Pro Tools 9 Crashes When Selecting Audio Interface

[formfunction]

Originally Posted by nohayniunnick

I'm having similar issues and i fell ripped off by avid, i bought a presonus firestudio 26 and i bought pro tools 9 and it IMPOSSIBLE to run directly with the presonus, i'm only availaible to run it wth asio4all, and the farthest that i can get is to initialize pro tools, open the session but then there is no playback, it just 'freezes' there. Im so frustated right now :@

It ain't Avid, it is your system/setup.

[hemmerlinj]

Try going back to OS X 10.6.4. Avid has not approved PT9 to work with 10.6.5 yet. I would also uninstall everything and run the repair permissions and then reboot in safe made to clear the cache. Reboot normally and then do the install. I went thru 2 days of nightmares with upgrading my mac and then I did this and everything runs fine. Make sure everything accept your mouse and keyboard are unplugged for the install. Seemed to make all the difference.

[siraltus]

Originally Posted by hemmerlinj

Try going back to OS X 10.6.4. Avid has not approved PT9 to work with 10.6.5 yet. I would also uninstall everything and run the repair permissions and then reboot in safe made to clear the cache. Reboot normally and then do the install. I went thru 2 days of nightmares with upgrading my mac and then I did this and everything runs fine. Make sure everything accept your mouse and keyboard are unplugged for the install. Seemed to make all the difference.

I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. How come other software that's equally as complex and very similar in functionality (Cubase/Logic/Live) works just fine, even in 10.6.5, and PT 9 does not? Same goes for unplugging all of my external devices - they work properly in other host apps, why can't they work properly in PT 9?

Seems like the PT9 DAE (Digital Audio Engine) is not yet fully ironed out to properly work with non-Avid CoreAudio devices. Either that, or the MOTU drivers are doing something fishy that upsets the PT 9 DAE (I opened a support ticket with MOTU as well just in case). Either way, PT9 is not working as advertised for me.

[Dism]

Originally Posted by siraltus

I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. How come other software that's equally as complex and very similar in functionality (Cubase/Logic/Live) works just fine, even in 10.6.5, and PT 9 does not? Same goes for unplugging all of my external devices - they work properly in other host apps, why can't they work properly in PT 9?

Seems like the PT9 DAE (Digital Audio Engine) is not yet fully ironed out to properly work with non-Avid CoreAudio devices. Either that, or the MOTU drivers are doing something fishy that upsets the PT 9 DAE (I opened a support ticket with MOTU as well just in case). Either way, PT9 is not working as advertised for me.

You aren't the only person in the world running PT9 or any other DAW. I guarantee there are others out there who are having similar problems with Cubase/Live/Logic, because that's the nature of computers. There is no one flawless DAW. I can tell you that PT9 has been a completely joy for me, and it hasn't even crashed once.

That being said... I'm not running MOTU gear, so I can't say whether or not that is the cause... but even identically built systems have differences. It's the nature of computers. There are probably others out there who are running 10.6.5 perfectly fine with PT9 and MOTU.

At the same time, it's always a bad idea to trust the very latest OS build of any OS. I'm pretty much always at least 3 builds behind, and only ever use qualified combinations of software and hardware. That way... it removes all the guesswork out of diagnosis. It's not to say that I don't run experimental setups, but if they mess up, it's easy to sus it out. Keep a backup of everything, and go back when necessary.

It's easy to blame the companies involved when something isn't working, but what you are running is technically an unqualified setup. I've already read several reports that 10.6.5 has messed with audio devices across the board, particularly those with propriety drivers.

Sounds Online

Apple

Logic Pro Help

This isn't an isolated issue, and it certainly isn't isolated to Pro Tools.

[geetarpicker]

I'm not having good luck with PT9 on my i7, Windows 7 64 bit machine. It definately isn't reliable with a UAD2 card. Also I'm trying to learn PT but still need to use Reaper until I'm more up to speed with PT9. Problem is PT9 is actually corrupting something (audio driver, registry?) that causes Reaper to go crazy.

