# CAPSULE freezes Cubase 8.5 when reactivating Instrument track



## lucor (Jan 4, 2016)

When I try to reactivate a deactivated instrument track with a CAPSULE instrument on it (both single articulations as well as the multis) it makes Cubase completely unusable for a good 5 seconds. The effect seems to be additive because reactivating more than one track at once results in even longer waiting times. Happens with all libraries (BWW, BST, Berlin Brass Exp C, etc.), all other Kontakt instruments without CAPSULE work completely fine.
Can anyone try this out and see if it's only me? That would be a huge workflow killer. 

Thanks!


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## scarred bunny (Jan 4, 2016)

Yeah, happens here too. Not always, but frequently.

I wonder if it's related to the problem that's causing some people to have very long connection times when using Capsule in VEP. They're aware of that one at least and a fix is being worked on. But I could be wrong, so maybe send a bug report their way just to be sure. 

I tried the disabled track routine in Cubase, but this (along with Cubase sometimes losing input/output routing when enabling tracks) made me go back to VEP again for now. Interestingly I don't think I've seen this particular problem when disabling/enabling Capsule instruments in Reaper, so maybe there's something going on with Cubase (and/or VEP) specifically.


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## lucor (Jan 5, 2016)

Yeah I'll definitely shoot Tobias a message about it.

On a side note, I've been willing to try Reaper for a while now and this finally made me download the 60 day trial. Would you say that Reaper is a viable alternative for a large orchestral template? And by large I mean HUGE since I'm a one articulation per track kinda guy, so I'd have way more than a 1000 individual Kontakt instances loaded (all disabled of course). 
Oh and how do you actually disable something in Reaper? I found the "disable fx" button but that doesn't unload stuff from RAM it seems.

Thanks for your help!


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## scarred bunny (Jan 5, 2016)

Reaper has a lot going for it and is most certainly worth a look. I think it's pretty horrid in its default configuration though, and needed to spend some time customizing the crap out of it before it became usable and comfortable for me. But mileage may vary there, as they say  

I don't think many tracks should be a problem. Its folder implementation is different from most though, in that tracks in folders are only minimized (not hidden) when the folder is collapsed. So many tracks can still take up a lot of room - I think my string section alone was enough to fill the whole screen even in its collapsed state. So instead of collapsing folders, I set up a custom action to hide/unhide the contents in folders instead of collapsing them. Works much better that way, I think. 

To manage resources, I set up hot keys for "Set FX 01 online/offline for selected track" to enable/disable stuff. I think you may need the SWS extensions for that though. Also hot keys for rendering tracks to audio. There's also good old track freeze, which is implemented pretty well and also unloads instruments from RAM.


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## lucor (Jan 5, 2016)

Ok I got in contact with Tobias and he'll show the issue to their developer once he's back. For some reason he couldn't reproduce the problem and everything worked fine for him, so I wonder what might be causing this? Maybe some interference with another plugin? Mh, I guess I'll have to experiment a bit.


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## cyoder (Jan 5, 2016)

If I'm recalling correctly, bypassing VSTs does not save any resource but CPU, toggling online/offline saves CPU and RAM, and freezing is a separate kind of online/offline state as well so it saves CPU and RAM. (By separate state, I mean that frozen tracks make all the VSTs disappear from the FX list, but if a plugin is already offline, they will still show up in the FX list, still offline.) A lot of these functions are buried in menus or the action list but things got really good when I made shortcuts for them and put them on custom menus.

I hope it helps (and is not redundant information for you)!
Best,


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## scarred bunny (Jan 6, 2016)

lucor, may I ask what Kontakt version and operating system you're using? 

I'm on Kontakt 5.5 (on Windows). Now that I think of it, I don't recall having any problems when I was still using K5.3. I've been wondering if maybe something broke at some point with a Kontakt upgrade or something. Although in the same time frame I've also had updates to both Cubase and VEP so it's hard to know what's what. Or maybe I'm misremembering entirely. 

