Stress Testing Pro Tools

[lunatic]

About once a year we rebuild our Windows machine, run updates, etc., and I've always wondered if there is a way to "stress test" a PT installation. You know... a big session with a lot going on just to see how it does and to catch any problems. I come from an IT background (glad I don't do that anymore) and we always had a way to test our servers.

So, anyone doing this? Any ideas? Anyone got a great "test" session?

Thanks!

[Dism]

The gold standard for Pro Tools stress testing is the "Dverb Test." That is to say, you create a session and essentially see how many instances of Dverb you can run consistently.

Originally Posted by sunburst79

The Dverb 2.0 Test

Start the computer. Create a brand new 24bit/48k Session on your audio drive for the Dverb test. Open up the system usage window in PT. Then, go to Setup > Playback Engine... > and make sure the RTAS engine: Ignore Errors During Playback/Record(may cause clicks and pops) is NOT checked. Set up your time line ruler for Min:Secs. You want to be in grid mode and set up your grid for Min:Secs and 1 second. Create one mono audio track. Take the selector tool, put it on the 5 minute mark in your audio track and drag this to the start of your session. You will now have 5 minutes selected in this track. Go to AudioSuite > Other > Signal Generator and click on the "process" but. You should now see a 5 minute test tone. Create another audio track and insert 5 Dverbs in all the inserts. Record arm the Dverb track. Click on the track name so it is high lighted white, and hit shift+alt+D then hit enter. Record arm the new track and continue this pattern. You want to be able to record WITHOUT THE TEST TONE BREAKING UP!! Keep adding Dverbs and recording. If the test tone starts to breakup, then delete some Dverbs until you can hear a SOLID TEST TONE for 5 MINUTES. This is VERY VERY important. The test tone has to be 100% solid!!!

Upwards of 500 instances or more is considered very high. Be sure to include which version of Pro Tools, how many cores you are using, and at what percent usage.

[lunatic]

Ah yes the "DVerb Test." I was aware of that but I'm looking for more like stress testing Pro Tools itself meaning a non-sense session with lotsa automation, maybe two instances of Drumagog, Two instances of Melodyne, etc. to really put a machine to the test.

I realize I'll just have to create one but I was putting this out there to see if someone knew a good way to do this or maybe had already created a sessions like this.

Thank you for reminding me about the DVerb Test though! I'm going to go do that now just for fun

[Dism]

Well there really isn't any other standard for stress testing the Pro Tools environment that I know of. One does have to consider that not everyone has the same plugins and workflows, so the DVerb test serves as the most straightforward and universally accessible environment to a Pro Tools user.

Feel free to come up with a more modern version with some automation, and perhaps other plugins. But as it stands, using 3rd party plugins doesn't really allow for true comparisons. Not to mention VIs will always hit the brick wall of 32 bit memory addressing.