need to restart PT due to sound distortion

[Martin Eriksson]

hi

I’m new to PT10 and DAW, but now the owner of a mbox mini with a free PT 10 upgrade. Problem starts with playing demos (first act of beginning to use PT), where it sounds distorted and flat (mostly the bass and drums sounds like 8-bit), but when doing a PT restart all returns to normal, and sounds good

This issue can return again after a 3rd PT restart (no reboot of the pc).. and so on..

I started with installing PT9 and had no issues, then downloaded PT10, uninstalled PT9 completely (also mbox drivers),, and then for course installing mbox and PT10 :)

I hope someone can help, because it's really annoying to learn a new program like this

EDIT: due to the link below :)
SiSoftware Sandra

Computer
Model : Lenovo 4236PFG ThinkPad T420
Mainboard : Lenovo 4236PFG
Serial Number : 1ZJJR******
BIOS : Lenovo 83ET67WW (1.37 ) 11/28/2011
TPM - Trusted Platform Module : 1.02, STM
Intel vPro : 7.01.14.1107
Total Memory : 7.89GB DDR3 SO-DIMM

Processors
Processor : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2640M CPU @ 2.80GHz (2C 4T 3.49GHz, 3.5GHz IMC, 2x 256kB L2, 4MB L3)
Socket/Slot : FC PGA988

Chipset
Memory Controller : Lenovo Core (Sandy Bridge) Mobile DRAM Controller 100MHz, 2x 4GB DDR3 SO-DIMM 1.33GHz 128-bit, Integrated Graphics

Memory Module(s)
Memory Module : Hynix (Hyundai) HMT351S6CFR8C-H9 4GB DDR3 SO-DIMM PC3-10700S DDR3-1334 (9-9-9-25 4-34-10-5)
Memory Module : Kingston 99U5428-040A01LF 4GB DDR3 SO-DIMM PC3-10700S DDR3-1334 (9-9-9-25 4-34-10-5)

Storage Devices
INTEL SSDSC2CW180A3 (180GB, SATA600, 2.5", SSD) : 168GB (C:)
Optiarc DVD RW AD-7710H (SATA150, DVD+-RW, CD-RW, 2MB Cache) : N/A (D:)

Operating System
Windows System : Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 6.01.7601 (Service Pack 1)
Platform Compliance : x64

Windows Experience Index
Current System : 6.3

any need for more info, please kick me

[sw rec]

http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=300050

[Old School Audio Guy]

Originally Posted by Martin Eriksson

hi

I’m new to PT10 and DAW, but now the owner of a mbox mini with a free PT 10 upgrade. Problem starts with playing demos (first act of beginning to use PT), where it sounds distorted and flat (mostly the bass and drums sounds like 8-bit), but when doing a PT restart all returns to normal, and sounds good

This issue can return again after a 3rd PT restart (no reboot of the pc).. and so on..

I started with installing PT9 and had no issues, then downloaded PT10, uninstalled PT9 completely (also mbox drivers),, and then for course installing mbox and PT10 :)

I hope someone can help, because is really annoying to learn a new program like this

It's all in the drivers and firmware I had the same problem with PT10 and Lynx AES16src and an Aurora 16VT and it had to do with PCIe buss speed Lynx built a new driver and firmware update that fixed it all Now I am a happy camper.

[Martin Eriksson]

OK.. still a sad camper here

[Darryl Ramm]

That's not quite a full Sandra report, please look at other posts on DUC to see what is expected.

Are you running audio sessions off internal SSD drive? Or a separate drive, if a separate drive connect it and rerun the Sandra report so it picks up that drive. You are supposed to use a seperate 'audio spec' drive and not use the system/boot drive for audio - doing that can cause *exactly* this problem. Now often with SSD drives you can get away with this, but not always, and you may be in that later case.

That other link also describes the standard optimization and troubleshooting steps -- what exact optimization steps have you done? What standard troubleshooting steps also described there have you tried?

What are all the settings in your Pro Tools: Setup>Playback Engine dialog panel?

What happens if you create a new session with just a single stereo audio track and drag in any old MP3 or similar file does it play OK? The point there is to try a new, completely empty session, without any plugins.

What exact version of Pro Tools 10 do you have? and what driver version for the Mbox? Did you do a "clean uninstall" of Pro Tools 9? "complete uninstall" is ambitious. Do you have any third party plugins? Did you check for any out of date plugins? -- even if not used they can cause problems like this.