I don't envy the developers' jobs. So many platforms, so many variables :(

At any rate, here at least the problem occurs even with an otherwise blank project. Not just with reenabling a track, also when adding a bunch of Capsules from a track preset. So I suspect it's not interference with other plugins.


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## lucor (Jan 6, 2016)

I'm on Kontakt 5.5 as well with Windows 7 Professional. I don't use VEP anymore, so that shouldn't be causing the problem. Unfortunately I deleted my installation of Cubase 8, so I can't test if things are working there.
Some more experiments revealed that Metropolis is even worse, the lag there is almost double to what it is in the other libraries. Berlin Percussion on the other hand doesn't have any lag at all and works perfectly. And you're right, it also happens in a blank project, so that should rule out an interference with other plugins.

I'm on the edge of completely wiping Windows and making a clean install (it's gotten quite cluttered over the last one and a half years anyway) and see if that helps in any way. Also begs the question W7 again or try out W10? Mhh...


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## scarred bunny (Jan 6, 2016)

Well, we have Kontakt 5.5, Windows 7 and Cubase 8.5 in common at least. Maybe that's some sort of starting point. 

I'd try downgrading my Kontakt to see if that changes anything, but it's too much of a headache for me - all my projects are using patches that were batch-resaved with K5.5, so nothing would open if I did that. Just tried it again with Cubase 8.0.3 but the behavior seems the same, if not worse. Cubase froze for about two minutes when re-enabling a single Kontakt instance. 

I don't have Metropolis or the Percussion, just the Berlin Strings and Woodwinds. The woodwinds seem to be working fine actually, it's just the strings that are giving me trouble. Maybe it's related to the size of the patches and sample sets or something. I noticed my BWW patches were batch-resaved with Kontakt 5.3... curious, I dug up my old BST patches also resaved with K5.3. But no, same problem. Same thing with the original un-resaved patches. 

I'm running out of clever ideas  although it is curious that it only seems to happen in Cubase. Hmm. Wonder what Cubase 7 is like. 

No experience with Windows 10 so I can't hlep you there. I'd be surprised if wiping the system would resolve this particular issue, although it may be worth doing for other reasons. I could use a bit of computer spring cleaning myself actually.


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## OT_Tobias (Jan 6, 2016)

Hey folks,

I've been trying to reproduce this issue on all systems I have access to, but was unable to.
Our Capsule patches are pretty large and need to initialize a lot of things, so a small delay is ok, but certainly not extentive.
If I enable for example all Metropolis Ark I High Strings single patches in one Kontakt instance, they take about 5 seconds to start up. A single patch is instantaneous.

Can you all please do the following:
Open an empty Cubase project, insert 2 Kontakt.
a) in the first one load all Metropolis Ark I High Strings Single Artic patches.
b) in the second the first 16 Berlin Strings Violins I Single Artic patches.
Substitute any other collection if you don't have one of them.

Then disable the first instance and re-enabled it. Stop the time it takes until playable.
Do the same with the second instance and tell me how long it takes along with
1) Your Operating system
2) Kontakt version
3) Cubase version
4) audio interface
5) HD or SSD
6) Batch Resave performed or not

This is very puzzling, especially if BWW and BST show different symptoms. Both use the exact same Capsule version, literally the same. Percussion is newer, Metropolis Ark I is newest.
If possible I would like to get to the bottom of this with Metropolis Ark I since this is the version our developers currently work with.

Thanks for your help!!!


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## lucor (Jan 6, 2016)

Ok here goes:

1) Windows 7 Professional
2) Kontakt Version 5.5.1.451
3) Cubase 8.5.0 Build 69
4) Komplete Audio 6
5) SSD (both libraries)
6) Batch resave was performed for both as well

Waiting times:
a) all Metropolis Ark I High Strings Single Artic patches: 2 minutes 27 seconds
b) the first 16 Berlin Strings Violins I Single Artic patches: 2 minutes 20 seconds


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## lucor (Jan 6, 2016)

Did you also successfully test it on a W7 machine, Tobias? I think I'm not gonna go the W10 route, hearing about too many potential issues...


