Digital Performer 8 - Digital Performer Quit Unexpectedly

[arthurputy]

I'm demoing Digital Performer 8 (Day 5). Since I've started using it it has always crashed on launch. What I have been doing is just relaunching it over and over and then ultimately it does work. For no apparent reason, now it isn't launching at all. it just keeps quitting unexpectedly. I've tried holding option and selecting All Disabled...still crashed. I haven't installed anything new so I'm not really sure whats going on. I've found that if I launch a project by just clicking on the project file then DP loads no problem. Strange. I've tried deleting a few preference files but also made no difference. Help?

[mikehalloran]

You don't show your OS nor what else is installed. If Mavericks or Yosemite, go to System Preferences/Security and check the box for Allow Apps from anywhere.

When this has happened to me, it was because something was trying to load that wouldn't. DP 8 will often ignore it the third time and load.

I would do the following in order. Reinstall DP 8, repair permissions in Disk Utility, reboot.

If it doesn't behave now, open Console and see what isn't loading that should -- or what old, obsolete app is trying to load that shouldn't. Either is possible. Usually, doing the above fixes this, however.

[stubbsonic]

If you are on a mac, you can go to your User Library folder (which is hidden in newer OS's), go to the preference folder and delete the Digital Performer preference files. (there might be two or three, depending on how far you've gotten in the launch).

Instead of DISABLE ALL, do the option-launch and choose the "SAFE" set, see if that helps.

Check also to see if you are launching in 32-bit mode or 64-bit. In Finder, select "Get info..." and uncheck the 32-bit box. Shouldn't matter, but you could try either way and see if one works better than the other.

Sorry you're having trouble. I know it is frustrating as hell.

[arthurputy]

Thanks very much for the replies and suggestions. I'm on a Macbook Pro, Yosemite 10.10.1, DP 8.07. In terms of other things installed, I have tried quitting everything possible before launching and I doesn't seem to make any difference.

I've tried everything else suggested without success. I'm quite stumped. The crash logs don't seem to suggest a plugin is causing it. For what it's worth, this is from the crash log:

Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: EXC_I386_GPFLT

It's odd because It brings up the splash screen, parses all the plugins, then the activate/continue demo popup appears. As soon as I click continue demo it crashes now every single time UNLESS I launch DP by double clicking an existing project file.

[arthurputy]

So I've moved all plugins (AU/VST/MAS) out of the default directories. So no plugins at all. Still crashes. It has loaded here and there but overall just crashes overwhelmingly. Most bizarre thing I've encountered in a long time. I'm starting to feel really bad for saying Cubase 8 was too crash prone.

Update: I thought I had made some progress. I moved everything back into the respective plugins folders. I deleted the plugin caches and all other preference files. Installed Onyx, ran all sorts of maintenance. On first few launch attempts (after enumerating plugins) DP didn't do anything...I click "Continue with Demo" and it just disappeared. No crash popup nothing. Just nothing. Then it suddenly worked...3 times in a row. Then back to the nothing. Since then...pretty much nothing.

My demo was going pretty well (I guess the fact that it crashed on launch every time should have been a clear sign...but it would always eventually load). I had every intention of purchasing DP but to be honest I don't know how I possibly can now. Perhaps the program is not at fault but I have spent more time now troubleshooting this issue than I think I have spent recovering from crashes in Cubase in total. Which is so totally ironic. I had a block of time this morning (which is pretty rare) to just work on some creative and continue to test DP and instead all of it has been wasted. Totally frustrating. Again, maybe DP isn't to blame...something peculiar in my setup...who knows, but what I can say is that on this same system right now I an launch any of these programs 10 x consecutively and not experience a single crash: Ableton Live 9, Logic Pro X, Cubase Pro 8, Numerology, Machine. Same plugins...same system so...?

Anyhow. I'm pretty close to giving up on it unless anyone has some ideas. I guess I could always just launch DP from a blank project..but the fact that the app just won't launch makes me extremely nervous about overall/long term stability.

[mikehalloran]

Did you reinstall as I suggested?

[stubbsonic]

I just went through a brutal crashing DP spell, and can't tell you the cause yet. Been busy with other work. I made a stable external boot drive with minimal & necessary plugs only. Works fine.

The only thing in your list that I also have in my list is Numerology. But I'm certain that I had my crash in a clean installation that did not include Numerology, so we can safely eliminate that as the cause of MY issue.

My crash never produced a crash report.

[arthurputy]

Did you reinstall as I suggested?

I did. First I installed over existing. Then I deleted existing and installed again.

[arthurputy]

I just went through a brutal crashing DP spell, and can't tell you the cause yet.

