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Synthjacker experiences - always crashing

Thelast27Thelast27
in General App Discussion

Hey all and @coniferprod

What's everyone experience with Synthjacker?

I bought it primarily for multisampling AUv3 instruments and it's constantly crashing when doing so. I get the most crashes during the saving phase at the end.

Happens randomly on any AUv3 instrument, sometimes i'm lucky, most times it crashes.

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

Comments

  • richardyotrichardyot

    Maybe try this method:

    https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/35665/tip-to-considerably-speed-up-synthjacker-sampling

  • coniferprodconiferprod

    @Thelast27 said:
    What's everyone experience with Synthjacker?

    I bought it primarily for multisampling AUv3 instruments and it's constantly crashing when doing so. I get the most crashes during the saving phase at the end.

    Happens randomly on any AUv3 instrument, sometimes i'm lucky, most times it crashes.

    Any help or advice would be appreciated.

    Hello, sorry to hear that SynthJacker is behaving badly for you. This hasn't been a common experience, so it would be great if you could contact me through the app's Settings menu and maybe send the log file using the options you'll find at the bottom there. That might help to find out what the problem is.

    I am slowly preparing an updated version of SJ but it's still work in progress. But hopefully I could get this problem fixed in time for that.

    Based on your description it seems like the problem is not the AUs as such, but the post processing. So I will need to have a look at that, and your log information could be important.

    Looking forward to hearing from you via e-mail!

  • yokotateyokotate

    I bought Synthjacker and experienced frequent crashes too. I tried sampling AUv3 and hardware synths. Ultimately, I refunded because it was not reliable enough for me. Shame, as I liked the concept.

  • coniferprodconiferprod

    @yokotate said:
    I bought Synthjacker and experienced frequent crashes too. I tried sampling AUv3 and hardware synths. Ultimately, I refunded because it was not reliable enough for me. Shame, as I liked the concept.

    Sorry about that too. Just curious, why not contact me and tell me about the problem, instead of getting a refund?

    If this is a common problem, it has started occurring only recently, and it may have something to do with iOS updates for all I know. But I'd like to get it fixed somehow.

  • espiegel123espiegel123

    @coniferprod said:

    @yokotate said:
    I bought Synthjacker and experienced frequent crashes too. I tried sampling AUv3 and hardware synths. Ultimately, I refunded because it was not reliable enough for me. Shame, as I liked the concept.

    Sorry about that too. Just curious, why not contact me and tell me about the problem, instead of getting a refund?

    If this is a common problem, it has started occurring only recently, and it may have something to do with iOS updates for all I know. But I'd like to get it fixed somehow.

    With large files this seems a common issue. I reported a reproducible case of this months ago and was able to work around it by breaking up my sampling into files with fewer notes. This happened under both iOS 12.x and 13.x. It wasn’t clear If the issue was limited memory (I have an iPad 6) or that SJ needed more storage than was available for working with the large file. 8 was resampling a desktop piano sampler for personal use.

  • yokotateyokotate

    @coniferprod said:

    @yokotate said:
    I bought Synthjacker and experienced frequent crashes too. I tried sampling AUv3 and hardware synths. Ultimately, I refunded because it was not reliable enough for me. Shame, as I liked the concept.

    Sorry about that too. Just curious, why not contact me and tell me about the problem, instead of getting a refund?

    If this is a common problem, it has started occurring only recently, and it may have something to do with iOS updates for all I know. But I'd like to get it fixed somehow.

    It didn't cross my mind at the time to report issues, sorry. I'd like to tell you more but this happened before iOS 14 was out with an iPad Pro 3th gen, so I can't provide any details. One hardware I had issues with was Arturia Microfreak, can't remember about soft synths.

  • coniferprodconiferprod

    Thanks for the additional information. No worries @yokotate, I just wanted to know if there was a specific reason that you wouldn't want to pursue it.

    @espiegel123 I remember we discussed this, but since you could route around it by breaking into several jobs, I maybe didn't take it seriously enough.

    Anyway, I did a quick test, with a development version of SJ (that requires iOS 14, you should be aware), and I wasn't able to immediately trigger a crash with a long job. This is not that different from the currently shipping version, only the normalization was removed (discussed in another thread).

    Here are some statistics so you can maybe compare if my "big" is even close to your "big"... I used KORG Module and its grand piano.

