poor rewire performance

[swethington]

Hi, this is my first post here, and I tried searching this forum as well as the web for some info and haven't had any luck.

My issue is that I'm using ProTools LE 7.4.2cs1 with Reason 4.0.1 via Rewire. And I'm having pretty poor results. The best example I can give is that I recently programmed some drums in ProTools using Reason for the drum sounds. I had a few playback problems while doing this where PT would give me H/W Buffer errors occasionally, although I tried changing the settings to every possible setting but had the same results regardless. These errors were minimal though, so I just soldiered through. Then I wanted to record each of the individual drum sounds as audio files in Pro Tools, and that's when everything freaked out.

I've seen some people talk about Rewire causing Pro Tools to crash, but I never had that problem. The issue was just that I couldn't actually record more than 30 seconds or so before getting the H/W buffer errors again. Again, I tried every setting and nothing worked. I was trying to record 16 tracks at once (via Rewire), and when that didn't work, I tried 8 at a time. When that didn't work, I tried 2. And so on... Nothing helped.

Eventually, I exported the MIDI file to Logic, rewired everything up there and recorded all the parts with no problems at all. No hitches, no flubs, no problems at all. So it seems to me the problem is not Rewire or Reason, but something in ProTools itself.

Has anyone else experienced this issue, and if so were you able to fix it? A friend of mine suggested that it might be an issue of firewire bandwidth (I'm using an external 7200rpm HD on the firewire bus with the 002) and he suggested installing an additional firewire card. However, I'm using an iMac, so that's not really an option. (See my system info below)

All in all, here's what I've tried so far....
-deleting Digi Database files
-re-installing Pro Tools
-reconnecting 002 and my hard drive in different orders
-changed all H/W Buffer settings
-deactivated every other track and plug in in the session (although there were only 3 other tracks with DigiRack EQs and Compressors on them)

Any suggestions, help or questions would be GREATLY appreciated.

thanks,
stv

[swethington]

Sorry for the follow up post, but like I said, this is my first post, and it looks like my system info didn't show up after all. So...

iMac 24" 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo....3 GB RAM....Mac OS X 10.5.4....ProTools LE 7.4.2cs1...Reason 4.0.1....002R

[DigiTechSupt]

Try reducing the # of CPU's in the Playback Engine to 1 and let me know if that helps.

It's also good to know what the error numbers in the messages are that you're getting.

Have you tried all the optimizations in the General Troubleshooting thread yet?

[swethington]

Digi- thanks for the reply.

I did try reducing the # of cpu's to 1 but it didn't make a difference.

I've checked all the general troubleshooting tips and have done everything except turning off bluetooth (i have a wireless mouse and keyboard). I'm going to grab a keyboard/mouse from a friend and try again.

Once I do that, I'll try to recreate the problem and post the DAE error numbers.

thanks again.

[swethington]

hmm, well, different story today.
I turned off bluetooth, and disabled the firewire networking option (hadn't done this before), had PT set to a HW Buffer of 128 w/ both processors and after about :30 of recording (again, from reason) got DAE -9128.

So I tried turning one processor off, and now of course it worked great. Even turned bluetooth and airport back on, still no problems. Actually even set the HW Buffer to 32 w/ one processor and no problems.

Not sure why it didn't make a difference before when I tried it, but at least it works now. My only question/concern is that does this mean that PT is actually only using half the processing power of my computer?

Regardless of the specifics, thanks for your help in getting me up and running again, much appreciated.

[Phil Ogden]

Originally Posted by swethington

My only question/concern is that does this mean that PT is actually only using half the processing power of my computer?

No. You're still using all the Mac's processing power.I believe that some of the PT code runs on one CPU and some on the other. Digi will, no doubt, be able to explain this a little more eloquently.

http://www.myspace.com/philogg

[DigiTechSupt]

Phil's right - reducing the # of CPU's just reduces the number specifically allocated to RTAS processing. You're still using that 2nd CPU for other tasks, including running code that is not fully RTAS compliant (which many plug-ins still need, especially VI's).