Wow. Is this common with DP? I was under the impression that it was a particularly stable DAW but since I've been researching my issue I'm getting the impression that I may have been mistaken. That being said...when I am able to get it running it has been quite stable so far and overall a pleasure to work with.

[arthurputy]

Ok. I have one last update. I changed the Startup Option from "Welcome to Digital Performer" to "None" and now it launches without issue. I had a feeling it was related to that hub/welcome page loader as it always felt like it would try to bring it up and then crash. Maybe related to the Demo mode. Not sure. Anyhow, I hope this experience proves helpful to someone and thanks to everyone who took the time to respond and share a thought/suggestion.

[mikehalloran]

Ok. I have one last update. I changed the Startup Option from "Welcome to Digital Performer" to "None" and now it launches without issue. I had a feeling it was related to that hub/welcome page loader as it always felt like it would try to bring it up and then crash. Maybe related to the Demo mode. Not sure. Anyhow, I hope this experience proves helpful to someone and thanks to everyone who took the time to respond and share a thought/suggestion.

Glad you found a workaround.

There were issues reported with that screen in the early versions of DP 8 but the boards have been silent on that for a long time.

In your OP, you didn't mention that there were crash reports. With those, you don't have to wonder if there's a conflict–there is. MOTU support is very good at finding conflicts when you have the reports.

[arthurputy]

There were issues reported with that screen in the early versions of DP 8 but the boards have been silent on that for a long time.

Interesting. I like the screen. Hate to lose it. I'm going to try DP on my desktop which has a very similar build to my laptop in terms of OS/Plug-ins. See how that goes.

In your OP, you didn't mention that there were crash reports. With those, you don't have to wonder if there's a conflict–there is. MOTU support is very good at finding conflicts when you have the reports.

I was typing in frustration and realize in retrospect that I didn't provide much in the way of useful info. Thanks for all of your help and input!

[stubbsonic]

Wow. Is this common with DP? I was under the impression that it was a particularly stable DAW but since I've been researching my issue I'm getting the impression that I may have been mistaken. That being said...when I am able to get it running it has been quite stable so far and overall a pleasure to work with.

Researching issues will likely bring them up, but doesn't give you a relative sense of it.

I've been a DP user since the VERY beginning (and pre-DP, on performer). Back in the OS 9 days, it was not a very stable app, and saving was a parachute you put on because you WERE jumping out of a plane. You WOULD need it.

Once DP was in OS X, my DP experience got much more stable. There were little bugs, but nothing huge. I hesitated on DP8 for a long time because it seemed like it just wasn't quite ready. Reports were mixed by the regulars here. And the general feeling was the 7.24 was a very stable release. Most folks are working at very high levels with the latest 8.07. But new wrinkles seem to appear when Apple releases a new OS (which is more frequent now).

My latest troubles were not something that anyone at MOTU had seemed to have heard about. It is also possible that I have a hardware issue, or some bizarre combination of factors that is rare. I'll see when I have time to get back to trouble-shooting again.

It really is a wonderful DAW, and we want it to stay strong 'cuz we'd all hate to see it lose momentum. Now that you are hunky dory, I hope you get a chance to see what we're all raving about.

[HCMarkus]

8.07 has been simply wonderful for me. Best version ever IMO.

[Shooshie]

I just went through a brutal crashing DP spell, and can't tell you the cause yet.

Wow. Is this common with DP?

No. I go for years without chronic problems. The occasional CPU-blip, caused by who-knows-what, may yield a sudden quit or crash maybe once a year for me, though at OS upgrade times and DP upgrade times (especially if they coincide) I may go through a few days of ironing out compatibility issues, usually with older plugins that need updating.

I was under the impression that it was a particularly stable DAW but since I've been researching my issue I'm getting the impression that I may have been mistaken. That being said...when I am able to get it running it has been quite stable so far and overall a pleasure to work with.

It is a wonderful DAW. Like Stubbsonic, I've used it since the beginning, and was using MOTU software even before Performer. (Professional Composer, the first high-resolution score engraving software, ever) People often complained that Performer and Digital Performer were not very stable, but it was the Mac's operating system that created a poor environment for it. When you learned how to do it, you could run either for months or years without a single crash. The only crashes I had in Performer were usually traceable to MacOS or other software. I learned to do the following to keep Performer/Digital Performer running:

[NOTE: this is for the Classic MacOS, not OS X. This is just to show what went into creating a stable, 100% reliable system for DP.]