1) UAD2 barely works with PT9, and needs my RME FF800 buffers all the way up to 1024 to play cleanly. Also it's crash prone with the UAD2, and after a crash typically a session is then totally corrupt and won't load anymore. Dang, Reaper will run down to 48 buffers cleanly!

2) If I run PT9 it then corrupts my other DAW, being Reaper. I can load PT9 onto my system and Reaper is fine, but once I open up a session in PT9 and then close it and go on to Reaper then Reaper is corrupted. Reaper will load, but when you click on a track lane it starts to flicker and locks. A reboot won't fix it, reinstalling Reaper won't fix it, even uninstalling PT9 won't fix it. I have to restore windows back to before I fooled with PT9 at all to get Reaper running again. Oddly I can even then reinstall PT9 without any initial conflicts to Reaper. However once PT9 is opened one time Reaper is wacked out again. It seems that using PT9 causes it to write something to the drive that wacks out my other DAW, something that even an uninstall of PT doesn't remove.

Hopefully PT9 really works on the patches and bug fixes for this. It seems folks with MACs are having better luck overall compared with PCs.

[baka]

PT9 seems to do things to the rest of the system on a Mac as well. I still haven't successfully run Protools either with a digi 002 rack, or a MOTU 828mk3 (connected on separate occasions).
After Pro tools 9 freezes (in too many situations to mention here) if I then restart my Mac it freezes before it has completely shut down. It was running Logic, DP, and Live fine before I installed Protools 9!


I've spent 3 solid days trying to get it to work and hours on the phone to support (mostly listening to irrelevant messages before I get through to anyone) and I'm giving up now to get some work done on software that works.

Its great that PT9 works fine for Dism, but I agree with siraltus that this is unacceptable. If we wanted to spend hours debugging Avid's software we could have done it as beta testers, not as paying customers. What will we get from Avid for being the first to try it out?

iMac 2.66 i5 Quad/10.6.4
4Gb RAM

[siraltus]

Originally Posted by Dism

You aren't the only person in the world running PT9 or any other DAW. I guarantee there are others out there who are having similar problems with Cubase/Live/Logic, because that's the nature of computers. There is no one flawless DAW. I can tell you that PT9 has been a completely joy for me, and it hasn't even crashed once.

That being said... I'm not running MOTU gear, so I can't say whether or not that is the cause... but even identically built systems have differences. It's the nature of computers. There are probably others out there who are running 10.6.5 perfectly fine with PT9 and MOTU.

At the same time, it's always a bad idea to trust the very latest OS build of any OS. I'm pretty much always at least 3 builds behind, and only ever use qualified combinations of software and hardware. That way... it removes all the guesswork out of diagnosis. It's not to say that I don't run experimental setups, but if they mess up, it's easy to sus it out. Keep a backup of everything, and go back when necessary.

It's easy to blame the companies involved when something isn't working, but what you are running is technically an unqualified setup. I've already read several reports that 10.6.5 has messed with audio devices across the board, particularly those with propriety drivers.

Sounds Online

Apple

Logic Pro Help

This isn't an isolated issue, and it certainly isn't isolated to Pro Tools.

I've built my own machines for the past 16 years so I know exactly what you're talking about.

However...

CoreAudio is part of the operating system used by ALL audio apps to interact with the audio hardware. This means that if there was a fundamental problem introduced into CoreAudio by the 10.6.5 update, it would affect all apps that use CoreAudio - Cubase, Logic, Live included.

