Virtual Instruments and 9093 / 9172 errors

[wyman]

Hi Folks,

Lately, I have noticed that my system gets 9093 and 9172 error messages when using virtual instruments, particularly the Arturia collection and Reason.

The Arturia synths almost always cause one of these errors the first time the playhead hits the midi clip on an instrument track. I can hit play again, and it will play fine. This will often happen for each unique instrument, which can get cumbersome in a big track.

The Reason issue is a little harder to diagnose. I'll notice that the errors will happen pretty often when rewiring reason into ProTools, even in relatively small sessions with modest CPU usage on the ProTools side. I'll very often have multiple Reason instruments stemmed out to multiple outputs in reason, rewired into discrete instrument tracks.

The problem seems to be pretty specific to Pro Tools 10. I never encountered it in 8 or 9 (which I ran on an old G5 with only 4 gigs of RAM).

I've played with different buffer settings (though i do like to run the buffer low when composing / recording for latency's sake) and different CPU usage limits and processor numbers, without a whole lot of luck. Even tried changing the slot for the HD card.

I know these errors have been plaguing folks and don't seem to have a whole lot of rhyme or reason, and seem to affect others way more seriously than they affect me.

Anyone have any experience like this? Any way to alleviate the symptoms? Would it make sense to limit the CPU in protools to something really low, like 50%, when using Reason, to effectively make a little more room for its processing?

My system:

HD Native
ProTools HD 10.3.8
Mac pro 3.33 6 Core
16 gigs of ram
OSX 10.7.5
Reason 6

[Darryl Ramm]

Have you fully optimized your system? Every last thing done?

VI samples are on what make/model/sepc drive? Audio/session files are on what make/model/spec (that needs to be a *dedicated*) drive?

All third party plugins up to date/claimed to be compatible with your OS X and PT version?

What are all your playback engine settings? Start by only allocating 5 cores to plugins, that leaves one whole physical core to PT processing itself. With this you want the CPU % limit high, try 99%.

Have you tried using Built in Output with a large VI session and just see what happens?

Try physically removing some of the third party plugin files and see if you can isolate which plugins/VIs might be causing problems (they may not even need to be instantiated to do so, just installed in PT).


Try standard troubleshooting, and HD Native recommendations http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...ve-errors-9071

How many instances of thee VIs are you instantiating? And what sample rate is your session?

[wyman]

Hey Darryl,

Thanks for the response.

All sessions are on a dedicated Seagate SATA drive. The VI's / Reason all live on the system drive. All the drives are 7200 RPM. Perhaps moving these to their own drive would help.

Reason can choke up the system with only a few instances, but I really notice it if I'm working on, say, a pop project, with 6-10 (or even more) different instruments along with audio tracks. The denser the track gets, the more it will choke.

I'm fairly new to the Arturia stuff, usually only one or two instances of them. It's really only the first time the track tries to play that it chokes up the system.

Sample rate is almost always 44.1

Yup, system is optimized, and plugins are current, but it's always good to periodically check up on that, thanks for the reminder.

Great idea to try the built in IO, which would determine if the HD native card were a part of this, yes?

As far as playback engine settings go, I'll try those out. How might setting the CPU usage to 99% affect Reason, which operates as a separate application, and communicates with PT via rewire?

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by wyman

Hey Darryl,

Thanks for the response.

All sessions are on a dedicated Seagate SATA drive. The VI's / Reason all live on the system drive. All the drives are 7200 RPM. Perhaps moving these to their own drive would help.

Reason can choke up the system with only a few instances, but I really notice it if I'm working on, say, a pop project, with 6-10 (or even more) different instruments along with audio tracks. The denser the track gets, the more it will choke.

I'm fairly new to the Arturia stuff, usually only one or two instances of them. It's really only the first time the track tries to play that it chokes up the system.

Sample rate is almost always 44.1

Yup, system is optimized, and plugins are current, but it's always good to periodically check up on that, thanks for the reminder.

Great idea to try the built in IO, which would determine if the HD native card were a part of this, yes?

As far as playback engine settings go, I'll try those out. How might setting the CPU usage to 99% affect Reason, which operates as a separate application, and communicates with PT via rewire?

When running Reason, try winding back your Pro Tools #CPU further, but leave %CPU usage high near 99%. I forget what control Reason gives you on its own CPU usage (CPU usage limits in preferences?). But the IPC overhead, context switching etc. involved with going out via Rewire is not helping here.

You still need to do tests of removing all third party plugin files and lookign for rogue behavior that is destabilizing your system.

[TC_TC_TC]

I've had these problems before and took me a long time to fix. It's very frustrating because I enjoy Reason. The only thing that resolved this issue for me was to uninstall & reinstall Resson. Sometimes I had to do this several times.