Pro Tools FREE and System Compatibility

[Kenn LeGault]

Hello,

There are many posts on this Pro Tools FREE DUC regarding compatibility issues with various processors (PII, PIII, Celeron, Athlon, K6, etc.) and various chipsets (VIA, AMD, Intel, etc.).

Many people have read Digidesign's "recommendations" regarding computer hardware, and have possibly misinterpreted what we meant to say (or maybe we just did a poor job of explaining things!).

This post is intended to set the record straight regarding these compatibility & performance issues (it’s another long one, so grab a beverage and get comfortable…)

First of all, Pro Tools FREE is sensitive to some things on your computer system. Here's a list of the 3 top things PT FREE is most sensitive to and why:

1) Sound cards and associated wave drivers

Windows MME “Wave Drivers” are supposed to be generic and similar regardless of the underlying audio hardware. Unfortunately, in reality wave drivers vary greatly from one audio card to the next, and it’s difficult to accommodate the idiosyncrasies of each. PT FREE is a new product and we’re playing “catch up” relative to more mature PC audio applications that have been using wave driver interfaces for a longer time. But, PT FREE also demands more from the audio drivers than most other audio applications, and to the extent that the audio drivers don’t deliver, PT FREE may choke. Specifically, PT FREE expects that input & output streams are synchronous (within a reasonable time window), and when they’re not, PT FREE has trouble.

PT FREE is derived from the Pro Tools TDM and Pro Tools LE products where the Digidesign hardware and streaming drivers are more deterministic and maintain proper input-to-output sync. Professional audio clients demand that input & output are tightly synchronized, otherwise multi-tracking is not possible (how can you lay down a tight vocal track if the underlying audio you’re singing with is drifting/jittering relative to your performance?!). It’s a real shame that many popular PC audio cards have this flaw. It’s also a shame that the Windows MME Wave Driver interface has no serious provision to synchronize input to output.

Over time we will test and tune PT FREE with as many audio cards as possible. The initial release was tested mainly on Sound Blaster (and compatibles) and built-in sound chips, since these have historically been the most ubiquitous. Release 2 will have better support for a wider array of sound cards. PT FREE will eventually work well with many of the available cards, but there will be restrictions due to the I/O sync issue described above.

2) The "performance" of the computer (CPU type, CPU clock speed, FSB speed, memory latency, memory bandwidth, disk drive performance) can make a big difference.

In general, the faster your computer, the better off you'll be. Does that mean PT FREE won't run on a slower machine? No. It just means you'll be more likely to have good results with a faster machine.

There is no reason that PT FREE shouldn't work with Celerons or VIA chipsets. Those of you who wondered why Digidesign was so specific about the "qualified" or "recommended" hardware (namely PII/PIII and Intel chipsets) are right to wonder why we were so specific.

The answer is NOT that we expected problems with non-intel CPUs or chipsets -- it's simply that we didn't test on very many non-Intel machines for our first release, and we had seen some bizarre problems with VIA chipsets last year when testing the Digi001 product with Pro Tools LE (we believe the more recent chipsets from VIA are more stable/robust). So, we were trying to be conservative when we recommended only Intel PII/PIII machines with Intel chipsets. We didn't want to say, "oh yeah, PT FREE is compatible with everything out there…" when we hadn't had time to test on all the various combinations of hardware.

Since Pro Tools FREE is "only" a software product, it does make a lot of sense to expect that PT FREE will run on virtually any PC hardware. In fact, MANY people have reported good results with PT FREE on configurations that we did not initially "recommend" -- Celerons, VIA chipsets, etc.

The CPU and chipsets do make a big difference for performance, however. While PT FREE may basically work on a slower machine, you certainly won’t get as many plug-ins, and you may see more intermittent error messages if CPU time is stolen from PT FREE (by other applications, the OS, or inefficient device drivers). PT FREE is a real-time audio application, and it does a fair amount of number crunching and memory accesses. If your system has a larger/faster L1 and/or L2 cache, you’ll be better off. Likewise, if you have a fast memory controller in your chipset, you’ll have better results. Early Celerons had pretty crappy performance relative to PII/PIII machines with 440BX chipsets mainly because of cache limitations and the slow 66 MHz Front-Side Bus. The former problem has been fixed, and newer Celerons are now faster, but the latter problem still exists. Most PIII, Athlon, and Duron based machines leave Celerons in the dust in many benchmark tests (check out PC World Magazine, Tom’s Hardware Guide, or AnandTech reviews for more specifics).

