VST Plugins constantly crash

[KroniK907]

Hello,

I was messing with the FL studio Demo when I found out about LMMS. It was really exciting for me, until I started having the VST Plugins crash every 5-10 minutes. It usually crashes when I am messing with the vst plugin settings. This happens with any plugin I have used and I have messed around with like 7 or 8 different plugins. All of these same plugins worked flawlessly in FL studio, so I dont think there is an issue with the plugins themselves.

Is there something I can do to try and reduce how often these plugins crash?

Thanks!

[musikbear]

please tell us your
* OS
* lmms vers
* hardware specification (ram is the most imortant)
* if any -screenshots of error
* names and best download links of the failing vst's

[KroniK907]

Ok so I am on Windows 7 64 Bit with 16 GB of ram and a 2.6 Ghz AMD Phenom II x6 1035T processor

I am running LMMS Vsrsion 1.1.3 (win32/x86_64, QT 4.87, GCC 4.9.3 20150305 (prerelease))

There is no error window that shows up. LMMS simply stops responding and crashes. I have tried just waiting and after about 2 mins of the spinny wheel of death, I just give up and kill LMMS. Usually it will say (Not Responding) in the top left of the LMMS main window.

Once I get the settings set on the plugins, I have zero problem actually using them (as in playing or recording using the VST plugin without touching any of its settings), however trying to change settings on ANY plugin (I have now experimented with about 20 different VST plugins (both 32 bit and 64 bit)) will lead it to eventually crashing if I keep tweaking the VST settings for long enough. If I simply open it up and do a few things, it usually doesn't crash, but I have had LMMS crash just trying to load a VST before, so no real guarantees. Anyway, the VST host just seems really unstable and I was wondering if there are any tricks to try and keep it from crashing so often.

[musikbear]

this puzzles me. Your pc is more than capable (woooot) for running lmms.
Lmms is seriously stable, when it comes to vst-support of those we know works,
https://lmms.io/documentation/Tested_VSTs
however - A lot of vst's will not work. If you search, you can find my long and pretty winding explanation, but it has to do with kit-builds, and the std steinberg protecol.. :/

Do you have Synth1 installed?
http://www.geocities.jp/daichi1969/softsynth/

I kind of see this vst as the 'default' vst, for lmms. It is also one of the best vst 's, and the one with most banks for download.
I recommend Synth1 as test, because if you cant run that, then something is weird

When you get this hang, have you noticed if the cpu in this
https://lmms.io/wiki/images/a/a1/Wave_CPU_meter.PNG
window spikes to the right?

[KroniK907]

HMM. I do have Synth1 but haven't really messed with it in lmms.

I have watched for the CPU spikes and nothing like that seems to be happening. When I am playing a track with like 6 VST's I can see the green bar hit like the 3rd tick sometimes but that's about it.

I'll do some testing with Synth1 and see if I can get it to crash.

EDIT: Been messing with Synth1 and have yet to had it crash. Maybe it IS the VST's

[KroniK907]

Welp, I think I found my problem..... http://puu.sh/gTB4v/02827964cd.png

I have LMMS closed btw...

[musikbear]

oh yes! the problem is that you havent removed the 'live' instances of vst's after you have had a crash, and they have really accumulated !
You do not re-boot daily?
I think you will find lmms running fine, if you re-boot and check for all those running processes being dead and gone. Also, running high priority processes like icq skype and alike, can create issues, for programs that, like lmms, uses your soundcard 'live'
Let me know how you are doing after a re-boot, and with synth1
If you can figure out what vst that caused all this, let us know, so we can avoid it ;p

[caLRo]

Can't LMMS just close those VST instances by itself?

[musikbear]

Can't LMMS just close those VST instances by itself?

:) see this is kind of hen and egg
When lmms crash, there are no longer any 'strings' attached to those associated dll's that are running inside lmms.
So in order to have a 'healthy' lmms shut all these vst-dll's it would need to work like this:
Hey.. I lmms, think that the user are planning to do something nasty in a few ms from NOW.. I better start cleaning up, before he makes me crash..

Difficult for good old lmms to do that :D
No, crashed/ hanging applications, cant do anything at all, so manually cleanup OR! a 'simple' reboot, is the only options
Should there be a chapter in the wiki about crash-recovery?

[KroniK907]

I was thinking of maybe writing a script that would kill all instances of the VST host. Thats probably the easiest. Most VST's I've used crash at some point. I did a little more testing with FL studio, and realized that the VST's crash just as often but having that happen doesn't really effect the FL studio application. Instead, it seems that FL studio somehow is able to simply soft reboot the VST.

It would be kinda nice for something like this to be implemented in LMMS.