Error R6025, Adobe Audition 2 Program Lock-up or Instant Shut-down, & the role of Spectral Frequency Display View, Lasso Selection Tool, & File Markers

It has been found that an error R6025, program lock-up or instant shut-down of Adobe Audition 2, can be reproduced pretty much at will on the author's PC when:

A file is being displayed in Spectral Frequency Display View;
The Lasso Selection Tool has been selected for use;
The Lasso Selection Tool is moved horizontally (left to right or right to left) whilst area selection on the file is taking place (holding down the left mouse button);
The Lasso Selection Tool movement is neither too fast nor too slow, but somewhere in between;
Most importantly, the file contains multiple markers and the field of view in the editing window includes over the critical number of markers (roughly above 10), at any level of horizontal axis (timeline) zoom.

Factors that have been found NOT to influence whether the R6025 error or Audition 2 Instant Shut-down occurs or does not occur:

The vertical component of movement of the Lasso Selection Tool (bottom to top or top to bottom) whilst area selection on the file is taking place;
Any of the Spectral View settings (Windowing Function, Resolution, Window Width, Decibel Range);
The file can be mono or stereo;
Program window size - can be maximised or less than the full screen size;
File duration - file durations tested have been from one twenty-fifth of a second to over a minute;
File Content - the problem originally manifested with genuine location sound recordings, but specially constructed test files also exhibit the same behaviour (see below);
Marker type - can be any mixture of CUE, BEAT, TRACK, INDEX;
Marker Position - markers can be positioned anywhere in the file;
Sampling Rate - 48kHz, 44.1kHz files have been tried;
Bit depth - 16bit, 32bit files have been tried.

Only the .wav file type has been investigated.

Duplication of Error:

Create a test file. The test file can:

Be of the tested file type - .wav;
Be either mono or stereo;
Be any duration between the tested durations of one twenty-fifth of a second to, say, a minute ;
Be any of the tested sampling frequencies - 44.1kHz or 48kHz;
Be any of the tested bit depths - 16 bit or 32 bit;
Contain silence or content.

The test file MUST contain more than what has been empirically found to be a critical number of markers. Tentatively, this number is 10, although around this number it becomes difficult to trigger the R6025 error or instant shut-down of Audition 2. It is recommended that for test purposes the file contain 30 markers.
These markers can be placed at any time position within the file.
These markers can be any combination of the tested types - CUE, BEAT, TRACK, INDEX.

Only a subset of all possible combinations of the above parameters has been tested. The author mainly used a 10 second mono 48kHz 32 bit .wav file of silence with 30 cue markers positioned at time 00:00:00:00 as a starting point for experimentation.

In order to trigger the R6025 error or instant shut-down of Audition 2:

Load the test file;
Display the test file in the Spectral Frequency Display View;
Ensure that more than the critical number of markers (roughly above 10) is in view;
Select the Lasso Selection Tool;
Hold the left mouse button down whilst moving the Lasso Selection Tool horizontally across the frequency display. The speed of moving the lasso horizontally seems to be a factor. If it is very fast, one can scribble all over the screen. If it is too slow, the selection is drawn. If it is at some speed in between the program crash occurs.

Observations:

If the test file is tested with a view that contains less than the critical number of markers then Audition 2 will not crash. If the view is then expanded to include more than the critical number of markers, then Audition 2 has a good chance of crashing, although sometimes this does not happen. Unloading

and reloading the file with all the markers in view and then testing will almost certainly elicit an immediate crash.

The original tests were carried out on a mono file and always seemed to elicit only an R6025 error. When a test stereo file was used Audition 2 performed an instant shut-down, not displaying the R6025 error. Thereafter, when a mono file was tested it would now either throw an R6025 error or perform an instant shut-down. It was as if Audition had learned that it had the option of displaying the R6025 error or performing an instant shut-down when a mono file was being tested.

Audition 2 program lock-up occurs quite rarely, and is usually associated with a borderline number of markers in view, say 10 or 11.

Recommendations:

If the reader encounters an R6025 error, program lock-up or instant shut-down of Audition 2 whilst using the Lasso Selection Tool for frequency space editing, then upon restarting Audition 2:

1) Attempt to perform the frequency space editing with a field of view of the file that does not contain more than the critical number of markers (roughly above 10);

2) If 1) above is not possible due to the high density of markers, then move or delete the markers from view before attempting an editing operation with the Lasso Selection Tool.

For brevity, the history of the investigation into this issue has not been detailed.

Part of the author's PC system's specification is detailed below:

Windows XP Professional SP2, bang up to date;
Adobe Audition 2;
ASRock 775dual-VSTA motherboard, BIOS Version P.3.00;
2.80 GHz Intel Pentium D Processor 915 2x2MB L2 Cache;
2GB DDRII 667 RAM;
Matrox G550 DualHead AGPx4 VGA card for Audition's two main work screens;
Matrox Productiva G100 MMS PCI VGA for two additional "static" information screens;
4 x PATA HDDs for OS & programs, swapfile & temp, project file sources, and guide audio;
Onboard Realtek ALC888 7.1 channel audio CODEC with High Definition audio;
Lite-On DVDRW LH-18A1P;
VIA OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller.

Via Hyperion Drivers 5.14a - (VIA Chipsets INF Update Utility V3.00A, VIA PATA IDE Driver Package V1.80A, VIA SATA IDE Driver Package V2.20A);
Matrox PowerDesk-SE 11.10.100.19;
Matrox Millennium G550 Display Driver Version 5.99.005;
Realtek High Definition Audio System Software Ver:R1.82;
DirectX 9.0c November 2007;
Microsoft .NET frameworks 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0 with all service packs.

Very interesting! I've set this not to expire and will draw it to the attention of the developers.

Very interesting!




Yes it is - and it is also interesting that a very similar crash can occur with AA3.0 and the healing brush, only you don't need markers, and fortunately it happens on very few machines. Unfortunately, one of them is my laptop...

A couple of comments:

Only the .wav file type has been investigated.




Since this is all that Audition will handle (all files are effectively converted to this internally upon opening), that's not a problem!

Hold the left mouse button down whilst moving the Lasso Selection Tool
horizontally across the frequency display. The speed of moving the lasso
horizontally seems to be a factor.




This was the bit that caught my eye - that pretty much describes what causes the crash with 3.0. At one stage I thought it was a screen redraw issue (and it still might be), but it's a slight mystery as to why this causes a complete crash, dumping the app entirely. And I have to say that the developers looked at this for quite a while, and came up with nothing that significantly altered it.

Fortunately the other machine here on which AA3.0 resides runs fine, and doesn't exhibit the same behaviour at all. And yes, all of the obvious stuff relating to hardware has been investigated. It's just plain weird.

If you receive a runtime error on the startup, or entering edit mode from the multi-track mode in Adobe Audition, there is a quick fix. This seems to be a wide spread problem across many of the applications and this applies to any software that runs into the dreaded Runtime error.
Close Adobe Audition, if it hasn’t slammed shut already.
Open Windows explorer, right click start and go to explore.
At the top go to Tools/Folder option/view and make sure show hidden files and folders is selected.
Browse to this folder:
C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Adobe\Audition\3.0
(Insert profile name or your log on account for user)
Cut and paste all the files in this folder to a folder you create in my documents or somewhere else called AAbackup. This just preserves your files in case you ever want to go back, to broken.
Reopen Adobe Audition and go to work. It will rebuild itself in your profile and correct its own problem.
Happy audio creation!
Scott Wolf