Questions & Answers

macOS (Catalina) - Studio One Pro 5.1 causing full system crash semi-consistently, no other DAW crashing

+2 votes
763 views
asked Nov 26, 2020 in Studio One 5 by davidwarner2 (690 points)
edited Nov 26, 2020 by davidwarner2
Right, so this is all a little bit speculative, because I can't reproduce the issue _in the same way_ consistently. However what _is_ consistent is that the crash only occurs whilst using Studio One.

The crash itself is not just an application crash, or a crash to desktop. It's a full-on system crash. That means you get the black screen with the white writing in multiple languages saying that the computer restarted because of a problem. Basically ... this:

I have Logic and FL on the same machine, a MB Pro 2015 and in Logic I can push it pretty hard until it does the usual "cannot process tracks" when it runs out of CPU to abuse. FL runs fine with more than a dozen plugins playing for a long time. Same as Logic.

But Studio One ... out of nowhere ... sound will be playing (that appears to be the only consistent thing here - it doesn't crash when idle, something needs to be happening to generate sound. Minutes can pass. I can have the same 16 bar loop of about 9 instruments and an audio track, with relative minimum Inserts ... it can play over and over and over. Then out of nowhere, something happens, it locks up, whatever is playing loops though about 4 "hops" of the same sound (this is just descriptive, basically the audio engine has likely crashed and the output is just streaming what chunk it last received ... I have no idea how it actually works) ... and then black screen, followed shortly by the message. Reboot ensues, and then I can launch the DAW and try again.

It has happened on playback with all these channels playing things. It has also happened as I've been moving MIDI notes up and down in the piano roll for Impact XT (so it's not specifically a third-party-VST issue, nor is it a CPU overload thing).

All the CPU is not being used up in any situations, the machine is not too hot. I can stress-test by playing stuff in FL studio and Logic that's using 70%+ of my CPU on a loop, and it's fine.

I don't have time to spend trying to stress test every possible iteration in order to isolate exactly what is going on here, but I love Studio One and I understand bugs happen but this is remarkable and I feel that I can't justify a Sphere subscription if I can't make use of the software I'm paying for.

I don't see how it's my machine, it's not my interface ... so what else could it be? Am I the only one experiencing issues here?

Happy to work with whomever and provide whatever i can to get this resolved.

I have raised a full-on support ticket. I didn't think of doing that first :facepalm:

2 Answers

0 votes
answered Feb 4, 2021 by khamsoukchanthavong (190 points)
I upgraded my Mac to Catalina version 10.15.7 and started to have the same issue. I tested other programs with the same plugins no issues. I would love to know the fix for this
0 votes
answered Feb 4, 2021 by davidwarner2 (690 points)
Annoyingly, after a full format and a downgrade to Mojave it happened again. There must be something specific with my configuration of VSTs. It took a while to happen again and i thought it was solved but it turned out that it was happening again.

To their credit Johnny from Presobus Support tried hard to figure out the issue bit yo no avail.

I've cancelled Sphere regrettably,  I'll try again with Version 6. For now ... Bitwig is growing on me ... and it doesn't crash randomly!
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