Darryl types faster
, but there still may be valuable info here so I'll leave it up.
Denormalization is not a plugin. Its a phenomenon that is caused by certain plugins and placing a Dither plugin in front of the "bad" plugin can solve the issue. The way to determine which plugin(if any) are guilty of this, make plugins inactive(one at a time) until the cpu meter drops. Try sticking a Dither plugin before the offending plugin.
Next, depending on your experience level, the 3 slow drives(below) might still be a contributing factor, if you are not on top of Disk Allocation(which means where your audio files are). Its possible to have a session(in a session folder) on a fast drive(where it belongs), BUT you may have audio files that are actually streaming from another drive(like one of these slowpokes)
SAUVE BB 2 (F:) : 4TB (NTFS, 4kB) @ Seagate ST4000LM024-2AN17V (4TB, USB/SATA300/600, 2.5", 5526rpm)
Ralph 5 TO (G:) : 5TB (NTFS, 4kB) @ Seagate ST5000LM000-2AN170 (5TB, USB/SATA600, 2.5", 5526rpm, SED)
DISK 2021 (H:) : 4TB (NTFS, 4kB) @ Seagate ST4000DM004-2CV104 (4TB, USB/SATA600, 3.5", 5425rpm)
How does that happen? Its usually operator error(something I know well
). 1-Maybe you made a new session and imported session data form a slow drive. Depending on how you did that, the new session might be retrieving audio from the original drive. 2-Another easy goof is; you saved a template session to a slow drive>later on, you OPEN that session and start recording to it and then you save it to your fast recording drive(or you THINK you did). What you actually did was save the session file to the recording drive, but it is pulling all its audio from the template session's Audio Files folder on the slow drive
Personally, I would pull the slow drives out of the computer and put them in external USB drive cases. Connect them when you need to backup files to them, and keep them disconnected(without power) when you don't need them
Last warning on external drives, never disconnect them without using the "Safely Remove Hardware" function(and never with Pro Tools open as PT will not release any drive, even if its not streaming data).