DAW Defrost: The Mac App That Names the Plugin Freezing Your Session
Ableton froze mid-export and there was no way to tell which plugin did it. So I built DAW Defrost, a free-standing Mac app that catches the freeze in the act and names the plugin, and it's now a real product for Ableton Live, Logic Pro, and every major Mac DAW.
Ableton froze on me mid-export. Not a crash, a freeze: the spinning wheel, no error, no way to force it to tell me anything. I've had this happen after nearly every macOS update for years, and every time the fix was the same miserable process. Bypass a plugin, try the export again, wait, bypass another, try again, repeat until something finally goes through.
This time I did something different. I built DAW Defrost, a small Mac app that sits in your menu bar, watches your DAW while you work, and names the plugin responsible the moment a freeze happens.
Why does a DAW freeze during export in the first place?
Usually it's one third-party plugin. After a macOS update, an older plugin can start leaking memory or threads, and when you hit export, the whole session locks up waiting on it. The DAW has no way to tell you which plugin caused it, and force-quitting erases the evidence, because macOS only writes a crash report when an app actually crashes. A freeze isn't a crash. Nothing gets logged.
How does DAW Defrost find the plugin?
It asks your DAW a simple question every 15 seconds: are you still responding? When the answer is no for 30 seconds straight, it takes a snapshot of the frozen process and reads which plugin's code every thread is stuck inside. About 30 seconds later, a popup names the plugin. No log files, no bypassing tracks one at a time, no guessing.
The first real freeze I caught with it was a plugin that had quietly spawned over 1,100 threads and pushed Ableton's memory to nearly 20 gigabytes. A healthy session runs a few hundred threads, total. One plugin update later, the export went through clean.
Which DAWs does it work with?
Ableton Live and Logic Pro, plus Pro Tools, FL Studio, Cubase, Nuendo, Studio One, Reaper, Bitwig, Digital Performer, Reason, GarageBand, and MainStage. It figures out which one you're running on its own, including watching more than one at a time.
What does it cost?
DAW Defrost is $19, bundled with Session BPM, my other Mac menu bar app for producers. One purchase, both apps, no subscription.
Where can I get it?
DAW Defrost and Session BPM are both at plugins.mightymaverickmusic.com.
Last Updated: August 2026
Who is Rick Seibold?
Rick Seibold is a Nashville songwriter and producer who runs Mighty Maverick Music, a multi-artist record label. He is a 2x Dove Award winner with 750+ sync placements and 1 billion global streams. His catalog includes cuts recorded by Bethel Music and We The Kingdom, Billboard #1s, Super Bowl commercials, Grey's Anatomy placements, and sync deals with brands including Google and Peloton. He is also a co-founder of Your Nashville Song and the builder of RoyaltyCoPilot.ai.