audio is visible; will not play back

[sidereal-studios]

I've got gremlins in my system. Both the bass track and the stereo keyboard track in a particular session are visible, and will be audible for a few seconds, but then both suddenly cut out. There is no strange automation going on, i.e. no hidden mutes or volume changes. I quit pro tools and re-launch it and it happens again. I could be at any location in the session and the same thing happens. (i.e. it's not just a problem with a particular area in the session)

Two possibilities I've considered for this: 1. I'm running PT5.1 on OS 8.6. this has worked fine in the past, but may be bogging down now. 2. Both the bass and the keyboard tracks have a large number of edits. But then again, so do the drums, but no problems there.

I tried trashing the prefs, bought new ram, even created new bass and keyboard tracks and dragged the original regions intact into those new tracks. The latter made things work longer, almost made it all the way through the song. But after a while the same thing happened.

Any ideas?

[DigiTechSupt]

Could be a voicing thing... Try checking the "Mutes frees voice" option under "Operations" menu and then solo those two tracks (you may have to assign these tracks to specific voices as opposed to "Auto" and see if they playback.

If they do playback, then try switching your Playback engine from 32 voice to 64 voice if it's not already. If you're already in 64 voice mode then you may need to distribute your available voices.

Jon Connolly
Digidesign Product Specialist

[Helge Schwarz]

What about 2 tracks that share only one voice? Perhaps one track is even hidden?
That may result in muting the lower track.

Good luck! [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[john1192]

try toggling bypass switch on plugins on these channels...better yet remove plugs and replace...if still happens this was a bug I beleive in 5.1.....I defer to Digi on the version that fixed this....good luck

[sidereal-studios]

Thanks everyone.

I tried all of the above, but still no luck. One nagging thing... I tried to assign voices manually but got this annoying dialog box: "Track can't be set to assigned voice because it contains an active RTAS plug-in. Audio tracks w/ RTAS plug-ins must be set to 'auto' or 'off.'

I should clarify a bit what's happening. When I first open the session, the bass and keys are fine, the song's rolling along, then after about 30 or so seconds, both become inaudible and the meters stop registering any signal. The only indication that anything's there is that I can see the waveform. If I quit, re-launch and then go to a different section of the song, say the chorus, the same 30 or so seconds of bass/keys will play and then go dead again. So it's not anything happening in any particular section of the session. The same strange thing happens no matter where I begin playback.

I'm wondering now if the audio region files might be corrupted. But that's a wild guess. I'm at a loss here.

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Try this real fast and see if it makes any difference...

Drag the Bass and Keys up to the top of the edit window (or the left of the mix window) and see if this behaviour continues.

Rail

[Shawn Simpson]

Just to make sure, you did try removing all of the plug-ins from those tracks, right? If it's giving you the same amount of playback each time, regardless of where you started, it might be a time-bombed plug-in demo. Waves plugs use to be that way, but not anymore. Simply bypassing them wouldn't help in that case either. You actually have to take them off. If you've tried all of the stuff already suggested, you might try creating a new session and track transferring just those 2 tracks into it. See if they'll play in there fine. If they will, it's not a corrupted audio file. Most likely, it's something very simple that you'll smack yourself on the forehead when you figure out. Good luck!!

[sidereal-studios]

That did it Shawn! I had demo versions of the Waves R-comp on the bass and MetaFlanger on the keys. Took both off and now it's all good. Guess I'll have to turn to my paid-for McDSP plugs to compress the bass now.

Thanks so much everyone! Feels good to be back in the drivers seat.