Scaler 3.1.2 VST3 (or VST2?) plugin crashing Studio One on song load

Scaler 3 Support Bug Reports
1

Hi,

when loading a Studio One Pro 7 song (project), S1 crashes and restarts. Upon restarting I got the following message in Studio One:

“The following actions could not be completed:

create device: scaler 3”

I checked, no dump files were created for this crash for whatever reason.

All I know is that I had a track (muted, and unused) in this project that had likely Scaler 3 VST3 (it might be the VST2 version but I normally try and use the VST3 version at all times if available), and also that the scaler instance was created with a much earlier version of Scaler 3, although I can’t tell you which version as the project is many months old. Whatever earlier version of scaler 3 plugin I used was used to create a chord progression, the midi was grabbed and then the plugin was likely disabled but not removed.

I could uninstall and reinstall scaler 3 but this has only happened to me once, so is it worth it?

Thanks for any help.

2

Hi @jsljustin sorry to hear this is happening. Very strange that no crash logs were generated. If you do find any of these please upload here so we can investigate. It could be related to a 3rd party plugin hosted by Scaler.

Is it just one of your old projects which is causing the crash? If you are not able to open that project you can temporarily uninstall Scaler 3 and try to load the project, then save under a different name.

Also which operating system are you using?

3

Hi @Tristan thanks for the reply.

I am on Windows 11. I had another crash tonight. I just started a blank Studio One song (project) and was showing a friend how I use Scaler 3 to create chord progressions. Anyway, I created a new instrument track in S1 then dragged the VST3 version of Scaler 3.1.2 onto that instrument track and it just hung for quite a while, then Studio One crashed and restarted. So the issue cannot be with a 3rd party plugin as it was a new instance of Scaler 3.1.2 with no third party instrument loaded.

Again I checked to see if Studio One had created a dump file, but there is nothing in there. The latest dump file date is May of this year. The location I am going to to look for the S1 dump files is:

C:\Users\Justin\AppData\Roaming\PreSonus

(note Justin is my user name and specific to my system only)

Unless there is another location it is saving crash logs to, there is nothing there that I can upload.

4

Hi @jsljustin. Thank you for the extra info. Whilst we have not experienced any crashes on Windows 11 in Studio One 7, we are investigating Scaler 3.1.2 being blocklisted by Cubase and Studio One which should be resolved in the coming update. Is this something you have experienced?

In our testing the VST2 Scaler 3.1.2 plugin was initially added to Studio One’s blocklist, but it is easy to remove from the blocklist via the plugin settings.In out testing the VST3 version if not affected, but perhaps the issues you are experiencing are related to this.

5

Hi @Tristan

no, I haven’t experienced Scaler ever being blacklisted as a plugin, so that isn’t my issue.

I have not had earlier versions of Scaler 3 doing this crash in Studio One, only the 3.1.2 version is causing fairly regular crashes now (at least two in the past few days).

I don’t know if there is something else on my system that could be causing this, so I am not sure what else to suggest. I will try and see why Studio One is not creating these dump files (crash logs) and if I can, if I get more crashes if I can upload crash logs I will do that.

6

I have just this happen too. Latest Scaler 3, latest Studio One, Windows 10. No crash files or useful logs from Scaler 3 or from Studio One. Studio One knows it did not finish opening the song but the log just says:

[startup][1240]
[action][1240:Win32 Thread]OpenDocument, DnB riff 043.song
[action][1240:Win32 Thread]CreateDevice, Voltage Modular
[done][1240]
[action][1240:Win32 Thread]InitializeDevice, Voltage Modular
[done][1240]
[action][1240:Win32 Thread]CreateDevice, Impact
[done][1240]
[action][1240:Win32 Thread]InitializeDevice, Impact XT
[done][1240]
[action][1240:Win32 Thread]CreateDevice, Scaler 3

Then radio silence.

There was a really long pause with the Studio One dialog saying “Loading Device: Scaler 3” (much, much longer than normal) before it crashed and dropped back to desktop.

I can open the song by temporarily moving the Scaler 3 VST3 out of the VST3 folder so it effectively does not exist. Studio One then opens the song and reports the missing plug-in so the problem is definitely S3.

The “contents” of S3 was really simple. Eight bars, four chords, a main track and a passages track both muted in the mixer (internal sound was Staccato Strings). No plug-ins. Passage track was four bars of passage 4 and four bars of passage 8 or 9. DAW sync on. Unlike Justin’s report above this track is brand new so the S3 version has definitely not changed during the process. I can’t really offer any more information.

Yesterday it loaded fine. I’d happily played with several variations, then dragged the MIDI into the DAW and muted the tracks in the S3 mixer. So I haven’t lost any work because I have the MIDI and I know the chords but it does make me nervous of using S3 as a plug-in. I’ll probably start using the stand-alone to develop ideas then move stuff into Studio One as MIDI clips.

7

Thanks boingy,

helpful to hear your report, so that we know it is not just me having this issue.

