New Mac Studio Ultra is generally crashy and unstable

[LittleJJ]

After waiting 14 months I took the plunge and bought a Mac Studio Ultra. Spent 14 days getting my system recreated on the new computer. New Mac is generally unstable and crashy running Digital Performer.. Massively disappointing and upsetting. My work on music has ground to a halt. Not sure how to proceed. Projects open. I work on them. Next time I go to open them DP crashes. After several tries, finally it opens without crashing. It’s a nightmare.
UPDATE: got it sorted. All’s well as of now.

[stubbsonic]

Ugh!! What a drag!! So sorry you're dealing with all that. I can imagine when you spend big on a new machine, it's the very last thing you want to have to endure.

I got an M1 MBP last year, and apart from having to jump through a few stupid hoops to keep my RME Firewire-based i/o working; I've had relatively smooth sailing-- in Monterey (12.6.5).

[HCMarkus]

I have been running a Mac Studio Ultra and DP (currently 11.22) since I bought the Mac a little over a year ago. Extremely stable for me. I am still running Monterey 12.6.1, but others are running Ventura without the issues you are having.

Search this forum for tips... Mike Halloran has guided many users thru issues like you are having. Most likely a plug in issue.

Good luck resolving; just know that DP and M1 Macs work really well together. I have been extremely pleased with the combination and have been very productive since day 3 (Days 1 and 2 were setting the new Mac up).

[LittleJJ]

Smooth sailing is what I expected, of course. I’ll deep dive into anything that might be helpful, as being able to actually record music is one of my life’s main joys.

[cuttime]

I am willing to bet the farm that it is plug related. Are you using Rosetta? With your description I can oly assume that you are running a combination of Intel and Apple Silicon plugs. I'd start by running DP in Apple Silicon Native mode with my Intel plugs disabled. Start adding Intel plugs in Rosetta until you induce instability. Tedious, I know, but this will help you out a lot:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pluginfo/ ... 2949?mt=12

[HCMarkus]

+1 on PlugInfo.

I installed all plugins from scratch when I built my Mac Studio. At this point, almost everything is Apple Silicon Native. The biggest laggard is AudioEase, whose Altiverb still requires Rosetta2. That said, Altiverb runs well under Rosetta within DP Native.

When installing Altiverb, I had to run DP in Rosetta Mode post-installation to allow DP to recognize Altiverb. After a restart and reverting DP to Native, DP Native would see Altiverb without issue.

[mikehalloran]

The old days of just looking at the Console.app window, seeing the problem and trying to diagnose from that are gone. It's technically possible but good luck finding the actual problem.

The Activity Monitor window on your Mac can be left open. Sort by Time, newest on top. If anything turns red, immediately double-click on it — which will split into two windows and keep double-clicking on what you find till only one thing is left at the root level. Whatever you find is giving you grief.

DP crash reports go away quickly. These can be found, opened and exported to Text.

Apple support used to be more helpful than my recent experiences but they can walk you through a data capture app and how to use it.

In the mean time, boot in Safe Mode, shut down and reboot.
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-hel ... enu%20bar.

Also start DP in Safe mode by holding the Shift key. This starts without extensions but rebuilds their paths etc. Ignore the error messages—audio engine won't load. Quit DP when it's up and restart normally.

[stubbsonic]

Thanks for the reminders, MH.

Last night, recording in DP, the whole app everything just vanished. Back in finder, no error message, no nothing. Just my new M1 MBP saying, "Hi Jon. What would you like to do today?", and me, dumbfoundedly saying "Really?"

Reopened project, which prompted autosave option, and only lost last take.

[Black-Man]

Echo what others are saying here. Look at the crash dump. 99.9% guaranteed its a plugin crashing DP on startup. I currently have UAD native, SoundToys, Valhalla, AD and Eventide (all M1 compatible - no Rosetta). Only UAD native causes DP to crash. In particular, the LA2 suite. Other UAD's I have are fine. Go figure.

[LittleJJ]

UPDATE: i know it isn’t, but the Mac Studio Ultra is acting as though it’s learning. No crashes
In 10 days! In fact everything’s been tickety-boo but for some authorization wonkiness that isn’t the Ultra’s fault. That’s sorted now too.
So now I’m getting exactly what I signed up for: great performance, stability, snappy responsiveness. Happy camper.

[James Steele]

Boy I’m glad to hear that. It’s such a weird phenomenon. I’ve had that happen to me where the Mac just seems to “settle in” after a while. There must be a rational explanation, but don’t know what it is. Glad to see things have stabilized. The Studio Ultra is a bad ass machine. I got the M1 Max version as the Ultra was outside my budget.

[DAWdler]

I'm having issues with my Studio as well. DP would hang as soon as I pressed to space bar to play but only on a couple projects. I loaded in safe mode and the projects played so figured it was a plugin. I disabled Exponential Audio and Izotope plugs as those had given me trouble in the past. The thing is I've been working on this project for a few days with those plugs installed and it was working fine. Also other projects work fine that have the same plugins. I have imported just the soundbites into a new project to start fresh. It works for awhile then it too hangs on play.

Also, DP is doing this thing where it won't play certain soundbites. If I "Replace soundbite..." with the same one that's not playing it returns to normal. For a while. I'm also getting a fairly frequent spinning beach ball. It lasts a few seconds then goes away. It's frustrating. I'm thinking it could be something corrupting soundbites. I have DP projects living on a NVMe M.2 SSD connected with TB to the Mac Studio so speed shouldn't be an issue. The Soundbites sound fine played from the soundbite window. I'm at a loss.

[HCMarkus]

I found that NI's Battery, would not properly recall settings unless I removed old instances(from my template) and replaced them with new ones. I mention this was a point for consideration as a possible cause of issues.

OTOH, many old projects seem to run fine.

You might also look into Merging the troublesome soundbites after Replacing.