Avid Pro Audio Community

Avid Pro Audio Community

How to Join & Post  •  Community Terms of Use  •  Help Us Help You

Knowledge Base Search  •  Community Search  •  Learn & Support


Avid Home Page

Go Back   Avid Pro Audio Community > Pro Tools Hardware > Pro Tools HDX & HD Native Systems (Mac)

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
  #21  
Old 01-13-2019, 12:58 PM
Howardk Howardk is offline
Member
 
Join Date: May 2000
Location: Canada, just past the line!
Posts: 1,990
Default Re: HDX PT 2018 CPU Spikes AAE -9171 Halts Playback

Quote:
Originally Posted by the.engineer View Post
Howard thanks for being a tesing bench for all of us, it's really helpful to see the processes you're going through. I've been experiencing a graphical issue in PT 2018.12 on 10.13.6 with an updated graphics card (AMD Radeon R9 280X 3GB) with an old Apple 27" LED Cinema display. I was getting so fed up I plugged in a cheap Asus 24" 1080p screen via HDMI and not only did my graphical lag go away but my CPU spikes were less frequent as well.

I noticed in your system specs that you still have the stock 5770 card, I would replace that ASAP with a Metal compatibile graphics card https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208898

You may run into isses with power connectors but if you're handy with a soldering iron (or know someone who is) you can splice the HDX power cable into one of the graphics card power cables. The HDX power cable is only used for the fan.

There is also the AMD RX 560 4GB which doesn't require power cables. There's a lot of information about graphics cards and some don't show the boot screen, so check before you buy.

Also, your system drive is a 6G drive and, though I'm sure it isn't a problem, the Mac Pro 5,1 is maximum 3G speed on the SATA bus. I am about to upgrade to a PCIe M.2 SSD blade for my boot drive, I will report back!

Lastly, have you considered upgrading your 2.93 CPUs for the 3.46 X5690?

I know it's yet more money to drop (especially when, like me, you've just paid the premium for Pro Tools Ultimate) but could be cheaper in the long run.

You may have done some of the things I've suggested, but if you haven't good luck!
Thanks for your post and info.

I will go thru it in more detail... just running errands with my wife right now, but she’s shopping so I can sneak in a post..

Although my original video card is working well with my displays, it certainly could be a culprit. I have been procrastinating on that because I don’t know which card to get yet and really like to be able to hold option on startup to select system drive. Yes on soldering and it would be good to be ready for Mojave.

The most curious thing to me is that it seems the system seems to work well with Pro Tools 10 on Mountain Lion, with HDX card... no CPU Spikes are apparent there!

I have tried the 6G SSD on the drive slide on the slow Sata buss as well as on a Sonnett PCIe card that fits two SSD drives, no diff.

I am filling a notebook with a log of tests, the short story is nothing seems to make a difference with Pro Tools 2018-12 or -10.... CPU Spikes seem to go from bad to worst depending on the weather, so to speak.
Reply With Quote
  #22  
Old 01-13-2019, 01:58 PM
the.engineer the.engineer is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Guildford, Surrey, UK
Posts: 287
Default Re: HDX PT 2018 CPU Spikes AAE -9171 Halts Playback

Quote:
Originally Posted by Howardk View Post
Thanks for your post and info.

The most curious thing to me is that it seems the system seems to work well with Pro Tools 10 on Mountain Lion, with HDX card... no CPU Spikes are apparent there!
+1 to that!

I was running Mavericks 10.9.4 with HD 11.2.2 and it was wonderful but I was getting worried about being 'behind the curve' what with updates to plugins that I couldn't access and firefox and chrome soon to lose support so I thought it was time to take the plunge.

Getting my system 'back to where it was' has been a struggle and a money pit that is extremely frustrating.

I don't know where you're based but MacVidCards in the US will help you find a compatible graphics card with boot screen, here in the UK create.pro are a company championing the Mac Pro 5,1 and in Denmark there's biglittlefrank.dk.

If you can find a company or someone near you with a 3.46 12-core tray with loads of ram and heft graphics card, I'd ask them nicely if you could borrow it for some tests!
__________________
James Welch
Recording Engineer | Producer
Masterlink Productions

Mac Mini 8,1 (2018) | 3.2 GHz 6-Core Intel i7 | 64GB Ram | Apple 27" LED Cinema | 2TB System Drive | LaCie Rugged USB-C 2TB SSD NVMe Audio Drive | UAD-2 Quad Satellite (Firewire)

macOS Catalina 10.15.7 | Pro Tools Ultimate 2021.7 | Avid HDX TB3 Chassis | HDX | Avid Omni | Avid 16x16 HD I/O x2 | Digidesign 192 | Digidesign C24
Reply With Quote
  #23  
Old 01-13-2019, 11:01 PM
Howardk Howardk is offline
Member
 
Join Date: May 2000
Location: Canada, just past the line!
Posts: 1,990
Default Re: HDX PT 2018 CPU Spikes AAE -9171 Halts Playback

Hi James

How is performance with your system at present with regard to CPU spikes, abilitiy to run native AAX plug-ins, AAE -9171 or 9173 halts etc?

