On Mac, Dorico 4 does not launch but hangs indefinitely waiting for the audio engine

Is the VSTAudioEngine still around then? If so, could you please take a sample of the process in Activity Monitor?

And are there maybe vstscanner processes around?

There’s no vstscanner when deadhanging. It hangs at either audio engine or the SKI Plugin Controller initialization (done).

VSTAudioEngine is there:


Only Dorico hangs:

Should I use Xcode instrument to sample the entire duration since Dorico’s boot till its hang?

Also, recent 10 app logs (as D.Sp suggested here):

/* File removed since this case is transferred to a private conversation with Ulf. */

Hi @ShikiSuen , thanks for all the data you’ve sent. It looks like the audio engine can’t connect to the license engine and therefore can not verify for a valid license and hence ignores any attempt from Dorico connecting to it.
So it looks like we have a Ventura compatibility issue here. Funny enough, Dorico and Cubase seem to be fine, but not the audio engine. We need to further investigate on this. Many thanks for reporting.

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Actually, ShikiSuen’s case is solved, please see this thread

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Is there a timeline for fixing these issues? I just purchased Dorico Elements 4 and it doesn’t work on my MacBook Pro M1 with macOS Ventura. If I start Dorico it will get hung up on initializing the audio engine. If I attempt to start VSTAudioEngine5 manually, the Activation Manager pops ups with “No License Found” for VSTAudioEngine5.
FYI, I’ve tried the suggested fixes, including turning Dorico/VST Audio Engine full disk access ON / OFF without any success.

Edit 2: FYI, if I remove HALion Sonic SE.vst3 from /Library/Application Support/Steinberg/Components, Dorico starts fine but I guess I have no way to play back. I also don’t see any instance of VSTAudioEngine in Activity Monitor in that case.

Hi @mariusl32 , could you please do in Dorico from the menu Help > Create Diagnostics Report and post the corresponding zip file here?
See, we need to find out more what is going wrong on your machine.
This is not a general issue that every user experiences, therefore it is not easy to fix or even giving a timeline.

Hi @Ulf, experiencing the same problem with the hang. No Eucon in my components folder… only Halion. Always gets stuck initialising audio engine. The ‘Activation Manager’ folder is too large to upload here, let me know if you need it. I would be happy to upload it to dropbox or similar and send you a link.

Dorico 4 AudioEngine.zip (20.2 KB)
DiagnosticReports.zip (83.2 KB)

Dorico 4.zip (483 Bytes)

Welcome to the forum, @motshwanepege. A lot of the files in the zip files you’ve uploaded are zero length, which is curious. I wonder whether this could be a problem with the archiving process, or whether they really are zero bytes in length.

Can you try again to generate the required diagnostics and send the single zip file produced by the script, using Dropbox or Google Drive or whatever as necessary?

Hi @motshwanepege, with the Dorico 4.3 we recently had a few reports about hangs at launch time. In those instances it turned out to be an old Groove Agent component that caused it. Please check the folder /Library/Application Support /Steinberg/Components and see if you can find some Groove Agent bundle there. If so, move it temporarily to e.g. the desktop and try to launch Dorico ; any better?

Hi, @Ulf no sign of a Groove Agent component. Just HALion Sonic SE. Are you able to provide me with an email address that I can send all the attachments needed for you to understand the issue?

Hi @dspreadbury, I am unable to send drive or dropbox links here, is there an email address that I can send this information to?

You need to read a few more posts to get your Discourse Trust Level up. Then you can attach things to your posts.

@motshwanepege, you can send to u dot stoermer at steinberg dot de

What else is in that components folder? Try to temporarily rename that folder and try to launch Dorico again.
If nothing changes do the same with the folders /Library/Audio/Plug-ins/VST and VST3

In motshwanepepe’s case it turned out to be that the vstscanner was choking on Melodyne and WaveShell plug-ins. Now up and running.

Hi @Ulf ,

I just installed Melodyne Assistant on my system. Is there anything specific to know if this is used?

Hi @JuergenP , if Dorico is still starting up, you are fine, no worries.

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Had a freeze on loading audio engine on start up, tried to find the files as suggested in the start of this thread, but did not have them in the mentioned folder. I restarted my Macbook Air, and now it suddenly works fine. IDK what it was, but seems to be working fine now.