Help! Acid Pro 11 Won't Open- Crashes at ASIO stage of loading splash

TiKkO wrote on 3/28/2024, 4:13 PM

I friend of mine has become a very notable hip-hop producer. I run a studio these days and we have the opportunity to work together. The catch is that he's only ever worked in Acid. So, after some headaches dealing with this issue while trying to use the trial license, I bought a perpetual license; hoping that would somehow solve the issue. Unfortunately, it hasn't. I've now been dealing with this issue for 2 weeks, including 3 sessions where we accomplished nothing but chit-chat and troubleshooting. Has anybody experienced this? Anybody found a solution or at least determined some probable causes to attempt solving?

I've been in contact with Magix Support. Aside from having to wait a day or 2 (which I really can't afford to waste), they've been good about trying to help and sent a patch and the MagixSysemCheck link to comb for possible causes when they get the file, but this isn't a situation where effort counts for anything. We need a solution.

My working theory is that maybe there a "Y2K" type of issue. Maybe the "unlimited" channels are actually coded as some arbitrary high number that they assumed nobody would ever reach. If they, for instance, set a maximum number of inputs and outputs of 99x99, we would exceed that. If they assumed a pair of MADI cards at 64x64 totaling 128x128 would be the maximum number possible, we would exceed that. If they set a maximum total input + output channel count of 999, we would also exceed that because our system runs on 1,024 (512x512) channel Dante AVoIP PCIe cards; which is probably not something Sony nor Magix would have anticipated.
HOWEVER, we also have a UA Apollo connected to this PC. It also has drivers for Dante Virtual Soundcard, the PC motherboard has its own soundcard built-in, and the main display even has it own stereo output channels. So, if the issue is that it doesn't understand what to do with a 1,024 channel audio-system, it should just choose one of the other drivers, or just let us choose for ourselves (like most other DAWs).

Here's some specs and software installed on the main Dolby Atmos mastering room PC, where we're trying to install Acid Pro.

OS: Windows 11 Pro
Motherboard: ASUS ProArt X570
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X
RAM: 64GB DDR4
GPU: Red Dragon/Nvidia 6800
Main Drive: 1TB Samsung 980 M2 NvMe (plus 5 1TB drive including 2 more Samsung 980 in M2 slots, and 3 SCSI SSDs
Soundcard: Marian Clara E PCIe card

Software:

Digital Audio Denmark DADMan, Focusrite Pro RedNet Control, Steinberg Nuendo, Steinberg WaveLab Pro, Steinberg SpectraLayers Pro, Reason, MixBus 32C, Reaper, Waves (entire catalog), UAD2 Complete, Neve Recall software, SSL Nucleus Remote, OBS, Dolby Atmos Renderer Remote, Adobe Creative Cloud, Dante Virtual Soundcard, UA Control Panel, Microsoft 360, iLok, eLicenser, some random Plugin Alliance plugins.

Comments

SP. wrote on 3/28/2024, 4:24 PM

@TiKkO Try resetting the program settings. Hold CTRL+SHIFT on your keyboard an double click on the Acid icon to start the program. Keep holding CTRL+SHIFT until a small window appears that will ask you if you want to reset the settings and clean the cache. I hope this helps to get the program running again. Then you can go into the preferences and try a different driver.

TiKkO wrote on 3/29/2024, 3:40 PM

@TiKkO Try resetting the program settings. Hold CTRL+SHIFT on your keyboard an double click on the Acid icon to start the program. Keep holding CTRL+SHIFT until a small window appears that will ask you if you want to reset the settings and clean the cache. I hope this helps to get the program running again. Then you can go into the preferences and try a different driver.

Just tried it. Checked "clear cache" too. Acid Pro 11 did what it always does. It opened the splash window, loaded past VSTs, got to the ASIO drivers, then closed after about 2 seconds.
This time, I did something new too...
I know for a fact Acid Pro should open while another DAW is open. I know this because I used to open AP10 and previous versions while Nuendo was running, in order to ReWire Acid and Reason into Nuendo up until a few years ago.
Anyway, I left Nuendo running so that Acid Pro would have to choose another driver, but that didn't work. So, now I'm out of ideas. This has to be something like maybe a registry issue from when Acid Pro Suite 10 was on this SSD back when it was installed in a previous PC, or some conflicting software, or something along those lines, which I know nothing about. I just remember the registry thing being a solution like 16 years ago or something like that.

SP. wrote on 3/30/2024, 4:43 AM

@TiKkO It could help to unistall the ASIO driver you might suspect responsible for the crash. Then start Acid again and maybe it will reset itself to some standard driver like the Microsoft Sound Mapper.

johnebaker wrote on 3/31/2024, 10:48 AM

@TiKkO

. . . . Crashes at ASIO stage of loading splash . . . .

Looking at your system specs, I would agree with your suspicion that the number of ASIO drivers and hardware options you have is causing the crashing.

An option would be to turn off/unplugging/disable all devices except the main audio card to see if Acid starts, and get it assigned to the sound card ASIO driver, after which the rest of the ASIO devices can be turned on, plugged in again.

HTH

John EB
Forum Moderator