Anyone have luck running PT10 on a Macbook Air?

[GKinTN]

I have an recent era Macbook air, dual-core 1.8GHz Intel Core i7. It has a quite fast 256GB SSD and is running OS Lion. At first it appeared to run PT10 fine, but not in extended tests... On the same system I might add that REAPER runs 100%!

I've been doing tests with PT10 using an RME UC interface (+ an ADAT preamp) recording 16 tracks + midi at 44.1khz @ 24bit. It works fine and records cleanly, however it will eventually crash PT with a 6101 error and/or others... Sometimes the crash takes just 15 minutes, other times it may take 3-4 hours to crash. I've tried all kinds of buffer settings, core settings, Wifi and Bluetooth OFF. The PT resource meter only shows 1-2% CPU and about 1% on the SSD drive. That said the error codes point to the data/hard drive throughput, but the PT meter (if it can be trusted) is cruising along with barely any resources taxed at all.

My only plugins are approved for PT10, being Waves Ren collection, Melodyne Editor, & Amplitube. Still I'm not using any plugins in my tests.

I know that typically you should run an external HD, but I am trying to make it work with the internal drive. The air is limited to only x2 USB jacks (RME UC and Ilok fill them) but I could try a Thunderbolt HD but they are pricey.

I can run REAPER on the same computer and record 16 tracks + midi ALL day long (longest test so far was 10+ hours) without ANY crashes.

?


Thanks in advance!

[mcmuffy]

I have PT10 running on a 1.6 Core2 11" Macbook Air with 4gb ram. I have not done anything stressful on it but it has run 6 tracks with some waves plugins for a couple of hours without problems.

[anotherscott]

It's encouraging to hear this works at all, since Avid has nothing posted online about the new Airs, only the old ones ("unsupported").

I have the 11" 1.6 gHz i5 with 4 gb RAM and internal SSD, running Lion, as required. There are three scenarios I could envision, and would like to know if anyone here can confirm that these definitely work with PT10.

1. Run PT from internal SSD, using a Firewire drive attached via Thunderbolt connected to the Cinema Display

2. Run PT from internal SSD, while simultaneously also using the internal SSD for data (this would only be done for very minimal work... recording a single stereo input live, running either no playback channels, or maybe a minimal number of them, and no plug-ins... for field work where I can't bring the Cinema Display with me)

3. to try to improve on scenario #2 above, maybe it would be better to either boot from an external SSD drive over USB and use the internal SSD as a data drive, or vice versa, boot from the internal drive as usual but use an SSD drive on USB for data. I know they don't like USB, but maybe the speed of SSD makes it more palatable. I'd still have the firewire/Cinema Display route for anything more heavy duty.

Will all of these variations work? The one thing I really dread is the possibility of getting the "not a valid audio volume" message (inability to set it to R on the Workspace screen) on any of these drives (firewire drive attached to thunderbolt display, internal SSD drive, external SSD/USB drive... ideally I"d want all three of these to be seen as writeable regardless of what I'm booting from, can anyone confirm?