Pd crashing on Mac
Hi,
I am using a MacOS Ventura 13.0.1 on a MacBook Pro (2,3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9).
Pd works intermittently and quite soon it crashes.
When I click on DSP in the main window, I get a weird popping sound looping.
When I try to edit objects in the editor, it does not allow me to select things and modify numbers, etc...
I removed version 53 tried tried also some old versions (51,x 52.x...) and I get same issues.
Anyone had similar issues? Thanks.....
@Riccardo-V Are you trying Pd for the first time..... or have you used it for a while and this has only happened recently?
It looks like Pd is not communicating properly with (a) soundcard.
You could try this....... Pd Fix.zip
The readme file explains what the fix.pd patch will do.
Essentially it resets Pd audio settings to 2in 2out using the first reported soundcard at 44100Hz with an 80ms buffer.
You can change your settings to what you really want afterwards.
David.
Hi @whale-av First of all thanks for the reply.
Yes indeed, I am trying to get it working for the very first time on this machine.
I tried with Pd_Fix.pd. Pd's interface initially worked smoothly but it crashed again after just a minute. Just by force-quitting pd and then relaunching it, it then works again for a minute or so, then it freezes again.
And also - very weird - after I force-quit it, random sounds generated by pd still play for a few seconds from my Mac.
These are my audio settings, maybe something I need to change in here?
Ouch... actually I have a big problem now,
Even after quitting pd, a VERY VERY loud sound keeps looping, it probably damaged my Macbook's speakers. Dammit... I can still hear it loud when my Mac's volume is just 10% .....
I had to reboot the Mac to stop the sound....
@Riccardo-V Hmm.... unless you have made a patch that uses the microphone....... using an [adc~] object.... and then fed that back to the speakers using a [dac~] object.... I cannot see how it would be Pd causing this. Especially not after it has been stopped.
But if you are using a [adc~] fed to a [dac~] then you will have to use headphones as the microphone is too close to the speakers on a laptop and feedback is unavoidable.
Please upload the patch that is causing the problem......... using the 
button above where you are typing a message into the forum.
I believe a Mac will reopen all programs that were running before you shut the laptop down? If that is so then try closing them all before running Pd again. Programs for communications.....like Skype.. might change some audio settings.
Check to see what has been using the microphone, and the sound settings....... https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-the-sound-input-settings-mchlp2567/mac
Also there is just a chance that resetting the SMC will help.
Bedtime here.... so I will be gone for the next 8 hours but someone else might have some ideas.
David.
sounds like it might be a portaudio issue..
also, when you force-quit pd you might only be force quitting the gui process. make sure you are also killing the 'pd' process (You can do that from activity monitor I think)
@Riccardo-V also check out this https://github.com/pure-data/pure-data/issues/1857
you may try deleting your preferences file and see if that fixes it
In general pd's samplerate may have to match the samplerate in your system sound settings or something
Thank you both, first of all!
Worth to mention that I am using PD for the first time on a MacBook that I fresh reseted a month ago. No intentional manipulation of audio setting, ports and such has been done since. This Mac is fairly fresh and virgin. And it is working like a charm except for PD. All this considered, I am afraid that resetting now the SMC has few chances to solve the issue.
In our class there are 9 people, everyone with a different Mac. Only 2 of the 9 Macs had the latest OS (Ventura) and exactly these two Macs have similar problems (PD's GUI freezing or not responding as expected). This led me think that the problem may be somehow connected to the OS update. But this can also be just an absolute coincidence.
(...and no, unfortunately none of them will agree on updating their Mac's OS in order to help out finding what's the problem here, I can tell you already. Teacher even suggested them to not update the OS).
I attach the patch. As you can see this is just the first 5 minutes of a very first class on using PD. No settings where modified from the default and no complex patch content.
esercizio_001.pd
Indeed, as everyone I do have programs for communication (not Skype, but Zoom for example) although in that moment these were not being used at least not in the GUI. Consider though that I tried again several reboots and Zoom is not in my automatic startup launched apps.
@Riccardo-V Yes.... your patch is not causing the problem.
There are issues with coreaudio in Ventura 13.0....... https://community.roonlabs.com/t/strange-audio-issues-w-ventura-roon-investigating-known-apple-issues-w-ventura-system-audio/222113/24 .... see posts from Dec 1 onwards.
Try the latest Ventura 13.1 update.
Then reset coreaudio if necessary (probably not).
Or downgrade OSX.... I think you need all data backed up to do that successfully.
Ignore the following if the OSX upgrade/downgrade solves the problem.
I suggest building the Pd app for your OS and system from the source code.... here...... https://puredata.info/downloads/pure-data/releases/0.53-0
I don't use OSX much (still Snow Leopard when needed) but I believe it is a simple procedure.
