ProTools 2018.4 Ultimate and macOS Mojave

[profdraper]

Originally Posted by TNM

.. even the most staunch windows advocate i know, who has done nothing but sell microsoft based DAW's for 20 years now, told me Win 10 is absolute garbage and a single update that can be deferred but not stopped, can break *everything*.. he said it went to hell after release 1511.. So that really puts me off as well.

All this angst (still) about MacOs vs. Win10. Both can work fine in my experience, but of course one does need to take responsibility for learning about both. On the hardware side, well that's a completely different & rather obvious matter, but we won't go there ...

Originally Posted by TNM

.. I just don't know what to do........

Consider this: rather than go on about mac vs PC, why not remove Pro Tools from the equation? Over the years I've had most DAWs on my workstations given work with others who choose to use what they like. Up to date unstalls include DP9, Studio One, Live, Nuendo, Cubase, Wavelab & Pro Tools. My main squeeze has become Steinberg and in my experience certainly has far less problems than Pro Tools on Win.

[KV626]

Originally Posted by TNM

No.. the 8 core and 10 core imac pro came with 10.13.2, so they CAN run that or 10.13.3.. it's a case of finding those versions as full installers.. This is what works with pro tools properly.

fwiw, I just installed 10.13.6 on my Mac Pro yesterday. I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with PT 2018.4. Projects do load faster. PT works like a charm.

[Kam Lion]

The Best company in terms of updates as well as upgrades was Digidesign. They used to send us CD discs with Updates and upgrades via mail with such astonishing speed. Avid, the corporate guys are the slowest in everything. The day Avid took over the audio business from Digidesign, I cried. I was 100% right. Just ask anyone who knew about Digidesign in nineties. For instance, Pro Tools is partially optimized in graphics performance until today.
When Avid takes more than 3 months for any minor solution, it tells you that there is a lack of high expertise in the business. I lost any hope.

[TNM]

Originally Posted by KV626

fwiw, I just installed 10.13.6 on my Mac Pro yesterday. I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with PT 2018.4. Projects do load faster. PT works like a charm.

Fantastic, but what buffer? You see, this is the important part and every time i ask that in response, i get crickets! So hopefully you can break this trend and let me know!

Also, I am having *massive* performance differences here between 2018.4 and 12.8.1 on the very same mac and sierra version.. same everything other than pro tools.. Vi polyphony playback performance has fallen 30% for me.. Cubase and Logic are just thrashing it now.. so sad.. Pro tools was the performance kind for me of all the DAWs at 128 buffer, prior to 2018.4!

[KV626]

Originally Posted by TNM

Fantastic, but what buffer? You see, this is the important part and every time i ask that in response, i get crickets! So hopefully you can break this trend and let me know!

I'm at 128.


I'm currently on a project with 19 VI instances:

- 4 NI Battery
- 1 Boom
- 2 Vaccum
- 7 Synthmaster
- 2 Analog Lab
- 1 Absynth
- 1 Hybrid
- 1 Pianoteq

Most of them have multiple inserts. CPU at +/- 15% during playback. Zero issue during record. I'll try different sessions when I have time...

[TNM]

Originally Posted by KV626

I'm at 128.


I'm currently on a project with 19 VI instances:

- 4 NI Battery
- 1 Boom
- 2 Vaccum
- 7 Synthmaster
- 2 Analog Lab
- 1 Absynth
- 1 Hybrid
- 1 Pianoteq

Most of them have multiple inserts. CPU at +/- 15% during playback. Zero issue during record. I'll try different sessions when I have time...

128 and above don't have the issue, so that answers that.

Avid support literally told me not to buy a new imac pro cause it will have 10.13.6 on it.

Doesn't matter anymore anyway, i'm out... the huge performance drop of 2018 means i can't even run my busy projects anymore on the same machine.. cancelling plan asap.
Just need something reliable that works consistently.

[EmilILönneberga]

Originally Posted by BillDog793

Hey all, I know MacOS Mojave is still in it's beta phase, but I'm wondering what people's experiences were with the two most current versions of both. I'm still on ProTools 2018.3 waiting on news for the current version of MacOs High Sierra (10.13.6) to be officially supported, but will be wanting to switch over to Mojave if it doesn't kill PT

Have been testing Mojave for a week with PT 2018.7.
It worked okay. Some glitches with UI like clip name window doesn't show any text until you enlarge the textfield by mouse.
But the UAD Software wasn't stable. I had some routing bugs out of a sudden. So for me it wasn't reliable (which I kinda expected). I was just curious.

