Protools 12.XX performance optimization script and important tips!

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by seanmccoy

Out of curiosity, aren't a number of hungry plugins designed to utilize hyperthreading?

To me, the proof is in the pudding. Hyperthreading off has been better here(so far). Now I am suspect that Sound Radix Mute-o-matic might be the last of my -9093(have not seen any since pulling that plugin).

[Stevenk734]

Hi Alton,
I know that you posted this optimization
texhnique months ago. I’m running PT 2018.1 for PC, win 10, i7.16 gifs RAM.
To make a long story short, if I can, I’ve been getting that out of cpu error.
I was able to get into task amanger, make those affinity and other setting high, or whatever you recommended, just allowing the PT the 6 cores. It brought down my PT cpu usage dramatically. It does not save that sesettings, however.
I copied and emailed that optimization link that you posted, as an email to myself.
Sorry to sound stupid, but what do I do with this link to make it easier to redo those settings after each PT opening. Could you explain that to me.

[Stevenk734]

Althon,

Sorry to bother you again. 2 things. One, on my PT Usage meter, I actually have not gotten a major improvement. I still seem to fluctuate between 20-40% usage.
I can see that my affinity and other settings were manually adjusted by me to your recommendations, but the PT meter still shows all 8 cores with some % of usage, although 2 are very small %.
I took your link, clicked on it and it said, “ don’t know the host”. I said run anyway.
So, I went back and now I have finally saved it as something like protoolsfix.bat, sitting on my desktop. So, I guess I’ll try opening it after I open pro tools again after I open a session. I won’t be having a session anytime soon, but I’ll just add some nonsense tracks, I guess and see if I get the cpu error.
Any suggestions or instructions, etc, would be appreciated.
I’m in a bit over my head here, technically, but doing the manual changes in task manager were easy enough.
Anyway, thanks in advance for any further advice, feedback.
Sk

[athlon64]

Originally Posted by Stevenk734

Althon,

Sorry to bother you again. 2 things. One, on my PT Usage meter, I actually have not gotten a major improvement. I still seem to fluctuate between 20-40% usage.
I can see that my affinity and other settings were manually adjusted by me to your recommendations, but the PT meter still shows all 8 cores with some % of usage, although 2 are very small %.
I took your link, clicked on it and it said, “ don’t know the host”. I said run anyway.
So, I went back and now I have finally saved it as something like protoolsfix.bat, sitting on my desktop. So, I guess I’ll try opening it after I open pro tools again after I open a session. I won’t be having a session anytime soon, but I’ll just add some nonsense tracks, I guess and see if I get the cpu error.
Any suggestions or instructions, etc, would be appreciated.
I’m in a bit over my head here, technically, but doing the manual changes in task manager were easy enough.
Anyway, thanks in advance for any further advice, feedback.
Sk

If you managed to get the protoolsfix.bat downloaded to yours PC, all that you need to do is run it after you have started protools. If it asks you some additional permissions every time you do that, there is a way to disable that but you will need to google it.
Then to check if the script has worked you can go into protools affinity settings in task manager and there you should find two cores unchecked.

You will still see cpu usage on those two cores. But that's from other apps, not protools.

I will be honest with you, in the end i solved all of my problems, caused by the fact that protools is not a very well programmed piece of software right now.
By switching to studio one by presonus.
Which not only works a lot smoother and snappier then protools but is also phenomenaly stable and offers me features i actually use and never got in protools.
Long story short, i think we all need to ditch the "industry standard" philosophy and get used to the tools that are objectively the best and can become transparent when you are mixing. Which protools for me could never do. I allways had to worry about problems and bugs and things not programmed very well.

[Stevenk734]

Athlon,
So very nice of you to respond after posting so many months ago.
In the meantime, that’s basically what I’ve done. I put the bat file on the desktop and install it each time I boot up PT. I do install it after I start a session.
I open a session.i haven’t had the chance to test whether it’ll keep resetting those changes, but it worked a time or two. Seems idiotic that one can’t save these changes permanently per program, butxwhat do I know.
I’m an old analog musician(68), who, after retiring from my doc gig, always wanted to try this digital stuff, so I’m no digital genius. I just went out and bought thexstandard, as you mentioned.
Quite a learning curve. I hire 25 year olds to help me(lol).
Thanks for the studio one tip. I’m pretty deep into buying a bunch of AAX PLUGS.
Will they be redownloadable from whatever come any(waves, mcdsp, isotope, etc, in studio one? Do they take vst?, AAX? Please advise for the future.
I never upgraded past version 2018. 1. Just too much can screw up with this stuff.
Anyway, thanks. I mean get post a follow up on how that script worked, just so you can know how it did. I don’t really want that blow another 330 really get bow, for 2 16s from crucial, but we’ll see.
Thank you
Sk

[Stevenk734]

Sorry about the typos. Fat iPhone fingers,
I meant that I’ll post how that script does after I use it a bit.
Do let me know about Studio one, although I can just google it and check it out.
Is there a particular version you would recommend, should I decide to go that route. As I had asked, does it take vst, AAX plugs?
Thx

[YYR123]

I don't think I ever tried this.....interesting.

[chrisdee]

After reading this great thread I've started experimenting a bit with affinity and priority settings in Windows 10.

On my system it doesn't seem to make any difference if I set the affinity settings befor or after PT is started. Seems to work anyway.

I'v also played a bit with the priority settings. Doesn't seem to make any difference on my system. Only thing to avoid is setting it to realtime while affinity is set to use all cores for PT. That makes my system completly unresponsive and I have to physically turn off my computer and on again.

I was wonder if it would be better to force all other processes and services to use only one core and let only Pro Tools use the other cores?
Only problem is that affinity settings are not remembered after reboot, so a script is needed.

[chrisdee]

Originally Posted by ejinbc

2) Minimize the use of serial processing - recently someone on GS was discussing optimizing your DAW setup to minimize serial processing of audio signals – the more parallel the signal path, the easier it is for the program to schedule across all cores (makes sense). So I route all signals straight to Master Output channels for monitoring. I have one send setup for Vox slapback (HDelay) echo during recording for monitoring.

3) Read the chapter on Groups in PT - Groups can be used for level control to minimize the need for Aux channels (e.g. drums master) – left click to adjust the group (like a VCA), and right click to adjust an individual group members level (wow). I have also started to mix more like this and for many tasks it keeps the mix simpler and easier for me to control. Aux channels can lead to extra serial processing ???

What do you do if you want reverb, delay or other effects on more than only the vox?

[Stevenk734]

C,

I can’t speak for athlon, but I guess you haven’t noticed that either he, or a colleague, did write a script, for that purpose.
I only picked up on his post of months ago, after I recently developed cpu peaks and out of cpu power error messages. So, I’m new to playing around with his patch and haven’t had enough time put in, to offer much of an opinion yet.
I don’t work at this full time.
Anyway, it appears that these settings Cant be saved, which is why they wrote a script. Just look for it in his post. I downloaded it and it seems to do the setting changes. I , to date, haven’t noticed major cpu reduction yet, but I also haven’t had time to test it much.
I’ll post more feedback on its effect, when I’ve used it more