Nasty VST undo bug (host crash)

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househoppin09
Posts: 536
Joined: 03 Aug 2016

15 Jan 2018

I've stumbled upon a catastrophic bug that totally crashes Reason when undoing the creation of a VST rack unit under certain circumstances. This is in the latest version of Reason (10.0.2), on Windows. Steps to reproduce:

- Create a VST rack unit. Every single VST seems to be affected (instruments, effects, you name it), so it doesn't matter which one you choose.
- Open the VST pop-out window.
- With the VST pop-out window active/highlighted, undo the creation of the VST using the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Z).
- Reason should carry out the undo operation as expected, but then crash immediately.

This isn't intermittent, it happens every single time with every single VST. However, all the steps above must be followed to the letter--there's no crash if the undo operation is carried out from the Edit menu, and likewise no crash if the main Reason window is active/highlighted instead of the VST window.

Anyone using a Mac may want to test this using the equivalent keyboard shortcut, as I don't have easy access to a Mac with Reason to test that myself. It will be interesting to see if this is reproducible for everyone or not. I haven't reported this directly to Propellerhead because I can't find where bug reports are supposed to be sent! Hopefully they check this subforum... :roll:

WongoTheSane
Moderator
Posts: 1851
Joined: 14 Sep 2015
Location: Paris, France

16 Jan 2018

I've just tried this and I can't reproduce it. I've tried several instruments, several effects, both undoing right after creation and with added events in between, always with the keyboard, and it works as expected. I have Windows 7 though, maybe it's a Windows 10 thing?

drloop
Posts: 243
Joined: 27 Jan 2015
Contact:

16 Jan 2018

I can reproduce this bug.
Windows 10 and Reason 10.0.2d1 .
It does not happen evertime but it is annoying.

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Loque
Moderator
Posts: 11170
Joined: 28 Dec 2015

16 Jan 2018

househoppin09 wrote:
15 Jan 2018
I've stumbled upon a catastrophic bug that totally crashes Reason when undoing the creation of a VST rack unit under certain circumstances. This is in the latest version of Reason (10.0.2), on Windows. Steps to reproduce:

- Create a VST rack unit. Every single VST seems to be affected (instruments, effects, you name it), so it doesn't matter which one you choose.
- Open the VST pop-out window.
- With the VST pop-out window active/highlighted, undo the creation of the VST using the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Z).
- Reason should carry out the undo operation as expected, but then crash immediately.

This isn't intermittent, it happens every single time with every single VST. However, all the steps above must be followed to the letter--there's no crash if the undo operation is carried out from the Edit menu, and likewise no crash if the main Reason window is active/highlighted instead of the VST window.

Anyone using a Mac may want to test this using the equivalent keyboard shortcut, as I don't have easy access to a Mac with Reason to test that myself. It will be interesting to see if this is reproducible for everyone or not. I haven't reported this directly to Propellerhead because I can't find where bug reports are supposed to be sent! Hopefully they check this subforum... :roll:
support@propellerheads.se
Reason12, Win10

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EpiGenetik
Posts: 410
Joined: 19 Jan 2015
Location: Glasgow, EU

16 Jan 2018

househoppin09 wrote:
15 Jan 2018
Hopefully they check this subforum... :roll:
Thanks for posting this, and don't worry, they keep an eye on these forums and are now aware of this issue.

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AttenuationHz
Posts: 2048
Joined: 20 Mar 2015
Location: Back of the Rack-1

16 Jan 2018

Windows 7 10.0.1d18 can't reproduce.
It is not too much of an ask for people or things to be the best version of itself!

RandyEspoda
Posts: 275
Joined: 14 Mar 2017

16 Jan 2018

Windows 7 and Reason 10.0.2d1,
can't reproduce it either.

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plaamook
Posts: 2593
Joined: 22 Jan 2015
Location: Bajo del mar...

