I previously worked with Cantabile but on Windows 10 it has been crashing often. I did not realise there was a 10% Pianoteq discount for Gig Performer! Never mind. I had a brief play with the Gig Performer trial version before I took the plunge and found that the midi velocity input editing tool seems to work really well with the Yamaha P515.

I'm off now to explore further and will report back.

Stay safe,

Warmest regards,

Chris

You log into your user area.

And, seems a lot like Cantabile  —and available as a fourteen (14) day limited demo! 

You get it at the website, https://gigperformer.com/.

The things above are pretty low hanging fruit - if nothing in there works, there might be more arcane things to look at (like BIOS settings) or hardware itself.. maybe check in your machine if things are seated in properly, or showing signs of overheating.. gigging can exert forces not experienced by equipment sat at home.

About BIOS: you might have a CPU setting in your OS contradicting the one in BIOS. That was the case with my current machine, iirc for a couple of CPU toggles (maybe it was to stop "throttling" and "allowing full power".. they don't all come out of the factory in their full glory

That's a calculated thing though.. it's not "clocking" the chip per se - but if your current setup is throttling, it might be a heat issue.. esp. if you're gigging under lights, keep that thing in some shade or with a fan on it maybe.

Gotta do what we gotta do. I'll post another wall (maybe some repeated things/more detail - have not the time to edit down much today sorry..) - hoping something sticks out which is useful. A wall of relevant stuff hopefully. Really understand though, if none of the rest is something anyone would like to continue looking into - esp. if another piano works at the moment. But, yeah, it's really a personal choice about the optimal option to take..

I'd just be hoping it's not something else which is going to glitch with any VST you use.. just if it's happened a few times when using Pianoteq.. well, maybe it also would have happened if you were using your sampled libs too at that time.. yikes.. don't mean to load that up in mind - but - if solid gig state is required.. maybe you might be good to keep looking at maybe hardware as well as the other stuff before settling on something which might fail with no notice anyway.

In Cantabile Pianoteq loaded in ~2 to 4 secs here in testing (quicker on ave than standalone does for me - or my DAWs). If I had problems loading Pianoteq in Cantabile here, I would have said "Yep definitely seems like something with Cantabile and/or Pianoteq combo" but couldn't find an issue. What it could be on your system is not certain without more (lots probably more) info, or seeing the maching and setup (software and hardware).

Probably comes as no surprise that the above, and the link to the glitch free guide, are just scratching the surface (low hanging fruit really - 99% of times 'something' should help).

Could you post the output of Cantabile's "log-previous.txt" file?

[Load up Cantabile, go to tools menu, and choose "Open Settings Folder" you will find --> "log-previous.txt" file.]

If you select the text, copy it, and paste it into a post, maybe it contains enough info for a forum user (or in Modartt) to see an "Aha" moment.

But - sometimes we just want to play music without the PC issues in the way and the fuss of some rare PC glitch can become maddening - really sorry you're getting this problem - I've had that too, more often than I'd like in the past. It's something which takes us out of the mode too - I've been keeping computers running since late 80s for my music making - so although it seems like a lot of things to try, I think I've almost seen it all by now.. and there's more than just what's mentioned above, sadly.

Maybe the best thing might be to look for a new PC if your current one is coming due for that and the budget is there. If I were to buy something new I'd be really looking at the latest chips, AMD's upcoming line maybe of interest, instead of Intel. (I'm not currently fully aware, but read some interesting tech news about AMD making some big jumps in upcoming speed/threading - maybe someone who knows more would be more helpful on that). Not to mention OS or makers of hardware etc.. that's an entire thing of its own. Some will say "this is the best" - I think it's what you can use which is best.. and I couldn't do some things with one OS as opposed to another and I use various ones for different things.

But I'm sure plenty would love to tell you their dream music PC setup A new thread like that might be helpful in that case.

But, if you are into DIY, and keeping your current rig, it might be still something you can fix.

If you keep at it, you may find the prob eventually - but, how?? It's a process of elimination - and a computer repair place will probably just say "Meh, upgrade X and Y and it should work". Some $s later no more issue. They are often right (not taking into account issues around recycling components etc).

OR..

Could be as annoying as just a physical component (sound card, CPU or other sockets?) being shaken a little loose from packing/un-packing at gigs or being un-seated from lots of heating and cooling.

If you do open your box or laptop, just be sure you're not wearing a jumper (you might go to the lengths of buying a static wrist strap, which you clip to the case before you begin unscrewing any panels or touching internals). Be firm but not brutal with anything in their, no stressing wafers and so on - if anything, check to see if any cards show indication of stresses.. it really could be as 'dumb' as the person or robots who assembled your machine's components jammed something in too hard or not seated in fully - check any ribbon cable while you're at it. Things can work fine for years then suddenly pop out just enough for say 1 pin to intermittently lose constant touch with the current.

