Anyone else having Ardour 6 segfaults?

[lykwydchykyn]

Started working on a couple new songs this month and decided to upgrade my Arch DAW, which took me to Ardour 6.0. It's got some great changes, but it's been crashing on me A LOT. Usually right after I stop recording or edit a region; it stutters, freezes, and segfaults. Subsequently upgraded to 6.2, but it hasn't helped. It's not all the time, usually only when I haven't saved for a while or just manage to get a good take after 15 tries. (kidding, it just feels that way).

Anyone else having issues or is it just my janky system?

[TheYke]

Had the same isses on my manjaro system. For me it crashed seemingly randomly (only when recording or editing midi though?). Posted about it in the forum, but couldn't reproduce it consistently, so no bug-report from my side. But there is something wrong for sure. Couldn't work like that in ardour :/ recently switched to Debian stable but had no chance yet to test things out. Fingers crossed.

[lykwydchykyn]

couldn't reproduce it consistently, so no bug-report from my side.

Yeah, same here. If I could connect something I'm doing to the crash, I'd report it. I don't wanna be that guy who posts "Ardour crashes a lot. Bye."

[GMaq]

Hi @lykwydchykyn

Between my son and I we've probably already logged 100 hrs.+ on Ardour 6 (and 6.2) and I think I've had one crash that was random and I push things with Wine/LinVST, we're using AVL (Debian 10) with the 5.4.28 AVL RT Kernel so I can vouch for Ardour working as good as ever here..

[lykwydchykyn]

That's good to hear. I may be upgrading my DAW hardware soon, so maybe it's time for me to give AV linux a try. I used Antergos on my current one because I wanted to take the bull by the horns and have all the plugins from the AUR, but that was some years ago when I wanted more synths and experimental stuff. Nowadays I just really want a solid install of Ardour and a handful of trusty plugins.

[GMaq]

That's good to hear. I may be upgrading my DAW hardware soon, so maybe it's time for me to give AV linux a try.

Lol, Well I wasn't trying to pimp my project, just saying that Ardour was working here is all. I don't know anything about Arch so I have no dogs in the fight one way or the other, I think in general any time you're using Linux for any dedicated purpose it usually pays to have a fairly static and well-tested base underneath it all regardless of whatever distro it is..

[lykwydchykyn]

I go back and forth on the static base thing. It's good in theory, but every time I've tried to make it work for a long time, I run into frustrations with not being able to get something newer. My first Linux DAW was Ubuntu Studio, WAYYYYY back around 2006ish, and I could never make it work consistently. I don't think I ever made any music on that system, because it was just too flaky. Eventually I broke it upgrading Jack and just gave up on Linux audio for a few years.

My next system was Debian Stable with KX Studio. It worked OK for a while, but I'd hear about some new plugin and want it, only to find I had to upgrade half my OS to get that working.

I went to Arch because I run it on my other systems, and it always just seemed easier to get oddball software and new releases. It's actually worked out pretty good for the last 2-3 years, and I've made some great recordings on it. It's just that, when Arch breaks, it's nobody's problem but yours.

The pendulum keeps swinging, so I may try something more turn-key next. It's just the constant battle between "I want a rock solid system that's predictable" and "I want that new thing!"

[mixe]

Limited direct experience but I've tried the free version on Kubuntu 20 and got indeed continuous segfaults.

I did some research and I got the feeling that many many people have been having similar experiences with the free version, while the paid one is much more stable. YMMV.

If you think you may like Ardour's workflow and are open to commercial software you may also want to know about Harrison Mixbus (apparently Harrison is an early supporter of the Ardour project).

[Michael Willis]

Most of the times that Ardour segfaults on me it is because some plugin crashes and takes down Ardour with it, and most of those times are plugins that I'm developing

[bluebell]

Most of the times that Ardour segfaults on me it is because some plugin crashes and takes down Ardour with it, and most of those times are plugins that I'm developing

Ardour makes Michael's plugin crash!

[lykwydchykyn]

Limited direct experience but I've tried the free version on Kubuntu 20 and got indeed continuous segfaults.

I did some research and I got the feeling that many many people have been having similar experiences with the free version, while the paid one is much more stable. YMMV.

If you think you may like Ardour's workflow and are open to commercial software you may also want to know about Harrison Mixbus (apparently Harrison is an early supporter of the Ardour project).

When you say "paid version", do you just mean harrison mixbus, or is there specifically a paid version of Ardour?

I didn't see any reference to a paid version on the site. I don't object to paying for it, or it being proprietary per se, but I don't like having to manage software licenses and manually update things.

[sysrqer]

When you say "paid version", do you just mean harrison mixbus, or is there specifically a paid version of Ardour?

I didn't see any reference to a paid version on the site. I don't object to paying for it, or it being proprietary per se, but I don't like having to manage software licenses and manually update things.

They mean the paid version. It is not proprietary, they build ardour against certain library files and sell it as a package, supposedly it works better than version compiled version provided by your package manager.

I gave up with ardour because of the crashes I got from it, even without any calf plugins (often sighted a as a cause), I lost many hours of work and I don't see that as acceptable. Renoise and Reaper are incredibly stable so I don't believe the stuff about libs that the daw is compiled against, as a user if my daw crashes and loses my work then it's not worth anything.

I would love for ardour to be stable but from my experience it is not and it's sad to hear that apparently it is still not.

[mk1967]

On my LibraZiK 3 studio (based on Debian 11) http://librazik.tuxfamily.org/base-site-LZK/english.php, Ardour 6 does a nice job, no crashes so far...

Michael

[Michael Willis]

I didn't see any reference to a paid version on the site. I don't object to paying for it, or it being proprietary per se, but I don't like having to manage software licenses and manually update things.

The Ardour devs make official releases built against specific library dependency versions, and ask for a donation or subscription. Often the Ardour builds available from distro package managers are linked against different dependency versions and the Ardour devs can't make any guarantees about how well they will work.

[folderol]

Most of the times that Ardour segfaults on me it is because some plugin crashes and takes down Ardour with it, and most of those times are plugins that I'm developing

I was going to mention the 'plugin problem'. It's well known and pretty much unavoidable as plugins and hosts are tightly linked.
I'm occasionally running Ardor - mostly checking Yoshimi - and don't see any segfaults here. However, I do notice it makes about twice the DSP load as either Muse or Qtractor.