Unfortunately for many of these things it may not matter that it 'worked on Pro Tools 9', Pro Tools is a demanding program and very sensitive to PC configuration and proper setup, you might have been on the bleeding edge on PT9 and just lucky it worked. The way to solve these problems is to scrub through everything making sure you follow systems requirements, systems optimization steps, etc.



Darryl

[sw rec]

Right off the bat, your configuration is lacking. You don't have a dedicated, separate recording drive listed, which is an absolute necessity for this to work reliably.
You also have mis-matched RAM, which creates major headaches.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by sw rec

Right off the bat, your configuration is lacking. You don't have a dedicated, separate recording drive listed, which is an absolute necessity for this to work reliably.
You also have mis-matched RAM, which creates major headaches.

The DIMMs are the same size and timing specs, but they are from different manufacturers. While yes this might in very rare cases caused problems there are many more things worth investigating there are lots of other things to look at here first. I'd not even call otherwise matched DIMMs from different manufactures "mismatched".

[Martin Eriksson]

so I just woke up this morning here in Denmark and it's still hella cold outside,, and oh yes,, Pro Tools.. thanks for the replies

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Are you running audio sessions off internal SSD drive?

yes, but also tried a USB harddrive - didn't work, and I've tried working with Boom (also installed in same folder as PT).. still 8bit sound

That other link also describes the standard optimization and troubleshooting steps -- what exact optimization steps have you done?

been updating every program and driver (network, graphics etc.), and I've stopped using Turbo Boost. I've read the hole windows guide, and tried out the things that made sense

What standard troubleshooting steps also described there have you tried?

I have reinstalled the PT10 again. I've tried a different slot for the USB wire. been crying :'(

What are all the settings in your Pro Tools: Setup>Playback Engine dialog panel?

H/W Buffer - 512 samples, Host Processors - 2 processors, CPU Usage - 85%, Plug-in buffer - Level 2

What happens if you create a new session with just a single stereo audio track and drag in any old MP3 or similar file does it play OK? The point there is to try a new, completely empty session, without any plugins.

Works just fine

What exact version of Pro Tools 10 do you have? and what driver version for the Mbox? Did you do a "clean uninstall" of Pro Tools 9? "complete uninstall" is ambitious. Do you have any third party plugins? Did you check for any out of date plugins? -- even if not used they can cause problems like this.

PT10 - 10.3.2, Mbox 1.0.8, I did a clean uninstall, and no 3. party plugin.. tried to install PT without AVI, and still problems

I will mess around with it some more, or just go back to PT9, since I'm a novice I don't think working with PT9 would be a big deal for me

[Darryl Ramm]

You tried what exact (make/model/spec) USB drive? I hope it had an NTFS filesystem. Connect the drive and run a full Sandra report if you are unsure of any of this. And you are sure all the session media was on that new drive? Boom samples should be installed elsewhere, not on the audio drive (audio/sessions should get a dedicated drive, VI samples usually go in the boot drive or their own dedicated 3rd drive). Again you can get away with this sometimes on an SSD drive, but not always. If you are trying to write to a very full SSD drive IO performance may drop significantly.

Is the problem only sessions that contain Boom?, or other plugins? or only one particular session?

There are lots of standard optimization steps you did not list, that you _need_ to apply. Things like disabling or uninstalling any antivirus software. Also make sure there is no disk indexing software (from Microsoft or Google etc) running on the computer.

Increase to the cpu limit to 99% and try increasing the number of processors to 3 and try decreasing to 1 and see if either helps.

Darryl

[soybalm]

Since it's pretty easy to do so, try pulling one of the memory modules. I know it's not good running Win 7 64 on 4 gigs of ram but you can easily resolve if that is the problem. It will run sluggish but you may find the problem. PT 10 changed the caching scheme across the board, which might be fussy across the board. Even though HD has an added disk cache feature I think non HD is changed also.
There might be a problem with one of the sticks. The Hyundai? Also try different USB ports for the interface as well as the USB drive. Not all ports are always the same. My 2009 desktop has one 1.1 USB port for example. That definitely causes 8 bit fragmented sound like a ring modulator is on.
Definitely another drive will make a world of difference. Make sure you put the whole project folder on the other drive and "open session" there and not "most recent session" which may use files from the OS drive.
If you have an eSATA port on your Lenova, use that with a Thermaltake blacX caddy or equivalent for desktop drives. My laptop rocks with that with Pro Tools but then it's hardly a laptop. The difference is 80 tracks or 11 tracks on an i3 Toshiba.