16 Jan 2018

Yep, crashes Mac OS 10.13.2 Reason 10.0

Funny something as simple as this slipped the net. (Shrugs...)
I just reported a bug as well. Grain bug. No biggy though.
Perpetual Reason 12 Beta Tester :reason:

You can check out my music here.
https://m.soundcloud.com/ericholmofficial
Or here.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC73uZZ ... 8jqUubzsQg

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ilikestargazing
Competition Winner
Posts: 72
Joined: 22 Jun 2016
Location: Copenhagen
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16 Jan 2018

I'm on Mac.
Was gonna make a post about this exact issue but kind of kept getting back into reason instead :D
Can confirm this Issue has existed since 9.5, was also in 10 through 10.0.2
Noticed it first right after 9.5 came out, when adding a fabfilter Pro-L just to quick-look waveform output.

The error happens with any vst. Add one, open the device window, press undo and Reason will crash 100% of the time.
Running OSX 10.11.6

househoppin09
Posts: 536
Joined: 03 Aug 2016

16 Jan 2018

Good to know it's this widespread, that should mean PH will have no trouble reproducing and fixing it.

For further info: I'm getting this behavior on a Windows 8.1 machine as well, so it looks like Win7 is the only OS that's immune.

househoppin09
Posts: 536
Joined: 03 Aug 2016

02 Apr 2018

This now appears to have been addressed in the new Reason 10.0.3 update, but in a very weird and unsatisfying way. Instead of fixing the bug, the Ctrl+Z undo keyboard shortcut now appears to be intercepted under the problematic conditions and simply disabled. Now, under the scenario I described (create a VST, open the pop-out window, make sure the pop-out window is active/highlighted), pressing Ctrl+Z repeatedly simply does nothing, as though there simply wasn't any keyboard shortcut for undo in the first place. However, if you mess around enough trying different things, the keyboard command will occasionally go through, and when it does the crash still occurs just like before. As always, everything works fine when using Ctrl+Z with the main Reason window active/highlighted, or when using Edit > Undo with anything active/highlighted.

As best I can figure out, what happened is that the Props realized it was important to address this bug so as to prevent the catastrophic crashing behavior, but didn't have time to hunt down the root cause for the bug and fix it properly. Therefore, they decided to disable Ctrl+Z under the specified conditions, figuring that some mild frustration about a non-working keyboard shortcut would be far preferable to a crash. Aside from the fact that this apparently wasn't done quite right (since I still was eventually able to get the keyboard command to go through and make the crash happen), I can't quite wrap my head around why more time would be needed for this. The Edit > Undo command works perfectly under all conditions, and the keyboard shortcut is supposed to be an exact alias of that command, so shouldn't it actually be quite easy to isolate the differential code that's getting executed, and then simply correct the code path for the keyboard shortcut to be identical to the code path for the menu command? I'm no software engineering expert, but this really does seem like low-hanging fruit.

Anyway, that's where things stand on this as of right now. It might be helpful if others (Mac users, etc.) could confirm my observations about how 10.0.3 has altered this behavior. Hopefully the Props still have this high up on their to-do list.

househoppin09
Posts: 536
Joined: 03 Aug 2016

05 Apr 2018

It appears I may have been a bit too hasty. After further testing, I'm actually getting the same old behavior more often than not: hitting Ctrl+Z after creating a VST and opening/focusing its pop-out window just produces the catastrophic crash, as it did before. Not sure why the keyboard shortcut now appears to be completely nonfunctional in some cases, but it's likely that that's just yet another aspect of this glitch that I never noticed before, and therefore nothing to do with the 10.0.3 update. As such, I'm now going to go ahead and say that it appears PH simply didn't make any attempt to address this bug at all in 10.0.3, which is very disappointing.

It'd be really great to get some confirmation that this behavior is unchanged on Mac etc. relative to 10.0.2. Come on people, it'll only take a moment to try it out and post your results here! ;)

househoppin09
Posts: 536
Joined: 03 Aug 2016

21 May 2018

As promised in the Reason 10.1 release notes, this has indeed been fully fixed now, as far as I can tell. What a relief, thank you Propellerhead! :thumbs_up:

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