Just a couple of quick questions for you.
Can you complete your signature and detail your sound setup and any midi devices.

As another observation/question, are you running a 32bit OS with 6G RAM?

The old 'Q' series of processors are a bit long in the tooth. I have one setup running my home media server. They aren't bad by today's standards, but you can stress them easily with modern VST.

Are you only using the plugin suite included in S1, or is your reverb a third party VST?

Studio one crashing all the time.

Also tell us more about this.
Tell us the steps to make it crash.

Does it crash when you open up S1 and then close it with no song?
Does it crash when you open up S1 and create a very simple song with one loop or recorded track ( no plugins)?
Is there a crash message?
Does it hang?

Thanks for the quick responses...
My sound setup consists of the presonus 16.0.2 running into a texas instrument fire wire pci card. I also have a casio cdp 100 midi keyboard running through an m-audio usb midi cable.

I mostly use the presonus board and play guitar and sing into some decent mics. I'm only using a reverb and compressor fx plugin on each of the two tracks. Don't feel like it should be stressing under a small load like that. and they are studio one's own plugins.

I am running a 32 bit os on 6 g ram and my pc has no problem running many programs at once. It's maxed out in terms of ram I believe.

Typically I start the program and it opens up like it should. Loads a saved song or even starts a new song. It doesn't really seem to matter if there are a few or many tracks when it crashes and blinks off. There are no messages. There are often no messages when I re-open it. A few times it has said something like "There is a more recent version of the file you are trying to open would you like to open it instead?"

It seems to happen most often when I let it idle for a minute or two. Like maybe I take a few minutes to practice a riff and when I look up it's turned itself off again. It doesn't seem to happen while I'm actively recording. Most often during idle, or if I change the tempo, or if I add an fx to a track.

Another strange thing happened. I don't know if they are related but, last night I finished a recording with a guitar track and a vocal track. Listened to it over and over very happy with it. This morning I loaded it up and somehow the vocals suddenly sound as if they've been lowered in pitch! They still match the guitar track but sound kinda awful. I checked the metronome against another and found the guitar track hadn't changed it's tempo. It was late but I'm sure the vocals didn't sound that way last night.

I see so much potential in this program if I could just get it to be more stable somehow. I appreciate any insights folks have on this matter.

Ok
So from your PC's perspective what is the audio in and out device? 1602? What is the sample frequency and buffer size?
Does your PC see any author Asio device?

(The sample playback at a different rate sounds like maybe a conflict with audio cards. )

We have to do some simple debugging to see what works if you are willing?

Make a simple song with no plugins and drag in one loop from Presonus's stock loop library like a two measure drum beat.
Set it to play in a loop and let it play for 5 minutes.
Save it as a test song, then shut down the song and S1.
Reopen the test song and get to loop for another 5 minutes.

Shut song then PC reboot and play the test song again.

Report your results if it works of not.

This will test the playback system and reloading of drivers.

It appears you're running a 32-bit version of Windows 7.
That version of Windows can't utilize more than 4GB of RAM, no matter how much you have installed on your motherboard.
The means at least 2GB of your 6GB installed RAM is essentially useless.

In some cases, certain computers reserve a portion of the system RAM for use by the video adapter and other things; the remaining RAM made available to application programs ends up being closer to 3GB.
If there are lots of resident programs running in the background (Antivirus, media streaming, etc.) they can take up a lot of RAM and processing power.
If you have "malware" on your machine, it can get even worse.

Your "Available Physical Memory" of 1.72GB is rather low.
That "should" be enough to run Studio 1, but will limit it's ability to load and use lots of VST's, etc.

The stat's and your description make me suspect that you might have some stuff running on your machine that shouldn't be there.
That can make your computer performance erratic, especially when it's asked to run a resource-intensive program like a DAW.

I recommend you scan your computer with a couple of good anti-malware programs.
I use the free versions of Malwarebytes and "Spybot Search and Destroy" when I need to clean up a system.
I always let them remove anything they find.

The only way you can get any benefit from having more than 4GB of RAM on your computer is to install a 64-bit version of Windows.
If you do that you can also use the 64-bit version of Studio One, which will use all 6GB of your RAM to support higher processing loads than the 32-bit version can handle.

I hope this helps.

after using malwarebytes and spybot search and destroy......


OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name ASSASIN-PC
System Manufacturer Dell Inc.
System Model OptiPlex 960
System Type X86-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9400 @ 2.66GHz, 2660 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Dell Inc. A17, 7/30/2012
SMBIOS Version 2.5
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514"
User Name assasin-PC\assasin
Time Zone Eastern Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 6.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 3.00 GB
Available Physical Memory 2.15 GB
Total Virtual Memory 5.99 GB
Available Virtual Memory 4.93 GB
Page File Space 3.00 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

jpettit
My computer asio device lists high definition audio device when the presonus is off, and when I turn it on it lists the presonus 16.0.2 asio buffer size 512 @ 44100.
I did as you suggested with the loop, saved it , closed program reloaded it , played fine, restart , re-opened , played fine.

I would suggest you investigate your system with one of these 2 utilities:

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

http://latencymon.soft112.com/

Have a read up on why this may be a factor for you.

