Hi guys,
with a blank session and no tracks my CPU is around 4%-5%. By anyway, as Darryl has pointed out, I'm not sure it is a denormalization problem, because my system is at almost 60% completely stopped. Actually, many times my system does not allow to my to make play, which is very weird.
To be honest, I'm not exactly a newbie, and I have been working with ProTools if I'm not wrong since version 4, and I can ensure you this is the first time I am regretting to have changed of version, the very first time.
It's true that PT12 have some new cool things, that you will be with me, nobody can not understand why there are not available since many versions before. But this is the first time I really feel that instead of taking a step forward and improve the quality of my system, I have taken a step back in terms of quality.
First because the audio engine the ProTools has changed. I have done my first album with PT12, and I do not want to say that it sounds bad, but sounds definitely different, even just listening music in one stereo track. It has something in the high end very weird I can not define. IMHO PT10 sounds more fat and consistent, and by consistent I mean that now my mixes out of my studio do not sound the same that inside my studio, and that's something are getting me crazy. And as I said, I am not a newbie, I am almost 50 years, and you can bet that I have mixed lots of albums since PT4. LOL
Maybe, I need to use the new sound, but this has never happened to me before with ProTools since this version. Maybe PT11 was the same, but I have changed to 12 from 10.
But second, the question of the plugins. I have always mixed using TDM plugins processed with my HD cards. Only when my system was exhausted I used to use Native plugins. But now, everything is Native, and the only AAX plugins I have got are the Avid plugins, the Phoenix from Cranesong and the Massenbourg EQ, just those ones.
Some years ago I did many tests with the different plugins in TDM versus its Native mode. Many of them sounded the same, like the Waves SSL EQ. But for example, the SSL Compressor of waves did not sound the same in TDM mode versus Native mode. I do not say that TDM version sounded better or worse, but it did not sound the same, and samples did not cancel out in phase after processing them with identical parameters. IMHO the TDM plugins sounded better than the Natives. And I would say that the AAX also sound better than the Native ones, and I suppose at the level of the TDM. But this is something that I can not demonstrate by the impossibility of using both formats within the program.
And finally, the amount of bugs that ProTools still has. There are even times that things are fixed, and others that already worked before in previous versions are ruined in new versions. Besides being a musician, my formation has been as an IT Engineer, and really, this is something I can not understand why it can happen, just because I know what I'm talking about.
What it really scares me is to think that my new Mac was underpowered, after have spent almost $6.000, and buy all the RAM possible, the fastest SSD, etc... It is very sad! Well... It is not sad it is annoying actually!
Tomorrow I will have the opportunity to look into the problem. I will keep you posted! Hopefully I can find something the culprit!
Thanks anyway to all of you for your help on this!