    Extracts from the SJ log:

    Selected instrument Audio Unit 'Module' aumu:frdl:KORG
Did select instrument preset 'Natural Grand'
firstNote = 24, lastNote = 96, semitonesBetweenNotes = 3, velocities = [120, 75, 105, 55], noteDuration = 1.5, noteDecayTime = 2.5, noteGapTime = 0.5
Space: required = 119,1 MB, available = 7 793 MB
...
recording = file:///.../SynthJacker-20210424072230.caf, format = <AVAudioFormat 0x2826e70c0:  2 ch,  44100 Hz, Float32, inter>, length = 19871460 sample frames
[slicer] Scenario: SLICE --> TRIM --> CONVERT --> COPY
About to add 704 post-processing operations to the queue (404 work items, 300 adapters)
...

    (then slicing, trimming, copying, generating SFZ file and MIDI file etc.)

    Final result: 288 post-processed sample files plus the original recording. Each sample file is something like 500 kilobytes on average (some shorter, some longer, because of the trimming and because they are piano notes (high ones don't ring as long)), and the original recording is 159 MB.

    But most importantly, no crash! So... I wonder what is triggering your crashes.

  • espiegel123espiegel123

    @coniferprod said:
    Thanks for the additional information. No worries @yokotate, I just wanted to know if there was a specific reason that you wouldn't want to pursue it.

    @espiegel123 I remember we discussed this, but since you could route around it by breaking into several jobs, I maybe didn't take it seriously enough.

    Anyway, I did a quick test, with a development version of SJ (that requires iOS 14, you should be aware), and I wasn't able to immediately trigger a crash with a long job. This is not that different from the currently shipping version, only the normalization was removed (discussed in another thread).

    Here are some statistics so you can maybe compare if my "big" is even close to your "big"... I used KORG Module and its grand piano.

    Extracts from the SJ log:

    Selected instrument Audio Unit 'Module' aumu:frdl:KORG
Did select instrument preset 'Natural Grand'
firstNote = 24, lastNote = 96, semitonesBetweenNotes = 3, velocities = [120, 75, 105, 55], noteDuration = 1.5, noteDecayTime = 2.5, noteGapTime = 0.5
Space: required = 119,1 MB, available = 7 793 MB
...
recording = file:///.../SynthJacker-20210424072230.caf, format = <AVAudioFormat 0x2826e70c0:  2 ch,  44100 Hz, Float32, inter>, length = 19871460 sample frames
[slicer] Scenario: SLICE --> TRIM --> CONVERT --> COPY
About to add 704 post-processing operations to the queue (404 work items, 300 adapters)
...

    (then slicing, trimming, copying, generating SFZ file and MIDI file etc.)

    Final result: 288 post-processed sample files plus the original recording. Each sample file is something like 500 kilobytes on average (some shorter, some longer, because of the trimming and because they are piano notes (high ones don't ring as long)), and the original recording is 159 MB.

    But most importantly, no crash! So... I wonder what is triggering your crashes.

    My original sample file before breaking it up into smaller pieces was in the order of 1G. The individual note samples are about 5 mb. The notes are about 14 seconds long to capture the full maximum note decay.

  • coniferprodconiferprod

    @espiegel123 said:
    My original sample file before breaking it up into smaller pieces was in the order of 1G. The individual note samples are about 5 mb. The notes are about 14 seconds long to capture the full maximum note decay.

    OK, thanks. I need to turn it up a notch and see what happens.

  • coniferprodconiferprod

    That didn't turn out so good. I tried a note sequence from C1 (24) to C7 (96) by every semitone, with six velocities, note length 14 sec. That means 432 individual notes, with 1.6 GB required for the recording, plus all the temporary storage.

    It got as far as note number 74, and then the audio engine stopped playing notes from the AU, no idea why. When the playback is complete, recording is stopped, and it moves automatically to the post-processing phase.

    The preparation of the post processing phase went OK, but at the very start it simply ran out of memory and crashed. I don't know the exact cause yet, but my hunch is that something is trying to read the whole recording into memory before slicing, an obviously it won't fit.

    I'm about to streamline the post-processing anyway, so I'll need to fix it so that only the necessary portion of the original recording is read in as the slicing happens. At that point I can probably also combine the slice and trim operations into one.

    I think I'm still going to either issue a warning or just prevent a very long sampling job before recording, just to not give any false hope. A big job like that can (and should) always be split into multiple ones.

