Dune 2 Crashes Ableton Live 9.7.5 when...

[Mathematics]

First off: I am running Win7 Pro, Live 9.7.5 (latest), on an i5 with 8GB. It's a modest setup and I have never really had any issues. I just bought another SSD drive and decided to do a clean install of Windows and all my software. Now then...

Dune 2 Crashes Ableton Live 9.7.5 projects when I have the following synths running alongside it in a single project: Sylenth, Massive, Reaktor (Razor), FM8, Zebra 2, Omnisphere 2, Kick 2, and Serum. Yes, it's a massive project and quite complicated. I also have tracks frozen and even then, it still crashes. I had another project that was bigger than this one with many more instances of the same synths except for Dune 2 and without freezing tracks, and it ran problem free from beginning to end.

This last project that I'm working on, I started it with Dune 2 and numerous other instances of the aforementioned synths, and it ultimately crashed after a few instances of Zebra 2, FM8, Massive, Reaktor, and Serum. Now, I did not have nearly as many instances of synths loaded upon the time it crashed as I had in the previous project. So, because this project has several instances of Dune 2 alongside other soft synth instances and it crashes hard to a white screen, effectively forcing Live to shut down, and since the previous project never crashed and was much bigger without Dune 2 running, I am lead to believe that Dune 2 is the culprit.

So far, I froze all the tracks, duplicated them and flattened them, and deleted the synths from the project beginning with Dune 2. The only synths running as non-frozen instances are: Sylenth, Serum, Kick 2, and Reaktor (Razor). Now the project runs fine and doesn't crash, so again, I feel like Dune 2 is the issue simply because without it, the projects running all the other synths function fine with no crashes.

Let me clarify how it crashes. At about 1 minute into the song, it crashes on the same measure every time. The screen goes white (80% opacity) saying that Live 9.7.5 has stopped responding.

Q1: Is there a synth that Dune 2 should not be run alongside?
Q2: Is there a limit as to how many instances of Dune 2 can run in a project?
Q3: How many synths has Dune 2 been tested to run alongside? (because I'm running many and Live crashes really hard)

I have contacted Ableton about this and I have given them extensive crash reports and troubleshooting steps to find out what the problem is. So far, they responded with a very detailed troubleshooting document written by a Senior Tech Agent which was helpful but with no solution. I have figured out how to stabilize Live running this project but it requires deleting Dune 2 and perhaps other synths, but that was just a decision I made out of desperation to make this project run. I don't know if I needed to delete most of them or just Dune; so, that's why I'm asking the above questions.

I really need some help with this. Because of this issue, I lost a client for whom I was producing an intro EDM track for a video they were releasing. So, I can't afford for this to ever happen again. I also run Pro Tools, and Digital Performer and they run reliably on this computer. Live is great but it's just this project running several instances of Dune 2 that has me baffled. I recently acquired Dune 2 and this was the first project I made with Dune 2 instantiated. As I said before, while other much bigger projects ran with many more synths instantiated without crashing and not running Dune 2, this current project crashing with Dune 2 instantiated makes me believe that Dune 2 is the problem.

Anyone?

[HYPNAGOGIA]

I can't really say much about this because I don't extensively use Live, nor do I have most of those plugins to check, but have you tried doing this for your D2 instances?



Just a thought that it might be worth giving a shot.

[Mathematics]

Hi there and thanks for the reply. The Ableton Senior Tech emailed me back and apparently they discovered several issues, none of which point to Dune but they aren't ruling it out so to speak because I had a similar project with the same synths and it never crashed...but enter D2 then Live takes a crap.

I am going to have to try to install Live on perhaps another computer and try to run the project on that computer and see if Live takes another dump. The issues, the issues.

So, the tech gave me several things to try. If I find a solution, I'll post it; otherwise...oh well. I guess the universe is trying to talk to me somehow.

[Christophe]

how many dune2 instance are you running ?

[Mathematics]

In this project I stopped at 4 instances of D2 because of the constant crashing, after having about 8 other instances of synths before it. Normally I end up with about 60-80 bussed tracks with half of them being synths...the ones I originally mentioned. So...yea, I like my synths. I guess from years of experience I have developed a resource hungry workflow but I get the sound I'm looking for or better most of the time. I am heavy on effect processing, so each one of those busses has at least 6-8 effect inserts.

Honestly, I don't think it's Dune 2 anymore. I think D2, albeit a bit CPU hungry, is still very efficient. I'm saying it's a bit CPU hungry only in comparison to say Sylenth or Massive but on my i5 it runs fine. On my i7 that I tested out, it runs about the same. So, I guess the extra cores help? I don't know...I'm not the developer. I'm assuming D2 is multi-threading.

Anyway.

[Christophe]

yes it is multi threaded like the above image show you, you can disable it.
As you said that each bus has 6-8 insert you can try to delete each effect on Dune2 track.

[Mathematics]

I did. I actually have the project with nothing but flattened wave samples from the frozen tracks that I deleted. The project still crashed with just wave samples. I am completely baffled. Ableton says the file is not corrupt either. Anyway, there is not much more I can do on a software level. I would need to try different hardware. So...yea. I already have a list of reliable devices. I'm thinking I'm going to go with Steinberg or stick with another MOTU device because RME is just not a practical solution in features and financially. As of now I have a MOTU 2408 MKIII coming out of a PCIe-424 interface. Since I already own an extravagant interface or my home studio, albeit legacy; I don't need another. I just need anything that I can use when the 2408 doesn't cut it.