Migrating to Ventura?

[dix]

I too usually hang back a version, and never update my OS until the latest version is at least a point iteration in. Since there's a couple things in Ventura I need, and I didn't see any DP users having issues I updated to 13.5. I suppose it's not impossible that MacOS 14.0 would resolve my DP issues, but it's at least as likely to introduce new ones.

Btw. My problems seem to be outliers. I wouldn't assume anyone else would have the same issues I'm having.

I would keep the Activity Monitor open to see what turns up. Look for anything in red. If it's consistent, you can have Apple view it on a shared screen and a tech should be able to help you isolate the culprit.

Interesting. It would not have occurred to me to call Apple for a DP problem. That could be worth a try. But just as I'd expect, Activity Monitor only shows "Digital Performer (not responding)" in red, while launches pause for a minute or so while MAS VST/VST3 load. Would that info be useful to Apple?

[Michael Canavan]

Interesting. It would not have occurred to me to call Apple for a DP problem. That could be worth a try. But just as I'd expect, Activity Monitor only shows "Digital Performer (not responding)" in red, while launches pause for a minute or so while MAS VST/VST3 load. Would that info be useful to Apple?

Reading your post again, it's obvious that a plugin or two are hanging the validation process, it's why it happens worse after restarting your computer. Personally the first thing I do in this case is look at where it hangs and at the very least make sure that plugin is the latest version. I would just go through all your plug ins and make sure they're current.

[cuttime]

Just in case anyone hasn't heard me beat this drum:

https://www.thinkersnacks.com/as-pluginfo.html

[dix]

Interesting. It would not have occurred to me to call Apple for a DP problem. That could be worth a try. But just as I'd expect, Activity Monitor only shows "Digital Performer (not responding)" in red, while launches pause for a minute or so while MAS VST/VST3 load. Would that info be useful to Apple?

Reading your post again, it's obvious that a plugin or two are hanging the validation process, it's why it happens worse after restarting your computer. Personally the first thing I do in this case is look at where it hangs and at the very least make sure that plugin is the latest version. I would just go through all your plug ins and make sure they're current.

My assumption too, but even if I remove all non-native plugins I still get the pauses.

And get this: In an attempt to identify the problem plugin I tried removing all the VST plugins from their folders in the Audio>Plug-Ins folder. That made the pauses go away, so I put half of them back in. The pauses still didn't happen, so I put the remainder back in (now all the VSTs are back where they started), and the pauses STILL didn't happen ...However after a Restart I'm back to square one, with a glacial pause on the first launch of DP after a Restart. I'm not sure what to try next.

[mikehalloran]

Console.app in the Utilities folder used to be my go-to for diagnosing such hangups. It displays every line of code in real time — or that's the idea.

For the last few years, anything I've needed has been nesting inside of lines nesting inside of others (click on the carat at the left to drill down) so trying to see what is really happening is a nightmare at best.

[Michael Canavan]

Interesting. It would not have occurred to me to call Apple for a DP problem. That could be worth a try. But just as I'd expect, Activity Monitor only shows "Digital Performer (not responding)" in red, while launches pause for a minute or so while MAS VST/VST3 load. Would that info be useful to Apple?

Reading your post again, it's obvious that a plugin or two are hanging the validation process, it's why it happens worse after restarting your computer. Personally the first thing I do in this case is look at where it hangs and at the very least make sure that plugin is the latest version. I would just go through all your plug ins and make sure they're current.

My assumption too, but even if I remove all non-native plugins I still get the pauses.

And get this: In an attempt to identify the problem plugin I tried removing all the VST plugins from their folders in the Audio>Plug-Ins folder. That made the pauses go away, so I put half of them back in. The pauses still didn't happen, so I put the remainder back in (now all the VSTs are back where they started), and the pauses STILL didn't happen ...However after a Restart I'm back to square one, with a glacial pause on the first launch of DP after a Restart. I'm not sure what to try next.

