Mac Studio won't reliably shut down, but restarts with error

[stubbsonic]

Again, might not be related, but RME (who has a pretty good reputation with drivers) pretty much blames Apple, and Apple blames either my combination of (apple-brand) adapters and/or RME's drivers. So I have to live with the various workarounds.

[HCMarkus]

Yep. I did a clean install as well. There was no way I wanted to use migration assistant and copy over years and years worth of old prefs and outdated residual files.

FYI, the ONLY thing that is causing the shutdown problem for me is the powered-on status of my MOTU interface. No other factors appear to play a role. Turn off the MOTU 828es before shutting down and it works reliably. 100%.

Ditto to all of this.

[mikehalloran]

Reading this, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that USB interfaces shouldn’t be the cause if using Core Audio only.

Is anyone having this issue with the M2/4/6 or any of the Hybrid interfaces over USB after installing the MOTU rivers?

[James Steele]

As far as I know, all reports of this problem involved MOTU audio interfaces connected via TB. I suspect if I connected my 828es via USB instead, there wouldn't be a problem.

[ronjams]

I wanted to thank you James personally for helping me through this process of making this transition to the Mac Studio along with dealing with getting back my mach five libraries via UVI Workstation. I really appreciate it.

[James Steele]

I wanted to thank you James personally for helping me through this process of making this transition to the Mac Studio along with dealing with getting back my mach five libraries via UVI Workstation. I really appreciate it.

Nice of you to say. You’re certainly welcome. I went through the same thing with my own transition to the Mac Studio. The whole point of this site as I envisioned it was a place for DP users to share what we learn.

[James Steele]

This might be fixed by Ventura, although don’t want to update until Core Audio export is fixed. Apparently not working with DP 11.21/Ventura combo. This means no QT movie bounce.

[HCMarkus]

This might be fixed by Ventura, although don’t want to update until Core Audio export is fixed. Apparently not working with DP 11.21/Ventura combo. This means no QT movie bounce.

Your suggestion that shutting down the TB-connected MOTU interface first eliminates the problem has proven true for me. Since I started following this procedure, I haven't had an undesired or error re-start.

Nice post, ronjams. I love this site and the pleasant and informative folks who frequent it.

[James Steele]

This might be fixed by Ventura, although don’t want to update until Core Audio export is fixed. Apparently not working with DP 11.21/Ventura combo. This means no QT movie bounce.

Your suggestion that shutting down the TB-connected MOTU interface first eliminates the problem has proven true for me. Since I started following this procedure, I haven't had an undesired or error re-start.

Yep... it works. What prompted my mentioning Ventura, is I had some communication with someone at MOTU about this and they said they hadn't been able to reproduce this issue on a Mac Studio, however they were running Ventura. So it might be that this issue is only affecting those of us on Monterey, and that Apple made a change in Ventura that fixes the problem. They told me they are aware of the Core Audio problem and may have a fix for it, although not if that means they have another version coming soon. MOTU is notoriously tight-lipped about releases, but I get the feeling it really is a priority for them so I'm hopeful we may see a fix for this before too long. Soon as that happens, I may go ahead and make the jump to Ventura as I think most of my plugs are probably going to be okay.

[James Steele]

Nice post, ronjams. I love this site and the pleasant and informative folks who frequent it.

Kind of you to say, thanks. Me, too. Seems with more and more people turning to Facebook forums it's slowed down some... at least enough for Sweetwater to pull their banner ad a while back, but oh well. Geez... if you watch YouTube, since Sweetwater got sold, they're throwing a lot of money at YouTube influencers these days. Nearly every other YouTube video I watch about gear or plug-ins mentions that Sweetwater sponsored the video.

[James Steele]

Okay... so I'm trying to work through this with someone at MOTU and figure out what's going on here. I sent the panic log that you get upon restart and some other stuff, but it's all very preliminary. With my limited understanding I'm going to try and gather some information from those that are having the problem.

After the restart there is nothing related to MOTU in the Crash Reports in the Console App.

If you have time, and are experiences this problem, open the Console App located in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder and choose "Crash Reports" on the left. What I've been seeing a lot are crashes for three processes most of the time:

Elements Auto Creations 2022
PhotoshopServer
NTKDaemon

The first two are related obviously to Adobe Photoshop Elements that I have on my system. So first question: anybody else having this problem Photoshop on their Mac.

The last, NTKDaemon is Native Instruments. I assume probably all of us have NI products on our studio Macs. What's interesting is the process crashed on me spontaneously while I was composing an email to MOTU and it has a history of crashing. I don't know, but it might be why most of the time when I run Native Access, I have to re-enter my admin credentials.

It's odd that powering down MOTU TB interfaces eliminates the problem, but it does. I have to wonder if there's some strange interaction between NTKDaemon and having the interface powered up that causes the issue. I don't know. But check your crash log and see if you also have NTKDaemon popping up frequently? Might need to report this to NI. I know they've been struggling with Native Access remember credentials for a bit.

[Tonio]

Your suggestion that shutting down the TB-connected MOTU interface first eliminates the problem has proven true for me. Since I started following this procedure, I haven't had an undesired or error re-start.

Yep... it works. What prompted my mentioning Ventura, is I had some communication with someone at MOTU about this and they said they hadn't been able to reproduce this issue on a Mac Studio, however they were running Ventura. So it might be that this issue is only affecting those of us on Monterey, and that Apple made a change in Ventura that fixes the problem. They told me they are aware of the Core Audio problem and may have a fix for it, although not if that means they have another version coming soon. MOTU is notoriously tight-lipped about releases, but I get the feeling it really is a priority for them so I'm hopeful we may see a fix for this before too long. Soon as that happens, I may go ahead and make the jump to Ventura as I think most of my plugs are probably going to be okay.

How odd, My MAC Studio crashes if I shut down the 828es before the MAC.

So Ventura fixes this?

[James Steele]

How odd, My MAC Studio crashes if I shut down the 828es before the MAC.

So Ventura fixes this?

Nope. It's a real mystery. Is your 828es connected via USB or Thunderbolt? Most users who have their interfaces connected by Thunderbolt have reported that shutting down the 828es (or other TB MOTU interface) prevents the spontaneous restarting on shutdown. But the cause isn't know yet.

[Tonio]

My 828es is via TB. Normally it will crash if shut off 1st. Previously ( prior to 12.6.3) it would ( as you mentioned)spontaneously
restart the Mac w/ an error.

Mystery for sure. Hope they get on it soon.

[James Steele]

Well it's hard to track down because, like I said, your experience is opposite most users who've posted. Shutting down the 828es first doesn't crash and it prevents the spontaneous restart at shutdown. So if you power down your Mac prior to turning off the 828es, do you get spontaneous restarts when you shutdown?