Long load times ("audio engine taking longer than expected..."

Nearly every time I launch Dorico, I’m confronted with the dreaded “The audio engine is taking longer than expected to respond” dialog box. I often wait 3-5 minutes for Dorico to get its act together and fully launch properly. If I get impatient and try to do some work in another app (like writing this post, right now), every 30 seconds or so, Dorico will interrupt me with the same dialog box, which I have to click “Continue to Wait” again.

This is really frustrating. What’s causing this and how can it be fixed once and for all?

Screenshot 2024-10-18 at 7.23.31 PM

1 Like

Update: after FIFTEEN minutes of no launching, I decided to finally terminate it. Here is the Diagnostics.zip:

Dorico Diagnostics.zip (1.7 MB)

I went into Activity Monitor and force-quit the VST Audio Engine. Then I relaunched Dorico. It launched quickly and properly this time…

This has happened many times for me. Why do I regularly have to do this dance with Dorico just to get it to launch?

Thanks for the data @user450 and sorry for the trouble.
We have to find out why it is taking so long for you to launch Dorico.
On the other hand, I have difficulties matching that what you describe with the actual log files from your diagnostics. Just a rough guess, but at which time did you launch Dorico when it took 15 mins?
Usually the vst3 scanning takes a long time when you start Dorico the very first time. But during that time a cache file gets created, so that on next start the scanner does not need to go over every single plug-in, but only scan plugs that have been added. So these runs shall be very quick.
But it could also be, that some virus checker or so intervenes and makes the scanning go slow. We have to find out. I have some idea and will come back later, since I have to find out something beforehand.
Stay tuned and thanks for your patience.

Hi @Ulf ,

is there any news on this regard? I’m experiencing the same issue on my Windows machine.

Welcome to the forum @tone123 . I’ve sent you a private message via the forum, please check.

Has anyone posted a fix for this? I have the same problem.

Welcome to the forum, Jennifer. If you have lots of VST plug-ins on your system, you may need to wait patiently for all of them to be scanned. If you have plug-ins from Waves, or other manufacturers that protect their plug-ins with iLok, make sure your iLok is connected. If you have plug-ins like EW Spaces, make sure your internet connection is active when you start Dorico up. If you can, use Alt+Tab (Windows) or Command-Tab (macOS) to check whether any plug-ins are showing errors or other dialogs that require your input.

Once you have been through this initial scan, subsequent starts of the application should be significantly faster. If you don’t have any joy after waiting for, say, 10 minutes, please come back here, and we will try some other steps.

I’m having this problem today. Not everyday. If Dorico won’t open, then what will Command Tab do? All it does for me is cycle through open apps. When it comes back to Dorico, the warning box is still there.

I need to pay someone to walk me through setting up sounds.

The idea of cycling through the open windows is to see whether any VST plug-ins are showing any message boxes that are holding up the initialisation. For example, some plug-ins that require an internet connection to check their license, or which require a hardware key like an iLok to be plugged in, may pop up a modal message when Dorico scans them, and execution will not continue until you have dismissed those messages – but you might not see those messages if they appear behind Dorico’s splash screen.

When this happens for me, there is no splash screen, and the sounds I’m using are what came with Dorico—too new to have VST.

Thanks

Are you perhaps trying to restart Dorico immediately after quitting it? If so, try waiting a few seconds before you start Dorico again.

FWIW I still have this problem irregularly, and it’s definitely not tied to hidden VST/AU plugin windows behind Dorico. I always check for those.

I am having the same issue. I’m accustomed for it to take some time for Dorico to open after any software update as it scans my plugins, but it is now taking this same long period of time (several minutes) to open every time I launch the application. Is something going wrong with the scan log file? Any suggestions for how to debug? I’m on a Mac MI (Monterey 12.7.6).

Welcome to the forum @brogan .

The Activity Monitor app (/Applications/Utilities/ActivityMonitor.app) is your friend in this case.
Click on the Process Name column header to sort the processes alphabetically and then scroll through to find the VSTAudioEngine process. At start up the audio engine also launches the subtasks vstscannermaster and vstscanner. How many of those do you see? Is the process ID (PID) frequently changing of the vstscanner process(es) or is it always the same? Does the Activity Monitor show any of the VST processes as not responding?
At the top of the Activity Monitor window is a little round icon with three dots inside. When you click on that a pop-up menu appears. Please click on Spin Dump and wait until it is finished. Save the output to a text file and post here please. Thanks

Thanks Ulf,

I killed a bunch of additional processes to simplify Activity Monitor view – and for some reason that seems to have sped things up. Only took about 10 seconds last time I opened. I’m attaching the spin dump file but everything seems to be ok for now (maybe another process was interfering – Onyx?).

Anyway, thanks very much for your help. I’ll let you know if issue returns.

Brogan

(Attachment spindump_brogan.txt is missing)

1 Like

Hi @brogan, your spin dump attachment is missing. Can you upload it again?

Sorry, the spindump file is 5.7mb and your max is 4mb. Any particular section you need?

Ok, I’ve broken into two files. Thanks.
spindump_a_brogan.crash (2.9 MB)
spindumb_b_brogan.crash (2.6 MB)