As far as I know.... unzip the tar.gz file.
Navigate to the folder in a terminal window.
Type "make" and press enter,
It only builds a Pd app tailored to your system..... it doesn't change any other files.
If it doesn't work then at least you will get messages to the terminal telling you why...... something missing or incompatible.
David.
Thanks David.
Ventura updated to 13.1: Problem not solved.
Meanwhile Mac doing random sounds as I browse even this forum.
Building the PD app starting from source code:
I downloaded, unzipped, and navigated to the pd-0.53-0 folder in Terminal. I did type 'make' and pressed enter. Did not work. I repeated also passing the pd-0.53-0/mac folder to Terminal. Did not work.
Now, your instructions are clear for me, but I am not expert and I never used Terminal before. So I attach a screenshot of terminal, I sense i made some mistake right there?
I did a screen + audio recording of a crash.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OEnKTNGUy4gRVPt6c5MuMAbyGEpsKpwt/view?usp=sharing
That weird looping sound starts by itself. And also after closing pd it stars again as I normally use the computer for example for reading email of browsing Internet.
Also you can see towards the end of the video, the GUI freezes, I can no longer edit and no longer switch to/from edit mode.
@Riccardo-V I am no mac expert. Looking around the web I think you need backslashes in your path..... so
cd Users\Riccardo\download\pd-0.53-0
... and then you should have Users\Riccardo\Downloads\pd-0.53-0\mac at the command prompt.
Then type make and enter.
Pretty sure that you did enter edit mode and return to run mode on the second selection of the edit button...... as the cursor changed in between. Edit in the title means that you have modified the patch..... and will disappear when you save it.
The echo sounds to me like one button press on the keyboard...... but how or why it is being repeated from the speakers I cannot say.
Ventura does seem to still have some bugs..... maybe going back to what was before will be the most certain method to get you working again.
David.
Edit...... the sound from Pd seems to be working. It turns on and off as you change numbers in the patch. That echo must be coming from some other program I think... or a feedback loop within the Ventura audio settings.
@Riccardo-V just fyi the behavior you are describing and the behavior in your video implies that the pd process might be continuing to run even if you force quit the gui. In order to force quit the actual pd project you sometimes have to open Activity Monitor and quit the process named pd
back slashes are only a thing on windows, not mac or linux.
if you want to make:
you probably need to do ./autogen.sh and then ./configure and then make but before that you have to get the command line tools for mac and install autoconf and automake from homebrew
afterwards to make a .app you have to cd into the 'mac' directory and follow the instructions there.
When you went into the system sound preferences, was the sample rate of your audio device the same as pd's samplerate?
Dear both, hope you had a merry xmas. I found a presudo-solution on this github post: https://github.com/pure-data/pure-data/issues/1857
I did what the post says (deleted the pd preferences) and this showed something interesting, Pure data worked for an entire hour at least. In this time I did the exercises an a beginner online tutorial, and all seemed to work perfectly. Then, at the following session on the following day, the crash happened again.
Now this is interesting because it's clearly something related to these 'preferences' files. Worth to mention: they are called preferences but I haven't customised any setting, I only used pd as per default settings.
Let's park this for a moment. As per your advices:
This all said, I think the problem is in the 'preferences' pseudo-solution. I think that is the most relevant clue at the moment.
I will also try to install purr data, as the class has been advised to switch to purr in order to avoid the problems I am having (although I will see if this solves any problem at all).
Hello all,
I am having the same issue on a M1 Mac running Ventura. Just switched to this laptop, and it's my first time owning a Mac, so I am unsure if it was happening before in a previous version. I tried building from source like @whale-av suggested. It didn't fix the issue. Here's what the command line outputted
DEPRECATION WARNING: The system version of Tk is deprecated and may be removed in a future release. Please don't rely on it. Set TK_SILENCE_DEPRECATION=1 to suppress this warning.
libc++abi: terminating
Pd: signal 6
gui socket 6 -
closing audio...
The "libc..." etc. is what came up when Pd became unresponsive. I'd really appreciate some help understanding this. I have no idea what this means and I really have no idea what I'm doing so it's a miracle I made it this far.
@Pathagas in order to use an up-to-date version of tcl/tk you have to 'cd' into the 'mac' directory of the source tree and follow the instructions/"help"s in the scripts to create the .app bundle with a certain version of wish. the version of wish bundled with macos might be too old.
Also some people have had some luck changing the samplerate in pd to match the samplerate in the "Sound" System Preferences, and/or deleting the pd preferences file.
It could also be that portaudio is just out of date, and you can build a newer version of portaudio to include with pd by using the update script in its folder. But idk if it's even a portaudio bug... (and if it is, if they're aware..)
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