constant crashing when moving projects

[Jim]

I've been trading DP projects between a tracking and mixing computer system for about 20 years, and have never experienced issues like this, which seem to have arrived with DP11.

I can work fine for hours on one computer, but when I move the project to my other computer, it's crash after crash on open - on both computers.

I can turn off the MOTU Audio System and the situation stabilizes, but then DP is useless to me. Buses have gotten jumbled when opening projects on a second computer. New buses have been added that I didn't add, and some of the buss assignments have been changed, often to one of the DP added buses.

Deleting an extraneous bus can cause DP to crash.

I have been able to work around this (about half the time) by starting a new project, and importing the crashy project. Most of the time, when I either default the delete Chunk or click the play-enable button on the imported track, DP crashes.

I can forestall the crashes by disabling MOTU Audio System. Then, I disable all the audio tracks (round button in the "ENA" column), turn the MOTU Audio System back on, then start enabling the tracks one by one. I'm most likely to invoke a crash by enabling a bus. But then, some times, there are no crashes and I can resume work.

This is a real productivity killer.

I suspect that there's a bug in the DP bus architecture.

[HCMarkus]

Please get a TechLink going with MOTU. Almost sounds like this may be related to the Bus issues with Clippings some are having as discussed here:

viewtopic.php?t=72649

[Jim]

The issues don't seem related to me, but I will report this to MOTU. Thank you.

[Jim]

48 hours later, and I haven't heard a peep from MOTU Tech Support. Is this normal for MOTU?

[HCMarkus]

Time for response depends. If you carefully describe the issue and provide a crash report I'd hope you'll hear back very soon.

In the interim, you might want to revert to DP10.13

Also, is this happening on only one project? You might try to Load the project into a new project.

[pencilina]

Not sure if this helps but I've had bus and track assignment weirdness with some strange feedback situations that automatically causes DP to disable audio when moving projects between my mojave studio machine and windows laptop each with different interfaces. Sometimes the audio bundles' routing get all scrambled. My guess its because at some level HW i/o ends up getting logical HW assignments based on hardware ports numbering rather than with specific names. I've noticed that busses can get messed up as well which shouldn't happen but does. My solution was, before hitting play, to Load (File>Load) only bundles (no soundbites) from a known working project into a project with routing issues and this fixed it. Good luck.

[Jim]

Re: no response so far from MOTU. I had temporarily forgotten that PSP gave notice a few days ago they are at a trade show, and would have delayed replies. Maybe MOTU is there with them.

HCM, as I explained in my long-winded OP, importing the problem project into a new DP project has been the most reliable method of putting myself back in business. Worse case so far has taken me an hour to do whatever magic it took to get the new project not to crash and resume work. It's not a satisfactory workaround, except to the extent I'm not dead in the water. So far, that is.

Pancilina, although I didn't report this in my OP, I also tried using DP 10, and DP won't open files that were made on later versions, which is fairly typical for most apps. I also tried reverting to earlier versions of DP 11, and the issues persisted.

The bus scrambling is hit or miss. Some times, they import correctly. But, some times, one or more buses get renamed after my audio interface default names, and other times, the names are names I've used before in other projects, but not in the current ones. That's really odd.

My working theory is that this is a DP11 thing because I get the crashing on two computer systems, with the common denominator being opening a Project that was last saved on the other computer. Also, because this issue didn't manifest on DP 9 or 10.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[Jim]

I'm doubling back to report that I've been able to belay this crashing. When opening a project that was last saved on my other computer, I
= disable MOTU Audio System,
- open the project,
- disable all the ENA circles for my VIs, audio tracks, and buses,
- fix whatever bus assignment got scrambled in transit
- enable MOTU Audio System
- enable the ENA buttons for buses, audio, and VIs

So far, on three projects, I haven't experienced the crashing as before.

This was before installing the latest DP update to 11.21. Now that I have updated DP, I didn't get the crash on a transferred project, but the buses still got scrambled in transit. That's progress.

MOTU STILL hasn't responded to my Tech Support Request of Oct. 24, a week ago.

[Jim]

MOTU STILL hasn't responded to my Tech Support Request of Oct. 24, a week ago.

And, they still haven't responded as of Nov. 18.

However, I think I have achieved some headway on my issue, and a less daunting workaround.

I've replaced my old 2012 MacPro with a 2018 Mac Mini that can run a supported and more modern OS. See specs in my signature.

I still get some crashes moving projects between computers, but avoiding them now that both computers are running Monterey is easier.

I don't have to do the Load / Import Chunk into a New Project any more.

This seems to be working most if not all the time:

After DP crashes upon opening a project,
launch DP again,
disable MOTU Audio System,
open the project,
Disable all the audio features,
enable MOTU Audio System,
enable the audio features.

It's a PITA, but it's much faster and less onerous than what I was having to do before to successfully resume working on a transferred project.

Now, the buses aren't getting messed up when opening a project that was last saved on my other computer. That's progress, too.