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  #1  
Old 10-19-2012, 06:32 PM
foxdog175 foxdog175 is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2012
Location: Coal City
Posts: 18
Unhappy CPU Overload (6101)

Hey Guys,

I've done searches through the forum and tried out suggestions (like using only 3 of 8 cores and setting the limit to 85% usage), but no matter what I do, I always run into this error on even the most simplistic sessions.

I'm eyeballing the System Usage during playback of a 2-track session (which is only 1.5 minutes long) -- no plugins -- and I'm getting the error when my CPU Native is at 3% and CPU Clip and Disk are at 0%.

My system is an 8-core Mac Pro (3.2GHz cpu's) with 12 gigs of RAM. Can someone please help me out here? I can't understand why I keep running into this error when my CPU Usage isn't even going above 3 percent. I'm lost...
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  #2  
Old 10-20-2012, 05:15 PM
foxdog175 foxdog175 is offline
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Location: Coal City
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Default Re: CPU Overload (6101)

Can anyone please help me out?
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  #3  
Old 10-20-2012, 05:51 PM
Joe Schwartz Joe Schwartz is offline
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Default Re: CPU Overload (6101)

Quote:
Originally Posted by foxdog175 View Post
Can anyone please help me out?
I get these too, even though the CPU Native is well below the overload setting. It usually happens several times in a row, regardless of what I'm doing, then goes away for awhile. Trashing the prefs and the Digidesign Databases Volumes folder seems to help for at least a little while.
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  #4  
Old 10-20-2012, 06:15 PM
Darryl Ramm Darryl Ramm is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: USA
Posts: 19,511
Default Re: CPU Overload (6101)

Quote:
Originally Posted by foxdog175 View Post
Hey Guys,

I've done searches through the forum and tried out suggestions (like using only 3 of 8 cores and setting the limit to 85% usage), but no matter what I do, I always run into this error on even the most simplistic sessions.

I'm eyeballing the System Usage during playback of a 2-track session (which is only 1.5 minutes long) -- no plugins -- and I'm getting the error when my CPU Native is at 3% and CPU Clip and Disk are at 0%.

My system is an 8-core Mac Pro (3.2GHz cpu's) with 12 gigs of RAM. Can someone please help me out here? I can't understand why I keep running into this error when my CPU Usage isn't even going above 3 percent. I'm lost...
Start at the "Help us Help You - READ THIS Before Posting!" link above.

What exact version of Pro Tools, what exact Mac, What exact OS X version. What disks are you boot/session and audio drives etc. (make/model/speed/how are they connected (e.g. USB, Firewire, SATA)).

What plugins are in your session?
What 3rd party/old pluigns have you got installed (even if not used)?
Have you checked all plugins are up to date?

How many tracks/tracks recording? Session sample rate?

What standard trouble shooting and system optimization steps have you done? Please list them all carefully ("see Help us Help You - READ THIS Before Posting!").

Especially trash DAE prefs. If nothing else works, move aside all the plugin files to another folder and start up Pro Tools. Its not just what is instantiated in your session, you may have sick plugins loaded.

Does this happen if you create a new session?

If that does not help do a Pro Tools *clean* uninstall (i.e. trashing all plugins) and do a full new Pro Tools install and then reinstall any third party plugins.

---

Joe -- can you create your own thread for your problem, and describe all the troubleshooting you have done. Piling onto an exiting thread usually does nothing except create confusion about who is talking to who about what.

Darryl
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  #5  
Old 10-20-2012, 07:50 PM
foxdog175 foxdog175 is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2012
Location: Coal City
Posts: 18
Default Re: CPU Overload (6101)

I'll definitely try clearing out my prefs. I'll be gone again all day tomorrow; on Monday, I'll check out the Help Us Help You thread. In the meantime, here are my specs:

Computer:
Mac OS X 10.8.2
Mac Pro
2 x 3.2 GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon
12 GB 800 MHz DDR2
30" and 20" Apple displays powered by NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT (512meg)
4 internal 1TB SATA drives. My music drive has 363 gigs of available space. My boot drive has 61 gigs of free space.
10 TB backup system (drobo)

Pro Tools:
No plugins in my session. It was even erroring on a brand new session within the first few seconds of recording a guitar track.

