DP Finding Plugins on Scan with Folders Empty & DP won't launch & crashing

[dwilliams]

I'm having a huge problem with DP right now. It is essentially unusable. It won't launch. It won't launch in safe mode. If I trash the preferences it will rescan the plugins and then it will launch but will soon crash again and won't launch again. If I remove all the plugins from the folders it will scan and say it found a bunch of plugins. What the heck? How can if find AU plugins if the "Components" folder is empty? I hope someone can help me out with this problem. I'm so tired of DP's pitiful stability. If it weren't for the fact that it has a Tracks and Sequence Editor view, I'd be gone.

[mikehalloran]

Download and reinstall. See what happens.


If this happened within the last 24 hours, restore your system from a snapshot from earlier.

https://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=64689


I’ve seen a number of causes over the years including importing a corrupt audio file.

[monkey man]

When you say "remove all the plugins" are you including those in your user-library folders as well?

Just checking.

[dwilliams]

Download and reinstall. See what happens.


If this happened within the last 24 hours, restore your system from a snapshot from earlier.

https://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=64689


I’ve seen a number of causes over the years including importing a corrupt audio file.

Thanks. Tried those things already. I will review the thread.

[dwilliams]

When you say "remove all the plugins" are you including those in your user-library folders as well?

Just checking.

Those are all empty

[Michael Canavan]

pardon me for asking all the basic questions, but hey.. you never know right?

When you remove the plugins where are you putting them? I've always had good luck with installing a "Components Disabled" folder in the plugins folder.
You may only download for the most part AU, but are there any VSTs or the like in your setup? If there are that could be the issue. It's always a good idea to restart your computer after physically removing the plugins to another folder.

The other elephant is what people have mentioned, that you may have changed something that you've forgotten about. Recently I read in the manual you could make shortcuts in DP by putting aliases in the clippings folder, well apparently that's dead wrong and it crashes DP. I had forgotten I had done this until someone found a reference to the error dialog and that very issue.
It could also be an update to the OS and/or a driver for an audio interface etc.

[Killahurts]

Here's a tool you can get on the App Store that might help you get to the bottom of it:

https://www.thinkersnacks.com/pluginfo/

James posted this app a while back (thanks James!), and I have found it indispensable.

You can look at and select all your plugins, and by using command-shift-F, find out where they are located on the computer.

[dwilliams]

pardon me for asking all the basic questions, but hey.. you never know right?

When you remove the plugins where are you putting them? I've always had good luck with installing a "Components Disabled" folder in the plugins folder.
You may only download for the most part AU, but are there any VSTs or the like in your setup? If there are that could be the issue. It's always a good idea to restart your computer after physically removing the plugins to another folder.

The other elephant is what people have mentioned, that you may have changed something that you've forgotten about. Recently I read in the manual you could make shortcuts in DP by putting aliases in the clippings folder, well apparently that's dead wrong and it crashes DP. I had forgotten I had done this until someone found a reference to the error dialog and that very issue.
It could also be an update to the OS and/or a driver for an audio interface etc.

Screenshot 2025-04-30 at 7.29.46 PM.png (398.38 KiB) Viewed 592 times

[Michael Canavan]

Screenshot 2025-04-30 at 7.29.46 PM.png

In your screenshot your VST3 folder still has plugins in it. Here anyway even if I'm using AU only it scans VST and VST3 as well if I trash preferences.

[monkey man]

In your screenshot your VST3 folder still has plugins in it.

... and the Components and CLAP ƒ's as well.

[dwilliams]

I guess I haven't explained this very well. The picture is how I normally have it demonstrating I know where the plugins are stored and I even have them set up so it is all AU except ARA (Vocalign and Melodyne) and three that need to be VST3 to function property (SSL Native Compressor and Channel Strip and Softube Console 1) which in those cases I don't have the AU's loaded and only have those five VST3's loaded. I am saying that when I move all the plugins out of the components and VST3 folders so they are EMPTY, then trash preferences, then rescan plugins, DP discovers like 300 plugins even though the Components and VST3 folders are 100% empty... Therefore DP is somehow getting plugin information that may be causing it to hangup on start and crash. This is a very weird and not routine case.

[Michael Canavan]

I guess I haven't explained this very well. The picture is how I normally have it demonstrating I know where the plugins are stored and I even have them set up so it is all AU except ARA (Vocalign and Melodyne) and three that need to be VST3 to function property (SSL Native Compressor and Channel Strip and Softube Console 1) which in those cases I don't have the AU's loaded and only have those five VST3's loaded. I am saying that when I move all the plugins out of the components and VST3 folders so they are EMPTY, then trash preferences, then rescan plugins, DP discovers like 300 plugins even though the Components and VST3 folders are 100% empty... Therefore DP is somehow getting plugin information that may be causing it to hangup on start and crash. This is a very weird and not routine case.

OK yeah that's odd, I ran into a similar issue with Logic once and a AUv3 plugin that was hanging Logic.

It does seem like an incompatible plugin, what's the crash report say? BTW ChatGPT is pretty useful with crash reports, just feed in the main part and the crashed thread.

[monkey man]

Thanks for clarifying mate.