Major disappointment with Xeon E5-2670 system: please help

[YYR123]

Yeah just for the SATA 2 to 3 it’s worth it.

Plus the HP’s are blessed by Avid, you would have more assurance everything is going to work

Return the system for sure and go with that HP.

[Darryl Ramm]

What a surprise, you are still stuck focusing on hardware.

You have not once explained your workload/details of what you are doing. Not asked if what you are seeing is normal or not. Not once detailed what troubleshooting you have done...

And now what? More hardware questions...

And after wasting time on an overpriced Fujitsu System why are you looking at overpriced HP Workstations... there are expert Pro Tools systems builders including in Europe. Why not buy a Pro Tools system from them? And when you likely still have problems due to your software install they can hand hold you through solving that...


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[YYR123]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Why not buy a Pro Tools system from them? And when you likely still have problems due to your software install they can hand hold you through solving that...

This is true, these guys are great...and you would get current generation-hardware

http://www.pro-tools-pc.com

Pro Tools PC

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by YYR123

Yeah just for the SATA 2 to 3 it’s worth it.

Plus the HP’s are blessed by Avid, you would have more assurance everything is going to work

Return the system for sure and go with that HP.

SATA III... for archive/backup hopefully.... I could not imagine using SATA for an audio/session drive.

[YYR123]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

SATA III... for archive/backup hopefully.... I could not imagine using SATA for an audio/session drive.

Anymore!! B/C we all used it when it was the only way.

The point was that it was better than sata2, and you can agree as well that the HP being blessed by Avid is a lot better than the Fujitsu

[dvdr]

Why not buy from expert Pro Tools systems builders?

Way out of my budget, when looking for a powerful system, around 2200€ up. I thought, I could manage with a used, refurbished, still high powered Workstation for my needs - my dealer supported that, while he could have sold me computers twice or three times the price...
As for "overpriced": getting away below 1000€ with a powerful workstation does not seem overpriced for me (of course, as long as it's working ) - I can understand the critizism, when looking at the ORIGINAL price-tag of Fujitsi/HP.
So, maybe my hope was wrong, that having real 16 Xeon-cores @ 2.6 GHz from a workstation, that was top of the notch not too long ago, would suffice

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

You have not once explained your workload/details of what you are doing. Not asked if what you are seeing is normal or not. Not once detailed what troubleshooting you have done...

Daryll, with all due respect: I did specify, what troubleshooting I have done. So, again: I followed EVERY optimization guide to the letter, also all those additional steps in this thread and followed YOUR troubleshooting steps.
As I said: None of these steps did in any way reveal any problematic behaviour of any cores or threads other than that of maxing out the total CPU load, when I loaded my problematic project.

I did want to spare you from the details of my session, but here we go. Going through it, you will understand, why I did not try to replicate it with "just" the Avid plugins. My expectation may be high, but seeing other, huge projects being handled by Pro Tools, my guess was, that this very project is not that huge at all - but I leave that to your conclusion.

It consists of 37 audio tracks, recorded in 88.2/24, 6 stereo Aux tracks and 1 stereo Master track. No outboard equipment routing is taking place. All Tracks and Auxes use Waves' NLS Channel in "Nevo" mode.

The Aux tracks are configured as follows:

Aux 1: Bus 1-2, subgroup for vocal harmonies, using iZotope Neutron, izoTope Vintace Compressor, Plugin Alliance Elysia Music Master, Maag EQ4. Aux 1 is assigned to the stereo Master, sends are going to Bus 3-4 and Bus 9-10 (reverbs)

Aux 2: Bus 3-4, holds Waves' H-Reverb, a 3.5 second reverb

Aux 3: Bus 5-6, holds Waves' H-Reverb "long", a 1.45 second reverb

Aus 4: Bus 7-8, holds Waves' H-Reverb "long", a 3.8 second reverb

Aux 5: Bus 9-10, holds Brainworx' bx_rooMs ind an M/S configuration

Aux 6: Bus 11-12, used as a subgroup for the acoustic guitar tracks, holds Waves' Puig Child 670 compressor

Now to the Audio Tracks:

1. Upright Bass (Mic 1), Audified U37b Compressor, with a send to Bus 7-8, I/O Stereo Master track
2. Upright Bass (Mic 2), U37b Compressor, Waves' Bass Rider, send to 7-8 I/O Stereo Master track
3. Upright Bass (Mic 3), U37b Compressor, Waves' Bass Rider, I/O Stereo Master track
4. Guitar 1, Puig Child 660, Neutron EQ, send to 5-6, I/O to 11-12
5. Guitar 1 DI, Puig Child 660, Neutron EQ, send to 5-6, I/O to 11-12
6. Guitar 2, Puig Child 660, send to 5-6, I/O to 11-12
7. Guitar 2 DI, Puig Child 660, send to 5-6, I/O to 11-12
8. Electric Guitar, Vocal Rider, Brainworx limiter, Send ot 5-6, I/O Master track
9. Electric Guitar, Vocal Rider, Brainworx limiter, Send ot 5-6, I/O Master track
10. Lead Vocal (frozen!!!): Brainworx stereo maker (to allow M/S processing of following plugins), Puig Child 670, RED 37-51, Scheps Parallel Particles, SPL Passeq EQ (inactive!), Slate Virtual Tape Machine , Lindell TE 100 (inactive!), E² DeEsser, BX limiter. Sends 3-4 & 9-10, I/O Master Track (as I said, this track is frozen)
11. to 37.: Vocal Harmonies, not all occuring at the same time, split on different tracks for better manageability. No plugins, sends to 9-10, I/O to 1-2
Tracks 18 & 19 are the only ones with the need of a DeEsser, in this case the Eiosis E² DeEsser

