Pro Tools 12 HD beach ball every few minutes

[DrVictorSA]

Hi there,

Please assist I am using:

Mac Pro tower (2012) OS: Sierra 10.12.5
6 Core 2 x 2.4 ghz
64gb memory
4 hard drives totaling 6.5TB, Mac HD is SSD

I am running:

Pro Tools 12 HD with 2 x HDX cards
Logic 10

I am having a issue where when I work in ProTools or Logic the mac beachball appears every few minutes, even on a small session, which does not make sense as I have upgraded my Mac Pro to have so much power, also if i play music in iTunes or on Youtube I get this loud buzzing sound as If the HDX card has crashed and is struggling to keep up with the playback? I am thinking my Mac may be too old now to run Sierra and the latest updated softwares or maybe my processor is struggling to keep up? I am really lost and frustrated, maybe someone can offer some advise on a step forward.

Regards,
Victor

[musicman691]

Try these things with the computer unplugged:
Open the case and clean out all the dust that accumulates inside; these old cheesegrater Macs can collect dust like crazy and things can overheat
Unplug and replug all connectors that you can
Reseat the HDX cards in the card cage
Make sure the power supply cables for the HDX cards are properly seated on all ends
Now plug the computer back into the AC mains
That buzzing sound - is it mechanical or in the audio? If mechanical there's a couple of possibilities - either it's one of the fans or possibly a mechanical resonance. It's also possible that the power supply for the machine is having issues. One more possibility is one of your spinner drives is going bad; take them out of the drive cage one at a time and see what happens.

[DrVictorSA]

Thank you for the advice musicman, I am going to try this out.

Regards,

[reichman]

Hit it with this:

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/t...nd_Preferences

Prefs and Workspace Database files. That reliably cleans up any beachballs for me. Sometimes I have to trash a Wavecache file, too.

loud buzzing sound as If the HDX card has crashed and is struggling to keep up with the playback?

Increase your buffer size.

[DrVictorSA]

Thanks Nathan, will check this out!