Dorico 3.5 VST Engine Crash

Hello,

I’m experiencing a problem with version 3.5 after installing today. Whenever I open a project file (new or old), the audio engine fails. The project does not hang, but when I open Edit—>Device Setup, I get an error box saying “Error connecting to audio engine.” I can manipulate the file, but if I try to save or quit, Dorico hangs. Interestingly, it also hangs when I try to open the new VST Plug-Ins tab in Preferences.

If I open VSTAudioEngine3 on its own, I can verify that it is running without issue in the background via Activity Monitor. Now, if I launch Dorico and open a project, VSTAudioEngine3 will crash, and the issue persists. Then, if I manually launch VSTAudioEngine3 while the Dorico Project is open, Dorico will immediately crash, but VSTAudioEngine3 will remain running. It seems there is some issue preventing Dorico 3.5 and VSTAudioEngine3 from running simultaneously.

I have tried switching audio devices and completely uninstalling Dorico 3 and 3.5 before re-installing 3.5. I have also tried purging as many related files in /Library/ and ~/Library/ as I could find before re-installing. Any help is greatly appreciated. Diagnostic zip attached.
Dorico Diagnostics.zip (1.45 MB)

Could you ensure you’re running the latest version of the eLicenser? https://www.steinberg.net/en/company/technologies/elicenser.html Also run the eLicenser Control Centre and perform the maintenance steps.

Thank you for your reply! Yes, I have the latest version of eLicenser installed (6.11.10.2266 at the time of writing) and have performed the maintenance steps. This has not solved the issue.

Anthony, are you still getting no further? Can you also see if there are any crash logs whose names start with “Dorico 3.5” or “VSTAudioEngine” in /Library/your-username/Logs/DiagnosticReports? If so, please zip them up and attach them here.

Hi Daniel, still no luck. There were two VST Audio Engine crash reports in the folder. They are attached here in the zip. I have also attached my Dorico Diagnostic to the top post in this thread. Thanks for taking a look!
VSTAudioEngine Diagnostics.zip (52.5 KB)

I should also mention that Dorico 3 is working without issue. The problem only exists with 3.5.

From the diagnostics, there are 3 crash dumps of the audio engine, 2 from May 20th and 1 from May 21st. That of course is serious, but not that awful lot.
Does this really happen on every start of Dorico 3.5 and on any project you are using? We would really much appreciate it, if you could elaborate a little more on this, in order to find a pattern.

The crash dumps we’ve seen so far show always the same stack trace and indicate that there is a problem in our copy protection system. But it is very difficult to remotely debug this issue, therefore we rely heavily on your goodwill and collaboration. So please provide further diagnostics report and do deeper investigations with several projects. Thank you very much.

Hi Ulf, yes, this happens every time a project is opened in 3.5. I’m guessing previous crash logs were deleted when I was attempting a clean install and purged everything “Dorico” from my computer. I have reproduced the problem several more times — the zip file attached here contains 12 crash logs. I’m happy to produce more if necessary.

I have been running Dorico 3.5 on my secondary system just fine, and since I haven’t seen any other forum posts about this issue, it doesn’t seem like a widespread problem. Could something like this potentially be caused by a hardware issue? I have not noticed any other oddities with my system, and as I said above, Dorico 3 is not experiencing any crashes.
VSTAudioEngine Diagnostics 2.zip (317 KB)

Thanks for the data, will have a look.
Indeed, the problem is not widespread and it could well be that it depends on the hardware, we don’t know.
I have another Dorico 3 customer with a similar unstable situation and where we also don’t get any further, it’s very complicated and difficult to trace down from remote. We would love to be able to reproduce the issue on a computer in-house, but since it is so rare, we have not managed, yet. But we stay on the case. I’ll get back…

Anthony, you seem to run no 3rd party plug-ins or components, but there is one propellerhead bundle that is used.
It’s under /Users/USER/Library/Application Support/Propellerhead Software/*/REX Shared Library.bundle
Could you please move that temporarily out of the way and see if that makes a difference, though I don’t think that it really is the troublemaker, but just to make sure. Thank you.

Ah, and the crash dumps look all identical; at least it is consistent…

I have tried moving REX Shared Library.bundle as requested, but no change. Here are more crash logs. I’ve also created some Dorico logs by manually launching VSTAudioEngine3.app after opening a project. These are included in the zip as well.

Thank you so much for your help!!!
VSTAudioEngine Diagnostics 3.zip (339 KB)

Are you sure that you took that propellerhead library out of the way? Because the crash dumps always tell, which bundles/libraries were loaded, and all of them also show that propellerhead bundle. You know, I only tell what I see in the logs.

And I don’t quite understand. There are several Dorico crash dumps as well. What did you do exactly that also Dorico itself crashed?

Yes, I relocated the .bundle file you requested out of ~/Library/Application Support/Propellerhead Software and am storing it on my desktop for the time being. If it it still showing in the crash logs, I’m not sure why.

As I stated in my original post, VSTAudioEngine3 will crash when I open a Dorico project, but if I manually launch VSTAudioEngine3 while that Dorico project is still open, Dorico itself will crash. This is what I did to generate the Dorico crash logs.

From OP: “If I open VSTAudioEngine3 on its own, I can verify that it is running without issue in the background via Activity Monitor. Now, if I launch Dorico and open a project, VSTAudioEngine3 will crash, and the issue persists. Then, if I manually launch VSTAudioEngine3 while the Dorico Project is open, Dorico will immediately crash, but VSTAudioEngine3 will remain running. It seems there is some issue preventing Dorico 3.5 and VSTAudioEngine3 from running simultaneously.”

Could there possibly be another location from which a Propellerhead library could be loaded? There was also a ReWire directory in that folder, but the contents seemed specific to Ableton. I removed it from ~/Library, but I did not check /Library. I will be able to do this shortly.

I did indeed find another identical .bundle file in the root library. Now it’s been removed from both the root library and the user library. No fix, unfortunately. More crash logs for both VSTAudioEngine3 and Dorico attached here.
VSTAudioEngine Diagnostics 4.zip (312 KB)

Are you using a dongle or the soft elicenser? If you have a dongle, is it one of the very old longer ones or a newer short one?

Thanks for the new data, Anthony. Now I don’t see any traces of propellerhead any more. So that one is not the culprit, but good that we have proven it. Thank you very much and you may move the bundle back into place again.

Regarding the Dorico crashes, well, that is not unexpected, since the whole communcation between Dorico and the audio engine is not designed for such special case as you constructed it. The audio engine is not supposed to crash in first place, but recovering out of such situation then is too difficult to program. So we need to find the reason for the audio engine crash in first place.
I will need to talk to other engineers on Monday and discuss. Please be a bit patient, there won’t be any easy solution and it will take time. Thanks for your understanding.

Paul, I am using the new (smaller) eLicenser dongle.

Ulf, thank you so much for your help! I am up and running on my secondary machine, so no work stoppage. I will not be a pest :slightly_smiling_face:

Hi Anthony, I’ve just sent you a private message via this board. Please check.