Any Ideas? Please!!!

[paulrgmusic]

This has been going on for a couple of months now and it is driving me mad!

When I open a session about 50% of the time it works perfectly. The other 50% of the time I open a session, press play and then get a message about a problem with the audio clock. I have checked all my settings; clock is set to internal (I have no external things anyway) and the bit-rate is fine. If it plays the first time I press play, it seems to work until I open another session (when the computer flips a coin again). If I try to change the hw buffer size to wake things up after I get the error message I get the message that PT can't reacquire the hardware. I then get PT has an unknown error and must close. I have no other audio apps running.

I have trashed prefs and repaired permissions, I have all power saving things off, time machine and wi-fi are both disabled. I have tested using the built-in audio; this seems to work perfectly well but obviously sounds dreadful.

If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Cheers
Paul

[Bruce Paine]

Try experimenting with your connections...

If you are currently going iMac > FW drive > Mbox 2 Pro
Then try iMac > Mbox 2 Pro > FW drive

If your drive has a USB port, try removing the drive from the FW chain, and connecting via USB.

See if either of those helps.

[YYR123]

Aren't there drivers for the inbox to pro unit - that have to be downloaded separately I'm assuming those are working right

So when that happens when it kicks you out of ProTools and gives u clocking issues what does the little green light on the mbox2pro is it blinking or is it solid??

You not running sessions over 96Khz's are you???

[ejwells]

Originally Posted by LoneTrombone

Try experimenting with your connections...

If you are currently going iMac > FW drive > Mbox 2 Pro
Then try iMac > Mbox 2 Pro > FW drive

If your drive has a USB port, try removing the drive from the FW chain, and connecting via USB.

See if either of those helps.

You don't want to run your audio drive via USB on a Mac.

[paulrgmusic]

Thanks for these answers. My FW audio drive doesn't have the USB option and my Mbox Pro is last in the FW chain (iMac>Audio Drive>Mbox Pro) but I have swapped them and it made no difference.

As for the little green light - I don't have one as I am using power from the FW bus. I saw an article or a post or help page saying you must not use the power adapter unless you are using an unpowered FW port sometimes found on laptops. I have an amber light which is solid and doesn't change when it gives me the error messages. Should I try a power adapter? I don't actually have the adapter so I'll need to get hold of one to try it out.

Thanks for the help so far but if anyone has anything to add I'd be interested to hear any suggestions.

Paul

[paulrgmusic]

Right well, I finally got a loan of a different interface (m audio fast track USB) and it hasn't improved things. Still getting that error. I'm losing the will to live as I have no idea what to do.

Paul

[priorytools]

Paul.
Have a look at the audio tab in "Audio Midi set up".

There may well be something ticked that shouldn't be . . ie, clock source .

[paulrgmusic]

Thanks for the suggestion Priory. I checked that out but all was as it should have been.

Paul

[colinmansfield]

Originally Posted by paulrgmusic

Thanks for the suggestion Priory. I checked that out but all was as it should have been.

Paul

This is a long-standing bug. I have been experiencing this since at least v.8 LE. I have an 002 Rack, but the symptom is the same, sometimes it plays immediately, sometimes it seems to be waiting for something, the stop button flashes and nothing happens. Yes, changing the buffer size, number of processors or % use of CPU gets things back to normal. I am now on PT 10 Native, and it still happens - maybe not as often, but it still happens. And I've discovered a new thing -- it will happen even when PT is idle for lengths of time. About six weeks ago I started a project where I ended up having to use the stand-alone version of RX 2 (its output set to the Mac I/O). Some fixes were things i had to work on for hours, even days at a time. I left PT open (using the 002 R i/O) but when I came back to it, this problem had happened again. resetting the Playback parameters fixed it, but it's still very annoying.

The only program that uses the 002 R is PT 10, everything else goes through the native Mac outputs.

The solutions offered about might work, but I believe it's a bug in either PT or the Digi drivers. However, it's intermittent, apparently rare and seems to affect only certain users while others using similar setups have never seen it. I'm not holding my breath for a fix... Simply hold my breath each time I start up PT and open a project.

[paulrgmusic]

Thanks for the reply.

If I get the error message and go to change buffer settings etc, I get the "cannot reacquire the hardware, it must be being used by something else" error. To my knowledge, the Mbox 2 Pro is not being used by anything else but PT. There seems to be no pattern to whether it will work or not.

Paul