But it doesn't. Out of all the CoreAudio apps on my system, only Pro Tools is having problems. The logical conclusion thus is that there is something wrong with the way Pro Tools' DAE interacts with the CoreAudio layer. Perhaps the DAE is doing some kind of ugly hack to talk to CoreAudio that broke in 10.6.5 because Apple changed something? If so, that's bad design. Other companies were able to write their software in such a way that they continue to work with 10.6.5. How? Magic... :)

Also, As a PT user since version 5.x, Digidesign/Avid has established a history of putting out shoddy initial releases and being very slow with releasing fixes. Hell, it took them 21 months to release an update to Pro Tools 8 LE that finally addressed the kernel panic which happened when you unplugged your Digi interface before you shut down your Mac (this was addressed in the 8.0.4cs2 update released in October 2010, 21 months after the release of Pro Tools LE 8.0). Your software hard-freezing your customers' computers is extremely embarrassing and reeks of poor development and QA practices.

Finally, the links you provided are completely irrelevant to this thread - they talk about OS X not seeing their USB devices (mostly MIDI interfaces) after the 10.6.5 update. This is not what's happening on my system.

[siraltus]

Guys, I did some testing and figured out exactly what the problem is. It is a serious bug in Pro Tools 9's Digital Audio Engine.

Pro Tools 9 will consistently crash if you select a CoreAudio device with more than 48 I/O as the playback engine. I think it has something to do with the way Pro Tools 9 enumerates available I/O via CoreAudio.

I have a MOTU PCI-424 system with a 24 I/O and two 2408mk3 interfaces, as well as a M-Audio ProFire Lightbridge.

No crash if I select the Lightbridge (this has 36 I/O) as the playback engine.

No crash if I select the PCI-424 system as the playback engine but turn off one of the physical interfaces, reducing the number of I/O available to Pro Tools on the PCI-424 CoreAudio device to 48.

If I have all three of my MOTU interfaces on and the total number of I/O visible to Pro Tools becomes 72, Pro Tools crashes every time I select the PCI-424 device as the playback engine.

If I select my aggregate audio device that combines all of my interfaces into a single device with 108 I/O, Pro Tools also crashes every time.

I also created another aggregate device using the Lightbridge and my Mackie d.4 Pro DJ mixer (which is a class-compliant FireWire device that doesn't use drivers). This device totals 54 I/O and selecting it as the playback engine crashes Pro Tools consistently as well. (Selecting the d.4 Pro mixer alone as the playback engine does not cause a crash.)

This is definitely a bug in Pro Tools - Avid, this is embarrasing. I submitted this as a case to Avid Support. Please fix it ASAP!

[Fulwave]

I too am finding many issues on 2 different macs with Core Audio intensive programs after installing PT9. Both causing PT9 to crash & other core audio based programs to also act strange.

[gmsjay]

Originally Posted by Dism

You aren't the only person in the world running PT9 or any other DAW. I guarantee there are others out there who are having similar problems with Cubase/Live/Logic, because that's the nature of computers. There is no one flawless DAW. I can tell you that PT9 has been a completely joy for me, and it hasn't even crashed once.

That being said... I'm not running MOTU gear, so I can't say whether or not that is the cause... but even identically built systems have differences. It's the nature of computers. There are probably others out there who are running 10.6.5 perfectly fine with PT9 and MOTU.

At the same time, it's always a bad idea to trust the very latest OS build of any OS. I'm pretty much always at least 3 builds behind, and only ever use qualified combinations of software and hardware. That way... it removes all the guesswork out of diagnosis. It's not to say that I don't run experimental setups, but if they mess up, it's easy to sus it out. Keep a backup of everything, and go back when necessary.

It's easy to blame the companies involved when something isn't working, but what you are running is technically an unqualified setup. I've already read several reports that 10.6.5 has messed with audio devices across the board, particularly those with propriety drivers.

Sounds Online

Apple

Logic Pro Help

This isn't an isolated issue, and it certainly isn't isolated to Pro Tools.

You must work for AVID...you are on this forum defending them blindly as well....

CUBASE, LOGIC, REASON and even the "free" reaper works with my interface...PT doesn't...Doesn't seem like a focusrite or win 7 issue to me.