Scaler 3.1 crashes after loading a specific User Preset

Hi,

today i was just saved a preset and after that when i try to load it to scaler 3.1 it crashes.
This is happening in standalone and in Ableton.
Attached the preset in case it may be usefull for debuggin.
1 Jul 2025.zip (30.7 KB)

Hi @omonymos. Appreciate you reporting this – I’ve tested the preset and can confirm it causes a crash for me too. I’ve logged the issue with our dev team and included your preset, along with a crash report from my end. Cheers.

Add me to the chorus of folks with this issue. This has now happened before and after the update with separate created presets. Standalone Scaler 3 crashes when I try to load it, and the entire Ableton project becomes unusable, giving a ā€œserious program errorā€ message (attached) when I open it.

I’m attaching the most recent preset and error report, and a screenshot of the Ableton error message. Ableton Crash Report 2025-07-08 225602 Live 12.2.1.zip (1.8 MB)
Ableton Crash Report 2025-07-08 225937 Live 12.2.1.zip (2.7 MB)
After SW Chords.s3p.zip (43.8 KB)

I’ve also made a folder with the Ableton project in question, and a ā€œsafeā€ version pulled from the backup earlier that day for reference on what else is loaded in the project. I also put a previous occurrence of this issue in the folder, but don’t have those project files to attach because I deleted them before pinpointing this as the issue.

My system is a MacBook Pro M3 with 64GB running Sequoia 15.5, and my Ableton is 12.2.1, with the most recent update of Scaler 3

I hopefully don’t have to spell out why taking out a whole project is a pretty huge concern, but it’s making me hesitant to use Scaler 3 at all, and I love the program!

Hi @jgoose welcome to the forum. Sorry to hear of these issues you’re encountering.

You mention ā€˜with specific user presets’. So are you saying these issues only occur after selecting a preset you’ve made via the preset menu at the top of the screen? So if you load an Ableton Live project containing Scaler 3, but do not manually load a saved preset in Scaler 3, you don’t have this issue?

If so we can certainly take a look at these preset files and try to find out what is going wrong. Are you hosting any 3rd party plugins in these user presets?

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Basically yes, only specific user presets, and only a few– I’ve made a number of presets that give me no problems at all– both with and without hosted VSTs. It’s just been these handful that create this issue, but they seem to be completely random, so it feels a little like a ticking timebomb– especially since once it happens, I can’t open that preset, or the project it was loaded in, to figure out what the heck happened.

I am like 90% sure this most recent instance is all Scaler instruments– (I can’t open it to confirm)– if I remember correctly, I was actually about to load a 3rd party VST, Nexus in this case, when it crashed, but I don’t think I even got a chance to actually open the VST before the crash, so I’m pretty positive it was still a Scaler-stock instrument when it crashed and stopped opening. I believe all of the corrupted presets were originally created in an instance loaded in Ableton, and they all have maybe 2 to 3 expressions of a main chord set– that’s about all I can think of that they have had in common.

Thanks @jgoose that is interesting. Are you able to share any of these presets here so we can investigate? If you have trouble uploading here as a zip file you may need to link to a cloud storage service of some kind. You can DM me the link if you’d prefer.

Happy to- they should all be linked in my original post, but just in case, everything is uploaded to Scaler 3 Ableton Bug - Google Drive

I’ve had the problem a couple of times before that (twice if I remember correctly) but don’t have the files from those, after doing a clean install of both programs