Also - dust - it can build up. Your PC OEM might have a guide for properly clearing it. My lappy seems really good with this - but others in the past have needed more work.. don't just vacuum the keys.

Also - CPU cooling paste - it can leak out. If you see white chalky residues, there's a chance your CPU might need either a re-seat or replacement if it's too far gone. OR it might be fine too - not always obvious.

Maybe somewhere over time you've baked a chip or other component somewhere on the board. (have to say I'm impressed with recent CPUs and cooling, given some of the room temperatures I've needed to run this thing in - but that always plays on my mind).

Sometimes something just breaks or changes (system software or hardware) and it's often a bunch of hair-pulling days or weeks until the culprit is tuned back to normal.

Maybe if you give some specifics someone smarter than us with machines could identify something they know about. Things like operating system (Win 10?), PC make and its age, (some info like RAM amount and type - the motherboard make and model# - and CPU - hard drive size (and how filled up), drive types brands and setup, for example does your system run some kind of drive backup utility constantly in the background always copying everything on C over to D? Western Digital, or maybe Intel Rapid Store tech.. that kind of thing is fairly un-noticed but can sometimes get sticky if it's detecting some issues - which you could maybe fix by right-clicking its icon in sys tray and choosing some option in its interface.. rare but that's been the case for me in the past - caused random slow downs sys wide.. easy fixed).

Other more longstanding things.. might be something worth checking up with your computer's BIOS. <-- This is usually OK these days, with most typical things enabled - but sometimes, some rare CPU related setting in there or other, might be needed to make some other improvement to an OS setting really function correctly. You can set some trottling or power options in your OS, but if your BIOS loads "disable CPU throttling" on bootup, you won't get best results - although you might get nothing, you may also get something glitchy too.

In those cases, it pays to really just read up on BIOS features (if your PC has this ability, begin with a general or basic BIOS settings view, then if nothing looks fruitful, then look at advanced BIOS settings.), check your PC manufacturer's web forum for similar issues - OR -->> take the beast into a good PC repair place.. they might tell you "It needs a new HD", or faster RAM to match some rare-as-all-get-out pin switch on your motherboard.. they may be right about a lot of that advice, as it's almost always better to upgrade anyhoo

There will be all kinds of reasons - including multipliers from the above list (take say item X + item Y = extra problem Z). It's not always about one thing alone - but, then, how much time does one ever have to try all combos of possible settings after trying out things which might be obvious..

Lots of people might also say "Just get a different OS" for various reasons. Whatever works - but the trick is trying it - or seeing it working somewhere else first.

Sorry that's probably not as succinct or formatted and clean as I'd like - but apart from posting everything what can ya do?

Just hope you can get your gig the way you'd like it best.

cheers

I noticed while testing in Cantabile here, after a time, my ASIO driver pop-up bubble pops up, again and again.. seems to be periodically re-loading, which is maybe a clue - I don't see that behavior with any other hosts I use. I imagine, in the middle of a gig, if THAT happened, my sound would stop and I might have to re-start something.. perhaps try this..

In Cantabile options, choose audio driver "Control panel", my ASIO window loads, shows buffer is different to Cantabile's setting I made.. setting the ASIO panel setting to match the Cantabile buffer might help??

Then also:

Also, in Cantabile's Options, Diagnostics tab.. "Ignore ASIO Reset Requests" could be interesting for that issue.. for a few reasons.. but mostly, I do like to manually refresh my ASIO driver periodically - I find that over time (if working hard) my audio can exhibit a little "crunch", not in a nice analog way - so opening my ASIO for all panel, un-clicking the running drivers, then re-clicking them after waiting about 4 seconds = all back to nice and clean audio - at least until I've pushed things hard again for a time.

Musicians having issues like you're experiencing, is prob. why Brad's starting to finish VST 3 support (I wasn't aware it only had VST 2 currently - just installed it to see if I can find something obvious here) but can't rule out that something he's doing with all VST handling is not also going on ATM.

VST 2 was pretty solid, but being superseded (like us poor old humans lol) - bound to begin to show issues in new/updated software - maybe indeed Modartt have altered something in VST2 handling in Ver. 6.5.4 but it works as usual here.

While Brad's mainly updating Cantabile's VST3 code, that still may be a cause of changes to VST handling in general - it's probably not as straightforward as the 2 things being fenced off entirely from each other. There's theory, then there's maybe some other blob of code everything does have to handshake before output..