Howard
Reply With Quote
  #24  
Old 01-14-2019, 01:08 AM
the.engineer the.engineer is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Guildford, Surrey, UK
Posts: 287
Default Re: HDX PT 2018 CPU Spikes AAE -9171 Halts Playback

See attached for my cpu usage for a session with over 60 tracks. I currently have that session looping with the entire mix coming out of multiple outputs and being routed back into a pair of inputs with input monitoring on.

It hasn't dropped out yet!

Recording test will be today so will let you know.
Attached Images
File Type: png JW CPU Usage 2019_01_14.png (51.3 KB, 0 views)
__________________
James Welch
Recording Engineer | Producer
Masterlink Productions

Mac Mini 8,1 (2018) | 3.2 GHz 6-Core Intel i7 | 64GB Ram | Apple 27" LED Cinema | 2TB System Drive | LaCie Rugged USB-C 2TB SSD NVMe Audio Drive | UAD-2 Quad Satellite (Firewire)

macOS Catalina 10.15.7 | Pro Tools Ultimate 2021.7 | Avid HDX TB3 Chassis | HDX | Avid Omni | Avid 16x16 HD I/O x2 | Digidesign 192 | Digidesign C24
Reply With Quote
  #25  
Old 01-14-2019, 10:19 AM
the.engineer the.engineer is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Guildford, Surrey, UK
Posts: 287
Default Re: HDX PT 2018 CPU Spikes AAE -9171 Halts Playback

Recording session went flawlessly.

But then listening back to some other sessions with no plugins I had a couple of dropouts for no apparent reason. As you said howardk like the weather!

And a freaky MIDI bug that is seriously not good. A bug that deletes all the MIDI on a track when you write one note.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
__________________
James Welch
Recording Engineer | Producer
Masterlink Productions

Mac Mini 8,1 (2018) | 3.2 GHz 6-Core Intel i7 | 64GB Ram | Apple 27" LED Cinema | 2TB System Drive | LaCie Rugged USB-C 2TB SSD NVMe Audio Drive | UAD-2 Quad Satellite (Firewire)

macOS Catalina 10.15.7 | Pro Tools Ultimate 2021.7 | Avid HDX TB3 Chassis | HDX | Avid Omni | Avid 16x16 HD I/O x2 | Digidesign 192 | Digidesign C24
Reply With Quote
  #26  
Old 01-14-2019, 03:50 PM
Howardk Howardk is offline
Member
 
Join Date: May 2000
Location: Canada, just past the line!
Posts: 1,990
Default Re: HDX PT 2018 CPU Spikes AAE -9171 Halts Playback

Quote:
Originally Posted by the.engineer View Post
Recording session went flawlessly.

But then listening back to some other sessions with no plugins I had a couple of dropouts for no apparent reason. As you said howardk like the weather!

And a freaky MIDI bug that is seriously not good. A bug that deletes all the MIDI on a track when you write one note.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
That's strange behavior! Neither of which I have seen.

I did see a couple strange events on my system a) audio segments/regions went missing/off-line from a session, and I had to relink by name and the files where still within the session's Audio Files folder. b) Pro Tools corrupted a source file when I was importing into a track for reference. . . both strange occurrences I have never seen happen before. I have been using Pro Tools HD since 1998 (had a 5 card Mix system with a couple samplecell cards in an expansion chassis) and moved to Accel when it first came out and eventually grew it to HD7. . . I have never felt as nervous using Pro Tools as I do right now with 2018 Ultimate.

Aside from the strange occurrences. . . I sure would like to know when these "weather related" CPU spikes made their way into Pro Tools HD. . . which versions of OS X/Pro Tools? and what the remedy is?

Does replacing the Video card with a more capable Model make the difference to eliminate these CPU Spike/log jams?

Last edited by Howardk; 01-14-2019 at 07:52 PM.
Reply With Quote
  #27  
Old 01-16-2019, 11:56 AM
the.engineer the.engineer is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Guildford, Surrey, UK
Posts: 287
Default Re: HDX PT 2018 CPU Spikes AAE -9171 Halts Playback

What I can say for sure is that my new (downgraded) Asus 27" 1080p screen connected via HDMI to my AMD Radeon R9 280X has significantly reduced crashes and cpu errors.