Master Track: NLS Buss and BX limiter.
For "mastering preview checking", this track also holds (inactive! not just bypassed...) Slate FG-X Virtual Mastering Console, Elysia Museq Master EQ and Brainworx BX_Meter

As said before, the entire session uses NLS Channel in "Nevo" mode.

Playback uses an RME Fireface UFX II, 2048 samples buffer, 3 GB Drive Cache, Video Engine inactive, Dynamic Plugin processing deactiveted, Pro Tools version is 12.8.2. (update: I did some tests with version 12.8.3, but no changes).

As stated before, I cannot playback the song due to Pro Tools complaining about "not enough CPU power", if:

- I unfreeze the plugin-heavy track 10 (which I need from time to time to listen how the lead vocal falls in place with the rest and adjust plugins)

- I play back the song with track 10 frozen, sometimes, the error messages comes, too

- I activate BX-Meter on the Master Track

- I activate any of the following plugins on the master track with track 10 frozen: FG-X or Museq Master EQ

To give you an estimate of the system load, that I can monitor, I will attach two screenshots from Pro Tools own system usage monitor: one with ALL plugins, even those on the master track, activated and track 10 unfrozen, and one with the plugins on the master track deactivated and track 10 frozen.
CPU load in Windows' task-manager, btw., is at 22%, when playing back with track 10 frozen and Master track plugins deactivated and at 18% with Pro Tools and the session loaded, but not playing.

Additionally, the very left screenshot shows Windows' own system monitor, note the raise in some "cores", once I start playback. The other screenshots are the additional "cores", when scrolling down the list.

So, that's it....

[Wizzoboy]

The core usage pattern is exactly what you should expect as some processes utilize fewer cores than others. Looking at your disc cache usage try raising the amount of RAM it can use as with 64gb you have plenty available.

[LightWing]

According to the Fujitsu website, Win 10 is NOT supported on this machine. Go Figya.

[dvdr]

Originally Posted by LightWing

According to the Fujitsu website, Win 10 is NOT supported on this machine. Go Figya.

The German/European website does provide certified windows 10 drivers for the entire system, which I did install. Did you get that info from an US website?
By the way: I did a complete second installation on a different drive with windows 7 professional. Same problems, so I do think, that I can rule out any problems based on driver/mainboard/OS incompatibilities.

[Darryl Ramm]

I think you believe you are following advice and doing what is asked but I suspect you so lost in this hardware focus you are unlikely to make real progress here. Again, I doubt you need new hardware, but if you keep wanting to buy hardware then the most important thing you should be looking for is a vendor who can help you troubleshoot software/plugin issues.

I suspect you have wasted weeks on all this stuff including getting a new PC and now wanting to return that, I would have hoped that hours of careful plugin exploring would find out if you have plugin issues here. All your symptoms point to exactly that, but you need to be doing careful troubleshooting to find out for sure. And maybe it's not that... but it should be the leading suspect so start there and prove if it is or not.

Originally Posted by dvdr

Daryll, with all due respect: I did specify, what troubleshooting I have done. So, again: I followed EVERY optimization guide to the letter, also all those additional steps in this thread and followed YOUR troubleshooting steps.
As I said: None of these steps did in any way reveal any problematic behaviour of any cores or threads other than that of maxing out the total CPU load, when I loaded my problematic project.

Why are you talking about cores and threads? *Stop* looking at CPU meters... they don't tell you jack **** about plugin latency problems. Ignoring CPU meters was the very first thing I advised you to do in this thread, and you are still at it.

And you are running plugins that are know to be very problematic at times. Gee do I suspect Slate or Izotope first?

Originally Posted by dvdr

....Going through it, you will understand, why I did not try to replicate it with "just" the Avid plugins.

So did you run *any* sessions with just stock Avid plugins installed in Pro Tools? What was the result of doing that?

I've been suggesting you look carefully for plugin problems. Nobody asked you to try to reproduce your current sessions using standard plugins or anything else, you are trying to find as proactively as possible faulty plugins. You have to get in there and removing and reinstall plugins and actually be looking for and wanting to find any plugins that are causing problems--either by just being installed, by being instantiated, or maybe exacerbated through denormalization issues once instantiated. You don't need to carefully replicate any current sessions to do that, but you do need to actually test for plugins. Create some quick fake sessions, do whatever it takes, but do something to check for plugin issues. You can also pull out plugins used in sessions and try to tackle things that way. But I suspect you are skipping doing any actual useful tests here.

This is plugin troubleshooting 101... you should have done that before posting here, before trying to buy new hardware, before most of the stuff here.