MW Gate apparently causing crash on Bounce

[Jim]

I was getting a crash on Bounce repeatedly after removing instruments, disabling tracks, changing VIs, and so on - Search and Destroy mission.

Finally tracked it down to the MW Gate I had put on a Cherry Audio Blue-3 (organ) VI because when idling, the Leslie sim was making the same noise you'd expect from a real Leslie - two mechanical motors that are always spinning, even when not making other sounds.

I removed the gate, and Bounce proceeded successfully.

I haven't had a problem using MW Gate on audio tracks. This may be exclusive to using it on an Instrument track. Since there are gates that can differentiate between a kick, snare, and tom, I don't use MW Gate on audio tracks except for guitars that also emit noise when idling.

I'd report this to MOTU, but I tried to file two support tickets last week on two browsers and both hung on "Submitting," and didn't go through. Posting here in case anybody else has the same experience.

[HCMarkus]

Maybe, and only if in the mood... Try with Look Ahead disabled or, if no Look Ahead was enabled, try WITH some Look Ahead.

[mikehalloran]

MOTU servers occasionally hang during weekend and holiday periods with nobody there to reboot them. I don’t know when they reopen during the holiday season but they are pretty good about returning phone calls during business hours.

Some of the MW plugs do have resource issues over Sonoma and later and I have been able to demonstrate these to Support in real time while screen sharing. Those cases are over a year old. I and others cannot use the MW Limiter anymore but there are better tools nowadays.

In the meantime, try rebooting before a session and see if the problem is still there.

[Jim]

Mark, I already automated track mutes manually. I'll try to remember your suggestion for next time.

I use the Cherry B3 a lot, and I had added the MW Gate in other projects without this issue. I almost always engage some lookahead, just because. IDK why all gates don't have lookahead; seems like that's an ideal parameter for gates, compressors, and limiters.

Mike, I didn't list all the things I tried: reboot, reinstall DP, delete prefs, reinstall Blue-3, launch in Safe Mode, re-scan plug-ins, create new track and drag MIDI from old to new, start New Project and use Load, delete one track at a time and hope it to stop crashing.

That's what I meant by "search and destroy," and how I was able to definitively trace the crashing to the MW Gate.

[Jim]

I just had another project with crash on bounce. This time, I narrowed it down to DP's ACE30 amp simulator plug-in.

I tried deleting the offending instance of ACE30, and replacing with a fresh instance, but that didn't stop the crashing. So I used the Kontakt Guitar Rig instead, and was able to Bounce without crashing.

I suspect this is an issue related to Sequoia, or perhaps Sequoia and the M4, since I've had no issues with ACE30 or MW Gate on my Intel Macs.

Going forward, I'll start my Search and Destroy missions by looking at DP's native plug-ins, which I don't use very often, anyway.

[mikehalloran]

Once again, did you try rebooting before a session and see if the problem is still there?

I cannot reproduce your issue but if rebooting makes it go away for awhile, I have a good idea what the problem may be.

[Jim]

Once again, did you try rebooting before a session and see if the problem is still there?

I cannot reproduce your issue but if rebooting makes it go away for awhile, I have a good idea what the problem may be.

Once again, I had tried several things including rebooting, which did not help.

To humor you, Mike Halloran, I just rebooted my computer, opened a formerly non-crashy DP Project, added ACE 30 to a track, bounced, and DP crashed.

Further experimentation:
- I just replaced the Guitar Rig with ACE 30, invoked Bounce, and DP crashed.
- I opened a different project, and put ACE 30 on an instrument track - crash on Bounce.
- I opened a third project and added ACE 30 to a track and bounced - DP went into Not Responding.
- I opened a fourth project, added ACE 30, bounced, and DP crashed.
- I had previously tried to fix the issue by using New Project > Load to work around the crashes. That project crashed on Bounce, but as soon as I deleted ACE 30, it bounced without crashing.

If ACE 30 is not crashing on Bounce on your M4 running OS 15.2, there may be a combination of factors that guarantee DP will crash on Bounce that haven't jumped out at me yet.

PS. EVERY DP effect that I've tried so far (about 10) are causing crashes on Bounce.

[mikehalloran]

I don’t have an M4. You aren’t humoring me. I’m not having this problem and am unable to reproduce your issue.

Except for asking questions to try to isolate the issue, I’ve made only one recommendation and that is to contact MOTU Support, have them do a screen share so that they can see the problem and look at the logs. Like everyone else, I’d be curious what they find.

Some MW plugs are major resource hogs and distort over Apple Silicon which is why I no longer use them as I demonstrated to MOTU a year ago. This may or may not have something to do with it but my M2 has 192GB unified RAM so they are unlikely to crash my Mac.

[Jim]

Maybe this is why you can't reproduce my issue:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/25 ... ortBy=rank

We have different hardware, and according to the article, a different OS.

Thank you for trying.

I updated my post yesterday. It looks like most or all DP's plug-ins crash on bounce. I tried it with several pedals, all the amp sims, eVerb, MW EQ, and a few others, on two different projects to rule out a corrupt project. I realize two may not be a sufficient sample size to reach definitive conclusions. I start all my projects with the same template that may be corrupt.

All my tests were on Instrument tracks. I can live without most of DP's effects, as I have plenty of third party FX. I was just using ACE 30 because it takes fewer steps to apply than Guitar Rig.

[EMRR]

Yikes, this would totally hose me. I use very few 3rd party plugs.

[mikehalloran]

We have different hardware, and according to the article, a different OS

Nope. You are misinterpreting this:

The M4 Mac Mini initially comes with a Special Build of Sequoia that is unique to the M4 ChipSet

That's the minimum macOS ot can run. Once updated, everybody is running the same thing.

There have been some M4 specific issues but this isn't one of them. If this was the cause, all M4 owners would be experiencing this. They aren't.

It occurs to me that this may be a macOS issue. Sequoia hosed Permissions for many, myself included. This caused most of my apps to stop working. Apple Support and I took nearly a month to rectify this. I figured this out, not they and yes, they paid me for my help.

DP Plug-ins are stored in /Applications/Digital Performer.app

Right-click on Digital Performer.app and select Show Package Contents

Run Get Info, click on the padlock and enter your Admin Password.

System should already be Read & Write — if not, change it (if it doesn't say Read & Write, you have found the problem).

Leaving it highlighted, now click on Apply to enclosed items...

When you get to the next screen, click OK.

See if it works now.

Screenshot 2024-12-31 at 4.08.15 PM.png (321.04 KiB) Viewed 3579 times

Screenshot 2024-12-31 at 4.08.34 PM.png (229.23 KiB) Viewed 3579 times

I'm still running into apps I've not fired up in awhile and have to re-set Permissions through the path to re-enable them.

[Jim]

Thanks for the detail, but my permissions were already set to Read & Write, so I suppose the issue resides elsewhere.