PT10 Ram/Memory Issues

[brucefielder]

Apologies if this is already a thread, I have had a search around and i couldn't find anything.

So, I have 8 GB RAM Mac Pro1,1. Pro Tools is giving me constant 'Critically low on memory' warnings, then eventually grinding to a halt and crashing, but when I open up my Activity Monitor I can see PT is using 2.2GB ram and I still have 3GB Inactive memory... why isnt pro tools using this memory if it clearly needs it. My 'Free Memory' runs from 2gb slowely down to nothing then things get really slow.. but the inactive RAM never gets used.

Have just ordered another 8GB, but am i wasting my time buying more ram? is it an issue with pro tools?

I have about 10 instruments in this session, including Kontakt, omnisphere, nexus, massive and alchemy, and about 40 odd plugs. And my CPU usage is sitting at around 40%

any help would be great, this is ruining my workflow in a big way.

thanks
B




spec:

PT10 (latest update)
Mbox 2

Mac OSX 10.6.8
2 x 3 GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon
8GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM

250GB startup disk
160Gb spare
500GB PT Sessions

[Darryl Ramm]

Pro Tools 10 is a 32 bit app, it cannot use most of the memory in your system already, adding more physical memory will not help at all. The first suspect is a memory leak in a plugin.

Are you running the latest version of all your RTAS or AAX-32 plugins?

What are all the third part plugins are installed on the system not just instantiated in the session?

Oh Kontakt, you provably want to be running the latest AAX-32 version of that not the RTAS stuff. Are you? Apparently the AAX-32 code has significant stability improvements. Go look on all these plugin vendors forums for memory leak problems.

Try opening a blank/empty session and add a few audio tracks, does that work?

You can first just try updating all the third party and Avid plugins to the latest versions. You should be doing that periodically anyhow.

Try opening an existing larger session that is known to have this problem with plugins disabled (hold down shift while selecting the session from the file menu) or even better temporarily remove all plugins from the plugin folders. Focus on third party plugins to start with. And if that fixes the problem add back some of the plugin files until you find the culprit. You have to disable or temporarily remove the files, just bypassing or removing a plugin insert is not enough, they can leak if loaded into Pro Tools and unused.

If that does not work uninstall Pro Tools and reinstall the latest version of 10. (Currently 10.3.6). Be sure to do an uninstall with clean option before installing that.

Pro Tools 11 is 64 bit and can use much larger amounts of memory. You can upgrade to that, which will also cause you to upgrade all your current RTAS and AAX-32 plugins to AAX-64 (if they are available in AAX-64, not all on your list are...). Which may well fix any leaking current plugins anyhow, if that is the issue.

[WinTaper]

If you're running all those VI's directly in Pro-Tools, yeah you're gonna have problems. But as usual, there are plenty of work-arounds.

For starters, you can use the memory server in Kontakt to offload the memory used by the Kontakt VI's. (kontakt settings)

You can also look into Vienna Ensemble Pro - which can host VI's outside of Pro-Tools (and can even host VSTi's)

Be advised that sometimes running all those VI's outside of Pro-Tools may require increasing the playback buffer in PT - marshaling all that streaming data between two different processes can introduce a bit of latency.