DAE 6101 on new iMac

[John_Toolbox]

Keep us all posted, I am in the market for a new imac, but will probably wait to see what happens with this. I do know that there have been several reports of problems with 10.8.5 on here, and not just from new imac owners, so I'm still running 10.8.4. Unfortunately, it's usually not possible to roll back to a version of OSX earlier than what shipped with a computer when it was first released, so I think all haswell imac owners are probably stuck with 10.8.5.

Not sure if this thread will be helpful, but if this is simply a 10.8.5 problem and not related to the new imac hardware, maybe what Ceri (DUC user "C") did in this thread will be helpful:

http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=344458

[solo206]

Originally Posted by Bookerv12

"Well Ive tried on my old 7200 rpm drive and still nothing. "

How is your 7200 rpm drive attached?

Through usb 3.0

I sent my imac for testing yesterday, and just got it back. They checked the hardware and there are no issues as far as there concern. One of there "geniuses" argued that the problem was that I didn't have delay compensation set and that it must always be set on long and that the buffer size should never be set below 256. He claimed to have pro tools hd, and I tried to argue that he was wrong, that I could run a much lesser buffer size w/o delaycomp on my 2.3ghz macbook pro smooth but just gave up. Anyways, there is no reason to have a $2,500 machine I bought strictly for music production, that is rendered useless, when I can run it smoother on my macbook pro.

I don't think its specifically OSX 10.8.5. Again, I run it perfectly fine with my macbook. Maybe theres a flaw in the build of the new imacs, or maybe just the Haswell chip.

Its so frustrating that Avid won't give us a proper response when it comes to 10.8.5. Hands down the worse customer support EVER!

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by solo206

Through usb 3.0

I sent my imac for testing yesterday, and just got it back. They checked the hardware and there are no issues as far as there concern. One of there "geniuses" argued that the problem was that I didn't have delay compensation set and that it must always be set on long and that the buffer size should never be set below 256. He claimed to have pro tools hd, and I tried to argue that he was wrong, that I could run a much lesser buffer size w/o delaycomp on my 2.3ghz macbook pro smooth but just gave up. Anyways, there is no reason to have a $2,500 machine I bought strictly for music production, that is rendered useless, when I can run it smoother on my macbook pro.

I don't think its specifically OSX 10.8.5. Again, I run it perfectly fine with my macbook. Maybe theres a flaw in the build of the new imacs, or maybe just the Haswell chip.

Its so frustrating that Avid won't give us a proper response when it comes to 10.8.5. Hands down the worse customer support EVER!

There's no need to set buffer size below 256 when you're mixing; set it high at 1024 and be done with it. And why not run with delay comp on maximum? Won't hurt anything and it may just help you.

Do you have the same os on your laptop as on the desktop? Same I/O setup on both machines?

[solo206]

Originally Posted by musicman691

There's no need to set buffer size below 256 when you're mixing; set it high at 1024 and be done with it. And why not run with delay comp on maximum? Won't hurt anything and it may just help you.

Do you have the same os on your laptop as on the desktop? Same I/O setup on both machines?

Thats beside the point to me, I bought this beast so I can throw anything at it. But yeah I do mix with a high buffer size with delay comp at max. Anyways, my macbook pro is running 10.8.5 with pro tools 10.3.7.

[propower]

Fascinating --

First off - what is the rest of the system?? Audio interface etc..

I bit on the new imacs as well 2013 3.5 i7 512SSD 8G of ram (today). I am running PT11.0.x and 10.3.7 on HDN Thunderbolt hardware to nothing but USB3 SSDs. I have zero - no 6101 errors. Tis was also true running tracks from just the internal SSD and on another test machine (late 2013 3.4 i5 running OS and tracks from the internal 7200rpm drive as well). I am also operating on the other end of the spectrum - nothing but live tracks with the lowest latency (96kHz/64buffer) - the reason I bought such a beast myself! (Delay comp on max always)

The good news - Using XCODE I turned Hyperthreading off and am running 10.3.7 on my little tracking sessions ( less than 6 stereo/mono tracks) at ~20% cpu load (PT at 3 cpus with 85%) - No issues - working great - no spiking on the cpu!.

