Dorico crashing when loading multiple instances of BBC Symphony orchestra

Dorico
1

I’m having trouble with loading multiple instances of spitfire BBC Symphony orhcestra. In this library, each instrument has to be assigned to it’s own instance of BBC Symphony Orchestra. I have managed to load and set properly eight instances, but after that Dorico always crashes when I try to add one more. From the activity monitor, I can see that “VST Audio Engine” disappears when Dorico becomes unresponsive. Before that it shows CPU usage of usually more than 100%. When Dorico is stable, VST Audio Engine is around 40-50% of CPU usage

I’m running Dorico on MacBook pro 2017, with 16Gb of RAM. The Spitfire BBC SO -Library is running from external 1TB SSD connected with usb-C. The buffer size is set to maximum from the Dorico preferences.

I attached a diagnosis report of one of these crashes. At that time Dorico was loading the (around eight) BBC instances while opening the project but crashed in the process.
Dorico Diagnostics 1.zip (1.07 MB)

2

update: I managed to run 14 instances of BBC SO after optimising the Spitfire library. Maybe it is simply that 16 GB of ram is not enough to run more instances? It plays back very well, even with all of 14 instances(/instruments) playing at once.

3

Certainly all of the crash logs are for the VST audio engine rather than for Dorico itself. I’ll ask Ulf to take a look at them when he gets a chance.

4

BBC is a pretty heavyweight library, both in terms of size and CPU usage.

I don’t suspect it will ever play nice with Dorico without an absolute monster system (Think something along the lines of 16+ cores w/ 64+GB of RAM).

Even a DAW on a 12 core machine with 32GB I try not to have more than a handful of tracks unfrozen at any time.

5

Hi sakasuri,
I had a look at the crash logs, and they show a pattern that we have seen before.
This shall all go away if you install the latest eLicenser software which you can download here: https://www.steinberg.net/en/company/technologies/elicenser.html

6

Fantastic, thank you very much Ulf!

I am happy to report that Dorico is now running fine with 18 instances of BBC Symphony Orchestra. After updating the e-licenser, there has been no crashes.

About the weight of the library, I have taken out some articulations and I’m only using the mix 1 of every instrument. At least this way BBC SO is running fine with 18 instruments playing at the same time. (This is actually better than what I was able to do in logic)

Since I’m now using a 4-core 16GB computer, I’m hoping that a new Mac book pro with 8 cores and 64 GB of RAM should be enough for larger projects.

7

I can’t run BBC SO on Dorico 3.5 without it crashing .
I have the latest elicenser and I’ve ran it as admin.
I can open 20 instances of BBC on Cubase 11 flawlessly .

I’ve submitted a support ticket but waiting for software to work that I paid a lot of money for is not my string suit

8

mikeyralston, have you followed the steps described in the FAQ thread under “Dorico is crashing. What do I do?” to make sure that Dorico is creating crash dumps when it crashes? If so, please do Help > Create Diagnostic Report to create a fresh diagnostic zip file, and attach that to a reply here, or in your original thread. In general there’s no need to post your problem in multiple threads: you can be sure we will see your post, especially if you are returning to a previous thread you have started a day or so earlier.