Impossibly slow to work

Hi everyone,

I’m in the layout phase of a huge orchestral composition and it’s extremely frustrating how incredibly slow every single action has become. To the point that the program crashes regularly. Is there any way that I can maybe uncouple any playback stuff from this document or do anything to speed up the process? With smaller files, dorico works just fine.

All the best,

Félix

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May be a few details may help the members of this forum to try solve your problem.
Mac or PC ?
Which OS ?
Which version of Dorico ?
What about VST configuration ? etc.

Have you turned off condensing?

Have you tried relaunching Dorico with only one layout having been opened?

There’s not a lot else you can do, as long as you’re on 5.1.60.

You can send it to @dspreadbury, so that the team can see what needs improving; or if there is anything particular in the file that is causing the problem.

You can select the Silence playback template (Play mode, Play > Playback Template). Not sure if this will help your issue.

Thanks everyone!

My equipment: Windows 11 Pro, Intel(R) Core™ i7-8565U CPU @ 1.80GHz 1.99 GHz, 16,0 GB RAM
Dorico 5.1.60.2187

VST is a combination of Noteperformer and Opus (EastWest)

I need to see the condesning since I’m starting to work on layout.

Will send the file to Daniel and will try if the silence template helps.

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That’s where your issues are. This CPU might not be up to the task…
It’s been 6 years since this came out, and it’s even a mobile part.

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What disk @Felix_Turrion ?

Daniel was so kind to reply super quickly. Thank you all for your time. Indeed, it seems that my CPU is simply not powerful enough. At least I know what my options are now. Greetings from Leipzig!

Since many calculations in Dorico need to be done sequentially, it is beneficial to have a CPU with a fast single thread speed. Yours is pretty slow in that regard. If you’re chip shopping, maybe consider one of the faster CPUs on this list.

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FWIW, I have a Ryzen 5950 that doesn’t even make it onto the list that @FredGUnn linked, and it’s still really fast, even for moderately large scores.

Buuuuut my other machine is an M3 Pro, and it screams.

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I think we’re pretty similarly spec’ed. My desktop is 5950x and laptop is M3 Pro 11 Core. I’m seriously considering jumping completely over to Mac next summer whenever the M4 Studio or Pros come out.

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A fast CPU is only part of the solution

Dorico still needs to calculate the spacing for all those additional instruments, and much of that must be done sequentially (can’t calculate spacing on page 50 before page 5 for example), so yeah a CPU with really fast single core speed is pretty essential for large projects, especially if using Condensing.

Even if you don’t see the instruments (filter out a few instruments or use a custom layout), the calculation happens for all instruments I guess. Is this really necessary?

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