I’m having occasional times in which I hit save on a Dorico project, and I get the spinning beach ball for several minutes. (I’m in the middle of one right now.)
This happens from time to time, and it’s highly concerning. What should I do?
macOS 12.5, Dorico 4.2.0.1092
I did go ahead and take a processor sample in Activity Monitor in case it’s helpful:
procsample.zip (37.4 KB)
When that happens to you, have also a look for a process called VSTAudioEngine. Is that one around, what is the status? Please also take a sample of that one.
And in any case, could you also please do from the menu Help > Create Diagnostics Report and attach the corresponding zip file here? Thanks
Because that report will also contain crash files that are most interesting for us.
During the hang, I checked VST Audio Engine in Activity Monitor: it is not hung. It appears normal.
I waited for 30+ minutes and Dorico was still hanging, so I had to force-quit. Then I relaunched Dorico and it hung on launch. That didn’t resolve for a half hour, so I force-quit that. NOW in Activity Monitor, it shows a hung VST Audio Engine. I force-quit that. After that, Dorico finally launched normally.
I’m really frustrated with the near-daily hiccups with Dorico not always launching properly, not always saving properly, etc. It really undermines my confidence in using Dorico further. Here’s the diagnostic report you requested; hopefully it yields some clues.
Dorico Diagnostics.zip (921.0 KB)
Hang in there! Hope you can get to the bottom of it soon.
Hi @user450 , thanks for the data and sorry for the inconvenience. We fully understand your frustration, but we will work hard too solve the issue.
The diagnostics don’t contain crash files, so Dorico and the audio engine continue running, so they get stuck somehow. I assume it’s the audio engine’s fault. During saving Dorico asks the audio engine for all the plug-in-states, but because the audio engine does not respond, Dorico is stuck in waiting for an answer.
Since it is not crashing, I would like you to generate 2 samples of the audio engine when Dorico is hanging. I want 2 samples, because I need to find out if the audio engine is really hanging. Thank you for your effort.
And it is not always our fault. Not too long ago I had a customer with a similar problem where the audio engine got stuck in Native Instruments code. So let’s find out what the cause is on your machine.
Thanks very much, I appreciate that.
I will gather those samples next time those things happen to me!
450, I promise you that what you’re experiencing is not normal; little comfort at the moment, I know, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.
As an aside, are things more stable with the playback template set to silence?
I had another hang on save today. I opened Activity Monitor and the VST Audio Engine was NOT hung – it looked normal. To be as thorough as possible I took two processor samples of both Dorico (hung) and the VST Audio Engine (not hung):
processor samples.zip (144.8 KB)
Then, since you said you suspected the VST Audio Engine was at fault, I force-quit it in Activity Monitor (“AM” from here on out). No change.
I then force-quit Dorico. Then I checked AM to verify that neither Dorico nor the VST Audio Engine were listed - they were not.
Then I relaunched Dorico. It launched normally. And it caused the VST Audio Engine to relaunch (as I would have suspected).
Please let me know if I should be doing any different type of troubleshooting when it happens again.
Welcome to the forum!
Hi @user450 , thanks very much for the process samples. They confirm what I had feared. The audio engine is basically running, but the main thread is stuck in a deadlock and since it is the main thread that also drives the communication to Dorico, the audio engine can’t respond to the save data request and consequently also Dorico hangs.
Now, the deadlock condition you have is not unfamiliar to us and we think we have already a solution for it that shall come out with the next Dorico release. I need to talk to Daniel, if we could maybe take you into our beta program, so you could receive a beta version and hopefully confirm the fix.
I’ll come back…