Audio Engine Error and Program Freezing

neildelson · October 21, 2019, 1:10am

Note: I was actually able to partially solve this problem by following this post from 2016 from Daniel, but I’m hoping there is an easier way then manually duplicating each of my existing files. Here’s the post: Help - no sound! - Dorico - Steinberg Forums

I just updated to Dorico 3 and about 90% of the time, I run into problems working with my older projects created in Dorico 2.2.1. New projects do not seem to be affected as much, but I have had the issue with new ones a few times, too. I am running macOS Catalina 10.15 on a mid-2012 MacBook pro. I’m running Dorico 3.0.10.1051 (October 7, 2019).

First, I do not get any sound from my VST instruments. When I go to the Play mode and click on the “e” edit symbol, but only the blue light turns on. The instrument doesn’t pop up. This occurs for both HALion and for third party instruments like Kontakt. They instruments are definitely activated. I cannot hit play to start playback because the button itself is greyed out. This generally occurs for only with my old projects from 2.2.1. On the occasion that they do work, I am able to load instances of HALion, Kontakt, etc. with no trouble.

I tried resetting the playback template and tried opening the playback options…no luck there. When I tried the latter, I’d get an “error connecting to the audio engine.”

When I’m having this issue, Dorico 3 also freezes completely when I try to save these files OR close the program, requiring me to force quit.
Anyone have any ideas or suggestions on how to make this work?

Update: As I mentioned up front, following the duplicate file/zip/delete VST info/convert back to .dorico process DID work for me and did preserve the instances of the VST instruments I used. I did have to manually reload each individual sound within those instruments, but that didn’t take too long. I’m posting this hoping that one of the developers or experts might have any additional advice. Perhaps it’s a Catalina issue. Before updating, I checked that the third party VSTs I use are compatible with Catalina, but even without using them (sticking with HALion only), I was still running into issues.

Sincere thanks!
Neil

dspreadbury · October 21, 2019, 8:12am

Neil, I’m afraid it sounds as if you are experiencing the kinds of crashes in Dorico’s audio engine that a number of other Catalina users are running into. Could you please do Help > Create Diagnostic Report and attach the resulting zip file (which will be created on your desktop) to a reply here? It would be helpful for us to see whether you are experiencing any different problems to those that other users are currently running into.

neildelson · October 21, 2019, 10:37am

Thanks so much, Daniel. I’ve attached the report here.
Dorico Diagnostics.zip (775 KB)

Ulf · October 21, 2019, 10:50am

Hi Neil, thanks for the data. And yes, it’s exactly the same problem that also other users reported. We are working on it and hope to come up with a solution soon.

Budadav · October 21, 2019, 1:41pm

Hi - I’m currently trialling Dorico with a view to moving over from notion. It’s infinitely better… apart from the fact that I’ve hit this same audio-driver related crash issue. A few times it has crashed without warning - most recently I mistakenly pressed shift-N and started a new project, which seemed to trigger the crash. Now there is no sound when opening a new file and opening the file I was working on causes it to crash. I happened a last week and seemed to eventually resolve itself - except I couldn’t open the original recovered project without causing it to crash again.

Please advise what / if there is a fix for this. I’d love to move over to Dorico, but only if it’s stable enough to not lose work…

Thanks
Dorico Diagnostics.zip (937 KB)

neildelson · October 21, 2019, 2:08pm

OK, thank you Daniel and Ulf. I will make do until a solution has been found.

Many thanks,
Neil

dspreadbury · October 21, 2019, 4:10pm

Budadev, welcome to the forum. Please see the post from Ulf (one of my colleagues) immediately before yours.

Xinver · October 21, 2019, 5:35pm

Is this an error also in macOs Mojave (which is how my computer is running)? Dorico 3 freezes because of a failure to connect with audio engine:

dspreadbury · October 22, 2019, 5:22pm

Yes, we have found that some users on Mojave have encountered this problem as well. Please do Help > Create Diagnostic Report and attach the resulting zip file here so we can take a look.