I don't know the actual details of it so I can't get technical with it, but DP and other DAWs that do plug in evaluation scans seem to do a deep scan and a "we've already done a deep scan let's load your plugins scan", So this is my theory on what is happening here, some plugin that is passing evaluation is hanging the process the first time it's scanned, but it always throws up a red flag when you restart DP. When you start DP after it loads, it remembers that the plugin has passed evaluation so it runs right through it.

As an example Logic is much more guilty of this, Logic seems to do a full scan every time you restart your computer or shut it down. so if it hangs on the evaluation process on a plugin you're doomed to a long stat every time.

[Rick Cornish]

Thanks everyone for the input. On reflection, I will stay where I am on my Mac Pro… at least until I finish my guitar album.

Unless there's some known complication with communicating between machines (like with AirDrop) if one is on Monterey and one on Ventura, I might go ahead and migrate my MacBook Pro to Ventura now (leaving my Mac Pro on Monterey).

[Michael Canavan]

Thanks everyone for the input. On reflection, I will stay where I am on my Mac Pro… at least until I finish my guitar album.

Unless there's some known complication with communicating between machines (like with AirDrop) if one is on Monterey and one on Ventura, I might go ahead and migrate my MacBook Pro to Ventura now (leaving my Mac Pro on Monterey).

Some people are experiencing crackles in the audio on Ventura, this seems to be a Ventura specific issue with no rhyme or reason, so IMO the oddly safer thing to do is wait for Sonoma to drop and skip Ventura entirely, or at least be able to instal Sonoma if Ventrura audio issues do affect you.

Like I mentioned already I'm getting audio glitches with youtube and other browser audio, but not with DP. So the only reports I could find of similar issues were at the RME forums, and someone is claiming adamantly that it's a random Ventura audio bug, solved in Sonoma. <-- Side note, this could be why some people here have claimed M2 audio issues, it could be more to do with Ventura etc.

[dix]

I don't know the actual details of it so I can't get technical with it, but DP and other DAWs that do plug in evaluation scans seem to do a deep scan and a "we've already done a deep scan let's load your plugins scan", So this is my theory on what is happening here, some plugin that is passing evaluation is hanging the process the first time it's scanned, but it always throws up a red flag when you restart DP. When you start DP after it loads, it remembers that the plugin has passed evaluation so it runs right through it.

As an example Logic is much more guilty of this, Logic seems to do a full scan every time you restart your computer or shut it down. so if it hangs on the evaluation process on a plugin you're doomed to a long stat every time.

Yes to all this! I arrived at this conclusion as well, essentially. Unfortunately, the only way I can think to get around this would be to do the plugin elimination routine (incrementally removing and replacing plugins until the bad plug-in is identified) with Mac restarts in between each cycle. ...which would be rather time consuming.

Is there a way to get DP to forget entirely which plug-ins it's had a look at without restarting the computer?

[Michael Canavan]

Is there a way to get DP to forget entirely which plug-ins it's had a look at without restarting the computer?

The only way I can think of would be to if you haven't already, create folders "AU Disabled, VST Disabled and VST3 Disabled", Drag all the plugins into those folders then go into the Plug ins Preferences and force a rescan, then you should be able to get the same results as a restart.

[dix]

Thanks. That sounds like it would only be slightly faster than just restarting - which is pretty fast these days.

Currently I don't use all that many VSTs (it's just nice to have them incase something is weird with the AU version), so it's probably simplest to keep only the VSTs I need in the VST and VST3 Plugins folders. Or I can just live with the once-a-day problem of having a 5 minute initial launch. After that DP launches super fast. 10 secs aprox.

[mikehalloran]

I posted variations of this a few times:

IK Multimedia is giving me grief at the moment with some installers that flat out don't work.

After a long drawn out support process, I'm happy to report that the recent update to the IK Product Manager has solved all of my issues. In addition, the $25 re-download fee after 180 days is now gone for good. Version 1.1.0 ... finally. Everything now loads properly in SampleTank 4 (and/or the individual standalone players for Miroslav, Syntronic etc. if you want). Although most of this struggle was conducted over Ventura on my iMac Pro, the problems were identical over Catalina on my 2012 MBP and my Studio over Sonoma.

My only issue and it's hardly worth mentioning is that, when the Project Manager updates, it doesn't remember my login info. I'll live.