The Bad news (I have a thread in the PT11 section going on this) - 11.0.0, .1 and .2 are functioning fine but after not very many minutes of recording PT jumps from lets say 80% cpu to 180% cpu. The session still goes but all of the sudden the CPU temps are near 80degC for no good reason. I can close the session and the CPU usage continues (have to quit PT). I am not testing any other sample rates or buffers so it may very well work in other places (once I get to mixing a little I may go over to 11 with 512 buffer and see what happens. For now though (be it 10.8.5 or PT11) PT11 for tracking is dead to me I would revert to 10.8.4 (shipped with the machine but I did a clean install and ) per applecare there is no way to do this! Every clean install gets the latest OS!

[solo206]

Originally Posted by propower

Fascinating --

First off - what is the rest of the system?? Audio interface etc..

I bit on the new imacs as well 2013 3.5 i7 512SSD 8G of ram (today). I am running PT11.0.x and 10.3.7 on HDN Thunderbolt hardware to nothing but USB3 SSDs. I have zero - no 6101 errors. Tis was also true running tracks from just the internal SSD and on another test machine (late 2013 3.4 i5 running OS and tracks from the internal 7200rpm drive as well). I am also operating on the other end of the spectrum - nothing but live tracks with the lowest latency (96kHz/64buffer) - the reason I bought such a beast myself! (Delay comp on max always)

The good news - Using XCODE I turned Hyperthreading off and am running 10.3.7 on my little tracking sessions ( less than 6 stereo/mono tracks) at ~20% cpu load (PT at 3 cpus with 85%) - No issues - working great - no spiking on the cpu!.

The Bad news (I have a thread in the PT11 section going on this) - 11.0.0, .1 and .2 are functioning fine but after not very many minutes of recording PT jumps from lets say 80% cpu to 180% cpu. The session still goes but all of the sudden the CPU temps are near 80degC for no good reason. I can close the session and the CPU usage continues (have to quit PT). I am not testing any other sample rates or buffers so it may very well work in other places (once I get to mixing a little I may go over to 11 with 512 buffer and see what happens. For now though (be it 10.8.5 or PT11) PT11 for tracking is dead to me I would revert to 10.8.4 (shipped with the machine but I did a clean install and ) per applecare there is no way to do this! Every clean install gets the latest OS!

Glad to hear you got yours up and running. Mine also is a 2013 3.5ghz i7, 8g ram with 1tb fusion drive. I ran it first on pro tools aggregate i/o, and then tried it on my Symphony i/o. Ive decided to return it. No-longer wanna deal with the hassle. Your obviously running haswell and I don't hear many complaints about them nor OSX 10.8.5 to believe its either of these issues, but rather mine specifically, but I just can't imagine what it is when they did a full
diagnoses of it.

So, do you actually recommend turning hyper threading off, or do you just do it during tracking at lower settings?

[propower]

Originally Posted by solo206

So, do you actually recommend turning hyper threading off, or do you just do it during tracking at lower settings?

My rig is still crippled on PT11 but.. in PT10 I have found turning HT off for low buffer tracking to be beneficial for keeping spiking on the CPU to a minimum (wish I would of tried it on my 2012 i7 mini but its gone). WRT playback and any buffer above 256 I never had any issues with HT or cpu load. Getting a rock solid low latency native 96/64 rig has been quite a challenge for me. Running 10.3.7 on the new imac with HT off is the first system that is not having issues. I have yet to load anything at it beyond the stock AVID plugs though . Maybe soon. There is still an issue with my current machine and its replacement will be in by next week.

PS: FWIW I am always a little wary of the Fusion Drive - no good reason really - Also I am very noise sensitive and can't stand the sound of even the imac (pretty darned quiet) spinning drive!. I opted for the simple (super fast) PCIe flash.

[MartinB]

I've just talked with Avid and they confirm that the CPU Overload error in both PT 10 and 11 is caused by the OS 10.8.5 update, and that they are aware of this problem. The error seems to have nothing to do with the new iMac, just the update.... My iMac was shipped with 10.8.4 so there is a chance they still aren't shipped with the latest update.

[John_Toolbox]

Interesting, thanks for posting guys. This is very helpful for those of us who are on the fence about buying one of these.

[John_Toolbox]

For anyone else that runs into problems with 10.8.5, I just talked with an Apple support tech and they said that the haswell imacs will indeed run 10.8.4. Since there's not actually a 10.8.4 full installer, the way you convert a haswell imac that already has 10.8.5 on it to 10.8.4 is to wipe the drive, then use migration assistant to transfer a 10.8.4 installation from another mac onto it.