Popping and Crackling - the next thread ...

[leftalive]

Originally Posted by The Weed

There is a way to have Pro Tools start with the Processor affinity you want, you just can't run Pro Tools as Administrator or Pro Tools will start, but the "fix" won't work.

That link is broken for me, could you point to it again?

[The Weed]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e565VSxdVhY

Hope that one works.

[leftalive]

Originally Posted by The Weed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e565VSxdVhY

Hope that one works.

BOOM. Totally worked, and was very easy. Cheers for that.

Now let's just hope it makes a difference...


In case it helps anyone, you can pin the shortcut you create to the taskbar and delete the one from the desktop and it still works fine.

[The Weed]

Excellent. As I mentioned, you can't set Pro Tools to Run as administrator and have the shortcut command work. Best to check that the setting worked by looking in Task Manager>Details and checking the Affinity of ProTools.exe.

[ejinbc]

I just wanted to follow up with a few more comments for anyone struggling with low latency performance and VIs. I installed 2020.5 and decided to redo some optimization tests.

1) Setting the processor affinity on MY system (see below) is critical. I currently use a setting of FFE for processor usage on my 6 core 8700K.

2) C-states switching and Turbo mode must be off in BIOS. I use a 4.8 GHz all core overclock with a -1 AVX offset. This is 24/7 stable with the cooling listed below. Note, I do not generally test stability with synthetic benchmarks - this is not real world testing. I set up a complex ProTools session and try to make it crash. It only takes a few tries to find the limit of your system.

3) Leave Hyperthreading On. With the Affinity switch, the extra (virtual) cores really improve performance in ProTools.

4) The way you setup your recording session can impact low latency performance. I try to avoid stacking VIs into Auxes with heavy effects. I 'think' this might allow ProTools to more easily parallelize the computations.

With the above settings I can record 16 audio tracks, and 16 midi tracks with Abbey Road Drums, Kontakt Pianos, Kontakt Session Horns Pro, Kontakt Session Strings Pro, Massive, H EQ on each of 4 vocal tracks, H Delay (slap) on Vocal send; CLA Mixhub (lite) on Drum Aux, all at 24/96 for more than 3 hours continuous recording no pops, no clicks, no stops. Never a redline on CPU usage meters. All the monitoring and levels are handled in Protools. With 24/96 the 64 bit buffer gives 'unnoticeable' latency YMMV.


Hope this helps someone - Yup, free advise YMMV.

ejinbc


Hardware
Intel Core i7-8700K 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor; Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler; Asus PRIME Z390-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard; Kingston HyperX Fury RGB 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory; Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive - x2 system/samples and tracking; Western Digital Red Pro 6 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive - x2 completed work and backup; Gigabyte GeForce GTX 950 2 GB OC Edition Video Card; Fractal Design Define R4 Blackout ATX Mid Tower Case; EVGA SuperNOVA G2 850 W 80+ Gold Power Supply; Motu 1248 on USB2

Software
Win 10 (latest); Protools 2020.5; Kontakt Ultimate Complete; Waves Gold + CLA Mixhub; H EQ; H Delay;

[The Weed]

And for ease of calculating a Hex number: https://bitsum.com/tools/cpu-affinity-calculator/

[dgdsu]

Originally Posted by ejinbc

OP
But, one last bit of possible help, your CPU is not really designed for this kind of work. I looked up your CPU on the PassMark site. Your SERVER class CPU has a single thread rating of a CPU 10 years old - only 1800. Probably not the best for low latency VIs.

You can'T read and interpret benchmarks like you did. You have to put the reasons into account. The SERVER class CPU is not by accident. It's a requirement. And the benchmarks are only useful if you know how to interpret them. I already did a lot of audio work with many different CPUs in the last 20 years and never a session with ONLY ONE instrument open (like here) ever hit any CPU limits. Music isn't that heavy as Video is. And we edit 4K Video here (as I sad, it's a audio/video suite) - The reason why this CPU has a low rating is because it has thread safety. Which is important if you care about file integrity. GAMING CPUs are dangerous in this manner and can cause glitches. And since the whole issue is sadly NOT reproducable in any other daw, we should look rather into same tweaks which closely refer to the Pro Tools setup. No other DAW has issues here on this machine. That being sad - IF the CPU is part of the problem - THAN it can only be an issue WITH Pro Tools which maybe do not like such CPUs. That - of course - would be another issue then.

[dgdsu]

Now here comes another interesting result of another test we did this morning: It seems that Pro Tools handles "disabling" of plugins different than other DAWs. Disabling the plugins on the master fader had obviously not that effect on the latency as we expected, but when we completely removed them, the latency issue has been drastically reduced. That came with a big surprise for us because we assumed that these plugins do not get into account when bypassed/disabled. "Disabling/Bypassing" (EDIT: I refer to "disabling" only here actually) them seems to be rather something like "muting" (making the effect not hearable) but usually bypassing also means that they are not in the signal flow no more. Weird ...

So it maybe makes sense to use an additional fader for listening the midi recording thru, while the master fader is muted.

[ChuckS]

High latency plugs on the master have been an issue. I don't think there is delay compensation on the master. Try putting an aux in front of the master - route everything to the aux and put the plugs on the aux. Then aux output to the clean no plugs master. There are a couple of videos out there re this setup and additional benefits.

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by dgdsu

Now here comes another interesting result of another test we did this morning: It seems that Pro Tools handles "disabling" of plugins different than other DAWs. Disabling the plugins on the master fader had abviously not that effect on the latency as we expected, but when we completely removed them, the latency issue has been drastically reduced. That came with a big surprise for us because we assumed that these plugins do not get into account when bypassed/disabled. "Disabling/Bypassing" them seems to be rather something like "muting" (making the effect not hearable) but usually baypassing also means that they are not in the signal flow no more. Weird ...

So it maybe makes sense to use an additional fader for listening the midi recording thru, while the master fader is muted.

Just in case this matters, be aware that(in Pro Tools), we consider a plugin to be either ON, on but in bypass, or inactive(where the plugin is grey'd out. When you say "disabled", its confusing as nobody(but you) know if that means "in bypass", or "inactive". The big difference is that "in bypass" still uses system resources, and still adds whatever latency amount the plugin uses when "on". To remove latency and drain on resources, making a plugin inactive is the proper choice. Another good thing to remember is that Delay Compensation(to keep all tracks in time with each other) does not apply to plugins on the Master Tracks(because it would serve no purpose) If you feed headphones via sends(instead of the main output), that would bypass the Master track so the phones would not have the latency of the main output(when caused by plugins on the Master). I realize this is wordy, but I try to break things down for folks that have less experience as a side benefit. I hope it offers something