7.4.2 ongoing issues - stuttering, freezing and more

[RW1965]

I have previously logged a problem with running 7.4.2 Pro Tools LE. I am continuing to have the same problems, where the sessions hangs or stutters during playback. During the space of two hours today I have 10+ occasions where the state problem occurred. Error messages that I received were:

-9128 Running out of CPU power, remove plug ins or increase CPU usage limit (This occurred 3-4 times)

-6093 Operating system held off too long, increase hardware buffer size (This occurred at least 5 times)

-6097 Lost communication with audio interface, try increasing hardware buffer size, make sure you have a valid clock source, reset to continue

Reason not responding, plug in failed to load (on Pro Tools boot up).

I believe this problem is partly plug in related. The only plug ins in use were the standard plug ins shipped with 7.4.2, D-Verb, 7 & 4 band eq and compressor, IKMultimedia Arc and Focusrite Liquidmix. I am using, so I am told, the correct versions of all plug ins.

The erros occurred when I tried to change settings on the Liquidmix plug in. They also occurred when I tried to move a Pro Tools fader and when I tried to solo a track.

ARC seems to be one common cause of problems, as when I remove it, the problems happen far less frequently. I've also noticed this when running Amplitube by IKMultimedia.

I don't believe that the issue is solely the fault of the plug in manufacturers. I believe that there is a fundamental issue with the 7.4.2 software. For example, for every session created under 7.4/Tiger, I have to reimport session data in to a brand new file for it to work.

I've sent this report to Digidesign, IKMultimedia and Focusrite. This latest version of Pro Tools LE is driving me crazy and becoming impossible to work with and worst of all, is preventing me from competing an important recording project.

I have been having this issue ever since 7.4.2 came out and when this added to the fact that that I cannot use some plug ins that I've purchased at all (Guitar rig XE, Digidesign's Velvet) and there is no end if site, I'm becoming extremely disillusioned with the product.

[soundsinamotion]

I am getting the same exact problem with the first 3 error messages on my system with 7.4.2 on mac OSX 10.5.4, I emailed digidesign as well and waiting a reply. Protools is completely unusable at this time for me. grrrr!!! If you figure it out soon let me know!

[Slim Shady]

Focusrite Liquidmix isn't listed on any Digi PT compatibility docs that I can find. From what I'm reading online, it's an external DSP processor that uses RTAS wrapped VST plug-ins to operate? That's like trying to cook your dinner after wrapping it in an old sock and then holding the pan 6 feet from the stove. You're just adding layers and layers of incompatibility (not to mention latency), which is not really a wise move. The -6097's are probably a direct result of having the Liquidmix connected, it's probably sucking too much from the firewire bus causing PT to lose it's connection with your interface while the Liquidmix takes all the juice.

If you can get something like that to work without any errors, I'd be pretty impressed. It's definitely not supported, at least I can't find anything on Digi's site that says they support it, or even mention it for that matter. They didn't support the fxpansion PCI cards (very similar concept, and also resulted in tons of errors), and since Digi makes their own version of "offloading DSP to other devices" called TDM/HD, they're not likely to support any 3rd parties trying to do add that feature to PTLE.

I couldn't find much info on ARC either, but it also isn't listed on the plug-in compatibility grid. It might be that it's too new, because I believe most of IK's other plugs are finally 10.5-ready (but require updates), but you might want to double check with them to make sure the latest version is compatible with PT on 10.5 - there are still lots of plug-ins out there that aren't.

What if you remove the Liquidmix and the ARC? Any errors? (BTW, remove means to move the plug-in out of PT's plug-in folder entirely before booting PT). Basically you're going to need to do some troubleshooting on your own to figure out the culprit. If removing those guys doesn't solve it, remove any other 3rd party plugs, then add them back one by one until you find the nasty one(s).

[RW1965]

Thanks for the mail and the dinner and sock analogy, thankfully that one wasn't in my Gordon Ramsay cook book!