    Let me know how this sounds to you. Some of you may be giving SJ quite the workout, a little beyond what I originally intended, but I hope I can make it better.

    Not aimed at the people in this thread, but as a general observation: this is how we handle things, no one-star reviews required -- they don't help at all.

  • espiegel123espiegel123
    edited April 2021

    @coniferprod : fwiw, my crashes were with files where SJ only did the post processing. I used SJ to create a midi file and rendered the midi file to audio on my desktop and brought the audio back to SJ.

    So, yes, streamlining the slicing to work with less memory would be great.

  • LSVLSV

    Using Synthjacker after today's update is resulting in errors while processing files. It seems to record properly but when it compiles on the Slice Recording page it ends with an error and not all files are created. Out of six tries only 2 worked properly.

    I've checked the settings and they appear correct. @coniferprod

    This happened on an iPad Pro 9.7 running 13.7 and an iPad Pro 11 running 15.4.

    Not sure how to work around it. Any help is much appreciated.


  • coniferprodconiferprod

    @LSV said:
    Using Synthjacker after today's update is resulting in errors while processing files. It seems to record properly but when it compiles on the Slice Recording page it ends with an error and not all files are created. Out of six tries only 2 worked properly.

    Thanks for the heads up @LSV. This looks like that old chestnut, "too large job", but I would appreciate it if you sent the log file (from the Settings menu).

    From your screenshot I can just about see that you have two octaves by two semitones, with three velocities. If the note durations (not visible) are significant, then that will result in a huge file, and that will multiply with many temporary files. (Yes, the SJ engine is not yet optimized for this.)

    So I urge you to try with smaller jobs first, or in this case rather split your job into multiple jobs and combine the samples later (requires a bit of file naming etc. but should provide a workaround). Let us know how it goes. Sorry for any inconvenience!

  • coniferprodconiferprod

    To be honest, the 0.8.3 update was really just updating all the dependencies and making sure everything works with iOS 15, before a more substantial overhaul that will leave iOS 13 behind, in anticipation of iOS 16.

    The planned improvements include optimizing the slicing engine to use less temporary storage, and driving the AUv3 with the iOS sequencer (instead of a thread that plays notes and sleeps, if you're into iOS programming you'll know what I'm talking about). Also there's a UI problem with Digital D1 that I haven't been able to track down yet. Also, introducing SwiftUI for the user interface, etc.

    I hope the next major update won't take more than a year, but no promises. :-)

  • LSVLSV

    @coniferprod The log is on it's way to you. I was just emailing you from inside the app settings.

    You make a good point about size. I'll try smaller batches like you suggest.

    Although, this has been my normal approach for some time without error. The error appeared after the last update.

    Thanks again for the quick reply. And thank you for your great app and your diligence.

  • coniferprodconiferprod

    Yep, there is something odd about the preview / recording process that is causing the slicing to fail. I'm not sure yet why that should happen, but I'll investigate.

    It's an app, it has bugs. They are inevitable because apps are complicated. But what p***es me off are the one-star reviews from some folks who don't even have the patience to leave feedback and try to solve their issues. I just left a few snarky replies to those in the App Store, because today I felt like I don't want to do any customer-facing apps anymore, it's just not worth it (financially or emotionally).

    But still, I'm so glad there are people like @LSV and many others who want to actively solve the problems, and also all the other folks who have provided constructive criticism and troubleshooting information, both here on the forum and from inside the app. You know who you are, so thank you! Your feedback has made SJ a better app.

    I'm going to take a short break now, and hopefully soon I can get back to properly finding and fixing the problem.

  • LSVLSV

    If you own SynthJacker & haven't done so already, I encourage you to leave a positive review on the App Store to offset the entropy of the reckless imbeciles.

    In case you want to workaround the issue:

    Avoid pressing play to preview the sampling process before you record it. Instead, set all of the relevant parameters (preset, midi, notes, semitones, velocity layers, decay, gap, etc) Then without hitting the play triangle, just press the record button.

    I tested several setups from 74 notes with 3 velocity layers down to 5 notes with one velocity layer & they all failed when I previewed them before recording. Every one of those same setups worked if I avoided the preview before recording. Not even size seemed to matter.

    @coniferprod will have this figured soon enough but even now I've had several days of successful use by avoiding preview.

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