Steinberg, Please read my post about MR816 problem. Please.

Steinberg Hardware
1

Dear Steinberg,

I (and many other users in these forums) have a big problem with MR816X. We couldn’t get any answer at Hardware section so I am posting it also to here, because I am also a Cubase 6 owner. I sent e-mails to Steinberg support team, talked with distibutor in my country and also sent personel e-mail to Steinberg technicians but nobody is willing to solve this problem.

MR816 is a professional equipment developed by Steinberg & Yamaha. We bought 2 MR816-Xs in 1 year and the problem that I explained below is not solved. We have tried sound cards; on 3 different PCs, with more than 10 different VSTs and with more than 10 different Cubase Projects.

You can find the hardware & software details at the end of the message.

Here is the problem;

If you load a project including more than 5 GBs of VSTs (for example a project including 5,2GB patches from Halion Sonic + Kontakt + EW PLAY), Cubase 6.0.5 crashes (Cubase 5.5 also crashes). All previous Cubase versions such as 6, 6.0.1, 6.0.2, 6.0.3, 6.0.4 crashed.

When Cubase crashes if you restart Cubase again, Cubase starts with PC’s other ASIO drive. In our setup we have Creative Audigy sound card, Cubase starts with Creative ASIO after restart.

If you load the same Cubase Project including more than 5GB of VSTs, it loads successfully. Why? Because at that time Cubase is using Creative’s ASIO drive.

If you re-select MR816’s ASIO drive and try to load the same project, it crashes.

A low end sound card’s ASIO drive lets Cubase to open the project successfully.
But high end sound card’s ASIO drive does not let Cubase to open the project successfully?

If the computer do not have any other sound cards then Cubase also starts with MR816’s ASIO drive, then it is impossible to open these projects. The only way is to cancel VST loadings during opening project, let Cubase open the project without VSTS, then to load every VSTs again.

When we use VE-PRO and load all VSTs into it, Cubase can load the project including 6 GB of VSTs successfully. But why should I buy it? Why should I need another program to solve MR816’s problem?

Also we have tried to install and use another brand’s firewire sound card to one of our PCs. We loaded same projects in the same setup (only with another soundcard), they all loaded successfully?! So there are not any problems with our PCs, Cubase, VSTs or anything else but with MR816-X. I also have read similar posts about this problem on the internet.

Please Steinberg, solve this problem. It may be a ASIO drive issue or maybe it needs a firmware update, but please do something. We bought 2 MR 816-Xs for our studio and we are having this problem on both of them. It cannot be a factory fault because we bought sound cards from different places and on different dates (we bought the 2nd one after 1 year from the purchase of 1st one).

We have;

  • 3 different PC setups with PCI-e firewire cards (Texas Instrument), but we have tried 4 more different firewire cards with different chipsets.
  • PC’s have Intel i5 and i7 CPUs (nothing is overclocked), mainboards are Asus P67, memories are 4x4 GB Corsair Vengance DDR3 on each computers (we have also tried other brands’ memory modules).
  • Computers are not connected to the network yet and also they are not connected to internet.
  • Seagate and Western Digital Harddrives with 7200 RPM, 16GB Cache. 4 x Corsair 120GB SSDs (we tried to load VSTs to different HDs, or only to SSDs)
  • 2 MR816-Xs with the latest drivers and firmware updates.
    All setups use Windows 7 64 bit, Cubase 6 64 bit, East West PLAY VSTs 64 bit, Kontakt 5 VST libraries, Halion Sonic.
    All software programs including Windows, Cubase, VSTs are up to date. Latest updates are applied.

Cubase 6 crashes when we try to load a project including 5-6GB of VSTs. We tried different VST combinations. For example we created a project including only East West Libraries, a project including only Kontakt, a project including only Halion Sonic, a project including VSTs from all libraries etc. But if Cubase is opening a big project, it crashes. If we select Creative’s ASIO drive from Cubase, we can open every projects without any problems.

I am really tired of this. It is not easy to test all these variations and also it is not easy to explain this to you every time. We may not work that hard on this issue but Steinberg, I am kindly asking you, please solve our problem. We want to use Steinberg products but we will have to change our sound cards to improve our workflow.

Thanks.
Cenk

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I cannot sell my two mr816x, I love the way they sound. And, I don´t want to waste money buying two different ones.

I have conducted a lot of tests too. I have read representatives of Steinberg answering in lots of other threads, why no one has ever said anything in the various threads about this matter???

3

no word yet…chris, I know you monitor this threads…can we have somekind of acknowledgment that this problem is known to Steinberg? I cannot work with large projects and mr816 and I am not the only one.

Please, please, please…there are several threads in the cubase subforum and this one…give us something!!!

4

Hello Pablo and all,

I’ve contacted with Steinberg Technical Department. We discussed every details about the problem. Here is what they told me to do. With this solution you will be able to load every big projects without any 3rd part programs (such as VE-PRO), but your REV-X will not be available any more. Steinberg will try to solve this with updates but as they said the source of the problem is East West VSTs. You can also find the explanation about East West below.

From Steinberg;

  • Turn your MR 816 off

  • Please create two new folders on your desktop: /32bit & /64bit

  • Please drag-and-drop the following folders and files to your desktop:

To the /32bit folder
C:\Program Files(x86)\Steinberg\MR\fx

C:\Program Files(x86)\Steinberg\MR\plugins

C:\Program Files(x86)\Common Files\Steinberg\Shared Components\mr_extension_u.dll

and also to /64bit folder:

C:\Program Files\Steinberg\MR\fx

C:\Program Files\Steinberg\MR\plugins

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Steinberg\Shared Components\mr_extension_u.dll

  • Now please turn the MR816 on and do some test runs with Cubase 6

From Steinberg;
The issue only occurs when Users try to load big project with an East- West Plug in as far as we know.
There is an issue related to several Plug ins including the Rev-X and other third party DSP- VSTs (UAD 1, UAD 2, RME DSP- Plug ins etc.)as well.
East West will have to update their software.

At this moment you can only do this work-a-round and this will result in non- available DSP VST- Plug ins.
We will update our MR816 Software as fast as we can, but this issue can only be solved if East West will update thei VSTi as well and solve their memory
overflow issue.

Best,
Cenk

5

Nice work Cenk!

That´s a good start, I see that you have posted in the East West forums too, have you contacted East west support? Maybe we can get an answer there too.
I am not using Rev-x, but the problem with this workaround is that I cannot choose the source of the headphones signal.

Is there any way to “hardwire” heaphones 1 jack to the “headphones” channel of the control room, and headphones 2 jack to the studio 1 mix, for example?
without using the audio hardware setup?

As I said, its a good start Cenk!
I will post in the east west forum so we can drag some attention

6

Well, yes Pablo, at least we are now able to load our big projects :slight_smile: Thanks.

I am using EW Spaces for reverbs now, that’s ok. But yesterday I couldn’t enable “direct monitoring” for audio recording. What happens if we only move Memapi but not mr_extentions? I’ll try that. And I don’t know a solution about your problem at that moment.

Yes I’ve also send message to East West Support team. I hope they’ll understand the problem and will try to solve this issue.

Keep in touch,
Cenk

7

I´ve tried restoring mrextension, but although the project gets to load ok, I can select Headphones/control room in the hardware setup menu…

so, something doesn´t work if I restore mrextension…I hope eastwest and steinberg can fix this bug!

8

cenk, have you heard from steinberg or eastwest regarding our problem? diying to use the extension when I am recording live musicians on top of the samples!!!

by the way, I enjoyed very much the music on your website!! keep it up!
Regards
Pablo Crespo