Enhance Speech crashes on some Macs with Intel chips / AMD GPUs

[David Polk]

The below is a fix that is working for some users.

Update: 
To fix the issue described below, upgrade your Mac’s OS to the latest version: Sequoia (15.0).
Go to Settings -> General -> Software Update
More information about Sequoia available here.

This issue effected some users with Mac Intel computers using AMD Radeon GPUs. The bug involved a crash when using Enhance Speech, particularly with longer audio clips. We do not see evidence that this was effecting other configurations.

We are continuing to work on a fix for remaining users still experiencing this issue. Thank you for your patience.

[Michael Grenadier]

What format is your audio? And does the sampling rate of your clips match
the sampling rate of your sequence?

[ghuff]

What do you mean "what format is the audio"?

Are you telling me Premiere cannot deal with clips that have different sampling rates than what the project is set to? Can I mix music tracks that are provided at 44KHz with audio tracks that are 48KHz safely, or is this something Premiere can't handle?

[Alaric0101]

Same issue with Premiere 24 and 25.

[Michael Grenadier]

Although theoretically Premiere should be able to handle mixed sampling rates, however, it does add to the demands on the system and if you're audio files are compressed, that will also add to the demands.  First thing I'd try is to do a test with uncompressed audio .wav or aiff with the sampling rate matching the sequence sampling rate and see if enhanced speech works...  

[Alaric0101]

Still have the same issue with .wav and aiff. 

[Michael Grenadier]

one thing that often helps audio issues is to set  audio hardware settings input to "none."  

[ghuff]

There were no use of compressed audio files any of the times I have used the Enhance Speech function which caused the entire system to go down, so it seems like this assumption doesn't seem like a solution,

How much load on Premiere does  4KHz sampling rate differences add specifically?

[ghuff]

one thing that often helps audio issues is to set  audio hardware settings input to "none."  

If this setting being set to "none" often helps audio issues, then it sounds like Premiere is setting a default that causes audio issues.

Perhaps that should be changed to default to "none" to eliminate all these issues it is causing.

However, it has made no difference to me whether it is set to its installed default or "none" in regards to Enhance Speech causing a complete system freeze on an Intel-based Mac.

[Michael Grenadier]

It's never easy to diagnose these issues remotely.   I was just suggesting to start with the simplest configuration to see if that solved the problem.  Working with uncompressed audio with a sampling rate that matches the sequence settings will make the least demands on the system...

Lots of basic troubleshooting steps I'd be happy to suggest...    No idea if they will solve the problem...  but they might.  

[ghuff]

If not mixing sampling rates is a basic troubleshooting step then best practice would be to never mix 44KHz and 48KHz in a timeline, and Adobe Stock should absolutely not accept music beds at 44KHz sampling to be mixed in with 48KHz on timelines which is how that commonly happens with my editing workflows.

If setting audio hardware input to "none" is a basic troubleshooting step for audio issues not even involving recording audio into Premiere, then it stands to reason that Premiere should default to audio input being "none" because there's no simpler configuration than running with the default settings. 

[Alaric0101]

I'd love to hear from an Adobe Employee so we can get some advice beyond "basic troubleshooting."

[Michael Grenadier]

if you're NOT having problems with mixed sampling rates, go ahead continue working that way...  And some people do need an audio input selected to be able to record voice overs...    But if you ARE having problems, these are basic troubleshooting steps...  Simple things to try.     

[ghuff]

But if you ARE having problems, these are basic troubleshooting steps...

I don't think these are actually basic troubleshooting steps to begin with.

[Michael Grenadier]

have it your way.  

[ghuff]

My way involves helping find and squash a software bug by providing my experience with the hardware I am on the release version I am experiencing the issue with.

Not blindly guessing at what magical combination of settings and sampling rates may hopefully, fingers crossed, potentially solve an issue for reasons that can't be reasonably articulated.

[David Polk]

New fix coming in 25.1 (first week of December 2024).

[James379474779d6d]

Thanks -- will this fix only work for MacOS Sequoia, or also earlier supported versions?  (Currently still on Sonoma here)

[mattchristensen]

@James379474779d6d The fix David mentioned applies to any OS version. It is also available in Premiere Pro (Beta) now to try out.

[PGGilligan]

Here's my very limited success story.

My studio space was designed to look pretty, but the HVAC is a nightmare. The architech didn't consider it at all. 

I've been recording some talking heads against a green screen, usually with folks reading from a teleprompter. I record everything in one clip - less than 10 minutes. I open the clip in v.25 (also updated my Mac to Sequoia) and I run the enhance audio/clean up noisy audio. I walk away. Once it's done, I output the clip as ProRess/422, quit the project and re-open the larger project and import the cleaned up clip and edit from there. I foolishly started to add Ultra key to the green screen before I cleaned up the audio on one shot, and induced the crash again. Once I went back to my original work around, everything was fine.

[Michael Grenadier]

Thanks for posting your workaround.