Crash because too many AAX

[tipto]

Hi Partypeople,

I have the following problem:

It seems, that I have too many AAX plugins in my AAX-Folder. Pro Tools (12.3HD) becomes very slow and crashes, doesn't matter if I have loaded any of these plugins or how many tracks I have. I tested these plugins and it is not 1 plugin that makes problems, it's the amount.

Actually crazy: With bluecats Patchwork I can have as many VSTs on my HD (and access to them during a Session) but with AAX it doesn't work.

I use PT 12.3 HD, with Win 10, 64bit, Intel XEON, 16GB Ram, 500GB SSD (System + AAX), 2TB.

I have Plugins from about 50-100 different companies. For example:

--Waves 10
- T-Racks 5/CS
- Eventide
- Native
- Slate Digi
- Arturia
- Plugin Alliance
- Blue Cats
- iZotope...

Any ideas to fix this problem? More Ram? I actually don't want to put for each session the most of my plugins into my plugins unused folder, and write it down for every project...

Cheers

Tom

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by tipto

Hi Partypeople,

I have the following problem:

It seems, that I have too many AAX plugins in my AAX-Folder. Pro Tools (12.3HD) becomes very slow and crashes, doesn't matter if I have loaded any of these plugins or how many tracks I have. I tested these plugins and it is not 1 plugin that makes problems, it's the amount.

Actually crazy: With bluecats Patchwork I can have as many VSTs on my HD (and access to them during a Session) but with AAX it doesn't work.

I use PT 12.3 HD, with Win 10, 64bit, Intel XEON, 16GB Ram, 500GB SSD (System + AAX), 2TB.

I have Plugins from about 50-100 different companies. For example:

--Waves 10
- T-Racks 5/CS
- Eventide
- Native
- Slate Digi
- Arturia
- Plugin Alliance
- Blue Cats
- iZotope...

Any ideas to fix this problem? More Ram? I actually don't want to put for each session the most of my plugins into my plugins unused folder, and write it down for every project...

Cheers

Tom

First off exactly how many plugins DO you have in the folder? I don't know if there's an official max number of plugins one can have in the aax plugins folder but even if there is it must be a huge number.

Second: have you done the standard troubleshooting steps of removing ALL the plugins to the unused folder (PT will reinstall it's own plugins at startup) and seeing how that goes? If that works then you add back one developer's plugins at a time. I know it's a slog but it's necessary.

You can never have too much ram but in this case it won't help you.

[tipto]

Thanks for the reply,

yes I've tried to remove all plugins. Then it works. I've tried to find, if there's a bad plugin, but that was not the solution. I've invested 1 work day in that.

I've also found this:

https://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=401473&page=2

I will try it.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by tipto

Thanks for the reply,

yes I've tried to remove all plugins. Then it works. I've tried to find, if there's a bad plugin, but that was not the solution. I've invested 1 work day in that.

I've also found this:

https://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=401473&page=2

I will try it.

Did you put the plugins back into the used plugins folder one developer at a time? Also you didn't answer the question I asked and that is how many plugins do you have - the exact number.

[tipto]

I've put the plugins step by step back into the plugins folder. And started PT always new (that's why it took so much time). Never counted how many plugins I have. I mean: already Waves 10, T-Racks CS+5 are a couple of hundreds(?) I would say not more than 2000. It's not that much I think.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by tipto

I've put the plugins step by step back into the plugins folder. And started PT always new (that's why it took so much time). Never counted how many plugins I have. I mean: already Waves 10, T-Racks CS+5 are a couple of hundreds(?) I would say not more than 2000. It's not that much I think.

What do you mean by 'step by step'? One developer at a time? I kind of doubt you have anywheres close to 2000 plugins.

[Darryl Ramm]

Not surprisingly the computer can count plugin files for you...

> cd C:\Program Files\Common Files\Avid\Audio\Plug-Ins
> dir /B *.aaxplugin | find /c /v ""

(and yes Windows drives me nuts with how awful the shells and user commands are...)

Useful stuff is missing here. Like what exactly happens with a crash. Does the whole computer become slow/flakey or just Pro Tools? Are there any error message?

And if you really have a incredibly large number of plugin files then running a system with only 16GB or memory might not be a good idea. How many VI plugins are trying to cache samples? Or how many different plugins might just be sloppy with memory use or have memory leaks etc. Software "running slow then crashing..." is a possible sign of a memory leak, especially if it affects the whole computer. While memory use gets complicated the computer can give you a basic idea what is going in. Have Resource Monitor open while running Pro Tools and look at the memory stats... start with what Free memory shows.

What does the Windows event log show happening when Pro Tools crashes?

I also can't follow what troubleshooting has been done... it's quite likely there are plugin compatibility issues, so doing things like a binary walk of removing and putting back half the plugins and keep going doing that in halves does not help isolate problems? To do that well with so many plugins you are going to have to write bat files to automate this. If you really want to have as much stuff installed as you claim you are going to need to be willing to spend time debugging stuff, and hopefully technically able to write bat files etc.

If you have thousands of plugins how have you checked for claimed vendor compatibility with those plugins? Issues of Pro Tools crapping out trying to load plugin and built the plugin database are unfortunatly well know and you just have to keep retrying. Try trashing prefs/databases if it makes no progress and try again. Sometimes plugins won't load and built a new database when they are incompatible, and that may be a problem with the next plugin trying to load not the one actually displayed in the splash screen.

I don't follow the comment about the Unused folder. I would be very strange to move plugins to the Unused folder on a session by session basis. If a plugin is found to be faulty/incompatible and put in the Unused folder you would not put it back at other times. If you are seeing session by session fragility here then I'd suspect either corrupt session or sessions using VIs and running your system out of memory. Again basic stuff you should be looking at.

[tipto]

Thanks a lot,

I see, I had to check so many things. I think it's easier to use BlueCats Patchwork and use the VST-Version of some plugins. In that case I have access to all my VST Plugins.

I cannot understand why they program pro tools like this. Why should a program load all plugins if I will never use it in this session? I am not a specialist but I would say: That's just stupid.

Why they just don't make an access to your plugins folder, like you have, when you use Bluecats patchwork and then you can open every plugin you want.

Ever heard of this: For a large number of books there exists libraries, and if you enter this library, you don't have to take 1st all books from all shelves just to have access to them. It's enough, if you take a look into a list, then go to the right shelf and take a book. It's not the newest invention.

[Darryl Ramm]

When you write a DAW you can make it handle plugins any way you want. But Pro Tools and most other DAWs load the plugins at startup. They are instantiated at a low level within the system, and really become a part of Pro Tools. There are stability arguments both ways here, and likely deep technical reasons why this would be hard, but not impossible to do.

For many workflows that also just may be a good choice. Folks likely don’t want to customize plugins that are available per session, they want to set stuff up once how they like and be done with it. And once plugins are loaded you get to do nice things like be able to invoke them on the fly.

It’s not a crazy idea but it’s just not something Pro Tools or most other DAWs were designed to do. And for my money there is a lot more important issues facing Avid/Pro Tools than worry about things like this. Including because Avid has been greatly downsized over the years and has a small fraction of the technical resources it has had in the past. I would rather see effort spent on obvious work needed on core AAX performance (Windows users should not be needing to play with Windows priority/affinity to avoid CPU errors), increasing HDX voice counts, migration to Apple/ARM for Mac users, and ongoing bug fixes, etc.

[musicman691]

This thread raises an interesting question that I think has been raised before: is there an 'official' upper limit as to how many plugins can be in the aax folder? I seem to remember that PT10 would barf after a certain number but don't remember that number.