Processor affinity
 

I've read a few posts about manually setting processor affinity. Are most Windows/Pro Tools users here currently doing this? Is it now considered standard practice? Thanks!

Re: Processor affinity
 

Probably not standard practice, but it's helped me with a few issues. There is a way to get the PT shortcut to automatically start PT with the Processor Affinity you want. However, that won't work if you're running PT as Administrator and/or start PT by double clicking on a session's icon.

I also changed my drives from MBR to GPT, which also seemed to help.

Re: Processor affinity
 

I experimented a little but saw no significant change(but was not aware that running as admin had any affect, so???). Moving from an older socket 1366 to a newer socket 2011 system made a much bigger improvement.:o

Re: Processor affinity
 

Did quite some affinity experiments using latency monitor. Measurements showed that in cores 0-1, IRQ/DPC max-times were the longest.

Concluded that CPU spiking improved a little by forcing PT to execute on higher numbered cores 2-12, leaving cores 0-1 to whatever windowsy, goes on there.( i7 8750H OMEN laptop 6 real cores 12 virtual cores)

A greater difference came out of inactivating "Control method battery" in device manager. That broke the battery so don't do that. Article found at Sweetwater.

But now for some reason I don't know, perhaps some update, it seems to have improved and I don't usually do affinity. Yet, I would try it again if problems occurr.

Skickat från min Moto G (5) via Tapatalk

Re: Processor affinity
 

Got rid of random pops and clicks for me, with low buffers. (I'm talking stupid low, like 32 or 64)

Set up a shortcut to launch PT with the affinity hack and then a macro in Autohotkey to launch the shortcut with a key command.

You have to make peace with the idea that you won't be able to launch sessions directly if you want to do this, but I've found that the recents list is convenient enough.

Re: Processor affinity
 

Pops and clicks gone for me too; why I continue to use the command shortcut.

Re: Processor affinity
 

Well, I just tried it for the first time, & it seems to have fixed my issue!!!

I had a session the other day that was CPU spiking @ 64. Today, I opened the session again - still spikey. Next, I set processor affinity to NOT use cores 1 & 2 (of 12). Then, I set priority to high. The spikes stopped & the session ran perfectly. Reset affinity/priority back as before, & the spikes returned. Tried it again: 1 & 2 off/high priority ---> spikes stopped. I'm sold!!! Here's how to do it: http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t...essor+Affinity

Re: Processor affinity
 

Here's some useful links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e565VSxdVhY

https://bitsum.com/tools/cpu-affinity-calculator/

Re: Processor affinity
 

We used to have options for "# of Processors" and "CPU Usage Limit" in Playback Engine. When/why did these CPU options go away? Now to achieve this, we need to manually adjust Processor Affinity/Priority?

Re: Processor affinity
 

YES.

Affinity switch setting still required for me to get click/pop free performance at 24/96 with 64 sample buffer (OC 8700K; Win 10; MOTU 1248; PT 2020.9.1; NI Komplete; Waves Gold+). Without this setting the processor switching gets in the way (I think) and the sample que gets serviced too late - and then a click. For my 8700K FFE works best.

At 256 buffer and greater this switch is not required, and in fact can make PT a bit less powered YMMV. So I use 2 command prompts, one with an Affinity switch and one without.

For reference:

cmd.e x e /c start "ProTools" /affinity FFE "C:\Program Files\Avid\Pro Tools\Protools.exe

<remove spaces in ".exe" above can't post without added spaces>

ej9inbc