Smaart Won't Open/Crashes at Startup

Created by Casey Guli, Modified on Mon, 16 Dec at 2:41 PM by Jake Bedard

Smaart Won't Open/Crashes at Startup

There are a couple reasons why Smaart would fail to open. This article details a few potential causes and how to approach them.

Does Your Device Meet Smaart's System Requirements?

The main reason we have seen Smaart crash immediately after installation is that the device does not

meet the minimum system requirements. This can occur both with the Demo and the fully-licensed version, and it can occur either before or activation depending on the device.

Alternatively, click here for an article on how to determine what level of DirectX your system supports (for Windows computer only).

Are Your Drivers Up to Date?

It could be an audio driver problem. While Smaart is launching, it checks the operating system for available audio devices. All available devices are individually polled to determine their configuration (input/output channels, sampling rate, etc). If the device's driver crashes during startup, it can prevent Smaart from launching successfully.

Smaart creates a log file every time it starts up, named "Smaart [EDITION].log". If Smaart won't get part, both in Windows and on macOS, any sort of rendering or audio device issue will be recorded in this log. If you are having issues, you can send this log via email attachment to the support team and we can help diagnose and resolve the issue for you.

The log file will be located in:

macOS - (MacintoshHD)/<your_username>/Documents/Smaart [EDITION]
Windows - C:\Users\<your_username>\My Documents\Smaart [EDITION]

Note: replace [EDITION] with your edition of Smaart (Suite, RT, LE, or SPL)

Can't Find Your Device?

If you can start Smaart, but cannot find your device or get it to work, please refer to this article to see specific details on device troubleshooting.

If you still cannot find the source of the problem, try uninstalling any old unused audio device drivers that are installed on your computer. Additionally, certain security and antivirus programs can prevent Smaart from accessing its own directory, which will also cause it to crash on startup.

If Smaart is Still Crashing...

This article has another potential fix for Smaart crashing on startup.

If all else fails, please send us an email at support@rationalacoustics.com so that we can help troubleshoot.