Insane CPU spikes in 11.3

[dannyboyhardnox]

Hey guys, i am having some insane cpu spikes in Pro Tool 11.3, i am on a 2011 Macbook Pro 16GB Ram external Buffalo 1TB running the audio. It is at the point where i cannot even playback anything. When pulling up any session the CPU meter will just be throbbing, random restarts it might go away, but will still get 9173 error. This is driving me nuts... Any suggestions? ABout to do a clean re install of PT 11.3, see what happens. Have already ran disk repairs, deleted prefs, don't know what is going on. Screenshots are below. Thanks guys

-Dan

[musicman691]

Looks like all audio and some aux tracks so no vi's to worry about. I see what looks like a ton of Slate stuff and Waves - is everything updated? Earlier versions of Slate plugins have been known to cause issues. Can you open and play the session with plugins disabled? How does that work out?

[audiobob]

One little piece of voodoo helped me...not sure if it will work on your MBP but it's helped me quite a bit on my 12 core MP 5,1 and it's worth a go. I tried this as a last ditch effort because I was getting spikes on a clean install at even a 128 buffer, one track of audio with only stock plugs installed. I need to record VO with low buffer for low latency.

The trick is turning off multi threading.

Download X-Code from the App Store...it's free. Control click on the app to show package contents. Go to Contents > Applications and drag Instruments to the dock. Launch Instruments and go to Preferences. Click the CPU tab and de-select Hardware Multi-Threading. Restart Pro Tools and the cores in System Usage should now be half of what they were. The settings stick after a log out but you'll have to repeat the steps every time you restart.

This worked for me tremendously. Things are much more stable and I don't think it's a placebo. I can now record at a buffer of 32 and rarely get fatal CPU spikes. Now it does happen, but much more infrequently....much more. I do move to a high buffer setting when just mixing and have never had spikes. I'm on Native HD...not sure your system. Would like to hear if it worked for you.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by audiobob

One little piece of voodoo helped me...not sure if it will work on your MBP but it's helped me quite a bit on my 12 core MP 5,1 and it's worth a go. I tried this as a last ditch effort because I was getting spikes on a clean install at even a 128 buffer, one track of audio with only stock plugs installed. I need to record VO with low buffer for low latency.

The trick is turning off multi threading.

Download X-Code from the App Store...it's free. Control click on the app to show package contents. Go to Contents > Applications and drag Instruments to the dock. Launch Instruments and go to Preferences. Click the CPU tab and de-select Hardware Multi-Threading. Restart Pro Tools and the cores in System Usage should now be half of what they were. The settings stick after a log out but you'll have to repeat the steps every time you restart.

This worked for me tremendously. Things are much more stable and I don't think it's a placebo. I can now record at a buffer of 32 and rarely get fatal CPU spikes. Now it does happen, but much more infrequently....much more. I do move to a high buffer setting when just mixing and have never had spikes. I'm on Native HD...not sure your system. Would like to hear if it worked for you.

From what it looks like the issue isn't so much the load showing on the individual cores but the total cpu usage at levels that doesn't even begin to approach the totals of the individual cores. I've had rare cases of PT 11 any version doing this to me but usually a restart of the session without restarting PT fixes it. Then again I'm not working on a laptop like the OP and most people know laptops and desktops don't use the exact same cpu chips.

[audiobob]

Originally Posted by musicman691

From what it looks like the issue isn't so much the load showing on the individual cores but the total cpu usage at levels that doesn't even begin to approach the totals of the individual cores..

That's exactly what what happening to me. System usage at 4 to 5%, then bam...huge fatal CPU spike. The Total System Usage would give the fatal spike while the individual cores would remain very low. I know our CPU's are different and it may not be relevant, but hey it's worth a try.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by audiobob

That's exactly what what happening to me. System usage at 4 to 5%, then bam...huge fatal CPU spike. The Total System Usage would give the fatal spike while the individual cores would remain very low. I know our CPU's are different and it may not be relevant, but hey it's worth a try.

Thanks.
The strangest for me is I'd get the occasional 6101 or 9173 error and play would stop but if I start play again I'd have no problem. And I would try and retrace my steps to repro it and it would sail on just fine.

[dannyboyhardnox]

Hey guys, thanks for all the responses, trying some things tonight, dropping plugins in one by one as well, will report back! thank you all! we will all figure this out!

[dannyboyhardnox]

Hey AudioRob, the hyperthreading did nothing. Tried dragging plugins in one by one to see if any were the culprit, we have zero clue what is going on. We even made a new session with one instrument track and put on a CLA Vocal Plugin and the CPU went straight to 100% this is so odd... We are on 10.9.5 Mavericks running PT 11.3.0, 16GB RAM 2011 MacBook Pro. The funny thing is my brothers laptop has same specs and he runs Final Cut Pro X and edits 4K video footage all day with zero issues and tons of heavy plugins. Any one else suggest anything to try? And we have no other applications running while using PT when we get the CPU errors.

[Darryl Ramm]

You mean you dragged out all the .aaxplugin files from the plugin folder and put them back one at a time? (hopefully you also trashed prefs while doing that). So with only the standard Avid plugins this dog is still unstable?

Just to be paranoid test other sessions/try a new empty session and build it up.

And just for grins I'd try enabling/disabling Dynamic plugin processing (just try it both ways).

Regardless if this is related to third party plugin compatibility or not, Avid has got to work out how not to ship crap like what this update (and many users whole Pro Tools 11 experience) is looking like.

[Sugarnutz]

On the Windoz side I fixed it by disabling CPU throttling, setting max/min CPU speed both to 100%. Not sure how that would be done on a Mac (sure I'll find out soon enough though). Problem is PT is trying to use say 10% of a 2 GHz CPU, then the OS throttles the CPU to 1 GHZ (or less) and PT has to adjust to use 20% of the resource and this is going back & forth so it creates a problem. This is what I found in my situation, may not work for all but it's worth a look.