The only plugins I have that don't come standard with Pro Tools were free that came with it when I registered PT 10 (Reverb One and BF Tel-Ray). Both are up-to-date. I just received PT 10 and my interface last Thursday (2 days ago).

Sample Rate is 44.1. It's error'ing on several sessions: one of them is only one track, another has 2 tracks (an mp3 and a guitar track).

Hopefully that's enough info to get started.
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  #6  
Old 10-21-2012, 05:20 AM
loosestones loosestones is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Gold Coast, Australia
Posts: 58
Default Re: CPU Overload (6101)

try this, turn off wifi and set DHCP routing for firewire devices (in networking) to off.
For me this nailed it.

Matt B

Loose Stones Studios.
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  #7  
Old 10-22-2012, 06:51 PM
foxdog175 foxdog175 is offline
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Default Re: CPU Overload (6101)

I've trashed all of the prefs and data that the 'help us help you' link suggested. I've also turned off my wifi and firewire device networking.

Unfortunately, I'm still running into the error. My System Usage (cpu native) has never gone above 6% during all of the Overload Errors, and the cpu clip and disk meters have never gone above 2%.

Any other ideas as to what the issue could be?

I'm running a guitar to a Line6 POD HD500 to an M-Audio Fast Track C600. The interface is going both to my monitors and computer. I also have a presonus faderport plugged in.

My playback engine defaulted to Pro Tools Aggregate I/O after I trashed the prefs and I left it there. Originally, the engine was set to my Fast Track. In my I/O settings, I just hit the default buttons, which setup the 6 inputs and outputs.

The Overload error seems like a bug because it's randomly occurring either during recording or playback...I'm just having a heck of a time figuring out how to fix it.
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  #8  
Old 10-24-2012, 09:14 AM
foxdog175 foxdog175 is offline
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Default Re: CPU Overload (6101)

I set my playback engine to the Fast Track and turned the sample rate to 512 and so far, that seems to have helped.

I've heard that it's best to set the sample rate low when recording and high when editing/mixing. However, I can't get anything accomplished at a low sample rate. Is it ok if I keep it at 512/1024 for everything?

The only downside I've seen is that if my input levels are turned up (along with the return levels), I hear a very distracting delay during recording. I've had to turn the input levels all the way down in my control panel and keep only the returns on. Is that ok?
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  #9  
Old 10-24-2012, 10:35 AM
Darryl Ramm Darryl Ramm is offline
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Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by foxdog175 View Post
I set my playback engine to the Fast Track and turned the sample rate to 512 and so far, that seems to have helped.

I've heard that it's best to set the sample rate low when recording and high when editing/mixing. However, I can't get anything accomplished at a low sample rate. Is it ok if I keep it at 512/1024 for everything?

The only downside I've seen is that if my input levels are turned up (along with the return levels), I hear a very distracting delay during recording. I've had to turn the input levels all the way down in my control panel and keep only the returns on. Is that ok?
Yes you don't want to be using aggregate IO. Something is still wrong, we see this frequently here where things are just not optimized properly with your system -- that may be happening here if you are having to run small sessions at 512 or 1024 buffer size. Have you done every last optimization for your system listed under the "Help us Help You" link above on this web page? Check them again! Many things there not done exactly as described in the recommended systems optimizations can cause this. What are all the settings on the playback engine dialog panel?

Stop looking at the CPU meters they are not telling you anything useful.

What exact make and model are your drives? What is each different drive used for? Are you sure nothing else could be doing IO to the session/audio drive. What file system is on each drive? Do you have RAID configured?