I hear what you're saying, but the LiquidMix worked absolutely fine prior to the 7.4.2 release. My DIGI002 is running on the Mac's inbuilt firewire bus - plugged directly in to the Mac. I have an External Firewire drive on the Mac's inbuilt firewire buss - plugged directly in to the Mac. The LiquidMix is plugged in to a separate firewire buss on an additional firewire card that was fitted, as I am aware that you cannot share the same buss as other Firewire devices. This is the hardware setup I ran with Tiger/7.4 and everything was fine and dandy.

With regards to removing plug ins, when I remove the Arc plug-in as an insert, the errors seem to be far less frequent. I contacted IKMultimedia a couple of weeks back and they weren't aware of any issues and confirmed that the latest version, which I was running, was compatible. I had also noticed a probem with Amplitube and found that by removing the plug in from the inserts, the probems also stopped. Amplitube seemed to cause far more problems than Arc.

When you consider these facts and also that Digidesign's own Air plug-in's are still not all compatible, as we other plug ins I won such as Guitar Rig, I suspect that there is either (a) a general issue with some 3rd party plugs ins which the relevant parties aren't owning up to.

I've contacted the support desks for all of the products in question here, so hopefully they'll all work together to get it solved for us all.

[DrDrumm]

Well, I'm having all of these problems and I don't have any of these plug-ins.

My setup is 002 Rack mac pro quad 2.66 with 4 gigs of RAM 10.5.3 PT 7.4.2.

I'm having all of these problems. After reducing RTAS to work with only 2 processors instead of 4, the freezing and stuttering pretty much stopped, but I'm still having spikes of digital bursts (which really really hurt when you're starting a mix and have your control room volume way up).

This is REALLY annoying, to say the least. I noticed it is happening only when you're starting to load the CPU with plugs. on "Light" projects it won't happen.

I have Waves Mercury Native 6.0 (it was like this with the previous version, b4 someone gets excited:) ) and a bunch more like Wave Arts' entire lineup, IK multimedia Amplitube 2, Izotope Lineup, DVtoolKit 2 (7.4.2), Auto Tune 5, TL Space and that's about it. Everything is at the latest version.

This is making me want to go back to Tiger (But I LOVE Leopard ).
Is there something that can be done ? Anyone is having the same problems ?

[dougied]

This maybe a dumb question here, but is everybody recording to the same hard drive that ProTools is installed on, or are you recording to an internal secondary or external firewire hard drive?

I have a 40+ track session running with 1-3 plugs on every single track with no problems.

Just curious that's all...

[RW1965]

Nope, I'm recording to an external 7200 rpm firewire drive, which is on its own firewire buss

[OddsAre]

My DIGI002 is running on the Mac's inbuilt firewire bus - plugged directly in to the Mac. I have an External Firewire drive on the Mac's inbuilt firewire buss - plugged directly in to the Mac. The LiquidMix is plugged in to a separate firewire buss on an additional firewire card that was fitted, as I am aware that you cannot share the same buss as other Firewire devices.

actually your Firewire drive is NOT on its own firewire buss because both ports on the computer use the same firewire buss, so your 002 and the hard drive are sharing a buss.

What brand/size hard drive is it? How full is it?

[RW1965]

I know the internal firewire ports are both on the same buss, but as I stated in the earlier email, i installed a separate firewire card which is independant from the internal buss. THis is not the issue, as I had this installed prior to 7.4.2, when running Tiger and 7.4 and everything worked fine.

Im running a Mac Pro 2.66Ghz Quad, with 3Gb RAM. The external hard dirve is a Maxtor and out of the 300Gb, only around 100Gb are used.

[Technog0d]

I am getting the same thing too. I found that when i changed the RTAS processor usage to 1 and 99%, things worked better. I have a dual core 24" imac (the latest incarnation). It seems it has a problem with utilizing the processors correctly. This is all just from my observations. The problem only started to exist when i used some RTAS instruments.

Here are my specs:

OSX 10.5.3
PTLE 7.4.2
Digi 003R
Euphonix MC Control
Novation SL Remote

Mike