This is not a Dorico 6 problem. It has been an irritant for several releases – maybe every release I have had installed on this computer. Other threads refer to the audio engine, but I get no indication the audio engine is hung. It is intermittent. Occasionally when I go to launch Dorico, it doesn’t appear. If I look at Task Manager, I see an instance of Dorico is running. And I believe that remains from the previous session.
If I blow that away, then I can launch with no problems. But it would be nice to find why this is happening. I have started monitoring the Dorico process using ProcessExplorer, and of course, now I can’t get it to fail.
I use Windows 10 and have a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20.
One of these days I’m going to replace this computer with a faster machine, and Win 11, which will probably clear things up. But if anybody has any ideas for now, I’d appreciate that.
Dorico’s audio engine runs as a separate process in an own address space. So please check in TaskManager for a background process called VSTAudioEngine. There shall be no such process around at the time Dorico launches. Dorico shall launch a new VSTAudioEngine and also shut it down when quitting the app. So please have an eye on VSTAudioEngine with ProcessExplorer.
Would it be possible for Dorico to check for an existing VSTAudioEngine process at startup and display a message telling the user about the problem? That would be very helpful if that is possible.
Thanks. I noticed my Focusrite software was rather old. I updated to V3.20.0 last night. That might help. It also might help with another nagging problem I have with Dorico not always recognizing the Panoramic MIDI keyboard that is connected through the Focusrite.
Well, the updated Focusrite driver may have fixed my problem with the keyboard not being recognized. But it didn’t help with the Dorico hang. It’s not that big of a deal to me. But just for the record, this is a SHUTDOWN problem, not a STARTUP problem.
It appears to happen when I do extensive edits on a score. If I am doing light editing, then usually Dorico (and the audio engine) shut down cleanly. But the session I just finished leaves both the VST and the Dorico process running after I have apparently shut down Dorico.
I have not narrowed down what kind of editing might trigger this behavior. But I did do an export audio to MP3 during this session, so that might be a factor.
As already said, by means of the Process Explorer keep an eye on the Dorico and VSTAudioEngine processes. If they don’t want to go after you ordered a shutdown, highlight each one after the other, do a right click and choose from the menu Create dump > Create mini dump. Save the output and send me to u dot stoermer at steinberg dot de
Thanks
Ulf
I’ve believe I’ve run into this myself a number of time. Unfortunately I don’t check after closing Dorico if it REALLY shut down, but next time I come to the computer and try to start it up, it doesn’t start. I then check the process table and seem to always find dorico and vstaudioenging still sitting there. Knowing the “kill” process, I just kill them and then start up and get on with my work.
Today I ran into this scenario again. Found both sitting in the process table. I did dumps for both processes (I’ll try to attach), then shut down vstaudioengine and waited a minute. Dorico still did not close. So followed my usual process to get to work. Hope these dumps shed some light on this issue. Ulf, File to large - will try email and/or send you a link to the share
Thank you. This sounds just like my situation. I have had some family health issues that have kept me away from Dorico during the past week, so I am glad you are able to provide info to Ulf.
I did do a quick test where I rendered audio without doing any other editing, and Dorico shut down cleanly after that, so I have no reason to suspect the export audio as being a trigger.
Just out of curiosity, are you also on Windows 10 and also using a Focusrite Scarlett?
I don’t think I used any unusual VSTs or VSTis in the project that most recently got hung on shutdown. The only real common element I notice is that the failure to shut down fully seems to happen only after editing sessions when I have worked for several hours doing thousands of actions within that one session. But that may just mean the odds are higher that one of those actions has somehow tripped up the audio engine.
FWIW I use the 18i20 scarlett with Win 11 and am not expecting any Dorico shutdown issues. I’m not particularly diligent about drivers for it - it just works. The interface I rarely power down, but I do have an older key station that I have to cycle occasionally to get Dorico to recognize it.
I am on windows 11 and also use Scarlett 18i20 (this has been happening at least since Dorico 5 - currently on latest version.) As near as I can tell it hits me fairly randomly and as I mentioned, I don’t check the task manager every time I quit, so really don’t have any direct correlation if it’s something I do DURING my working session that causes the failure to fully quit when I end Dorico.
Many thanks for the dumps @kloewen. The situation is pretty simple and clear. Dorico wants to close the project and quit the app and sends a shutdown request to the audio engine, which gets received and also immediately processed, but then during the audio engine shutdown it tries to unload the Groove Agent SE (aka GASE) plug-in and this is where it gets stuck, GASE waiting for some signal which never arrives.
I don’t know with the other users, if it is the same, but in kloewen’s case it is clearly Groove Agent SE. As a reference, in our bugbase this is now ticket HALLY-11392.
Nearly every program I’ve ever owned does this sometimes, even in Win 11. Outlook is a common miscreant. I think it’s more a Windows issue than Dorico, but I’ve had it happen with v 6 on Win 11. I keep the Task Manager open at all times just for these times, going into Details, then nuking the offending process with End Process Tree. Ignore the warning; it never actually affects anything. Many times, you’ll find multiples, and I think that’s what causes the issue. Nuke 'em all!
Is there any news on a solution?
I also have this problem and the result is a notice on opening Dorico that the last session is registered as not closing properly even though I have done just that and I have lost nothing.
Annoying.
