Concave_convex.dorico (1.3 MB) Struggling with Dorico performance. My file of 4 flows and 12 pages is slowed down to the point where I have to wait a while for simple operations like note input. Things like changing divisi takes considerably longer.
I’m using a windows machine with 2 CPUs of with 16 cores each, and 64G of ram
Attached: a video for illustration, the project, and the a diagnostic file
Video
Diagnostic File
This isn’t much help, but my machine (which usually does just fine) is also having a difficult time.
I reset the playback template to NP, which cleared up some of the VST slots and improved the lag considerably, though it’s still not snappy. But better.
Pianoteq has always been problematic for me with Dorico. Pianoteq support shrugged me off, but I’ve had to abandon it for use in my projects. No idea if that experience is common to other users.
Thanks Dan, it helps somewhat.
Here’s another video that really illustrates how impossibly slow things are Video
Mind you, this is with playback turned off
First thing I would suggest is to bring up task manager , expand the Dorico item and look at the percentage of CPU used by the vst engine, and that consumed by Dorico. It will help you decide without a lot of wasted time where to focus - if say Dorico is at 15% but the audio is 40% or greater.
I know you said playback is turned off, but there are also cases where the video engine has an impact even when its not apparently running. So I’d like to see what the TM says. I’m suspecting CPU - or maybe a better word is that I’m projecting.
This is while idling:
This is while it’s actually frozen to perform a set of operations 
Looks like the CPU never spikes, yet Dorico is effectively frozen for minutes at a time.
You won’t see maximum CPU utilisation or anything close to it with these kinds of edits. I can’t see from your video exactly which instruments or at which bars you’re making those edits, but I grabbed four staves among the clarinets and oboes effectively at random at bar 27 and used Alt+M four times, and each operation took between 1 and 2 seconds to complete, which is about what I would expect.
What if you deactivate Edit > Condensing. Does that help at all?
I tried turning off condensing but it’s still laggy to a fault. I also tried restarting Dorico, restarting the computer, and turning off playback.
(A rhetorical lament: if I’m in Galley View, why does every operation necessarily need to update the “final” look. I.e. why not just update everything when switching to Engrave Mode / Page View? But I’m just lamenting because I’m frustrated at the standstill my workflow reached. I think that had I not had this issue, I wouldn’t care about what is updating when… )
Any advice will be highly appreciated. My deadline is coming up and I’ve reached a standstill… 
Michael, can you please do Help > Create Diagnostic Report and attach the resulting zip file here so we can take a look at the logs?
You can find all of the files needed in the original (top) post. Let me know if anything is missing. Many thanks!
The most recent logs are from more than 24 hours ago. Please do Help > Create Diagnostic Report again so I can look at the logs from your most recent sessions.
There’s a development: Now if I perform some operation Dorico doesn’t like, it just quits.
I had the project crash once when I was deleting a tuplet, and one minute later when I was moving from write to print to engrave too quickly.
Another time was right after I instered text with Shift+x. The text jumped all across the screen before the program crashed.
Concave_convex 2.dorico (1.4 MB)
Your diagnostics to date don’t include any crash dumps. Perhaps that’s because Dorico hasn’t crashed before, or it could be because your computer isn’t set up to produce crash dumps. Please follow the steps under Dorico is crashing. What do I do? here so that when Dorico next crashes, it will produce a crash dump. Then reproduce the crash and generate a new set of diagnostics. If the resulting zip file is too big to attach here, please send it to me via WeTransfer or a similar service to d dot spreadbury at steinberg dot de.
I’ve also been struggling with lags, hangs and crashes, so have done a lot of experiments. Haven’t loaded your project but I assume it has a bunch of stuff in it. In my very large scores Dorico starts to lag to where it becomes unusable. HALion is mostly fine, but any other library isn’t. The best solution that I’m using now (which costs some $) is to use Vienna Ensemble Pro. This offloads the VST’s to a VEP server and Dorico becomes usable again (not as zippy as a small ensemble, but usable).
If you already have a DAW like Cubase there’s another approach you can use with that.
I’m having issues even when playback is turned off completely.
Not of much help, but just to put things in perspective: on my machine (a Mac Pro 2013 with 12 cores and NotePerformer) entering notes is much faster than in the video. Entering a note in an empty bar is nearly immediate; in a bar already containing notes, just a bit slower (but under half second).
(By the way: fantastic work, you are doing!)
Paolo
I’ve also experienced the same type of lag in the OP’s video but only on occasion and I can’t figure out why. It only happens on my [more powerful] imac, never on my mac mini. Sometimes Dorico is so slow in processing the input from my midi keyboard that it will turn a whole passage into a chord even though chord mode is not turned on. The only thing that has ever helped is a restart of my machine, and occasionally, changing which usb port the keyboard is plugged into. Usually Dorico is smooth as butter for me since I don’t have huge projects, but it is absolutely crippling when this happens.