Constant 9173 error's PT 12.6 *solved*

[Studio Llama]

Hi all

I'm having serious trouble with PT 12.6 (vanilla) and the 9173 error. It was pretty bad on 12.5 but is worse on 12.6, CPU hovers around 50-60% then will spike to 100% and 9173 comes up, then everything is distorted requiring a reboot.

I have removed Click II from the plugin folder altogether. I am running relatively large projects at 48K, maybe 60 audio tracks, I'm using 35 (1-2 to 71-72) stereo busses, for routing to sub masters, then FX, verbs, delays, plates, etc etc. Parallel processing on snare, kick, guitars, guitar/BV sub groups etc.

Using a fair amount of plugs, but 95% of my tracks are frozen.

A friend has been running Reaper at 96K with 90 tracks and zero issues on a 2 year old MBP.

I am running, OS X 10.10.5 on a 2016 MBP, 2.8Ghz i7, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, 500 GB SSD, RME FF800 over the thunderbolt adapter.

Can't take it any longer, love PT and the workflow, the look, features, would be a real shame to swap as I haven't found anything I like as much (not including 9173's).

Not sure where to go from here? Sierra maybe? 12.6 has not been good from the off, the first several times I used it after install the last 12.5 session I worked on wouldn't open up without crashing.

Regards, Gareth


EDIT: I chased through the plugins as per instructions and found a couple of old ones which I had downloaded on trial version and which had then expired a long time ago, removing these seems to have worked! Thank you and sorry PT 12.6 for blaming you. I hope things stay like this, CPU hovering around 25% now.

[Studio Llama]

https://youtu.be/3wiCwiB-vPs

This is just after opening the project, haven't started play yet.

[Darryl Ramm]

Uh oh. Not good news.

What sample rate and buffer size are you using?

Trouble shooting you should try, and hopefully already have:

Temp. remove all third party plugins from the plugin folder. You have to get them out, just freezing a track does not guarantee an errant plugin cannot cause havoc in Pto Tools. Just get all plugins in the folder and drag them elsewhere, Pro Tools will put back its standard plugins. Leave them out while debugging until the system is stable.

Trash prefs (and do so again between other tests).

Does the system get stable at any buffer size?

Try using Built-In output as the playback engine? Is that much more stable?

If this only happens to one session try importing that content to another.

Create a new OS X admin account and test from there.

[TOM@METRO]

We need to know more. This looks like it may be a issue with a particular plug-in or VI.

If you open this session without plug-ins active (hold Shift as you open) what happens?

If it all looks good, you will need to start activating plug-ins until the culprit is found.

I have plug-ins that work better in 12.4 than 12.6, but the only way to sort it out is a bit lengthy.

EDIT: and, what Darryl said above.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Studio Llama

https://youtu.be/3wiCwiB-vPs

This is with the project just opened, haven't started play yet, just sat there doing nothing.

Ouch. But that type of behavior burning CPU before play can be plugin interaction, either totally broken plugins or plugins with denormalization issues. So after removing all third party plugins if this still happens start uninstantating Pro Tools standard plugins and see if /when it goes away, start with any instances of SansAmp and D-Verb.

[Studio Llama]

Thanks for the replies guys, will try removing plugs.

Running 48K sample rate, buffer size 1024. Actually since, 12.5 I haven't been able to do a large mix with smaller buffer sizes without serious errors coming up.

[Studio Llama]

By removing plugins will I lose all the settings in this mix I am working on? What will happen later when I unfreeze the tracks?

Thanks, Gareth

[Studio Llama]

OK, so booting whilst holding shift results in 2% CPU usage

Concerned as to what happens if I remove all plugins with my mix and settings. The waves plugins I have all come under the waveshell.aax right? They're not individual.

Also, could it be that I have too many plugins on the session? It's not crazy, there's about 80 combined Auxes and tracks, some with 4 or 5 intensive plugs on but most with just 2, buses with compression plugs etc.

Thanks

Gareth

[Ianduarte]

It's very funny. I run a hackintosh, and my system description is in my profile, but I don't have half the errors you guys do. I really wish I knew why. I am a power user. Lot's o VI's, Universal Audio, Click II, and since 12.5.1 all the errors that bothered me are gone. Never had a screen lag, just 2 or 3 -9173 errors and sometimes it crashes on quit, but the two erros I found in this version no one ever talked about.
My errors, in case you guys didn't see are:
When you commit up to the first plugin in the chain, sometimes the last ones vanishes. Just to clarify, I was editing a vocal with melodyne and when I was done, I committed just it, and the reverb i had set disappeared. I don't know if it's kind a mono to stereo problem, because the reverb was a Mono to Stereo. I think it is a reborn problem, because I saw this in 12.5 but fixed in 12.5.1.
The other problem is that when I try to edit a clip with the new equalizer feature, sometimes I cannot move things, just the high and low pass, like if they were there, but frozen, and that's is it. Other than that, very stable here. Mixing 24/7.

Heavy power user here!

Let's try to find out why my hack behaves somewhat better that the macs. I NEVER have system errors and such. I wanna figure this out not for me, but for you guys.

Best.

[cshaw]

Originally Posted by Studio Llama

OK, so booting whilst holding shift results in 2% CPU usage

Concerned as to what happens if I remove all plugins with my mix and settings. The waves plugins I have all come under the waveshell.aax right? They're not individual.

Also, could it be that I have too many plugins on the session? It's not crazy, there's about 80 combined Auxes and tracks, some with 4 or 5 intensive plugs on but most with just 2, buses with compression plugs etc.

Thanks

Gareth

Debug your problems with a copy of the session

- Shift-click on the session copy so that it opens with all of the plugins deactivated.

- open the system usage window and control-click each plugin to activate them.
- take note of the system usage as you add in each plugin and you should be able to deduce which plugin(s) are spiking your cpu. Remove those from the session then close and reopen it with the plugins activated and see if you still have spikes. Make sure that the plugins that are causing cpu spike are up to date. Also remove any plugins that you don't use that often.

You also may want to open the Activity Monitor program on your mac to see if there are any other programs or background processes that are taking up CPU time.