Hi all,
I've been experiencing consistent freezes in Traktor 4.5.0 for a few weeks and have finally nailed down exactly what's causing them. Posting here with full details in case others are seeing the same thing, and in the hope it reaches the right people at NI.
My Setup
Traktor Pro 4.5.0 | Windows 10 22H2 | 10-core laptop | Kontrol Z1 + X1
What's Happening
Traktor completely freezes — not crashes, freezes — and has to be force-killed via Task Manager. Most of the time Ctrl+Alt+Delete still works so I can recover without rebooting, but on one occasion the entire machine locked up and I had to hard reset. That's when it became a serious problem.
The Reproduction Steps — This Is Consistent Every Time
- Open Traktor
- Select any track in the browser
- Click and drag it toward the playlist folder tree on the left side of the browser
- Freeze — as soon as the drag enters the playlist tree panel, before you even hover over a specific folder
Importantly: this happens with nothing playing on any deck. The audio engine being on or off makes no difference.
What I've Already Ruled Out
I've been troubleshooting this thoroughly and can confirm the freeze is NOT related to:
- Waveform view (tested in both Parallel and Essential)
- Multi-Core Processing (tested on and off)
- Background track analysis (tested with auto-analyse off and full library pre-analysed)
- Specific tracks (happens with any track dragged)
What the Crash Dumps Show
I've collected three freeze dumps (.nicrash files) from separate incidents and had them analysed. The finding that stands out is that all three dumps contain an identical internal error signature — specifically the same C++ exception type thrown from the same location every single time. This isn't random instability, it's the same specific code path failing consistently.
The browser and playlist threads (BrowserStdTree, TraktorTreeControl, ListLoaderThread, RefreshThread) are active in all three dumps, which points to a deadlock in the drag-and-drop handling between the playlist data layer and the UI — essentially two parts of Traktor waiting on each other and neither being able to proceed.
The Z1 ASIO driver is also present in all three dumps, and is suspected to be involved in the worst-case full machine lockup.
Is Anyone Else Seeing This?
If you're experiencing freezes when dragging tracks to playlists, I'd really like to know — particularly if you're also on Windows 10 with a Z1 or X1. The more people who can confirm this, the stronger the case for NI to prioritise a fix.
I've submitted a full technical bug report to NI support [#4897116] with the dump files attached. If you're experiencing the same thing, I'd encourage you to do the same and reference this thread.
Thanks
