Solved: Sometimes no sound on Cubase PC

[Geoff]

Hi,

Have been using Electra2 (v2.7) for a few weeks now and have identified some odd issues when using it with Cubase 10 Pro/Win10 PC (64 bit).

The problem occurs when adding more than 3 instances of Electra2 as VST rack instruments to a project. The project appears OK and the various programs and audio all play OK with the VST instruments. At some stage later, after closing and re-opening, the audio routing appears to have been lost on some of the instances. MIDI can be observed going in to the instrument, the routing setup appears correct on teh instrument and yet no sound is present in the mixer. Another issue seems to be the loss of the program settings on some of the instruments. In this case the settings for the first instrument appeared to have overwritten the settings on the second as well.

It should be noted that Electra2 is the only VST instrument that does this in out collection of dozens of VSTi's from many manufacturers.

Another strange thing that we noticed yesterday, not fully examined yet, was starting with an empty project we loaded an instance of Electra2, then an instance of Serum, and then another instance of Electra2. This caused Cubase to crash completely. The behaviour is odd because we have projects with 10-16 instances of Serum in some cases which run just fine (along with may other VSTi plugins).

Hopefully this is of some help. If you want me to try other things let me know and I can easily do this to try and debug.

Regards,
Geoff

[Markus Krause]

Hello Geoff,

this problem is not known from other users. Electra 2.7 has been reported as very reliable and stable.

------------

Assumption:

You are running the 32bit version of Electra (ElectraX.dll and not ElectraX64.dll) and are running out of RAM. Please note that the maximum RAM assigned to a Software in Windows is 2 GB. When you open a large number of VSTs you can reach this limit quickly. You can verify this with your task manager.

Solution:
- Use the 64 bit version of Electra (ElectraX64.dll)
- Reduce the number of tracks in your project.

Best Regards,
Markus

[Geoff]

Hi Markus,

Thanks for the suggestions.
I've found Electra to be stable and reliable with 1-3 instances. No problems there.
I'll check the keyfile, however I doubt that's the problem as it appears to work OK with 1-3 VSTi's.
I only run 64 bit plugins. Cubase 10 only supports 64 bit plugins.
There is plenty of memory. This machine has 16G. We've recorded and mixed many large projects on it previously.
The problem is recurring. Just add half a dozen instances of Electra, all set to different sounds and on different instrument tracks (or as rack instruments, it does not appear to matter) and close/open the project a few times. It seems to not appear until the project is later opened again. I haven't seen it with any other VSTi which is why I started looking here first.
The 1903 Win10 update is not yet installed on this machine, maybe that will change the way things work.


Thanks,
Geoff

[zvenx]

Because I am a Cubase user too, I tried it.
So far on the mac, Will try it on my Nuendo system on PC later today.
But new project.
one instance of Electra X
one instance Serum.
three instances of Electra X
one instance of Serum
one instance of Electra X

so seven instrument tracks in all.
Not a problem.
Saved project.
Closed Cubase
Reopened Cubase.
Reopened project.

No issues.

Will try on PC later.
sorry.
rsp

[Geoff]

Thanks for checking.
I kind of suspect something amiss here, as Markus suggests but it's good to confirm with others as well.
Let me know how the PC check goes. Then I can start investigating further to find the culprit.

Thanks,
Geoff

[zvenx]

Hi, I completely forgot to check on pc.
let me do so tomorrow.
sorry.
rsp

[zvenx]

Tried importing the tracks into a new Cubase Project, and also opening the project itself.
The good news is that it doesn't crash.
However I realise two things.

1. For folders with more patches than will fill three columns, the patches past the three columns do not show up in ElectraX.
2. Opening the project, or importing, not all ElectraX patches play....some of them just click...... if you try to play the preset, you hear no sound.... next or previous preset all play.
very very odd.
Will email project to support.
rsp

[Markus Krause]

Hello Richard,

1) The maximum number of patches per directory is 78. If you create own patch collections with more sounds you must split them into two directories.
The limitation makes sense, since the Mac can only show popup menus with one row for the patches and we are cross-platform. Mac users would have to scroll for a long time to access patches otherwise.

2) I will check it out. Could be caused by some broken patches. Make sure that you installed the latest version (v2.7).

Best Regards,
Markus

[Markus Krause]

Hello Richard,

I checked it out and could not reproduce a problem with the two patches you have reported. I tested it with Cubase 9.5 as well as Orion. There are also no other users which reported problems with these patches.
You have emailed to me that it does not appear when you start a new project.
I assume your project file is damaged or the patches are damaged.

You can try this:

1) Delete the problematic patches
2) Reinstall Electra 2.7
2) Load the project
3) Load the patches again (pick the fresh ones from the factory library)
4) Save the project
5) Close Cubase
6) Open Cubase and load the project again

Markus

[zvenx]

Were you able to open the project in Cubase 9.5?
The patches play fine in PC, without that project or if I reload ElectraX in that project and select those patches in the same project and save the project it is fine.
rsp

[zvenx]

Tbh I rarely rarely ever use ElectaX, I was just trying to help the OP and discovered these two issues.
But since I dont use Electra X, not worth it to me to track down the issue,
I will reinstall though and see if that makes a difference.
rsp

[Alex_Longard]

Hmm, i test Electra v2.7 on Asus K54c 1.8 ghz cpu, 8 gb ram.
Load and normal work 14 instances with all 4 layers))))

PS: i test this in Reaper and Sonar.

[Markus Krause]

I think i was able to solve the problem. It was very difficult to reproduce, since it did happen only rarely and only in Cubase under certain conditions if several instances are loaded. It does not seem to happen in other hosts. It was caused by a too aggressive performance optimisation.

--------------------------------

This patch fixes a problem with Cubase and Electra on PC.

Description:
If a patch with legato was used in a song project it could occasionally happen that it did output no sound after reloading the project.

Installation:
1) Install Electra 2.7
2) Go to the Vstplugins directory and replace ElectraX.dll / ElectraX64.dll with the one from this package.

https://www.tone2.com/update/Tone2_Electra_PC_Patch_2.7.2.zip

[zvenx]

Thanks Markus that was fast.
Will test within the hour.
rsp

[zvenx]

Yep.
That Fixed it at my end.
thanks
rsp