The next debug step would likely be to manually remove all plugins from the plugin folder(s) and see if Pro Tools works better with no plugins loaded (even if you are not using them), but I suspect the problem is so something simpler and covered above already.

You can use any buffer size that works, the only penalty is the latency you are hearing. At mix time it's more common to need a large buffer size to allow lots of tracks and plugins to be used, that increases latency but does not matter since you are not tracking. When recording latency matters so folks often try to use a smaller buffer size. However the fast track pro and many other interfaces supports a hardware monitor/cue mix that let's talent hear themselves back with zero latency, that may be enough to allow you to track with large buffer sizes and keep the talent happy.

To be clear on terminology what you are adjusting is the IO buffer size not the sample rate. Sample rates are how many times per second the analog signal is converted to a digital word. IO buffer size is how many bits the IO buffer is in size, the IO buffer stores samples as they are moved around internally and written to disk. The latency you hear is a product of the latency of each sample (the time between each sample = the reciprocal of the sample rate) and however many samples fit into the IO buffer. The lower the sample rate and the larger the buffer the higher the latency. But as you increase the sample rate you often need to increase the buffer size to keep things working (so don't just turn up the sample rate trying to reduce latency).

Darryl
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  #10  
Old 10-24-2012, 01:24 PM
foxdog175 foxdog175 is offline
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Posts: 18
Default Re: CPU Overload (6101)

Yep (using these instructions). Here's a rundown:

Optimize Energy Saver: check
Turn off Wifi: check (though it's back on now)
Turn off BT: check
Disable Firewire Networking: check
Disable FileVault Protection: check (wasn't on)
Update iLok Drivers: check
Software Update: check
Disable Spotlight Indexing: check (when I went through the checklist, I added all of my HD's, but removed my boot drive after testing the error as I require it for my work email).
Disable Sudden Motion Sensor: for laptops only. I skipped this one.
Deleting prefs and databases: check
Uninstall and reinstall PT: I haven't tried this yet, but will.
Repair Disk Permissions: check
New User Account: check. I created a new admin which resulted in almost a 'new computer' when logging in. Unfortunately, I still ran into the error.
Remove Login Items: I had a boatload of them. I removed all but 3 (Mail, DragThing, and AirVideo Server). I'll definitely turn those off though temporarily and see if that helps.
Remove Startup Items: check
Plug-In Compatability: I only have 2 plugin's that I downloaded (which were free from Avid as a bonus, when I purchased Pro Tools: ReverbOne and Tel-Ray Delay). Neither say they're compatible with OS X Mountain Lion.

How do I properly uninstall plugins? I'd like to remove the 2 that I downloaded and see if that's it. Do I just remove them from the Library/App Support/Avid/Audio/Plug-Ins folder? Or are they somewhere else as well?

Hard Drive Info: I have 4 internal HD's
Mac (boot drive; contains all applications): Hitachi HDE721010SLA330
Mac 2 (media drive): WDC WD10EALX-009BA0
Mac 3 (music and video project drive -- video editing sessions and pro tools sessions): Hitachi HDE721010SLA330
Mac 4 (work drive): Hitachi HDE721010SLA330

Mac 2, 3, and 4 are nothing more than storage drives. Nothing special there. Mac is my boot drive along with applications and pictures.

I do not have a RAID, but I do have a Drobo backup system that uses nothing more than Time Machine. I don't think it does anything special to my storage other than the standard processes that Time Machine runs through.

Thanks for the info on the I/O buffer size.

I'm wondering if my problem is one of two things:

1) one of my 2 plugins that were downloaded
2) I really have no idea how my I/O should be setup. I simply selected my Fast Track as the engine, used 3 of 8 cores, and then went into I/O and hit the "Default" button in the input and output section.

Note: I have run into an error that states, "The current playback engine does not support a sample rate of 48 kHz" when opening the Pro Tools sessions a few times. Could that be the issue?

Thanks so much for responding. I greatly appreciate your help!
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