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  #1  
Old 04-26-2020, 07:24 AM
MKZ MKZ is offline
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Default Very Strange CPU Performance Problems w/ some plugins (ReWire, Reason, Minibit)

Hello everyone,

Right off the bat, I apologise if this is a little long, but this problem has frustrated me for some time now and it reared its ugly head once again today (case #2 below), so I’ll try to describe it in as much detail as I can.

I appreciate the help! My plugin and OS versions and other info can be found below the post.

Case #1
I updated my simple, small Pro Tools system early 2019. I had a brand new iMac with OSX 10.13.6 and I waited till Avid released a version of 2018 they verified to be compatible with said OS. I also upgraded all the plugins (Waves, FabFilter, etc.) to compatible versions and upgraded to Reason 10. The Mac was only connected to the internet when required to download big install files or verify plugins etc.

Everything ran smoothly. I’m pretty sure I ran every application and plugin I had for the next 4 - 6 months with no problems at all, UNTIL COMPLETELY OUT OF NOWHERE Reason would spike the CPU usage meters in the red and freeze PT. Not every now and then, but everytime Reason was opened via ReWire. I need to stress the fact that after I got everything installed and upgraded 4 to 6 months prior, the Mac had not been connected to the internet and I hadn’t updated anything. The only change I’d made was that I installed the free Avid DB3 organ plugin and possibly the Avid MiniGrand I had forgotten to install initially.

(This probably has no relevance to the above, but I’ll mention it just in case: At the same time Reason started acting up, PT started taking minutes to load. It seemed to be “stuck” looking at the Waveshell stuff. A couple of months ago, I bought some new plugins from Waves and had to connect to the internet as well as update Waves Central and voila! PT boots up in mere seconds again! Nice. Reason, on the other hand, still acts up.)

Everything else runs smoothly. My sessions don’t get too heavy to start with, but for example, I can have Superior Drummer 3 with no “power saving” or “resource saving” measures taken and record several tracks at once with a buffer size of 32.

Case #2

I got MiniBit and MiniVerb from AudioThing yesterday and installed them this morning. I just got finished saying “Wow this thing is cool” when the audio glitched and PT froze for some seconds. I took a look at the CPU usage meters and indeed, they hit the red every now and then - maybe once in 10 - 30 seconds, unlike Reason which had the meters in the red constantly.

Having the instrument track in record-ready mode and playing the plugin with a MIDI keyboard seemed to make them spike more than not having it in record-ready and triggering with Midi from PT.

I restarted PT and the Mac a few times and the problem persisted. Finally, I uninstalled the plugins because it seemed just having them installed made everything else crank the CPU usage up. (Not 100% sure about this).

I don’t know, but I wouldn’t think MiniBit or MiniVerb would be such heavy plugins that they would crash my system like that.

As far as I can tell, the plugins should be compatible, but all the info I could find as I quickly looked was “AAX, must be 64 bit,” so, yeah.

Questions:

-What the hell could be causing these problems?
-Could there be a chance that the “Reason problem” has nothing to do with PT or Reason, but with ReWire? How would I know if I have the wrong or non-compatible version of ReWire?
-Could trashing the preferences really fix something like this, or could whatever is causing this be fixed by trashing the prefs? Is that still a thing? (I know I probably shoulda tried days ago).

---------------------------------
MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6
(Retina 4k 2017 / 3,6 GHZ Intel Core i7 / 16 Gb RAM)
---------------------------------
Pro Tools 2018 / Version 2018.12.0*
---------------------------------
RME UCX interface / Updated drivers/software after installing PT 2018 / Not sure of the firmware version.
---------------------------------
Reason 10 / Version 10.2.2d1**
---------------------------------
MiniBit v1.6.1
MiniVerb v1.1
---------------------------------
Waveshell or Waveshells (Will check later).
---------------------------------

*PT 2018.12 verified by Avid as being compatible with OSX 10.13.6.
http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...tibility-Chart

**Reason 10 is compatible with OSX 10.13.6 (Requires “OSX 10.7 or later (64 bit)”
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Old 05-05-2020, 07:29 AM
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DonaldM DonaldM is offline
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Default Re: Very Strange CPU Performance Problems w/ some plugins (ReWire, Reason, Minibit)

I've had similar issues that I can't explain with respect to CPU spikes causing PT to glitch. I assume you've checked your playback settings in PT for the buffer size? Is it at 1024? Sometimes I forget to switch that back from a lower setting after laying down VI tracks via midi.