Virtual memory is another issue. When the OS has to swap memory to/from disk, this takes time, steals disk bandwidth, and wastes CPU cycles. Try using PhotoShop with a huge TIFF file on a machine with 64 MB of RAM and you’ll see what I mean – thrashing takes its toll. So, the more memory you have, and the fewer applications you have running in the background, the better off you’ll be. 128 MB RAM is really the practical minimum in my experience. 256 MB or more is a dream.

Likewise, the faster your hard disk and disk controller, the better results you’ll have. If you don’t enable DMA mode for your IDE drive, PT FREE will throw lots of –9073 errors because the disk I/O will be too slow. If your drive is very fragmented, you may also see these errors.

So the bottom line is: try PT FREE with whatever computer you have, but expect better results on “faster” machines with more memory. If you have problems with a slower machine, try removing as many unnecessary drivers & applications as possible.

3) Other software/drivers running on your system.

As noted above, PT FREE can use a lot of CPU, memory, and disk bandwidth – especially with lots of plug-ins and dense region edits. If other resource-intensive applications or drivers are running simultaneously with PT FREE, you may see problems. For example, we have seen problems where Anti-virus software, bad video drivers, slow network drivers, and CPU-hungry wavetable synth applications have caused problems for PT FREE.


Epilogue…
OK -- So why does PT FREE not work well for some people, even when they have decent audio hardware, a fast computer, and seemingly no conflicting software/drivers? Good question! We've been working hard to understand this ourselves, and this is why it's important to have feedback from you all via the DUC (and why we're going to post a web survey very soon). From what we've learned so far, here are the top 3 reasons that PT FREE has problems running on some systems:

1) There are some bugs in PT FREE. We have been working on solutions to several bugs that we've been finally able to reproduce since the initial posting. It's a bummer that we didn't catch these before we released PT FREE, but these things happen. We're working very hard to identify and resolve such issues, and we expect that "Release 2" will fix a good majority of problems people are currently reporting.

2) Some sound cards have problems with I/O sync as described above. The "compensation" software we put in the first version of PT FREE was flawed – it didn’t track properly with lots of clock jitter, and the drift detection code was fooled sometimes. This causes pitch variations/distortion on some systems. We have decided to remove this “clock correction” code from Release 2 of PT FREE. The inadvertent pitch fluctuations should go away, but audio cards with severe I/O drift or jitter will not work.

3) Certain portions of the PT FREE code were not properly optimized. Over the next few releases we will introduce more and more speed improvements. Release 2 will be noticeably faster (sessions will load faster, screen updating will be snappier, etc.).


If you’ve made it this far, I commend you! Please accept our sincere apology for any hassle and lost time you may have had with Release 1. We are working hard to make Pro Tools FREE a mature audio product, and with your help and patience we’ll get there soon!

Stay tuned for Release 2 !!

Regards,
The Digidesign Pro Tools FREE Team

[Robotobon]

Ken,

Not to start any lame arguments, but why would you possibly need a P3 to run PRO TOOLS FREE? Especially since most of the plugins aren't realtime and there's only 8 audio tracks? That doesn't make any sense.

By the way, could you investigate the relationship between QuickTime and PTFree? What is it in QuickTime that made PTFree work for me?

-Robotobon

[JohnK]

I got an error message saying that my sound card's input and output streams were not synchronous. I have a WamiRack 24. Are you saying that Pro Tools FREE will not work with that sound card/interface? By the way, I have a PIII 800MHz machine that I use primarily for Gigastudio. I've got 512 Ram. When I use Pro Tools FREE as my default sequencer in Gigastudio, it hangs up (error message 6008). When I initiate it straight from Windows, I don't get that message.

[Kenn LeGault]

Hi JohnK,

Thanks for the feedback.

If PT FREE is currently warning you about your input/output not being synchronous, there may be a way around the problem. With some sound cards we've found that the 48K sample rate setting works better (no drift) than the 44.1K setting. You could try this. If there is still an I/O sync problem, you may still be able to record, but the length of your record region may be limited with Release 2.

I'll need a little more detail from you about the Gigastudio problem before I can help, so I'll contact you via email.

Regards,
Kenn LeGault
Digidesign

quote:

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Originally posted by JohnK:
I got an error message saying that my sound card's input and output streams were not synchronous. I have a WamiRack 24. Are you saying that Pro Tools FREE will not work with that sound card/interface? By the way, I have a PIII 800MHz machine that I use primarily for Gigastudio. I've got 512 Ram. When I use Pro Tools FREE as my default sequencer in Gigastudio, it hangs up (error message 6008). When I initiate it straight from Windows, I don't get that message.

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[Robotobon]

quote:

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Originally posted by Kenn LeGault:
Hi Robotobon,

Last time I checked, there were quite a few real time (RTAS) plug-ins available. Almost all of the RTAS plug-ins that run on PT LE will run with PT FREE.

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OK looks fine. What about Quicktime?