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## scarred bunny (Jan 6, 2016)

None of this is a deal-breaker for me personally as I prefer using VEP anyway, but I tried doing some experiments anyway. For testing purposes I dug out the original 2.0 patches and did a new batch re-save with my current Kontakt version. I don't have Metropolis so I can't help there. Instead I've tested individual Kontakt instances loaded with one of the following: 

a) every keyswitched multi from the Berlin Woodwinds core library
b) every single articulation patch from BWW Flute 1
c) the first 16 single patches from Berlin Strings Violin 1

Results in Cubase 8.5: 
a) 25 seconds. 
b) 12 seconds.
c) 2 minutes 27 seconds. Ouch. 

In all cases, the Kontakt load screen takes only a few seconds, and then Cubase's GUI freezes for the rest of the duration. Overall the first two are pretty reasonable, I think - a bit of startup/initialization time is to be expected. But something seems a little funky with the third one. Maybe the extra delay is related to the size and complexity of the patches. 

Same thing tested in Reaper: 
a) 22 seconds
b) 10 seconds
c) 19 seconds

System specs: 
1) Windows 7
2) Kontakt 5.5.1.451
3) Cubase 8.5.0 and Reaper 5.1. Cubase 8.0.3 seems to behave the same as C8.5. 
4) MOTU Ultralite (first generation)
5) Everything on SSDs, both samples, OS, hosts and project files
6) Everything batch-resaved with Kontakt 5.5.1451

Yeah, I'm confused too. 

One thought that struck me is that my woodwinds are on a SanDisk SSD (I think), and the strings are on an EVO840 which has been known to have performance issues with older files. I've done the firmware upgrade to address that issue though, and see no other symptoms of disk problems. And I figure if the disk itself is at fault, I should see similar problems in Reaper. So far it looks like a Cubase specific thing... and/or something else specific to mine and lucor's system, if it's can't be reproduced elsewhere. 

I want to try this in Cubase 7, but Steinberg's servers keep cutting me off so I haven't managed to download it yet. I'll report back when I do though if I find anything interesting. If I have time I'll try an older Kontakt version too just to see what happens.


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## lucor (Jan 6, 2016)

scarred bunny said:


> I want to try this in Cubase 7


Wasn't the track deactivation feature first introduced in C8? Unless you want to test something else.


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## scarred bunny (Jan 6, 2016)

Errrr.... now that you mention it you're probably right 

Guess that would make it a pretty useless test.


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## Stevie (Jan 6, 2016)

1) Windows 8.1 64bit
2) Latest Kontakt
3) Latest Cubase 8.5 64bit
4) RME HDSP AiO
5) SSD RAID0
6) Batch Resaved

The Metropolis Ark: 4:32 minutes (yes, you read correctly)
Berlin Strings: 2:26 minutes


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## lucor (Jan 6, 2016)

Ok I finally finished my completely clean reinstallation of W7 and as expected nothing changed. :( Also did a quick upgrade to W10 (without deleting anything) beforehand which had no effect either. So the problem must lie somewhere else.
At least I have a squeaky clean PC now, even though setting everything up again is quite a PITA.


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## OT_Tobias (Jan 7, 2016)

Here are my own results (3 tests done for each):
a) 7s, 5s, 8s
b) 15s, 13s, 17s
1) Windows 10 Pro 1511
2) Kontakt 5.5.2
3) Cubase 8.5
4) RME Fireface UCX
5) Samsung 850 Evo
6) MA1 Batch Resaved, BST not Batch Resaved (for testing)

It does not surprise me that the BST Legato patches take a while to activate. If I leave them out and instead use other patches, the numbers are more like Metropolis Ark I.

In both tests, a single patch (which is how I mainly use the track disable feature) loads within 1-2 seconds.
I would really appreciate if others could chime in with their findings.