I also had another crash yesterday I think, brand new Studio One song, just loaded Scaler 3.1.2 VST3 onto a new instrument track, then a long pause, then Studio One crashed to the desktop, then restarted again. The error message showing in Studio One when restarting was the same one you describe: a problem with creating device “CreateDevice, Scaler 3“.

Looking back, I am pretty sure now all these problems all occurred with Scaler 3.1.2. Even though I got an early crash loading an older Studio One project that had older versions of Scaler 3 loaded at that time, because it was loaded when I had updated Scaler 3 to version 3.1.2 it would obviously load the VST3 3.1.2 version.

So it seems something with Scaler 3.1.2 is having problems with Studio One 7.

If it helps, I generally find that once Scaler 3 causes Studio One to crash, the next time Scaler 3 will load safely, so you might be able to keep using Scaler 3 in Studio One. I am not sure of the mechanics of how Studio One operates, but it might be that Studio One engages some sort of crash protection that helps an offending plugin to load the next time, and without having to blacklist it.

8

Just to add that I have 4 or 5 other very similar Studio One songs which load fine. All of them have one instance of Scaler 3 with just a few chords and one or two tracks in there. All are using internal instruments so no plugins. I can’t see anything obviously different about the one that crashes.

9

Hi folks. I wanted let you know that there will be a Scaler 3.1.3 update released very soon which addresses some of the issues reported in v3.1.2 including blocklisting on Cubase and Studio One on Windows.

It’s not clear whether these fixes will alter the behaviour you are seeing in Studio One as we have not been able to replicate these crashes, and testing the blocklist behaviour has been somewhat inconclusive. In our experience, uninstalling Scaler 3 prior to updating avoids blocklisting in both Cubase and Studio One however tests are ongoing.

We’re hopeful this update improves performance for you and should be available to download on Thursday October 2nd. Please let us know how you go after installing the update as this is something we will continue to look into.

10

Thanks @Tristan

I will report back after installing the 3.1.3 update when it is available.

Is it advisable to uninstall Scaler 3.1.2 prior?

Thanks.

11

Hi @jsljustin, the Scaler 3.1.3 update is now available. Uninstalling is not usually necessary but it might be wise in this case. You can always try just updating first, and if you continue to have trouble, then try a clean install.

12

Hi @Tristan

unfortunately it is still crashing Studio One Pro 7.

I installed Scaler 3.1.3 (but didn’t uninstall 3.1.2 first, as you suggested) and now in an existing Studio One song (project) every time I click to open an existing Scaler 3 instance, Studio One crashes.

Everytime.

I am going to try and uninstall Scaler 3.1.3 and then reinstall, and see if I can’t at least open my instance of Scaler 3 (VST3 version) as I really would like to at least gain access to the scaler 3 instance as it has work I did the other day and I have no way of getting it back.

Will try the uninstall (and removing all remnants) and see if I have better luck.

I did already mention this, but from tonight’s crashing, again it is clear that this bug is being instantiated when Scaler 3 first tries to load as a plugin. The error messages I have gotten in the past are around a crash when studio one tries to first load the Scaler 3 device. Tonight, it is clear that the crashes are occurring when Studio One first tries to load or create the device, ie when it first attempts to create or load the plugin.

13

Hi again @Tristan

I am in the process of reinstalling Scaler 3.1.3 (clean reinstall, using the forum instructions posted for clean uninstall elsewhere) but I thought I’d do a bit of detective work as it requires a reboot now and I want to give you more information first before I reboot and lose the info.

First, you mentioned an issue with Studio One blacklisting plugins. That is concerning, as Studio One, instead of having a plugin firewall, will blacklist plugins if they are unsafe, meaning if they have code that might lead to crashing Studio One. So perhaps the cause of the blacklisting is related to this issue?

I searched the event viewer in Windows 11 and found that even though Studio One is not creating dump files when Scaler 3 is causing Studio One to crash (probably as the exception is unhandled to the point where Studio One cannot write a dump file even? I don’t know), there are registered logs of these crashes in event viewer. One such log is:

Faulting application name: Studio One.exe, version: 7.2.2.0, time stamp: 0x6880c8c2
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.26100.6725, time stamp: 0xf41da127
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000000000001cc9f
Faulting process id: 0x8E8
Faulting application start time: 0x1DC337DC556407F
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\PreSonus\Studio One 7\Studio One.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
Report Id: 61a83f6b-4c29-4db4-97ba-ae33bcacb240
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

This error was from one of the crashes of Studio One, in particular the last crash tonight when I tried opening a Studio One instrument track that had an instance of Scaler 3.1.3 on it.

ntdll.dll is the reported source of the crash, although this may not help, as it is my understanding that it is a Windows (in this case, Windows 11) API call. In other words, when I try and load scaler 3 as a plugin, it then makes some sort of programmatic call, either to Studio One or to the Windows API directly. If it is the latter, then your programmers should understand it and be able to debug this crash appropriately. If it is the former, meaning if Scaler 3 makes some sort of programming call to Studio One and then Studio One makes a call to the Windows API (i.e makes a program call to ntdll.dll) which is clearly an unhandled exception, then this information above may not be any use to your programmers. But maybe pass it on to them and see what they say.

