I am writing here out of sheer frustration. I recently purchased Dorico 6, which is a very expensive professional product, but my installation experience has been completely terrible—an experience I definitely do not want to repeat. To make matters worse, I have already contacted official support, and they haven’t even replied to me yet, which is unacceptable for a customer who paid a premium price.
Here is the technical issue I am facing on my Mac (Apple Silicon):
The Steinberg Download Assistant interface seems to be completely frozen for the HALion Symphonic Orchestra. When I click the individual “Install” button for this specific library, absolutely nothing happens—the button does not react at all. The only way to trigger any action is by clicking “Install All” at the top right, which then forces the status into an endless loop of “Launching…”.
I previously had this product installed, but I had to uninstall it. Now that I am attempting a clean reinstall, this happens. Other content products (like Iconica Sketch and Groove Agent) installed perfectly, but this one is completely stuck. Even worse, if the Mac goes to sleep during a download, the Assistant corrupts the files and completely breaks down.
I have already tried completely uninstalling and wiping all Steinberg components, managers, and preferences via Terminal to start fresh, but the Download Assistant still gets stuck in this loop.
Since official support is non-existent so far, has anyone in the community dealt with this frozen button/Launching loop on macOS and figured out a way to bypass this broken manager?
Hello Jorge, first of all, thank you for your purchase and my apologies for this bad first experience. We have already started investigations as we had a similar case recently. Your ticket is assigned, and we will reach out to you asap.
Welcome to the forum; and sorry you’re having a hard time.
It’s worth saying that the installation process is usually flawless, though problems do arise from time to time.
The SDA downloads the installers to your user/Downloads folder (in a subfolder called “Steinberg”). You could try manually running the HSO installer, and see if that works, or if it provides you with any more information.
The best way to get support from the Dorico team is through this forum; as well as “other input” from other users. (Such as this post!)
Hi! I ended up at this post because I am experiencing the same issue. I’m using a MacBook running Tahoe. Is there a solution for this problem? I’ve tried restarting and redownloading to no avail. Thanks!
Have you tried what I suggested in my previous post – running the installers manually from the Downloads folder, and seeing what happens. (There’s also an option in the Mac Installer app to show the logs while installing.
Fixed it and am leaving detailed directions on how I did it to hopefully save other some time.
I completely uninstalled an reinstalled everything. I then manually downloaded HALion Symphonic Orchestra from Dorico 6 Downloads | Steinberg Opened the .iso and then installed HALion Symphonic Orchestra by double clicking one of the sound files. This triggered Dorico to register the sounds. The download manager still is hung upon “Launching…”, but at least Dorico works properly now.
I finally managed to solve the problem with the frozen install buttons and the endless “Launching…” loop. It happens because the download engine files get corrupted if the connection drops or the computer goes to sleep.
Here are the exact steps from Steinberg Support that fixed it for me:
Restart your computer and make sure the option to reopen apps is not selected. This helps close any running processes. You can also check in Activity Monitor that no “aria2c” process is running when SDA is closed.
Delete this file: ~/Library/Application Support/Steinberg/Download Assistant/SDA_downloads.json
Remove any partially downloaded files from your download folder. If possible, please delete the entire Steinberg folder in your Downloads.
Enable logging in SDA by adding the following line in the application.properties file: aria2c.loggingEnabled=true
Then try the Halion Symphonic Orchestra download again.
This will create log files in the SDA logging folder.
Please note that these files can become large, so disable logging again after the test.
Hi @Jorge_Domingues , excellent finding and thank you for sharing. This will help us as well in improving our Download Assistant. One question though, is the enabling of the logging actually really necessary in your solution, or does it just serve a monitoring purpose?