Also, just read on another thread about uninstalling the Avid App Manager (which I had done already) may help you out.

I seem to have about one CPU spike early on in my day (usually during playback) and then nothing for the whole day.
__________________
James Welch
Recording Engineer | Producer
Masterlink Productions

Mac Mini 8,1 (2018) | 3.2 GHz 6-Core Intel i7 | 64GB Ram | Apple 27" LED Cinema | 2TB System Drive | LaCie Rugged USB-C 2TB SSD NVMe Audio Drive | UAD-2 Quad Satellite (Firewire)

macOS Catalina 10.15.7 | Pro Tools Ultimate 2021.7 | Avid HDX TB3 Chassis | HDX | Avid Omni | Avid 16x16 HD I/O x2 | Digidesign 192 | Digidesign C24
Reply With Quote
  #28  
Old 01-17-2019, 05:12 PM
Howardk Howardk is offline
Member
 
Join Date: May 2000
Location: Canada, just past the line!
Posts: 1,990
Default Re: HDX PT 2018 CPU Spikes AAE -9171 Halts Playback

Also, the CPU Cores toward the center seem to always be loaded the most on my system, with the lower and higher cores doing very little in comparison.

IMG_0140_s.jpg

I spoke with another user that has a number of 2010 Mac Pros running 2018/HDX, and he said he is seeing the same thing (cores in the middle loaded more).

Not sure when this CPU spiking problem came about. . . but I don't see it with the HDX card running Pro Tools 10, but the HDX card brings me nothing on Pro Tools 10, when I already have a Magma EB7 sitting here with 7 HD cards.

The advice I have been receiving from many sources has been "with 2018 Ultimate & HDX, do not use any Native Plugins and leave the buffer at 1024 and you'll be fine". From my point of view, then why did I upgrade from HD Accel on Pro Tools 10 to HDX Pro Tools 2018? An important goal was going to 64bit for more accessible RAM to run VIs. . . but I can't reliably do so on PT 2018 due to CPU Spikes. . .

I will look at the video card/monitor effect in more detail. BTW, I have sent 4 emails to MacVidCards.com, trying to see what video card they recommend, but zero response so far and not phone number listed. . .
Reply With Quote
  #29  
Old 01-17-2019, 05:22 PM
LukeHoward LukeHoward is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Melbourne
Posts: 1,233
Default Re: HDX PT 2018 CPU Spikes AAE -9171 Halts Playback

Quote:
The advice I have been receiving from many sources has been "with 2018 Ultimate & HDX, do not use any Native Plugins and leave the buffer at 1024 and you'll be fine". From my point of view, then why did I upgrade from HD Accel on Pro Tools 10 to HDX Pro Tools 2018?

Well, buffer at 1024 on HDX is pretty fine with virtual instruments and native plugins, even at 96k. But only using DSP plugins is a bit of a non-starter compared to the TDM days... I'd love FabFilter and SoundToys for starters!
__________________
https://lukehoward.com/
Reply With Quote
  #30  
Old 01-17-2019, 08:16 PM
Howardk Howardk is offline
Member
 
Join Date: May 2000
Location: Canada, just past the line!
Posts: 1,990
Default Re: HDX PT 2018 CPU Spikes AAE -9171 Halts Playback

Another thing that is driving me a bit wacky is the playlists are really slow. . . click solo on a lane, and wait 5 seconds or more. . . happens when there starts to be a lot of playlist lanes. . . I used to be able to have a couple hundred in Pro Tools 10 and never noticed a slow down. . . now it is like get a cup of coffee each time. Not really useable and most CPU cores not even loaded. . . not sure what Pro Tools is off to doing while we are waiting after soloing a playlist lane. . . strange behaviour. . . to get around, I just create a new track and disable the prior. . . which means a lot of looking around when I need to replace a comp section down the road. . . so yes a workaround, but not the behaviour I am used to from Pro Tools 10, which was snappy in this aspect. Ideas?

Last edited by Howardk; 01-17-2019 at 09:20 PM.
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
-9171 Errors luke88 Pro Tools HDX & HD Native Systems (Mac) 3 03-27-2019 03:49 AM
12.5 bug report AAE error -9171 solarduan Pro Tools 12 10 11-21-2016 09:29 AM
9171 error with HDX but not with Aggregate I/O pklein Pro Tools 12 0 07-15-2016 07:57 PM
Anyone having -9171/-9172 errors on 12? rinky Pro Tools 12 2 03-25-2015 10:32 AM
PT 11.2 with HDX 9171 error David Sandwisch Windows 5 12-02-2014 07:24 PM


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 11:38 PM.


Powered by: vBulletin, Copyright ©2000 - 2008, Jelsoft Enterprises Limited. Forum Hosted By: URLJet.com