Also, maybe the system state/hardware could have something to do with it. Let's see if we can find similarities.
My Windows 10 is pretty new (clean install, 2 weeks old). GPU is a HiS Radeon 7770 with 3 screens connected. 8 hard drives plus 2 BluRay drives (all internal). Asus P9X79 board, newest EFI firmware. I do very regular system maintenance, quite often manually (manually browsing all folders and for example deleting temp files). But this is a new system, and so is Lucas' so that should make no difference right now.

EDIT:
Make TRIPLE sure ANY Antivirus or Firewall is actively set NOT to mind Cubase, VE Pro and Kontakt! If you are using Windows Defender that is especially important. Just came to my mind...

Again, any reports appreciated!


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## scarred bunny (Jan 7, 2016)

The antivirus thing struck me as well, so I went back and double-checked. I've set up exceptions for Cubase, VEP, Kontakt and the sample drives. Just to be sure, did the test again while disabling Avira altogether - same result. Defender is disabled.

Ran some misc. Windows and driver updates. My graphics drivers were particularly archaic. No difference. Fwiw I have an NVIDIA GTX760. Gigabyte Z87X-OC motherboard. No optical drives. No particular computer problems that I can think of. 

For another comparison, I tested my old 1.6 violin patches (after doing a batch re-save). I tried matching the patches as well as I could, but obviously 1.6 doesn't have the fingered legato or exposed spiccatos. But I stuck the legato, ostinato, sustains, trems and some misc. short notes in there. 16 patches in total. Disabled, re-enabled... everything is up and running in 7 seconds.

With the 2.0 patches, re-enabling an instance with only the VLN1 Legato or VLN1 Spiccato takes about ~10 seconds each. Spiccato is marginally faster, but not by much. Doing the same with the BWW Flute 1 Legato is near-instant, maybe a second or so. The difference between BST and BWW seems rather odd, if the Capsule version is the same; I guess maybe BST has longer init times because of the larger sample sets or something like that? 

Not sure what to try next. So far the crucial ingredients seem to be Cubase + Capsule 2.0 + some other x-factor. But I have no idea of what that x might be, or what Cubase is doing differently from other VST hosts (e.g. Reaper). So far I think everyone reporting issues have been on Windows, although it seems there's no difference between W7/W8.1/W10. 

Any users of OS X and/or older versions of Kontakt want to chime in?


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## lucor (Jan 7, 2016)

OT_Tobias said:


> Make TRIPLE sure ANY Antivirus or Firewall is actively set NOT to mind Cubase, VE Pro and Kontakt! If you are using Windows Defender that is especially important. Just came to my mind...


I think we have a winner, at least for me! I knew about issues with your standard 3rd party Antivirus software, so I turned them off during testing, but didn't think about Windows Defender and Firewall.
So I opened Windows Defender and set an exception for all folders that contain my samples and for the whole Steinberg folder as well. In the Firewall settings I set an exception for Cubase 8.5 and now everything seems to work perfectly!
I'm not yet doing leaps of joy, in case this is just a fluke, but let's say I'm cautiously optimistic. 
Will do more testing and report back if it stays this way.


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## lucor (Jan 7, 2016)

@scarred bunny Have you tried the Firewall exception thing as well? I'm not sure which of the two procedures helped me, but maybe it wasn't defender if it still isn't working for you.


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## lucor (Jan 7, 2016)

Ok, I spoke too early. While BST and BWW seem to be working fine now, Berlin Brass Exp C still has the problem. Still transfering the rest of the samples, let's see how those turn out. Really weird...

Edit: Btw, now that I think about it, I don't think I tested anything else besides Berlin Brass yesterday before I did the changes to Firewall and Defender. So BST and BWW might as well have been working already. They are not yet Batch resaved btw, while Berlin Brass was. Don't think there is a connection there though...


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## scarred bunny (Jan 7, 2016)

Yeah, I just tried it again after completely disabling all antivirus and firewall stuff. Makes no difference here, unless I'm overlooking or doing something stupid (entirely possible).