I guage from your response that having 6G of RAM may not present as a problem, and it may not be. But keep in mind that your 32bit system can only address around 3.4G total, and 1.7G for all programs.

Perhaps you should also confirm that you have your power settings in order, and that all PCI and other hardware settings are not set to a power saving setting. Wifi and networking can be a real hassle for apps that run in close to real time.

You may also like to experiment with 'run as administrator' and also adjusting the program priority, found in the 'task manager' under 'details. You need to right click on S1 after you boot it, and set the priority to 'high'. Do not set it to 'real time', as it will freeze your computer if it goes into a loop.

I would also suggest you go through your 'start up' devices found in 'task manger' and make sure you disable any non essential services. You will have to do some research and trial and error.

To save you having to type in your system devices every time you post, put the details in your signature (go to your account page to do this). Have a look through the forum to see what most people list as relevant. It only helps for us to see what you have.

thanks rangersam

thimblewit wrotejpettit
My computer asio device lists high definition audio device when the presonus is off, and when I turn it on it lists the presonus 16.0.2 asio buffer size 512 @ 44100.
I did as you suggested with the loop, saved it , closed program reloaded it , played fine, restart , re-opened , played fine.

OK you have proven that the basic playback is fine.

Usable memory can be monitored while working in 32 bit mode. ( click on performance meter)
Keep an eye on it as you debug.


I would take one of your songs that is consistently crashing and do the following:
1) rename to a debug name
2) run it till it crashes
3) remove all plugins save version
4) run it till it crashes
5) Remove 1/2 the tracks. save version run it till it crashes.
6) keep pairing down until it runs without a crash

Once there go backward and add back the last thing ( go to previous version and run it till it crashes
This allows you to pinpoint the trouble area.
Let us know when you have narrowed it down.


FYI here is a similar approach by turn on and off services to help isolate the issue area.
viewtopic.php?f=152&t=32

thanks jpettit

It appears that cleaning your system reclaimed about 440MB of RAM.
That could be significant because it probably means there was malware on your machine before.
Getting rid of it could help quite a bit.

Now that your system is clean (hopefully), you should keep a good antivirus program running at all times.
Unfortunately, the big names (Norton, Trend, McAfee) tend to slow things down a lot.
I usually uninstall those as fast as possible and replace them with something "leaner and meaner".
Currently, the free version of BitDefender is probably the best way to get good protection without interfering with the overall performance of your machine.
I'm running it on my laptop alongside Studio One with no problems.

thimblewit wrotejpettit
My computer asio device lists high definition audio device when the presonus is off, and when I turn it on it lists the presonus 16.0.2 asio buffer size 512 @ 44100.
I did as you suggested with the loop, saved it , closed program reloaded it , played fine, restart , re-opened , played fine.

You could be having a conflict with the windows sounds trying to use the same audio device that Studio One is using. There could be a program running that tries to play a sound while Studio One is open. An example would be Microsoft Outlook, which by default plays a sound when a new email message is received. Studio One may have set the audio device to a sample rate of 44.1 kHz, while Outlook tries to play a file at 48 kHz.

You could try setting the Windows Playback device to use the built-in sound device in your computer by default, thus preventing it from trying to use the 16.0.2 that Studio One is using.

I usually set Windows Sounds to 'Off' by default, as I don't need them on my DAW, but if you set Windows to use the built-in device on the motherboard by default (or anything other than what Studio One is using) it should cause any conflicts with Studio One.

Rangersam wroteI guage from your response that having 6G of RAM may not present as a problem, and it may not be. But keep in mind that your 32bit system can only address around 3.4G total, and 1.7G for all programs.

^^^^ THIS
6 Gig is wasted space in a computer running a 32 bit OS. I skimmed over the thread and see that you had several problems people have helped with, but you really should consider going 64 bit.

1: As stated above, the 32 bit OS can't see beyond 4G, and in real life, only uses about 3.4G.
2: Each program cannot use more than 2G (actually, closer to 1.7G in real life)

As soon as Studio One reaches it's limit (1.7G) it will crash in a heartbeat. That's really easy to do with a couple VST's, especially any sort of sampling based systems. Even EZ Drummer will run it to the limit really fast.

Do yourself a favor and install the 64bit OS. Not only will the OS see all 6G, each program will have access to whatever the OS isn't using. The Q9400 can run it no problems. I'm running that same processor and do 40+ tracks regularly without issues.

Many good inputs.
The 32 bit memory limitations are true but there are many with minimal systems where it works fine depending on how complex of a song you build.. (you also have a good built in monitor for memory issue built right into S1)

Earlier in the thread you made a song that worked eve time.. Somewhere between that song and your real day alto day songs is either a limitation in your computer or an anomaly with your set up ( two cards,permissions, install issue, plugins etc)

Let us know how you are doing with isolating the issue.

mine also crashes alot but my biggest problem is, the more tracks i record on one song it starts sounding scratchy and the cpu is working over time. I have plenty of hard drive and 8 gigs of memory. i dont use the factory soundcard so its disabled. i use the onyx blackbird firewire interface. the first 4 tracks sound great but i started adding bass to it and its does the scratching sound every few seconds. i closed all startup programs in windows that might be causing issues but its still there
and clues??