Another thing to look at is what else besides PT is going on in your system. Are there other programs or apps running in the background besides PT? What's autoloading when you boot up your system? Some here have suggested clearing out all unnecessary apps and programs from the auto start menu on bootup.



I will also add that to the day I die I will NEVER understand how the PT CPU meter measures anything. It makes no sense to me at all....and never has.
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Old 05-05-2020, 07:44 AM
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JFreak JFreak is offline
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Default Re: Very Strange CPU Performance Problems w/ some plugins (ReWire, Reason, Minibit)

If your problem is Reason related, you might be happy to hear they just released native AAX version that does not need ReWire. Free for all Reason 11 customers.
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Old 05-06-2020, 12:31 AM
MKZ MKZ is offline
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Default Re: Very Strange CPU Performance Problems w/ some plugins (ReWire, Reason, Minibit)

Quote:
Originally Posted by DonaldM View Post
I've had similar issues that I can't explain with respect to CPU spikes causing PT to glitch. I assume you've checked your playback settings in PT for the buffer size? Is it at 1024? Sometimes I forget to switch that back from a lower setting after laying down VI tracks via midi.
Good point, DonaldM. I think I tested with a buffer size of 1024 when this problem appeared. Not quite sure though. I will have to see what effect it has.

However, the thing is, it was working fine at lower buffer sizes before (it pretty much has to if you wanna trigger midi live) but all of a sudden started peaking CPU usage. There had been no changes made pre and post when the problem came up, besides the afore mentioned installation of DB33 and MiniGrand.


Quote:
Originally Posted by DonaldM View Post
Another thing to look at is what else besides PT is going on in your system. Are there other programs or apps running in the background besides PT?
The only thing I can think of is Google Chrome right now, but when the problem started I was not connected to the internet. I will double check the start up items in the preferences.

Can anyone confirm that Google's instructions on how to uninstall Chrome get rid of the app completely. (They basically instruct you to just drag the app to the trash).


JFreak, I might have to think of upgrading to Reason 11 in the future. I'll wait a bit to read up on possible compatibility/performance issues.

Other things people have suggested through other avenues:

-Rescan plugins (locate the file named installedAAXplugins and delete it / reboot Pro Tools). Some suggested this might make ReWire work again.

-Drag plugins to a folder on the desktop / boot pro tools / quit pro tools / drag the plugins back to the plugins folder and reboot Pro Tools

-Boot PT in low resolution mode (to see if some kind of a bad graphics code peaks CPU).

-Delete preferences.


I have yet to try these, but I will. At first, rescanning plugins and maybe deleting the preferences file.
Do you guys think these could solve the problem?
Any precautions to take? I can take screen shots of my preferences etc, so I remember what changes I'd made etc.
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Old 05-06-2020, 08:25 AM
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DonaldM DonaldM is offline
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Default Re: Very Strange CPU Performance Problems w/ some plugins (ReWire, Reason, Minibit)

Quote:
Originally Posted by JFreak View Post
If your problem is Reason related, you might be happy to hear they just released native AAX version that does not need ReWire. Free for all Reason 11 customers.

Good point. I had noticed that Reason has been using more CPU resources since 9.5 and VST hosting arrived. I'm interested to see how the AAX version will behave with respect to that. I'm downloading it to my studio system even as I type this comment!
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Old 05-06-2020, 08:27 AM
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DonaldM DonaldM is offline
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Default Re: Very Strange CPU Performance Problems w/ some plugins (ReWire, Reason, Minibit)

Another option you always have is Track Freeze. If I start running into CPU issues when I'm in the composing stage, its usually due to having one too many VIs running all at once. So I just freeze a few of the more "hoggy" CPU culprits, and things go fairly smoothly.


I know that doesn't help explain why you get these unexplained spikes, but it can help.
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