• 1) Create what we called a "Location" just for Performer, which included certain system extensions, but excluded all others, and started the OS with perfect compatibility
  2) Run NO other software in the background
  3) Run only the hardware related to music operations, no printer, network, etc.
  4) No shareware on the professional computer.
  5) App on system drive, project on 2nd drive with lots of space
  6) Balance the RAM for DP (from Get Info in the Finder) so that there was plenty of RAM for audio recording and playback via PCI card/interface, which actually worked outside of the app's RAM, if I remember correctly.

And there were other things involved, but that was the basic setup that guaranteed perfect performance. In a little over 20 years of professional use, I never lost a project, and the times I lost data could be counted on one hand with a finger or two left over. The times I had to interrupt work with computer issues were always traceable to two things: hardware problems (bad cables happened more than once) and copy protection, which improved over the years to the point that it never became an issue again. It was only a problem during the "key-disk" (floppy with a code in it) days.

OS X brought huge problems at first, but they were quickly ironed out. I didn't start using DP4 (the first version for OS X) for my pro work until about version 4.11, maybe even 4.5 or so (I don't remember now). I continued using OS9 until I could guarantee my clients that I had a version which was stable and not terribly buggy.

Since then, the versions for OS X have been mostly very stable, with a few dark periods that lasted a few months each. During those periods, I went back to previous versions, or avoided important work that could be delayed.

If you are having problems with DP in your system, the causes are almost 100% guaranteed to be 3rd party software, and not necessarily music software, but even little files from software that doesn't even have to be running to cause problems.

For example, there's a file associated with the old app, Audio Hijack, which causes massive compatibility problems in the current versions of OS X. It's name is InstantOn.driver, located in Volume/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL and is optionally installed as part of Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack Pro.
http://www.macworld.com/article/2837811 ... aster.html [thanks go to Frodo for that information]

Until you find that file and remove it, you'll suffer. (sorry; I can't remember its name, but a little research ought to turn it up) People are quick to blame DP for everything, but I find there is a lingering anti-DP bias, just as there are anti-ProTools, anti-Logic, and anti-any-other-DAW biases. So, when anything goes wrong with ANY of those apps, you'll hear a chorus rise chanting "I TOLD YOU SO!" and for a year afterward, you'll hear that every problem known to audio is traceable back to DP. It's all bulls*t, of course, but it takes its toll.

As I learned almost 30 years ago, if you're going to do MIDI and audio, which are time-based algorithms that forcibly take over CPU operations and simply MUST reserve certain moments in time, 44,100 times per second (or 48,000 or 88.2K, etc.) for their output to work properly, then you simply MUST use a very clean system. OS X allows us to get lazy, because as Apple says, it really IS the world's most advanced operating system, or one of them. But when you have problems, you MUST clean it out. You're working with delicate balances in code that not only deals in graphics, but time, where accuracy is not optional, but required. The slightest interference, as in that extension from Audio Hijack, will cause you enormous headaches.

OS X has a remarkable property of being self-healing to some extent. Before you snicker, think of all the systems that are operating in concert: input devices (mouse, keyboard, MIDI, audio, trackpad, tablet, network devices, ..., ..., ); output devices (audio, MIDI, graphics, network); storage devices (hard drives, SSDs, thumb drives, cloud, network); and much more that I probably don't even know about. There are layers and layers within the OS, all the way down to the Mach Kernel, and BSD UNIX. This is complicated and complex software. It was written to be self-diagnostic, to overwrite files and preferences as needed, and to "phone home" to tell Apple what to change in the next OS release. Over time, most of our problems get corrected without our direct intervention. Every time I upgrade either the OS or DP, there is a period of a few days during which I see odd behaviors, things I can't really remember, but more like noticing that someone is off their game a little, and then they start clearing up on their own. I can only begin to imagine what is going on under the hood to make that happen.

So, don't even think of blaming all your problems on DP. DP WILL run, and it will run without issues 99.999% of the time, if you run it on a clean system. When I have issues, I'm always mystified. In fact, I have a chronic, long-running issue in DP that I have never seen operate properly, and yet I'm the ONLY one I've ever known with this issue. (Branching Undo; it just doesn't happen on my system. Don't worry about it; I've tried almost everything) But in every case besides that one, it has been correctable, or it was fixed by MOTU, or it just went away somehow.

If you've ever used Audio Hijack, try searching the /Library/Audio directory for any lingering file with the name (InstantOn.driver, located in Volume/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL). Note all that you see; there may be other files that need cleaning up. In any case, a normal installation of DP will run without issues. You might even consider using another drive to create a "clean" installation of the OS and all your MIDI and audio stuff. Once you have a clean system, you'll practically never see DP crash.

Shooshie