I have used Dorico since v2, and I have used it on 5 machines: 3 Mac and 2 PC.
This has been happening almost every time I open Dorico for the duration of that time. Not one install of it has been immune to this.
Sometimes it opens quickly after this window appears. Sometimes it just waits.
About 50% of the time it will wait too long and stop the process.
Either way it takes a very long time to Dorico to open.
I cannot fathom why a “professional” piece of software would be this much trouble to open.
Every single software application on this list opens faster and more reliably than Dorico:
Reaper (a full orchestral template with 200+ tracks of VSTis)
Nuendo (same)
Bidule
Unity
Unreal Engine
Blender
Wwise
DaVinci Resolve
OBS Studio
After Effects
Reason
on and on…
…and these are all generally doing much more powerful computing, pushing many more 1s and 0s than Dorico.
What is so problematic about this “audio engine” that takes so long to respond?
I am getting tired of quitting the audio engine process, restarting Dorico, restarting my computer etc.
Fix it!
How many more people have to have this issue?
These are all threads just regarding the audio engine initialization hang, not even the threads that deal with other audio engine issues (such as freezing or crashing):
I think if you notice @Ulf solves them individually one-on-one because of the complexity of each computer setup.
Have you done a Help > Create Diagnostic Report and attached the resulting zip file for him to look at by any chance?
Not even close to comparable. Opening a blank/new file in Reaper takes 2 seconds on normal performance systems such as most consumer laptops made in the past 10 years.
Scanning for new plugins is a process only needed on occasion and does not happen at startup every time.
Opening a new/blank file in Dorico suffers from the initialization hang described.
The size of the file seems to have no bearing on the initialization problem.
Yeah, I also understand your frustration. It’s the only professional audio program that comes up with that error, consistently. Other than that, I find Dorico to be rock-solid and it rarely crashes on me (thankfully). But I get this message frequently, and have experienced it since I came on with Dorico V3.5 (and have been through two computers and several OS’es since then). Fortunately it usually opens without me needing to submit a diagnostic report, but I do find it odd that out of all the audio software I’ve used (DAWs and I’ve dabbled in MuseScore and Sibelius), that Dorico can’t seem to get this message ironed out. I feel bad for Ulf having to address them so often on a case-by-case basis…
It’s tricky: Dorico has tens of thousands of users, and Ulf doesn’t spend all his time dealing with this issue, which he would if everybody experienced this problem.
Sure, this error message is consistent for you, across multiple machines, but presumably the bank of VSTs you have is also consistent across your multiple machines.
I’ve never seen this message, across three machines in the eight years that Dorico’s been on the market (on both Windows and Mac), or on the machines of anyone I’ve coached (five separate people on five separate machines in the past month alone, and countless others over the years).
It’s going to come down to specific VSTs. Now whether there’s something that Dorico could do to prevent these VSTs from slowing things down is a good question, but as users we don’t know if it’s a one-size-fits-all error message that is caused by various VSTs failing to respond in a multitude of different ways, in which case it’s likely a larger job to deal with.
I’d certainly agree that it’s an easy test to remove all third-party VSTs, and see if the problem remains, or is gone; then add them back in small groups, to see if that pinpoints the problem.
But as said, you should supply a Diagnostic Report for the team to look at. If you actually read any of the litany of posts that you’ve quoted, you’ll see that the vast majority are identified and solved.
That may well be true - it quite likely is in response to certain VSTs and/or a particular ASIO driver etc etc, but that doesn’t alter the fact that it’s only Dorico that’s struggling to boot.
And while it’s true that one user will have the same plug-ins and config across all of their machines, that config of course isn’t repeated across all of the users who report this. The fact that you don’t have a config that Dorico chokes on doesn’t mean that it’s not a problem.
It’s a Dorico problem, not a plug-in problem, they should fix it, it’s been years.
That’s the point I was trying to make in my final paragraph: it could be one VST that’s consistently causing a problem across multiple machines, in which case it probably needs one fix in Dorico, or it could be multiple plugins causing different problems across different machines, in which case it’s no wonder that Dorico hasn’t fixed for all of those cases.
Hi everyone,
I apologize on behalf of Steinberg for all the hassle and frustration that this complex is causing you. I say complex, because it is not only one bug or issue, it is several.
And guess what, I am also frustrated of fire fighting this intensively during the last weeks. I spend so much time in remote sessions with customers in recent time, especially since the Finale refugees flock over in thousands.
So there are very many reasons why the audio engine can get stuck, and with almost everyone I have to sort this out on a individual basis. So far, I think, I could help everyone who accepted a remote session with me. This takes up pretty much time of my working day, and I should not type here right now, because I better work together with my colleagus on getting this all sorted.
But please, no one shall stay behind, if you have trouble with the audio engine initialization, write me a private message and we’ll arrange for a remote screen share via Zoom or whatever.
Not a solution to this problem, but the thought crossed my mind: why is the audio engine neccesary for Dorico to start?
If you use Dorico only as a music notation program (as I do), I think you can live without any audio…
Would it not be a good idea to have an option somewhere in the general preferences to completely switch it off?
It is undeniable that the after-sales service is excellent and very proactive. However, at the same time, the company has consistently avoided answering this question: Why do so many other audio software programs not have these issues, or at least do not cause confusion and trouble for users, while Dorico cannot seem to avoid them?
Well to be fair, those other programs have had these problems historically. I’ve worked as a producer and programmer with many different DAWs since the late 80s on Mac and PC and they’ve all had periods of maddening instability (except Reaper…). It’s been changing plug-in formats, audio drivers, asio, graphics rendering, cpu types, graphics cards, proprietary driver incompatibility etc.
I can’t begin to imagine how many hours I’ve spent working with various tech support teams debugging this kind of stuff. Just thinking about ProTools in 1999-2000 makes my blood run cold. And I completely gave up on Studio One when Presonus couldn’t make it run reliably on my AMD workstation - they’ve fixed it recently but two years down the line I’ve moved on.
It’s a moving target for the devs, so I’m sympathetic, but it is a Dorico problem, it’s not ‘your dodgy VST’ or ‘your audio setup’.
Just to throw in: I have only had this error a few times over now 6 years of using Dorico, and I think every time has been due to some iLok issue or other plugin licensing. And they are indeed problems that occur in other audio apps, not just Dorico (even the great, ever-stable Reaper).