This is the point where I usually throw my hands up in defeat. Or start blaming it on Cubase just not liking me very much after my infidelity with Reaper. Or maybe it's black magic. Maybe I just haven't thrown enough pixie dust at my computer lately  no, really, I have no idea what's going on.

Come to think of it I do have Berlin Brass Exp C, so I just tried that too. There's a bit of Cubase freeze there as well, but not as bad as what I'm seeing with the strings. Curiously the brass and strings are on the same EVO840, but the woodwinds are not. Hmmm. Maybe I should try loading them from a different drive anyway just to be sure, although it doesn't make sense to me that the drive would cause problems in one host but not another. But I'd feel better if I could at least exclude a hardware component that's known to be potentially problematic.

edit: nope, no difference. Okay, I give up. Cubase, thou hast defeated me


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## lucor (Jan 7, 2016)

Ok, so now that everything is loaded:

Working: BST, BWW, BP, Metropolis (only Percussion worked before my system wipe)
Not working: BST A, BST B, BP A, BB C

All libraries except Berlin Percussion Main are still on the same hard drive they've been before. I don't get it, everything seems so random...


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## scarred bunny (Feb 9, 2016)

Just remembered this thread. Last week, as part of my annual spring cleaning, I did a fresh OS install and upgraded to Windows 10 while I was at it. Curiously, the problem disappeared - but only with the Berlin Strings core library. Most of the others still makes Cubase freeze up. Just went through all my Capsules and tested them again: 

Working: BST, BWW, BP (core libraries)
Not working: BST A, BST B, BWW B, BWW D, BB C, BP A

Rather confusing. And again, it only seems to happen in Cubase. Works fine in Reaper or Digital Performer. Batch resaved or not seems to make no difference. Defender has exclusions for all DAW folders and processes and sample drives. Curiously all the libraries that are working happen to be Kontakt Player compatible and none of the problematic ones are, although I'm not sure why that would have anything to do with anything. 

Did you ever get it sorted out, lucor?


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## lucor (Feb 9, 2016)

Unfortunately not. :( Noticed some other weird random things (for example while the whole Berlin Brass Exp C doesn't work, the "special patches" like the Horns Divisi Cluster Builder load just fine), but other than that things are still the same.

Last I heard from Tobias was that their developer was able to recreate the problem and that they would have some time looking into it, since they planned on using the disable feature quite extensively at NAMM. That was about 4 weeks ago, haven't heard anything since then though.


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## scarred bunny (Feb 13, 2016)

I see. Well, at least if they can recreate the problem, that increases the chances that they can fix it at some point 

Did some more testing. For me, Cubase now connects instantly to a VEP instance hosting the BST core library, but takes an awful long time if it's also hosting one of the expansions. The same expansions that make Cubase freeze when being reenabled. So I'm guessing those two issues are related.

I want to give this disabled track workflow a try, so for now I've reverted to just using the keyswitched multi-patches instead. They seem more well-behaved here at least, presumably because you simply end up with a lot fewer patches that need initializing - enabling one of the ExpA multis takes a few seconds, while enabling the same articulations as single patches takes minutes. The multis also result in more efficient use of RAM and disk space in general. Guess I just need to get over my dislike of keyswitches.


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## Emmanuel Rousseau (Mar 10, 2016)

Hi everyone, first post on Vi-Control :]

Did any Cubase user notice the same kind of "lag" described when you Freeze an instrument track with Capsule on it ?

The processus is usually ultra-fast with other virtual instruments, but Freezing a Metropolis multi-patch "freezes" Cubase as well for at least a minute, before going to 100%. This happens only when I have keyswitches on the track.

Same result when I do an offline audio mixdown.

It has to be related to the same problem, and here as well this happens only with Cubase...

Thanks !


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## lucor (Apr 20, 2016)

Seems like they took care of the problem with the latest CAPSULE update. Very excited for this!


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