[deafguy]

Hi,
My observations point to the plugins themselves. Whether there’s some coding that Avid could do to ‘fix’ the issue, maybe some of you guys know.

I’m running a 2012 5,1 cheese grater, 12 core with a HDX card and a UAD card, I’ve tried toggling between 12 and 24 cores, doesn’t make a noticeable difference.

The two sets of plugs that clearly demonstrate the situation for me are Acustica and Waves.
I can run maybe 6 Acustica plugs before my rig craps out. The usage is concentrated on the ‘middle’ cores, consistent with a lot of the screenshots we’ve all seen.
On the other hand, I can load up 64 channels with the CLA Mix Hub, all sections active, all tracks assigned to 8 buckets, no problem.

The system resources graph shows equal usage across all cores. The machine runs fine with 80-90% usage, no spikes. I can fill up the slots with DSP / Native and UAD plugs, maxing out all the cards, no problem.

A few tracks with Acustica plugs, buffer @ 1024, is all my system can handle.

So it seems pretty clear to me that my rig is pretty capable with the right plugs.
After years of Pro Tooling I'm used to work-arounds and hiccups.