Hello. I’m getting this message anytime I try to open Dorico 5. I have rebooted my computer and updated the Steinberg Download Assistant but the problem remains. When I start Dorico it pops up a window with the message “Cannot connect to the audio engine. The application will now quit”. Then the application closes and my file explorer opens up. I have tried looking for the VST Audio Engine task but there seems to be no instance of it running. How can I fix this?
Thanks in advance.
Hi @Hector_Page , welcome to the forum.
First, please go to C:\Program Files\Steinberg\Dorico5\VSTAudioEngine
and see, is there a VSTAudioEngine5.exe?
If there is none, then that’s the problem and time for a reinstallation.
If there is then please copy and paste
%appData%\Steinberg
into the address bar of a file explorer and hit return/enter.
Zip everything up that you can find there. Make it smaller chunks so that it does not exceed 4 MB, otherwise it won’t upload. Among all that data I will find needed information and then will come back to you asap.
Thanks
Ulf
Here you go.. Thanks
Dorico 4 AudioEngine_64.zip (1,4 MB)
Thanks for the data. From what I see it looks like the audio engine is choking on scanning VST3 plug-ins.
Sorry, I should have asked already in first instance, in your Documents folder should be a subfolder Steinberg and in there a subfolder CrashDumps. There are probably plenty of dump files of the audio engine. Despite the fact that they compress well, zipping them all up will exceed 4 MB (the limit of attachment size here). So please just gather a few of the latest ones, zip them and post here again.
Please also do something else: Go to C:\Program Files\Common Files\ and temporarily rename the folder VST3 to _VST3. By that the audio engine won’t “see” any VST3 plug-ins any more. If you then start up Dorico, what does happen?
Hi. Here are the dump files
Dorico 5 AudioEngine 5.6.42 64bit 2025.4.22 20.17.41.367-freezedump.zip (1,3 MB)
I have renamed the VST3 folder as _VST3 as you told me, but dorico keeps crashing with the same message.
Also sometimes this message will show up instead of crashing the app.
Which will create the dump folder with these files.
VSTAudioEngine5.exe.4216.zip (3,5 MB)
VSTAudioEngine5.exe.8408.zip (2,1 MB)
VSTAudioEngine5.exe.21260.zip (2,0 MB)
VSTAudioEngine5.exe.10716 (1).zip (2,0 MB)