[Note: This message has been edited by Digidesign]

[Mocha]

I have to say that it took Digidesign a lot og gutts to release a free version of the world most popular software. My problem is with Ptfree and my Motu midi timepiece AV. Whenever i start a session and play a few notes on my keyboard, I get a protection error in module... Then when i go into the details it tells me that it's being caused by the MTPAV. Is there any help i can get to resolve this issue, is any one out there having the same problem. Pleas Digi, help me.My set up is as follow.
Dell GX1 PIII500 win98SE
chrystal built in snd card
384meg ram
10gig IDE
Dual 18scsi cheatah drives
Adaptec 2940 controller
Yamahah ext. scsi recorder(8x4x24)
Motu MTPAV
two keyboards, two modules
Cakewalk, cubasis vst and Logic audio gold run fine with my set up.
Please help me.


[This message has been edited by Mocha (edited November 27, 2000).]

[Robotobon]

Hi Kenn,

ProTools Free used to crash on start up. Thinking maybe I should install QuickTime since other apps ported from Mac needed this. All problems solved.

My theory is this: Quicktime contains some form of DLL or other library that PTF and any other ported software from the Macintosh needs to work. PTF is now totally solid after playing and recording serveral tracks & the downloaded Demo Song. It even works with the APSLIVE drivers for the sound blaster live.

Here's my config again:
Asus P2B 440BX Mother Board
Intel Celeron 333a CPU
128MB PC100 Memory
Matrox 8MB SDRAM G200 AGP Video
13.5GB Ibm Deskstar 7200rpm UDMA/66 HD
Teac Ide CDRW
Maudio Delta 1010 audio
Creative SoundBlaster Live! Value
Netgear FA310TX 10/100baseT Ethernet PCI

-robotobon

[Gumboot]

Pro Tools Free works here (well,it loads fine most of the times, but it also often ends session by crashing). But I certainly appreciate the efforts you folks at Digidesign put into this Free software.

Nevertheless, in my opinion, PTFree is indeed a ressource hog; there is simply no comparison with the other host based systems you mentionned.

PTF often freezes while previewing one AS effect (and not necessarily a reverb) with, say, only one 15 second 16 bit audio mono region loaded in the session. No automation. I have to reboot the whole thing.

By comparison, I finished mastering a short 1 min. jingle; 24 bit stereo audio and it looped over and over again until I finaly stopped it; that's with Timeworks 4080 reverb in an aux bus and Waves C4 and L1 in the master bus. And tweaking the C4 in real time. I had ressources left. And the meters were accurate ;-)

Sure, I sometimes got VST, Cakewalk and Logic to their knees; I usually can get a whole lot more going on before this happen w/ them though. And then, Logic will simply interrupt playback; same thing w/Cakewalk; Cubase might crash, but it never crashed half as hard as PTF.

Now the comparison isn't fair; PTF is your first incursion in such a territory and I can see the potential there. The other guys have been doing this for years and still manage to sell us bug ridden, unstable software once in a while.

Yet, despite the theorical possible "serious CPU processing" , I sincerly think that this is one really weak link in the chain¸; I read R02 shall be snappier, and I think this is indeed a good sign.

Please don't get me wrong as I really appreciate what you guys are doing. In fact, I'm am still considering the 001 . Now, if only you could get Waves to come up w/ RTAS for PC, it might make my decision a little easier...

Arthur
(Gumboot)

quote:

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Originally posted by Kenn LeGault:


All host-based DAWs I've ever used (VST, Cakewalk, etc.) come to their knees if you load up a bunch of plug-ins. Trying to edit or navigate through the program is painful when the system is so loaded. (Try putting a 4-band EQ and a compressor on 24 tracks, add a few aux busses with delay lines, a few reverbs, and a limiter on the stereo main bus and things get a little slow with VST).

Your point about "only 8 audio tracks" is valid, but with aux input tracks, main fader busses, and 5 inserts per channel/track you can certainly load up quite a few RTAS plug-ins if you want. Add to that a bunch of dense automation and dense region edits, plus some MIDI tracks and you've got some serious CPU processing going on -- even with little old PT FREE. In those cases having more computer power is a big advantage since the UI experience will be much better.

Regards,
Kenn LeGault
Digidesign[/B]

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[This message has been edited by Gumboot (edited November 28, 2000).]

[Rickster]

Kenn;

When do you anticipate the release of Rev2?

[tnie]

I already own a Mix system(Mac) and thought I would try the Free PC version for home because of version 5.01. I'm still using 4.31 at my studio because of many problems with the latest version and waiting for 5.1 hoping for fixes. My question is.....Since the idea is to pull people into your Digi network with a Free version you can at least have a strip down version that works!