I can't use any PSP plugins in PT12 - Win 10

[Bulley]

Avid have told me they've "escalated" my case and are in contact with PSP, I'll post if I hear anything useful.
I haven't really gotten anything useful from PSP, they said they were aware of AAX users having the issue but couldn't reproduce it.

[leftalive]

I've been having similar issues since switching to Windows, although I don't generally get an error message at all - the session just shuts down. Happening with Old Timer & FETpressor... Not sure about Vintage Warmer.

Never had these issues on MacOS.

I'm about ready to swear off their stuff all together, which is a shame, as I own about half of their plugins.


EDIT - Just got the assertion error trying to move Old Timer down one slot on a track, so... (sigh...) whatever.

[abc1mce2]

Originally Posted by Greg M

abc1mce2,

Can you provide the component list of your computer (similar to what I have in my signature) or a Sandra report. What video card are you using?

My experience with PSP plugins is very different than yours. A little more detail about your computer would be helpful.

Greg

My video card is a SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6570 1GB DDR3. An older card but it's a one slot card which I was looking for so not to block any of my PCIe slots.

[Greg M]

Well, it might be worth trying an Nvidea card. No need to get a top of the line expensive one.

FWIW, my PSP plugins are still working without issue. I just updated Nexellence and it acted a little strange, but deleting all preferences straightened it right out.

Hope this helps,
Greg

[Bulley]

I've got an Nvidia card in mine so I don't think it's related to that.

[Bulley]

I had this helpful response from PSP today..

"We still haven’t managed to fix it.

Warm regards from Warsaw"

[[email protected]]

Same problem here with PT 12.8.2R2 on Win 10. All other plugins functioning, but all my PSP plugins generate an AAE Error (-30001, -30002, -30003, -30004, or -30005), usually followed by an immediate PT crash or a crash later when I try to exit PT.

[Plec]

I've had the exact same issue and been going crazy over it. I've managed to hunt the problem down locally on my end, and since I'm running PT12.8.2 on two machines, one being a Win7 with 4GB of RAM (I know, hehe) and one Win10 machine with 16GB of RAM and can report similar issues on both systems I've been able to go through quite a bit of troubleshooting and find some things out.

As others report, I had the issue on very busy sessions which makes the problem very tough to hunt down, but I just recently had the PSP crash with 100% failure rate on a very small 18ch session.

So without boring everyone with pages of texts, which I instead sent to PSP support, what I found was simply this...

PSP crashes the software when in combination with other plugins creates some kind of an illegal structure within ProTools. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with system resources as in memory etc.. since I can replicate the issue on two very different machines here. When successfully solving this issue within one session... all other sessions having the same kind of issue magically decides to work within this instance/launch of ProTools. If ProTools is re-launched and you open a problem session containing this illegal structure the crashes are back.

First off... let's see what DOESN'T work:
Trashing preferences, updating graphics drivers and other similar troubleshooting guides... does not work!!

What does work? This...

Please remember that if you don't re-launch ProTools and just close re-open as sesison you might accidentally solve this issue without knowing it. It's only after a re-launch and open the most recent session that you can know if you've found the problem or not.

Also simply making plugins inactive doesn't cut it. Here, the entire channels need to be inactivated for a reliable troubleshoot.

1. What you need to do is open a problem session using "SHIFT" so the session opens with all plugins inactive. Then just select all tracks and DISABLE all tracks in the session and save this as a new session.

2. Re-launch ProTools and open this new session.

3. Enable all channels using PSP plugins and save as a new session.

4. Re-launch ProTools and check this new session to see if it crashes when trying to change anything on those PSP plugins. Most probably they're ok.

5. Enable batches of similar channels with plugins i.e.. all UAD, all Softube, al Slate etc.. and save a new session after every activated batch of plugins, re-launch ProTools and check for stability.

6. Continue this process until you find the issue.

7. Once you do find the culprit, know that if you leave this channel or channels deactivated and save the problem session like that. After you re-launch ProTools, open the session and enable this/these channels causing the issue very last.. this solves any PSP issues for any other session you open within this launch of ProTools.

Like I said, replicated this exactly on two very different machines with different specs so I hope this can help all others out there. PSP support is not very helpful, just saying everything works on their end and from what I can see anyone who has this issue is on Windows? And also when testing here locally different sessions crash on different setups so I think this is very very hard for PSP to hunt down since the problem sessions I've sent them works well on their end and when I launch a problematic session on another system here it can also work perfectly but it's 100% failure rate on the originating system having the issue and also the solution seems 100% correct as well.

For me, the issue seems to be Slate VMR in combo with PSP. If that's up to VMR or Slate plugins in general, I have no idea. On one session that's unstable only one instance of VMR is enough to cause the PSP crash and on another session 3 out of 4 instances work but adding the last 4th one causes the crash 100% of the time.

Since VMR is the issue here, the main solution is opening the session having the issue and disabling this channel with the VMR on it, save new session, relaunch ProTools, open the session and then activate this channel. After this, closing the session and re-opening it which would otherwise cause the crash now works great, also heading into other sessions that would be unstable now works great as well. But if you re-launch PT and head into any of these problem sessions with the channels engaged from the start that is responsible for issue, the crashes are back.

So happy hunting!!

[Bulley]

Good hunting. The VMR thing makes sense to me, there will definitely be instances of it in my unstable sessions I had problems in the PT10/32 bit days with VMR and Soundtoys not playing together well.

PSP have been very little help with me as well but Avid have said it's not just a PSP thing but a bug in Pro Tools that affects other plugins as well. Bug number PT-233897, whatever that means and that it "won't be fixed in early releases but in some major update probably".

Great.

[Jeezer]

I have the same issue with PSP, esp the E27 eq (which is otherwise great)

I too wrote to PSP to no avail.


What I would avoid doing is anything anyone has written above (bug hunting) a completely pointless and random task that they (and I) have already done and won't do you any good.

The fact is, in certain versions of PT 12, PSP plugs can throw access violations and crash.

It has nothing to do with other plugs, nothing to do with session size, nothing to do with 'fresh launch', nothing to do with trashed prefs etc... why, because I did it all, I did everything you could do and tried every permutation of plugs installed and used, small sesh, large sesh.

I've had the problem happen with JUST the E27 installed and no other plugs (for testing) on a ONE TRACK project, with enough continued inserting of the PSP plug and adjusting the GUI it'll eventually give an access violation. BUGGY code, whether it's purely PSP's issue or Partly Avid's as someone above said, all I know is it'll happen eventually.

That is no way to run a PT session, just waiting for the next crash/AV fault or playing stupid mind games with random factors and spotting patterns (that are different for us all...).. I'm on nvidia, i'm on windows 10 etc. It's not the point. Other than it seems to be a windows only thing at least. I doubt everyone who has it is overclocking either (a more common thing on windows PCs I believe) as I am. I've seen faults from bad overclocks in the past but normally blue screens not quite like this so...

E27 to me is one of the best EQ plugs ever made, both in sound and function but it was never really polished for the AAX side (inc full D-Command integration for the FULL non se version).

I can't think of any other plug-in eq I like as much but, while it will run in blue cat patchwork (VST version) without crashing, it's cumbersome and won't work with my icon properly at all so...

Thanks PSP.