Kontakt and Kinetic Metal just blown my left speaker tweeter.

I am fully aware NI does not support Monterey so I am not blaming anyone here, I used it at my own risk. I am just trying to understand what was the possible cause.

I pull up Kontakt in Studio One 5.4 with my Apple 14" Macbook Pro and Monterey 12.01
I load up Kinetic Metal and right after I hit the first note, a sudden blast of white noise comes out of both of my speakers.
I usually monitor at pretty low volume, around 65dB C-weighted slow.
That blast volume was like someone firing an AR-15 right next to your eardrum, the output fader in Studio One reads clipping over 3500+ bits. All red
and after I let go of the key, the noise does not stop.
I immediately mute my audio interface (RME UFX+)
Then I smell burnt electronics. I quitted Studio One.
saw in Totalmix mixer the white noise signal went away, I unmute the interface.
Play some music to check whether the speakers survived.

And.....the left speaker tweeter is gone. (Amphion One18)

Does anyone know what is the possible cause? never had this issue before. even under Monterey and other sample libraries with Kontakt.

 

Some users complained about unexpected blasts in another plugin. I guess Massive X, not sure. There is long thread about it. Hard to say, if it has common reason.
I have not experienced anything like this. But I am on Win, not Mac. Also, my feeling is that people, who had problems with other plugin also used thr same DAW like you... Check it.
Sorry for your gear, but still better than injured hearing if you had headphones....
Would be good, if you report it to NI....

 

Ok I am able to recreate this. This only happens with the "Aluminium Scratches" patch.
Below is the screen recording. You can see right after I stop hitting the midi controller (Komplete Kontrol SL88 MK2)
The burst of noise still continues until it dies down.

I haven't tested all the Komplete or other 3rd Party libraries. I don't know if others will exhibit the same behavior.

Please mute the sound before you watch the video!!!

 

Thanks man, can you please point me to the long thread?

 

https://www.native-instruments.com/forum/threads/668db-spike-from-massive-x-massivex-2304.423465/

 

The Massive X issue in that thread has nothing to do with this at all. Completely different codebases.

 

I do not know, what was the cause in Massive X. The cause of both may be the same/similar, even thought it has different codebases.... Or it may be different.... Only NI would know.

For example I experienced mistake in Microsoft Visual C++ standard library for printing float numbers. It overwrote memory when printing a number, in some cases. So, any program using standard MS library for printing (converting float to string representation) could have random problems.... It took me several months to find the source of problems. One would not expect, there is such a bug in standard library and focused search on his own code....

 

There is no audio at all in the video you have posted.

It was uninitialized memory in one place that was very tricky to find (and it was Mac AU only).

 

Yes, unitialized memory may be tricky, as well as writting to wrong places.... The both problems were on Mac, maybe that this one also AU version of plugin....

 

Then it's all good, I haven't enable loopback in Totalmix and I use built in Mac screen recorder, just a precaution in case it has loud volume blast.

 

Not sure if it's related, but from the time I hung out on the IL forum I remember there was a guy angry in the mac section. In his opinion FLS had destroyed his mac (portable) as a feedback loop between the mic and the speaker blew his speakers. The conclusion of all this was that it was an Apple issue, and something that could happen in connection with unplugging the headphone jack at the wrong time in combination with the workings of the DAW. Not sure I remember the details correctly here, but remember being surprised with Apple not having a hardware limiter on their output to prevent this possibility. This was however for internal speakers and a painfully loud feedback sound.

 

Thanks for reporting Vincent, I will have a look now.

 

I can not reproduce this,

- Are you on Kontakt 6.6.1?
- What are your buffer size and sample rate settings?
- If you re-install the library does it still happen?

 

Hi Yaron, yes I am on 6.6.1
Actually yesterday I tested again with different DAW that I have (Ableton Live11, Studio One, Reaper, Logic Pro X)
Only Studio One and a specific project file exihibit this issue. All other Studio One project and other DAW does not.
I already reported to Presonus, I am not sure it's a corrupted bus or whatever reason. hopefully they can find the cause.
This probably has nothing to do with NI but thank you so much for look into it.

 

Thanks for getting back to me so fast.

I actually suspected something along the lines of what you are thinking too.

Maybe what you could do if that project is important to you - load it, re-load the Kinetic Metal patch, save the project, reload it. Maybe a new save of the project file chunk will clean it up? Worth a shot.

Regardless, always sad to hear about a blown tweeter.

I would also be curious to the response from Presonus, feel free to update.

 

Especially on a speaker as expensive as Amphion...

 

Luckily, that project is not important, just a new music idea scratch pad. I already deleted that project, in case of opened it again accidently in the future. I will let you know know if Presonus get back to me with the update.

 

It's not ideal but actually not too bad, I ordered two new replacement tweeters for $200 to replace them together, in case of imbalance issue (the right speaker tweeter actually survived)
They arrived earlier today and I just replaced them, now they are good as new.

Off topic, the Amphion passive crossover is huge.

 

Whoa!

 

Not so bad, at last....
The most important is that your hearing has not been injured....