Intermittent Distortion

[hirundos]

Been having an intermittent but concerning issue with my 2016 MacBook Pro running 10.12.6, where I will suddenly get crazy distorted audio when playing back. I will be editing for hours, and then out of nowhere and with no error message, playback gets crackly and terribly distorted. I have had it happen in iZotope RX, too, but I realized that it was probably running through Pro Tools via RX Connect, so using CoreAudio/PT for playback. I believe that I had to reboot the computer to make it stop. (It's been a while since I've had this happen to me to this degree...I still get crackling sometimes though on a smaller scale).

I was running PT 2018.1, but have recently updated to 2018.4. Today I also manually uninstalled (using this) and then reinstalled, hoping maybe that would reinstall the driver. I also got rid of some very old digidesign files from a very old PT install. I don't know yet if it's fixed because the problem can be so intermittent; it may be a while before I know if the fix worked (but I am doubtful).

I'm having a hard time trying to figure out if this is a PT issue, or if it is with my computer. I had an incident where the crazy distortion was triggered by the sound of the charger being plugged in, but I must have been running PT at the time (because a few months ago I was working several hours a day in PT doing crazy editing, so it was always open). I want to take it to the Genius Bar, but the problem is intermittent and can't be triggered, so I don't know how they'll be able to diagnose.

I'm just looking for some troubleshooting advice, or see if anyone has had this happen to them, too.

[hirundos]

If anyone comes across this thread, the way that I was able to "solve" it (or rather, make it so that it never happens), is that I never allow my computer to go to sleep while a session is open, which used to happen all the time if I took a break and then came back to working on a session. It has not happened to me since I started quitting out of PT before taking a break, or leaving it open but have sleep/disk sleep disabled.

[amagras]

Originally Posted by hirundos

never allow my computer to go to sleep while a session is open

I think there are a few things here that will make your life easier:
https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/ar...oting/en367983

[hirundos]

Originally Posted by amagras

I think there are a few things here that will make your life easier:
https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/ar...oting/en367983

Yes, thanks! I always do the optimization for when I am recording, but get lazy when I'm just editing

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by hirundos

Yes, thanks! I always do the optimization for when I am recording, but get lazy when I'm just editing

You only need to do the optimizations once and once done leave them as they are.