Hello everyone. I'm having a persistent issue with Omnisphere where everything will seem to be working fine; presets load fine, etc. But when I initialize a patch to create a new sound, within 5 minutes or so, Omnisphere will freeze, whether in standalone or in the DAW.

The sound continues and can be played with a midi controller (not computer keyboard) but the DAW (or standalone) freezes and has to be killed by task manager.

I've tried updating (2.8.1c) , reinstalling, deleting User Settings.xml, deleting all registries related to Spectrasonics, updating graphics drivers, and optimizing Omnisphere for cpu resources as suggested by the user manual.

This is really unfortunate considering I've used Omnisphere in countless projects with no trouble. The only difference now is I'm actually creating patches myself (or trying to) instead of going through presets. Even on a single stack instance with minimal effects/mappings this inevitably happens within the first 5 minutes of basic sound design.

I believe my specs are pretty good.

Win 10
i7-9750H CPU @ 2.60GHz
16GB RAM
Nvidia Geforce 1660 Ti

Edit: Looking at the performance monitor, Omnisphere froze at 9% CPU and 30% memory so I'm guessing RAM can be ruled out as a contributing factor.

Any help on this would be super appreciated, I've been trying to fix this problem for a whole day now. Thank you

 

Last edited: Nov 13, 2021

most Omnisphere presets are much more complex than something you can make from init patch, in only a few minutes.
So they would usually be bigger symptoms of a resources problem.

 

Right, one could logically assume it's not a resources problem. Complex patches are played with relative ease, just takes a couple seconds to load up as usual.

 

your daw is probably not the issue as it also freezes in standalone. are you using the same keyboard controller? it's unlikely a problem, but it would be another common factor to keep in mind.

 

Happens with and without a midi controller. Also an update: just did a performance check and it froze at 9% CPU and 30% memory so it looks like RAM can be ruled out as a contributing factor.

 

Go to: https://audiosex.pro/threads/omnisphere-2-8-constantly-freezes-windows-10.61572/

Spoiler: Streaming & Memory Management

Streaming



The first column contains controls for the streaming function in Omnisphere. Streaming permits samples to reside largely on disk. In this way you can use large samples with a relatively small amount of memory.

PRE-LOAD MEMORY SIZE




Determines how much memory is devoted to sample pre-load. The higher the settings, the less likely that glitches will occur due to streaming problems. However, turning it up requires more memory and will increase the load time for Soundsources.

Recommended values are between 22,000 to 66,000, with 60,000 as the standard default value. If patches make use of TIMBRE or SAMPLE START, this parameter might need to be raised over 40,000.

NOTE: Soundsources must be reloaded when changing this parameter before the new value will take effect.

Range – 1000 samples to 100,000 samples.

STREAM BRAKE




The control balances system resources between streaming and other operations. This is the second most important streaming parameter, after the Pre-Load Memory Size. It should generally be set to a moderate value around 0.1. Values above 0.5 may lead to streaming glitches due to deferring streaming reads in order to give priority to other processing operations in the application. Turning it down to zero may cause glitches in other operations due to the streaming monopolizing the CPU. There is a relationship between this parameter and the Num Bytes Per Read parameter. When that parameter is turned up, this parameter should generally also be turned up.

Range – 0.00 seconds to 1.00 seconds.

STREAM DISPLAY


Diagnostic numbers that are used for Customer Support purposes.

https://support.spectrasonics.net/manual/Omnisphere2/25/en/topic/system-streaming-index

Memory Management



The Sample Memory Menu allows you to manually limit the amount of virtual memory Omnisphere can use for Sample Memory.

The default is “Process limit.” To disable memory limit alerts, use “No limit on Sample Memory” instead.




Selecting a value from the drop-down menu sets the maximum amount of virtual memory available for Omnisphere to use.

Using the up-down arrows will step through the available values.

NOTE: Omnisphere Soundsources can require a great deal of memory. When limiting the amount of memory available to Omnisphere, it is a good idea to also apply Sample Thinning using the Patch Browser Lite Version feature, or the thinning options on the Soundsource Zoom Edit View.

Memory Meter

The Memory Meter displays the amount of memory currently in use by Omnisphere, along with the remaining available memory. This display mirrors the Memory Gauge found on the Browser Pages.

 

Last edited: Nov 13, 2021