Crashes with multiple tracks in overdub

[Jeremy Tranter]

Hi Jeff,

I've been having frequent crashes but cannot pin down exactly what I'm doing to provoke them.

What seems to push things over the edge is multiple loops in overdub and/or a long series of SUS substitutes/reverses/half speeds while in track sync mode. Seems to crash much less when no synchronization on.

I have looked at activity monitor and a don't think I'm pushing the computer to it's limits. Any suggestions welcome. What information should I be sending you and what is the best format?

Regards

Jeremy

Mac Book White running Mac OSX 10.5.8
2.4GHz core duo with 2Gb RAM
MOTU 828mkII

Mobius (freestanding)
JACK
Ardour
SooperLooper
Midi Patchbay
CueMix

[Jeff]

We've been having a private email dialog on this, but for the benefit of
the forum users I think this is due to the "long series of SUS substitues"
possibly in combination with reverse.

The bug is that if you use functions that force a new layer before
the current layer is allowed to play at least once from beginning to end,
you will create a "stack" of layers internally that have to be merged
as the loop plays. Normally we "flatten" this stack as the loop plays
but flattening can only be fully complete when the loop is allowed to
play from beginning to end once.

I won't go deep into the technical details but we're reaching a memory
limit if there are too many layers on the stack, this limit appears to
be smaller on the Mac than it is on the PC, my tests show that 16 layers
will cause this problem on the Mac.

I know how to solve this, but I'm currently deep into the synchronization
redesign and won't be able to have another release for awhile.

You can prevent this by being mindful of using functions that create
a lot of layers (you can see them as vertical yellow bars). After creating
several layers just allow the loop to "rest" and play once from begging to end
to allow the flattening to take place, then you can continue modifying it.