Also, 32 bit apps do work. You'll get the warning but they open and work flawlessly.
I'm back at 10.13.6 now and I have to say that Mojave itself felt a little snapier. It is super stable for being a beta.

Btw. I don't have performance issues with HS.
Could it be that newer Macs, like the new rMBPs are more affected?
I had ugly CPU spikes with 10.12 though.
(nMP 6,1 10c 3ghz 32GB ram)

[EmilILönneberga]

Originally Posted by BillDog793

Hey all, I know MacOS Mojave is still in it's beta phase, but I'm wondering what people's experiences were with the two most current versions of both. I'm still on ProTools 2018.3 waiting on news for the current version of MacOs High Sierra (10.13.6) to be officially supported, but will be wanting to switch over to Mojave if it doesn't kill PT

Have been testing Mojave for a week with PT 2018.7.
It worked okay. Some glitches with UI like clip name window doesn't show any text until you enlarge the textfield by mouse.
But the UAD Software wasn't stable. I had some routing bugs out of a sudden. So for me it wasn't reliable (which I kinda expected). I was just curious.

Also, 32 bit apps do work. You'll get the warning but they open and work flawlessly.
I'm back at 10.13.6 now and I have to say that Mojave itself felt a little snapier. It is super stable for being a beta.

Btw. I don't have performance issues with HS.
Could it be that newer Macs, like the new rMBPs are more affected?
I had ugly CPU spikes with 10.12 though.
(nMP 6,1 10c 3ghz 32GB ram)

[TNM]

Originally Posted by EmilILönneberga

Have been testing Mojave for a week with PT 2018.7.
It worked okay. Some glitches with UI like clip name window doesn't show any text until you enlarge the textfield by mouse.
But the UAD Software wasn't stable. I had some routing bugs out of a sudden. So for me it wasn't reliable (which I kinda expected). I was just curious.

Also, 32 bit apps do work. You'll get the warning but they open and work flawlessly.
I'm back at 10.13.6 now and I have to say that Mojave itself felt a little snapier. It is super stable for being a beta.

Btw. I don't have performance issues with HS.
Could it be that newer Macs, like the new rMBPs are more affected?
I had ugly CPU spikes with 10.12 though.
(nMP 6,1 10c 3ghz 32GB ram)

That's great news they didn't drop all 32 bit support.. let's hope it stays in the official release.. That's huge news if so :) Thanks for the heads up, I am not as anti mojave now lol

[~ufo~]

It’s certainly sad that PT has been experiencing so many low buffer issues, especially on Mac.
When I got my HD Native system with my 3.33 6-core in 2012 I felt like in many ways it was a huge step up from the old TDM G4 rig it replaced.
When PT10 came out, I was quite a happy camper.

I recorded many full band in a room projects at 96k 64 buffer with hardly any issues. Granted, I hardly record with plugins, but the system was powerful and stable enough to run what asked of it.
Only rarely did I have to go to 128 samples during recording.

Ever since PT11 performance has been going downhill for me.
To the point where I couldn’t reliably record a single track at 96 64 buffer with NO active plugins.
I decided to instal Windows 8.1 via boot camp and low and behold, it ran much closer to what I remembered from PT10 on Mac.
Not as stably, mind, but useable.
There’s been ups and downs in the Mac versions, but none of them have been ecceptably stable to record with, sadly. What’s worse is that it seems like the windows version has deteriorated too since 2018.3.
I’m currently running some tests but it seems that eventhough the windows version has been more reliable at recording at low buffer and handling multithreading better, when I load plugins on recording tracks, Windows is now performing worse than the Mac version, and both are performing even worse than PT11/12 versions.

I wonder if upgrading my 3.33 6 core with a 3.46 12 core daughter board will give me just enough horsepower to at least record reliably again.
It’s either that or installing an old PT10 image, or abandoning PT altogether for recording.
Whether it’s Avid’s or Apple’s fault, it’s unacceptable.

I hope Mojave helps. I’m sick of my time being wasted.