CPU Issue

[Alexlimbert]

Thank you for all your help Darryl. I uninstalled everything to do with Omnisphere from my boot drive. Restarted. Reinstalled. Now I'm able to load and play 150 simultaneous tracks of Omnisphere using 25% of the CPU per the System Usage window. That's good enough for me for a while.

I got scared because I went out and got the AMD Ryzen a few months ago without doing much research about Pro Tools and CPU. All the literature tends to indicate that AMD doesn't work well with Pro Tools. I was about ready to give the PC away and get one with an Intel CPU because of this. You were correct, this had nothing to do with the CPU. Thank you.

[Alexlimbert]

Okay, so I wanted to overclock again. Came back into Pro Tools and Omnisphere kept crashing again. I guess I can't overclock at all using Omnisphere and Pro Tools.

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by Alexlimbert

Okay, so I wanted to overclock again. Came back into Pro Tools and Omnisphere kept crashing again. I guess I can't overclock at all using Omnisphere and Pro Tools.

So... it seems the cache is likely the issue here, it cannot feed CPU fast enough which means no overclocking (and you might even have better results if you underclock a little). There's a reason why vendor has chosen the clock speed like it is by default.

I just tried myself with a 32 buffer session. It can play one Omnisphere but not two. And using the mouse is laggy, not suitable for any real work. With 64 session it starts playing with two instances giving me 6101 error soon after. Mouse still laggy but not as bad as before. With 128 buffer it plays nicely without stops and no mouse lag at all.

On another topic, I don't get it why people seem to "need" very low buffers. I myself have no problem playing with 256 buffer (at 48k) so that's what I'm always using by default. But let's not dive into that topic now...

My system is a 2013 Mac Pro with a 3.7GHz quad-core Intel Xeon E5. I also have installed 64GB memory like you. Interface is Apogee Symphony II via ThunderBolt. This dummy test session proves my point about buffer size and I'm gonna continue using 256 by default :) that means (system delay 138 samples + 256 samples buffer) / 48000 samples = 8.2ms total latency. Anything below 10ms should be fine. And the system is working without any mouse lag whatsoever, very responsive, and I would not give that away just to have lower buffer for bragging rights...

[albee1952]

I admit I went a little bleary-eyed reading the drive compliment in the Sandra report. Please list how many physical drives you have, how each is partitioned and what each partition is handling. Some general recommendations:
If the C: drive is the same physical drive as other partitions, those other partitions should ONLY be used for backup storage(not recording or streaming samples)


Any other drive that is partitioned, should ONLY be tasked with 1 function during recording(IOW, don't split a drive into 2 partitions and expect to record to one partition while the other streams samples)


As a work-around to this issue, if you can use other VI plugins to record your midi info, you can set your buffer to 1024, insert Omnisphere and commit the track. Then make the original Instrument track inactive(so Omnisphere will also be inactive and use no system resources. I love Keyscape, but it drags my system to its knees. So, I usually use MiniGrand or Lounge Lizard(wurly/rhodes) while recording midi. Once the midi is all ironed out, I swap in Keyscape and commit(then making the Keyscape track inactive). I keep those inactive tracks visible until I am sure I don't need to make changes

[Alexlimbert]

Thank you Janne. You warned me not to overclock earlier. Thanks for introducing me to the idea that underclocking might be even more stable. Very good to know. I have my buffer size set to 512 Samples now. If I play my guitar, I set it down to 256 Samples. I agree, that's fine for me too.

[Alexlimbert]

Thank you Dave. I have the other drives for other things. I do all of my Pro Tools stuff on my Base Drive. It's a 1 Terabyte Sandisk SSD. Thank you for warning me about Keyskape. That's been on my wish list for a while now. Still going to get it, but now thanks to you, I know a work around if I start having CPU issues.