Sound Hickups on M-Powered
 

Hello Everyone,

I keep getting these annoying 'hickups', i.e. short silences and playback skipping, during playback whenever I select anything (an audio region, an empty space on a track).

My config is an iMac (Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz / 2GB RAM) through an M-Audio Firewire 410 (with the latest driver, 1.8.4, installed). This happens regardless of the number of tracks active, and plugins used. I've fiddled a bit with H/W and DAE Buffer sizes, tried the troubleshooting hints, but nothing happened.

I can live with it, but it makes me work a lot slower because I need to stop playback anytime I want to select something.

Any info on this will be highly useful.

Cheers

Missionario Jose

What are you using for a harddrive? Are you using an external FW or USB? What OS and how many tracks are you trying to play?

More info....

As I mentioned, it happens on any session, regardless of the number of tracks. It happens on a session with just a single mono track, on 16-bit/44.1, and the exact same thing happens on a session with the whole 32 voices on 24-bit/88.2, for instance.

I've upgraded to 10.5.4 recently, but it already was happening on 10.5.3, that's on my iMac, but also on 10.4.11 (PT 7.4) on a different computer.

I've tried playing sessions on the internal drive, and on 2 different OWC external drives w/ 7200, through a Firewire port other than the one the interface is connected to. I've experienced a bit with disabling the dashboard and similar procedures, to no success.

Nothing similar happens in any other Programs other that ProTools, I've tried playing some arrangements in Ableton Live and on Reason, and they are working fine.

Any help will be welcome,

Cheers

Z

If you're running 10.5.4 (which I have on my G5) you need to download PT 7.4.2 since it is the ONLY version authorized to run on Leopard. OS 10.5.3 is NOT recommended.

Also, just because you have an external FW drive on a different port than the interface doesn't really do anything. ALL FW ports are on the same buss, even FW800!! I have both an MBPro and G5 and purchased a separate FW card for each, which is the ONLY way to guarantee your drive and interface are on separate busses and you won't have any traffic problems.

We also have 4-HD systems at our facility with two of them recently upgraded to 7.4.2 on OS 10.5.4. It really works well.

One thing I did do on my personal G5 is to create a separate user for MUSIC work. I have minimal preference panes loaded and have disabled a lot of the normal Apple apps, i.e. Dashboard, Expose', etc. The system really screams after being 'thinned' out.

Hope this helps...

Do you possibly have Dynamic Transport enabled?

i think
 

I think I have an answer for you.

For some reason the firewire series and macs are a little funny sometimes. I have the same problem. I have 10.4 mac pro with 7.3 pro tools with an 1814. So here is what you can try. Open a session and then go to the harware config. then go to the hardware tab and change something. I usually change the sync source. Then go back into pro tools and tell me how it goes.

I have seen a few posts about this, but nothing ever seems to change. I recently updated the driver for the 1814 in hopes that would help, but it didn't.

let me know if this helps!!!

Hi, everyone

The Dynamic Transport thing did the trick for me. Just disable it (should you have the same problem) and there you go. Under options, Dynamic Transport, or option-command-P to switch it on and back off again.

Thanks a million dollars to the Support Folks!

Peace

Z

you gotta be kiddin me. this whole time that's the problem?:(

Did that also fix the problem for you?