Part of Canatabile's re-coding touches on preset switching - that may be where something changed (common module talking to both ver. 2 and 3 plugins), even for VST 2 - just assumption, but can't be ruled out for certain use cases without more testing - or picking Brad's brain

A abstracted kind of example.. if you change something in CSS (call it VST3), in a web page, it won't touch HTML (call that VST 2) but your web page (call it your sound) might now look 100% different now in your browser (call it your Cantabile app) - or broken. That just may be that something does rely on something else only Brad will know there - or worse, only something to do with your particular OS (recent updates etc.?), CPU and audio card.. funny, I look back to the 90s when the buzz-term "Plug-n-Play" was a big deal, now although there are standards and so on, the competing implementations and innovations are still spaghetti

But, yeah if your Cantabile only uses VST 2 (and it was working fine before) there may be things to do so your kit returns to some state as stable as it was..

I've seen Cantabile uses a lot of RAM - but that's probably a feature to be sure - if users pre-load a bunch of presets and so on, it will use a looot more RAM than just running a VST standalone mode.. there are some settings in Cantabile which might alter that below..

For now, some things to consider?

Maybe roll back your Pianoteq version for now in case it does have some new VST2 behavior that impacts Cantabile's output, to where it was working well with Cantabile.

Or of course, try the age-old uninstall, then re-install of Cantabile and/or Pianoteq (making certain any custom VST folders are correctly input into Canatabile's setup routine - one of the things VST 3 may do is take some mystery out of this supposedly).

In Canatabile "Tools" menu, choose "Scan Plugin Folders (full)"

Things to try in Cantabile "Options":

General tab: Enable GPU Accelerated rendering (OpenGL) if applicable.. in case an update to a graphics driver changed something - or in case it helps with CPU.

Audio Engine tab: check you have a large enough buffer, correct sample rate, experiment with the check-box "Double Buffered Audio".. here also the Cantabile options allow some "tuning" of the audio engine, which are..

number of audio threads: - check you have a reasonable number of threads.. Automatic chose for me 4, but I could choose 8 for example.

multi-processor mode: Compatible or Aggressive - I assume the latter = more CPU locked in.

thread affinity mode: Disabled = system settings.. the other 2 preferred or forced could be interesting to test more.. Pianoteq is OK with less threads on my system.. but others might like to go with forced.. if it has the results I imagine, of forcing processing across threads thinly, rather than allowing any one processor choke on too much by itself.

prevent memory paging: might help setting from disabled, to normal or aggressive, in case your system is thrown by it.

switch to power plan: none, high performance, power save. Obv. make sure you have high performance selected, you don't want it going to sleep if you for some reason set a screen-saver when working on other things.

Output limiter: think twice about running that - Pianoteq has a limiter already - it's like maybe shaving twice, do you really need that processing?

Plugin Options tab: check the folder location(s) are correct - also maybe keep the check-box selected "Rescan plugin folders on startup".

Also, if using presets and banks - it may be where some issues lay, simply because, tangential to VST 3 updating, that touches on the handling of presets and banks - maybe something had changed here recently on their end.

Maybe check also in the Miscellaneous tab: Prevent power suspend and maybe also Prevent monitor power suspend. You can have those set as system-wide settings of course - BUT - after enough updates, somewhere the OS or another program could assert some change, or you can forget that once when you wanted to change something, "I must remember to chage this back" and don't

In the Diagnostics tab: Check the box "Log VST MIDI events" = might allow your to see if some program change, or send happens around the time of your crash. Also maybe change the detail level to "Detailed" or "Over the top" for more clues for Brad or Pianoteq should you choose to send it to them - maybe they could see something going on to help out.

Really annoying stuff when something solid suddenly becomes a hair pulling thing - but hopefully the situation will improve for you!

BTW, Glitch Free - guide to tuning Windows by Cantabile's dev Brad is pretty sweet for anyone having issues with audio in general - things to look at there could help.

Really hoping something in all that helps here and you can gig without worry, cheers.

If you have more gigs lined up I can only suggest using a stable DAW instead of Cantabile, until Cantabile finishes their VST re-code.

No mystery IMO pax, Cantabile's VST 3 handling is currently being re-coded by the owner/dev (Brad Robinson). I have confidence it will be done well, and done soon, seems an excellent developer - I post again the link:

https://community.cantabilesoftware.com...vst-3/4635

It's the likely answer - and not a secret - click the link to read from Cantabile's owner/dev about how he is currently re-coding Cantabile's VST handling - his own forum thread about it - it's interesting to me anyhoo.. that's what's goin' on, I could bet on it  Q_-

Why not do this:

Load up Cantabile, go to tools menu, and choose "Open Settings Folder" you will find --> "log-previous.txt" file.

You can open that text file in notepad, copy the text there, and paste it into a new post.

That way, we can know what is happening.

That might really help Brad over at Cantabile re-write VST handling especially for Pianoteq - who knows -  always look on the plus side, cheers

So last night, mid-song at a gig PT caused Cantabile to freeze. Got this funny noise through the speaker then Cantabile posted the error message about Pianoteq module (or words to that effect) and I had to restart Cantabile. Not good. There is definitely something going on here.

Changing models works in under a second - somewhat different to those sample pianos!