Sidelined by CPU Problem on 32GB Mac

[JFreak]

Sadly, no. If you need good performance, you need external SSD on TB or internal NVMe SSD -- both expensive in larger size.

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by cp2

upgrade from USB-C

Any SSD on USB-C will be much better than your spinner, because by design SSD has minimal latency. Unless you need to use practically every library at the same time, that *may* be enough for you. With the USB bottleneck of course.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by cp2

I wondered if the drive might have something to do with this issue as well. I have about 3TB of libraries all on an external drive which is a 4 TB Glyph USB-C (3.1), 7200rpm (not SSD). I was thinking of using this as a backup drive only and getting another one, but a 4 TB SSD with a thunderbolt 3 connection is about $1500. Ouch. Any suggestions on an upgrade from USB-C that would be an improvement but less than $1500? My internal drive is only 500GB...

I hope we will see more USB 3.1/Gen 2 USB drives in the 4TB capacity range soon and hopefully Thunderbolt 3/PCIe/NVMe drives as well.

The NVMe SSDs are just so stunningly fast, but always be careful that any "Thunderbolt 3" drive is a PCIe/NVMe drive... some may only be SATA internally.

If you did purchase an external USB SSD or SSDs today that might not be terrible... as you say you can use your HDD or clones/backups.

But if curious if the drive performance is an issue one thing you might be able to do is copy only the samples you need to the boot drive and repoint Omnisphere to them. And test, just to see if there is an improvement. I don't have a feel for how large the libraries you might need are... but I've done this in the past with other sample based systems.

[Marsdy]

Originally Posted by cp2

I wondered if the drive might have something to do with this issue as well. I have about 3TB of libraries all on an external drive which is a 4 TB Glyph USB-C (3.1), 7200rpm (not SSD). I was thinking of using this as a backup drive only and getting another one, but a 4 TB SSD with a thunderbolt 3 connection is about $1500. Ouch. Any suggestions on an upgrade from USB-C that would be an improvement but less than $1500? My internal drive is only 500GB...

Omnisphere does stream from disk but the instruments really aren’t that big. It’s a bit of a throwback from when people had less RAM in their computers.

An external USB-C NVMe enclosure would be a lot cheaper than $1500
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ICY-BOX-Enc...s%2C161&sr=8-3

These are limited to 1000MB/s over USB-C but with the massively faster access time over a spinner you’re talking four times faster than your Glyph.

Unfortunately 4TB NVMe sticks are still expensive but a Sabrent Rocket 2TB stick is less than $300.

Even better one of these:
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/express-4m2
Add two 2TB NVMe sticks and it’s still a lot cheaper than $1500

[monnecka]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Lots of info there except you missed some of the most useful stuff, especially what exact Pro Tools versions you are using on what exact macOS version?

Rule number one of troubleshooting CPU errors is to always suspect plugins.

Are those Omnisphere plugins up to date? Compatible with your macOS and Pro Tools version (note you need Omnisphere 2 for official compatibility with Catalina). And as Ben says, they seem suspects here. (edit: I fixed a typo that said iZotope not Omnisphere)

And you have a UAD system... are you absolutely sure you are not instantiating UAD plugins in a session? No hidden tracks etc. None of those big slow high IO buffer demanding UAD plugins? Hopefully you understand the overhead issues with UAD plugins within Pro Tools.

What troubleshooting have you tried? Lots of standard stuff you need to go thought. Start at "help us help you" up the top of every DUC web page.

You should have tested by removing all .aaxplugin files from the plugin folder (and just testing only with the default Pro Tools plugins that Pro Tools will put back automagically), trash prefs (keep trashing prefs as you try other stuff, use Pete Gates PT Prefs utility), try other sessions, test with Build-in Output, test from a new admin user account, ... there are a pile of things to try and if you should list exactly what you tried if you want useful help.

Is the system fully optimized? every last thing done, WiFi off, Bluetooth off?
Do it all for now, you can back off some of them later.

Uncheck ignore errors (you want to see errors while troubleshooting).
Hopefully you are working at sane sample rates of 96kHz or lower.
Try dynamic plugin processing off.
Set cache size to a few GB.

If your samples would fit on the super-fast internal PCIe/NVMe SSD then that is likely a better place to run them than the external slow glyph drive. Those PCIe/NVMe SSDs are usually capable of running boot, audio sessions, and samples.

I’m just watching from the outside and saw your section here about the UAD stuff... can you give me more info on this? I am always having pro tools is out of memory issues and I’m on a 64gb Mac Pro system ... I was wondering what the cause could be.. lmk your thoughts :) I appreciate it! Pro tools 2020 and Mojave in my studio FYI


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[musicman691]

Originally Posted by monnecka

I’m just watching from the outside and saw your section here about the UAD stuff... can you give me more info on this? I am always having pro tools is out of memory issues and I’m on a 64gb Mac Pro system ... I was wondering what the cause could be.. lmk your thoughts :) I appreciate it! Pro tools 2020 and Mojave in my studio FYI


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Session size? Do you use a lot of sample-based vi's? NI Kontakt and EW Play aren't always good about releasing unused samples. Do you use VEPro? You may want to as it's pretty good at managing memory.

[lesbrunn]

Originally Posted by musicman691

Session size? Do you use a lot of sample-based vi's? NI Kontakt and EW Play aren't always good about releasing unused samples. Do you use VEPro? You may want to as it's pretty good at managing memory.

+1. I've been using VE Pro for a few years now on the same computer as PT. There's a world of difference there, but I'm now running VEP7 on a second networked computer...unbelievable performance. let's face it, PT isn't good at VI's. Maybe just a few, but if you are a hardcore VI user then PT is not your friend. Period. VE Pro is. My second machine is an older quad core overclocked to 4GHz with 32GB of RAM. It absolutely rocks because VE Pro handles CPU and memory very efficiently.
I run very few VI's in PT. Instead, I use the VST versions in VE Pro; that way PT is free to do what it does best...audio.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by monnecka

I’m just watching from the outside and saw your section here about the UAD stuff... can you give me more info on this? I am always having pro tools is out of memory issues and I’m on a 64gb Mac Pro system ... I was wondering what the cause could be.. lmk your thoughts :) I appreciate it! Pro tools 2020 and Mojave in my studio FYI

This whole thread is about CPU performance/CPU errors and I was talking about high latency needs when running UAD plugins in Pro Tools, that is well known and has been discussed here and on UAD forums a lot and is well covered in UAD documation. But that has nothing to do with memory usage.

As mentioned already a likely cause is using a lot of memory hungry VIs (how do you have the VI cache configured if it has one etc, How big do you have the Pro TOols cache set to? What VIs are you using? What standard troubleshooting have you tried? You are not actually providing much info here that is going to get you useful help). But we can't guess, you gave us *no* idea what you are doing except maybe running UAD plugins.

And if it's not just VIs then a likely scenario is you have a plugin with a memory leak.

There is a lot of standard troubleshooting you should try, starting with just trashing prefs. It's better if you just start your own new thread and provide all the expect info, including listing what troubleshooting you have tried. Start under the "Help us help you" link up the top of each DUC web page.