Sorry to hear that Silentman.
I recommend getting in touch with Pianoteq support and arranging to send the same crash file to them - only that can give you a diagnosis which might help your setup.
We can only guess about cause or other things which might help.
One of the reasons I'm so fond of Pianoteq, is the software engineering side (almost as much as the musical side) of it and the support seeming to understand, find and fix anything brought up.
I haven't had any crashing even once (crazy rare esp. given how much I load it) - and have used it going on some years.
Thinking about an Ableton setup for gigging:
You can definitely line up enough plugins to halt a DAW session. Certainly any VSTi can suddenly use just a bit more than usual CPU if you play a lot of notes at once or play something quite complex. Currently, I'm finding some limits in Ableton and having to drop some plugins which are way heavier than Pianoteq - they will only be opened for mixing down tracks and not during normal playing/recording. Make certain that nothing you do in a gig will be too much for your machine. Think you got it right? Test again. If CPU gets above say 70% for 'long periods' it might be a little too close for comfort and a spike (from anything in the chain) could choke it, to my way of thinking. I'd want to know that even if I run all the keys with both elbows and held down the sustain pedal and mashed a bunch of high velocity chords, that CPU will not be much higher than 30%. If it's risky, I'd limit polyphony or unload or edit down some plugins's demands (if you have any complex chains - simplify something). Some plugins will have "gig" variants - use those instead of "full" if appropriate for gigging. Also gigs can be stupidly hot under direct stage lights and CPU likes to be cool (be sure to keep your PC out of spotlight etc). But these are things which would be the same with any VSTis. Just worth considering our entire toolset. Never hurts.
Pianoteq is pretty balanced in how much CPU it needs - but for gigs, I'd consider making some specialist changes to the PC regardless - for recording or gigs - like not using a general purpose machine but one with a maybe extensive list of custom changes for audio use (just in case yours is not already tailored). There's a lot of good advice about this easily found by a web search.
If your machine has the specs to run Pianoteq and your pre-gig fitness testing checks out, it really should be one of the most trustworthy tools in your kit, from my experience.
[edit "recording tracks" to "mixing down tracks"]
Last edited by Qexl (17-01-2019 15:46)
Pianoteq Studio Bundle (Pro plus all instruments) - Kawai MP11 digital piano - Yamaha HS8 monitors
