HDX, Sonnet Chassis, New Mac Pro... help?

[nhaudio]

We have two almost identical HDX rigs that have been TERRIBLY unstable for far longer than I'd like to admit. I've been through Avid Support, Apple support, sent a hard drive back, updated, re-installed, clicked my heels together 3 times while chanting... nothing is helping, and I'm wondering if anyone here might be able to help.

The setup(s):
Mac Pro 6,1: 6-core, 32 GB RAM, 512 GB Internal Drive, d300 GPUs
ProTools 11.2.2 on OS 10.9.4
TB -> Sonnet Echo Express III-R with 1 x HDX Card
TB -> OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual Thunderbolt/USB-3 in Independent Mode (one drive for audio, one drive for video [DNxHD])
TB -> VGA adapter to 24" screen
TB -> VGA adapter to 24" screen
HDMI -> TV (1080p)
USB -> keyboard and Kensington Expert Mouse
USB -> Anker USB 3.0 Hub -> 2 x iLoks + printer + DVD Burner
Ethernet1 -> Local network
Ethernet2 -> C|24 or Artist Mix (depending on which of our two studios it's in)
Optical Digital Audio Out -> Grace m906 monitor

Everything above is listed as 'supported'.

The issue(s):
Crashes and freezing. Something interrupts things and we can see various symptoms around each freeze. These can be different each time, including (but not limited to):
-drives un-mounting
-random graphical glitches (visual artifacts on-screen)
-GPU Crashes (according to Console Log)
-ethernet to Artist Mix getting messed up somehow

Originally we thought it was just one computer having all the issues, but now we're finding the other is having similar problems.

So far, we've tried:
-wipe the system drive and reinstall everything (did this several times)
-obvious resets of PRAM, SMC, prefs... yada yada
-sent a drive back to OWC... they said nothing was wrong with it. It worked fine when I got it back, but sometimes we still get random un-mounting of attached drives on either rig.
-went back and forth with AVID support for a month or two. They think it's Apple hardware fault.
-sent the more problematic Mac Pro back to Apple... they can find nothing wrong with it, but apparently replaced the GPU's to be safe. And while they've had it, the other system has been acting up more. I'll get the first computer back from Apple hopefully in the next day or so, but don't expect to see any change.

The crashes/freezes are not repeatable by any action. They seem to just happen randomly. We only use these computers for studio work, so Pro Tools is pretty much always running. That being said, we've never seen them crash without ProTools running. Sometimes we can go a few days with no crash, but other times they happen several times per hour. Plug-ins are up to date and there's nothing really esoteric there... Waves, Izotope RX4, basic stuff. No VI's.

We've spent a small fortune on upgrading to these systems from old Mac Pro 1,1's with HD3 systems. They were quite slow, and on big sessions we really had to be careful managing resources, but at least they were stable.

If anyone has any insight of what the problems could be, please let me know. I've lost too much time and hair to these crappy rigs. I need stability!

[albee1952]

I am hardly an expert and I hope someone jumps in here with better advice, but I have some thoughts to offer in the meantime

#1-the Thunderbolt ports are not(IIRC) each on their own bus, so I would try removing the 24" screens for testing. This would allow you to move the other things around to different ports to see if this helps(somewhere I saw a chart showing which TB ports were sharing buses, but I can't remember where. Maybe try a google search).

#2-I also believe I heard that iLoks do not like USB3 ports, so maybe if you used a USB2 hub(even on a USB3 port) that might help too

I found that chart. Notice that there are 3 busses supporting 6 ports. How you assign your hardware might make a huge difference

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/...ortmapping.png

[Brandonx1]

If you want something else to try, I would try running pro tools without the HDX and chassis connected, with the mac internal soundcards play back engine. See if 8ts that chassis or card giving you issues. Also, what's digitest say? Everything g ok with the card?

[nhaudio]

Thanks guys. All good suggestions, but I think I've covered those bases.

We have tried moving around Thunderbolt ports. I've studied the bussing scheme thoroughly. We've even tried running the OWC drives on USB to clear up more TB room. No luck, though. I also found this article, for those keeping score on how "Pro" the new Mac Pro is:
http://macperformanceguide.com/MacPr...ance-tips.html

I really miss the old Mac Pro form-factor.

