Thanks Dave, and interesting to see that a lot of options work for you that have never been practical for me for whatever reason. The short version is that I’ve already tried every configuration under the sun, and it doesn’t make a difference with regard to the issues I’m having with Dorico 3. More details below in case they might help in troubleshooting whatever’s happening.
Fratveno, I’m curious even though I’m not on Windows … the stuff you noted today was on Win7 and 8.1, but the stuff you mentioned on previous days applies to whatever the latest (supported) version of Windows is? So the problems you’ve noted occur with regularity on 7 and the latest version, but seem not occur at all on 8? Or am I misunderstanding?
Today I tried installing Dorico 3 on the iMac. For some reason this allowed me to connect more than one VEP instance (although, I stopped at only three instances when I usually need quite a few more than that; I could run more than a dozen on Dorico 2.2 without issue.) But when I tested the real issue, there was no improvement: trying to load that file after closing and restarting Dorico 3 = frozen Dorico. I should mention in case there’s any doubt: I haven’t simply been force quitting impatiently at the first sign of beachball this past month. Lately I force quit after sampling and spindumping, just because I already tested being patient on multiple occasions, and it didn’t make any difference with the issues I’m having. One time when Dorico 3 hung up trying to load a file, I left for an appointment and returned three hours later; Dorico was still rollin’ that beachball …
Not sure if it would be helpful to compare diagnostic reports from the iMac vs the Mac Pro. Have uploaded a few just in case: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1NR2DX9K9vN3Gmr0CGsZDwhV2Vva48d2a
VEP settings details:
I always “leave one core free” for Dorico, and most of the time even an additional core for the OS (that based on a possibly-outdated recommendation I read somewhere awhile back.) I put that in quotes because there’s something I don’t quite get the wisdom of regarding VEP’s thread preferences: setting this preference seems to specify a minimum, but not a maximum. For instance, if I have only one instance up and tell it to default to one thread, Activity Monitor still shows the load being spread fairly evenly across all 12 threads (or in some cases, across all 6 physical cores; I still don’t know how programs like VEP and Dorico decide when to hyperthread vs when not to … or is it the processor itself that decides?)
For orchestral, I run everything decoupled and preserved. I’ve tried all variations and it doesn’t make a difference with regard to the issues I’m having in Dorico 3 described in this thread. On my system, even with a small orchestra and only one flow and no part layouts and all the other suggestions for keeping things snappy, Dorico (every version so far) runs quite slow if coupled. Decoupled, I can run a fairly large orchestra (quadruple woodwind or higher) with noticeable but livable slowdown. I’m a bit surprised that Dave can run coupled without a sizeable performance hit! For me that’s only a possibility with chamber music.
Regarding ports, most of the instruments I run have important components in the chain that don’t allow me to use ports. So in most projects, I’m on one port per instance. Again I’ve tried both ways in Dorico 3, and # of ports makes no difference to the issues I’m having.
I have of course tried the Event Input plugin as it was designed to be a workaround to allow ports, but even when only one instrument is playing (even when there’s only one instance with one instrument instantiated!), I always get stuck notes using Event Input.
Except in rare cases when a project requires more, I only do one stereo pair of in and out for each instance.
p.s. As an aside, I’ve heard that some pros in Hollywood use one VEP instance per articulation, and they claim their system performs the best that way … I’m really glad I’m not in that boat …