I will reboot now (having done a clean uninstall of Scaler 3.1.3 followed by a reinstall) and report back if at least for now, Scaler 3 doesn’t lead to an immediate crash of Studio One 7 Pro.

14

No luck.

Even after a clean uninstall and reinstall of scaler 3.1.3, now I cannot even load the Studio One song (project) at all!

Every time I try and load the project now in Studio One, it crashes right after is says “Loading Scaler 3”.

The only way I can recover this music project for a client is to wipe Scaler 3 from my machine.

I managed to create two diagnostic reports in Studio One that relate to the last two crashes.

Studio One Diagnostics Report 20251002-203332.zip (195.6 KB)

Studio One Diagnostics Report 20251002-202540.zip (195.6 KB)

15

Hi @jsljustin sorry to hear this is happening. I’m not aware of any other reports of crashes within Studio One on Windows and performance also seems stable on other platforms. So this is unusual.

In our experience the blocklisting issue is resolved via a clean install, however this is still under investigation and seems to be primarily affecting Cubase users on Windows.

But thank you for providing the diagnostics reports. We can submit this to the development team and see if they can figure out what is going wrong.

16

Hi @Tristan

thanks, if the developers can figure this out, that would be great.

I did manage to get the project running again, I think the third time I tried to load it with scaler it didn’t crash, but it really is hit and miss.

The other thing is that the crashes happen in a variety of ways, either when trying to first load an instance of Scaler 3.1.2 or 3.1.3 onto an instrument track in Studio One, or in the most recent case, when trying to load a project that has an instance of Scaler 3 already in the song file.

If you guys need more info about my setup and hardware let me know. Also, it does seem like another user, boingy here has a similar if not the same issue as me.

Thanks.

17

I would like chime in as well. I am seeing several oddities with v3.13 in Studio One 7.22.

I installed 3.13 on 10/1/2025 - first thing that happened AFTER Install was the Studio One took about 2-3 minutes hanging on the Scaler Audio plugin at startup.

I had to remove it from the blocklist at least 3 times before it finally scanned in correctly.

Then as a test after watching @davide latest video (Passages) - I started an empty project - with just a single track of Scaler 3 (using Kontakt 8) as it’s sound source and put together a 8 bar phrase - saved the project and then came back to it yesterday.

Immediately upon startup - there were NO scanning issues to speak of - but when I went to open this single track project - Studio One HARD crashed - like completely disappeared. Haven’t had that happen in years.

Tried the project again - and it did load after what felt like about 30-40 seconds.

Unfortunately - 3.1.3 is bust for me as well. I am guessing this non-stop loading issue - is tied to Scaler using a third party VST as a source - as I have had nothing but trouble doing this.

Scaler 3 is now on officially the bench over here until these long standing (and now VERY annoying) load issues are investigated.

Again - not sure what it going on over there and noticed that the Scaler crew works almost exclusively on Mac - if this app is not being tested on Windows (both 22H2 and 24H2/25H2) that is a major problem.

Getting very frustrated with Scaler 3 and given the talent over there - I would have thought this would be a no-brainer to get working after a year now.

Cheers

S

18

Same problem here. My workaround after a crash is to start and quit the standalone version, and then start Studio One. The song then loads without crashing.

19

Well, from a Studio One viewpoint 3.1.3 is worse than 3.1.2, at least for me.

I’ve never had any previous version of Scaler 3 end up on the Studio One blocklist although I know others have. I had to unblock it and manually scan twice before it was accepted. I then closed and opened Studio One a couple of times and Scaler 3 ended up back on the block list again so I had to unblock it again.

Then I tried that one project I have that crashes out and it still crashes out.

In 6 or 7 years of using Studio One as my main daw I think I’ve only had two other plugins end up on the block list. One was Waves, who use a weird shell thing that contains several plugins. The other was a Ujam plugin where they free admitted that they had messed up and released a fix a couple of weeks later.

Scaler 3. I want to love it but it’s causing me grief that Scaler 2 never did. I don’t know if anyone else is old enough to remember those early days of VSTs where the technology promised so much but crashes, hangs and other problems were common. Scaler 3 is reminding me of that. Great technology but frustratingly unreliable.

Until it gets sorted my “new” workflow is to use standalone Scaler 3 and whenever I get something I like I immediately drag it to desktop so I don’t lose it. If I want to drag a second thing I have to rename the first one otherwise it gets overwritten. This is probably not the workflow that Davide and the team imagined!

So, yes, I’m grumpy today. :sob:
Just be glad you don’t have to live in the same house as me.

1 Like
20

Hi @boingy sorry to hear of these issues. Are you still experiencing any blocklisting in Studio One? We have had a few reports of this which is being investigated, but I believe in each instance, resetting the blocklist, then uninstalling a reinstalling Scaler 3.1.3 has resolved the issue.