I've read about the iLok issues some were having with USB 3. We actually started with a USB 2.0 hub, but I ditched it, thinking it might be part of the problem. And to be honest, we've had no authorization errors. All iLoks show up fine all the time, so I don't think that's it.

As for not running the HDX card... then I have no audio input to record with, and I can't mix 5.1 using Mac Pro audio out, so that's not really an option. Maybe if I get a stereo mix-only session I'll give that a go, but that could be the day we wouldn't have a crash anyway. I'm hating the random-ness and 'untraceable-ness' of these issues.

The other thing is that we have TWO of these rigs in separate studios. What are the chances I got 2 bad chassis' or 2 bad HDX cards? We swapped computers, and initially the problems seemed to follow one of them, so it went to Apple, but the other is now regularly showing similar problems.

I forgot to add, I've been running the buffer at 512 minimum, 1024 most of the time to try and gain stability. Piss-poor performance for HDX.

Digitest says all is ok, as does Apple's Hardware Test.

[nst7]

The suggestion to run it without the HDX card, using the Mac's built in output, was just for testing purposes. Obviously you need your I/O, etc.

If you run it without the HDX card and it runs flawlessly, then that narrows the problem to either the card or chassis. So I encourage you to try that. It will only take a few minutes.


One other thing to try, since you have two identical systems, is to try using Video Satellite LE to run your video on the second computer instead of the one you're using for audio.

The functionality of Video Satellite LE is now built into PT11 standard, so no purchase or additional license is needed. Put the video onto a separate drive and hook it up to the second Mac and run only the video on that, while running only the audio on the first one.

Again, since it's free, there's no harm in trying this.

[Brandonx1]

Onw additiona trouble shooting step I would take is try to narrow down if it's a plug in or not. A pour coded plug in might cause pro tools to crash.

[propower]

Following up from the above post

Have you tried booting to a clean OS X + ProTools only disc - no 3rd party anything (can even be an external USB3 one if it has to be). This is an essential test to make sure it is not plugin related.

FWIW - I run the identical machine as you with HDN (since last summer). I split my 512 internal drive into two partitions so I could easily boot internally to two configurations. I also have no experience with the OWC TB solution but can tell you I have 100% confidence and success with the BlackMagic Multidock for external drives (more than a year now). I eliminated all USB3 drives a while ago.

Best of luck - keep us posted.

[nhaudio]

Status update:
Got the one nMacPro back from Apple. They replaced both GPU's and all the ribbon connectors to the GPU's. Apparently they found bent pins, which may have caused some of the issues. I wiped the drive and decided to plunge into Yosemite and PT 11.3. Today I had a rather large session to picture and I'm happy to say, all went well.

The other system had multiple crashes last week, where mounted drives would not show up when rebooting after a system freeze. We tried disconnecting the OWC drive, and running sessions off the internal drive (new USB drives had been ordered). So far, it hasn't crashed either.

So, some problems MAY (have) be(en):
Mavericks and nMacPro (bad drivers?... growing pains?)
One bad OWC Drive?
Faulty Apple GPU's/bent pins.

Time will tell... I'll update this thread with more info as it comes. Figures I'd get multiple different problems with two identical rigs.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[Cheesehead]

Weird, I'm running that exact same rig but without the owc drive.
I have the sonnet tempo with 2 ssd's instead.

Its been super rock solid ever since I put it together. Pro Tools has not crashed for months, with massive sessions. Very pleased I made the jump.

Glad you're getting to the bottom of your problems, there's nothing more annoying than a flakey system.

[nhaudio]

So far the 'fixed' Mac Pro that I installed 11.3 and os 10.10.1 has been through two days of heavy sessions without a blip. Yay. Only took me 6 months to get to this point.

The other system is still showing some weirdness... the Artist Mix occasionally has some kind of network crash... Console Log seems to indicate that the dns info gets changed somehow. The OWC drive hasn't been connected. I'd like to put Yosemite on that guy, too, but Eucontrol isn't there yet.