Pro Tools 11 - CPU usage holding off USB Audio Error -6104

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by mhmh

In this thread:
http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=346597&page=3

Hanswurstlsepp says:

"I have not had any system overloads or crashes when saving while PT was in PlayBack with 11.0.3.
It seems to be very stable."

He came from 11.02 and was on 10.8.4 at the time

I do not see how that is in any way relevant to a DAE 6104 USB holding off audio problem, they are talking about a very specific problem when trying to save a session. And to me there I would work like crazy to exclude plugins or plugin related problems. There are tens of thousands of Pro Tools users running many different Pro Tools and OS X combinations. The approach to solving this problem cannot be to try to install some version of Pro Tools on a version of OS X that happened to fix some other unrelated problem for one of those users. There are more than enough things to do to troubleshoot this here in a logical way, trying random things is not a good way to try to make progress.

[PMF Media]

One other thing, you may find your problem stems from the internal Fusion Drive you're using to run your system, as has been discussed elsewhere on this forum, the FD is literally a virtual "Fusion" of 2 drive types, an SSD and a Standard "Spinning Platter" drive. There are 2 (at least) potential problems with this setup, firstly, the MacOS decides which applications live on what part of the FD so there's no guarantee that PT11 will be running from the SSD portion - especially if you use the computer to frequently run other things ( the OS shifts things around constantly based on usage). Secondly, the spinning portion of the FD may well be spinning at the less than optimal 5400rpm which will slow things down and almost certainly cause the errors you are describing.

so what's the solution? You could replace the FD with a dedicated SSD or - and this depends on your level of expertise and willingness to dive into the dark realms of UNIX and the the command line structure of Terminal - separate the single virtual drive with the appropriate UNIX command (search the US Macworld site for an article on how to do this) and create 2 separate drives, keep in mind that either solution requires a complete system rebuild so clone your complete system drive before proceeding.

Also, if the computer IS being used for purposes other than solely running PT, it would be a good idea to create a separate partition for PT and install everything else (MS office, iPhoto etc) on another partition, this will give you many happy trouble free hours working in PT.

Hope this helps.

[Darryl Ramm]

The OP tries to make clear he is already using an external audio spec drive for audio/sessions. The Fusion drive is only a boot/system drive, and therefor should not be an issue here.


Whether the HDD part of a fusion combo is 4,800 rpm or 7,200 rpm depends on the model of iMac. If buying an iMac or any other comptuer for *any* use I'd want to backing drive to be 7,200 rpm. Apple has made a balls up of explaining exactly what Fusion is, or exactly what you get in different Mac products. Look for a Mac that has a 7,200 rpm drive and buy the fusion option for that. And again don't use an internal Fusion boot/system drive for audio files, use a dedicated 7,200 rpm HDD or even better a good SSD like a Samsung 840 Pro or Evo, but none of that seems relevant to the problem here.

[propower]

Hey Darryl,

I assure you I am only trying to be helpful but I do recall there was a long thread about this model of imac having troubles with 10.8.5 and 11.0.2.
http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t...highlight=6101
THe solution at that time was to get to 10.8.4. I am keen on these cause I too have this exact imac (though none of the troubles so far).

According to my best research on compatibility 11.0.2 is only qualified up to 10.8.4.
http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...ements&x=0&y=0

Whereas 11.0.3 is actually qualified to 10.8.5.
http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/d...-0-3-Downloads

Now maybe you have inside info that the published stuff is in error WRT 11.0.2. If so that would be good to know as well. I have had software update turned off for the last month and a half waiting for all of this to really shake out...

[Darryl Ramm]

Like many threads here lots of folks were piling onto the thread you quote with "I have the same problem" when maybe they have the same error message (and its unclear if its really the same root cause...) and we never get clear config or troubleshooting info from everybody. There is no way anybody could work out a holistic view of what was going on in that thread. I tried to at the time and could not follow what was going on. Some folks managed to solve their problem doing different things. But even the symptom there was completely different from here, that was a DAE **6101** Error and this is a DAE 6104 error (normally 6101 are pretty easy to fix, these 6104 errors especially with the Eleven Rack seem much rarer and more nebulous). Again I'll repeat my comment that trying permutations that fixed some other problems for other people is not an effective way to try to troubleshoot/solve this specific (and apparently different) problem.

I've seen the concerns about OS X 10.8.5 vs. 10.8.4 and I am not necessarily convinced there is hard evidence of a problem there. However now that PT 11.0.3 is a bridge that allows Mavericks upgrade in future all I'd install is 11.0.3 on Mountain Lion. (yes 10.8.5).

This started with the suggestion to go to Mavericks, something that I still strongly discourage unless many other things have been tried -- including all the troubleshooting steps I already suggested.

[PMF Media]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

The OP tries to make clear he is already using an external audio spec drive for audio/sessions. The Fusion drive is only a boot/system drive, and therefor should not be an issue here.


Whether the HDD part of a fusion combo is 4,800 rpm or 7,200 rpm depends on the model of iMac. .

Sorry, have to disagree here, if the SYSTEM drive is performing at a less than optimal level it WILL cause issues with PT performance. If the drive portion that houses/contains PT does in fact spin as low as 4800rpm(as you've suggested it could) it's recipe for disaster!

As I've seen you post many times, more info (not just system specs) on how the machine is configured, what other apps are present and used on the drive partition etc is required to get a clear picture of what may be causing the issue here. From my own experience, these 61*** handling errors can crop up pretty much out of the blue at times but if they happen consistently and the session and audio does reside on a suitable external drive, the issue pretty much has to be something interfering with proper PT function on the SYSTEM drive. The absolute optimal setup to run PT is to have the MacOS (mandatory add ons included) and PT as the only app installed, now most of need more than this to do our work, but over loading the system drive with a whole bunch of apps to do say... your book keeping and accounts or maybe edit some photos or videos IS NOT OPTIMAL for PT! This scenario is way further complicated when the system drive is a FD and these apps - including PT - are "scattered" across both portions.

To test the system drive and narrow down the possible causes of the problem, simply clone the existing system drive to and external 7200rpm drive, restart from the external drive and see if the errors follows.

Here to help

[Darryl Ramm]

Oh for the love of God, is here something in the drinking water today? How about leaving the original user to do some simple debugging with things like just changing the playback engine and seeing what happens. Even if I agreed with anything you've said so far, then cloning the OS drive would be *way* down my list of troubles shooting steps.

[PMF Media]

OK, this is me bowing out and graciously walking away with my hands raised in surrender.

oh, as for the water... I prefer beer

[Darryl Ramm]

Oh well so do I

And when I think about your home town of Adelaide it reminds me of Coopers Sparking Ale.... a great beer. Hopefully we are a bit closer to agreeing on that?

[PMF Media]

True that! It's 38 degrees centigrade here today, that's just over 100 degrees in your scale so I'll definately be knocking the top off a couple when I finish work!

Cheers.