Hi all,
Dorico is freezing quite often and then becomes unresponsive so I must force quit. There doesn’t seem to be any specific task that causes this, it’s just generally while I’m working. I’ve attached the latest “hang” report here. 2021 MacBook Pro 16" running Sonoma 14.3, latest version of Dorico.
Dorico 5_2024-08-12-133353_Jakes-MacBook-Pro-2.hang.zip (439.6 KB)
Hi @jrun , while awaiting the response of the Team, one possible cause could be an undesired Midi Loop. Can you check in the bottom right corner of the Dorico Window*, if the green light indicating MIDI activity (MIDI activity indicator) is glowing even if you don’t input any notes with the MIDI Keyboard?
(*) Nr. 11 in the Status Bar:
It looks from the spindump that you’ve provided that Dorico is trying to save. If Dorico becomes unresponsive during saving, that’s almost always because the audio engine process has either crashed or is itself hanging.
Please do Help > Create Diagnostic Report and attach the resulting zip file here so that we can see if any audio engine crash logs are contained within. It would also be worth taking a spindump via Activity Monitor rather than sampling only Dorico: that would allow us (in theory at least) to see what the audio engine process is doing when Dorico is waiting for its response.
Dorico Diagnostics.zip (3.7 MB)
Thanks, Daniel. Here’s the diagnostic report from Dorico.
Thanks for the diagnostics. Unfortunately there are no audio engine crash logs in there, so it would appear that the engine is hanging or freezing rather than crashing. Please make a spindump using Activity Monitor next time this occurs, zip it up and attach it here.
Daniel, here are two spindumps from Activity Monitor. Thanks!
Spindumps.zip (1014.3 KB)
I forced quit Dorico, then when I restarted, I got this warning, and had to force quit again. When I tried to open it again, the same thing happened…
Thanks for the spindumps. I will need to consult with my colleague Ulf about what they might show, and I’ll come back to you.
The warning you are seeing definitely suggests that the audio engine is hanging or freezing. If you run into this, click Terminate and wait a few seconds. Run Activity Monitor and check that the VST Audio Engine process does not appear. If it does, select it and end the process using the X button in the toolbar of Activity Monitor. Wait a couple more seconds, then try running Dorico again.
Ulf is on holiday at the moment, but he kindly took time out of his vacation to have a quick look at the spindumps from the audio engine. He has seen this problem before: on some systems, for reasons as yet unknown, the audio engine becomes deadlocked. This problem also affects Cubase (Dorico’s audio engine is based on Cubase’s audio engine), and as yet the audio engine team doesn’t know what’s causing this problem. If I have an update to provide, I will do so.
I have the same identical issues:
I’m attaching the spindump of my latest freezing while saving, and the subsequent Diagnostic Report from Dorico.
Mac Monterey on Intel, latest OS and Dorico version.
Paolo
Spindump while Dorico is frozen saving.txt.zip (821.1 KB)
Dorico Diagnostics.zip (1.6 MB)
Thanks, Daniel. I’m attaching a few more Spindumps when Dorico froze yet again, then became unresponsive.
Spindumps 2024.8.19.zip (1.6 MB)
@jrun, in one of the spindumps, it looks as if the audio engine has crashed – at any rate, the process is not shown in the spindump. That would certainly explain why Dorico hangs during saving, because it needs to be able to communicate with the audio engine to save the project. In the other two, the audio engine is running, and Dorico is busily saving the project, but again, if the audio engine has frozen, the save operation won’t complete because Dorico won’t get the data that it needs from the audio engine.
What plug-ins are you using in the audio engine? I wonder whether there is one or more plug-ins that is the culprit in causing the engine to freeze.
Hello. I’m just using NotePerformer.
Hi @jrun , I had a look at your latest spindumps and there is one thing that is striking me: In the 2 dumps where the audio engine process is present, I can see that NotePerformer is loaded twice, once NP as the old VST2 plug-in and at the same time also the new VST3 plug-in.
0x10fe54000 - 0x10fe8ffff com.wallanderinstruments.VST3.NotePerformer (1.0.0) <F5280A89-B702-36EF-BD50-C7439852CE48> /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/NotePerformer.vst3/Contents/MacOS/NotePerformer
0x119800000 - 0x1199d7fff com.wallanderinstruments.VST.NotePerformer (4.4.0) <513F1ABE-0DA0-34C2-B861-6A43221E1908> /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/NotePerformer.vst/Contents/MacOS/NotePerformer
I wonder if that is the problem and also how it can happen that both the VST2 and VST3 version get loaded.
What also concerns me, the fact that we don’t see any crash dumps of the audio engine, because when Dorico is frozen the spindump shows that no audio engine process is around, so ist must have shutdown gracefully, but don’t know how that should be possible.
How well is the freezing reproducible on your machine? If possible and if you agree, I’d like ot have a remote screen sharing session with you, so we can try out some things and I can see how the system is behaving. Can you agree on that? But no obligation, only if you really want to.
Hi @Paolo_T,
your case however is different in that the audio engine is still running while Dorico is frozen. Also, you only use VE Pro, but really on ly the VST3 version. I need to resolve stack here and see if I can get another hint. Sorry, it’s all very slow, but it’s difficult to get behind the scene…
Hi @Paolo_T , I now also resolved your spindump but could not find anything suspicious in there. So in the same way I’m asking you then for a remote screen sharing session, if that is okay with you. Other than that I can not offer at this moment.
Thanks, Ulf. I just downloaded the latest version of Noteperformer…so maybe that will help? Otherwise, we can set up a screen share.
Hi @jrun , did you get my private message?
I’m having the same issues here. I attach diagnostic and spindump here.
Thank you in advance!
Dorico Diagnostics.zip (849.2 KB)
Spindump.zip (391.9 KB)
Hi @Miguel_Lopez and sorry to @jrun, I’m jumping the queue, but Daniel resolved the spindump for me already, therefore I can say that Miguel, you are unfortunately hit by an audio engine bug that happens really rarely and where we currently can not do something. The audio engine deadlocks it’s main thread and therefore can not communicate with Dorico any more.
This bug is difficult to reproduce as well as difficult to fix.
How bad is this bug for you? I can only make more pressure on the team that is working on the audio processing threads.