Anyone had Buffer Issues Dissapear after 7.0?

[yarrick19]

I have a laptop running 6.4 that I use as my secondary recording computer (I have a great Pentium D desktop I do most of my work on). For the most part the laptop works OK, but I get the occasional buffer errors.

Has anyone had buffer issues dissapear after upgrading to 7.0?

[django57]

I have just purchased a laptop, to run 6.4 on... an HP Pavilion, no less... a diagnostic program says the chipset is a 915G/P, which I think is deemed incompatible by Digidesign... quote: "Digidesign's Mbox is not compatible with Intel 925X, 915G or 915P chipsets..." - not sure if my chip is a combination of both of these, or what...

Yet, after getting the dreaded -6086 H/W buffer error messages constantly, I have now simply installed a powered (mains, not bus) USB hub, with the Mbox running off that, and this seems to largely solve the problem (I say largely, 99%, as I've encountered the buffer underun only once since installing it)

This is an issue that Digidesign refer to themselves in their 'Compatibility' documentation (http://www.digidesign.com/compato/xp/intel/), in relation to certain USB underun issues (I think - don't understand it that well.

Anyhow, in part, it says "although Intel has not validated a high speed USB hub as a solution to this issue, we are aware of certain 3rd party system manufacturers that are using an external high speed USB hub to mitigate this issue..."

Indeed, on my old (current) desktop, a PII 660mhz machine, taking off all the USB devices makes it run Pro Tools OK without interrupts.

Basically, deeming a chipset 'incompatible' with Pro Tools is a convenient opt-out from having to fix what has to be some of the most temperamental software in use today (though it does a great job when it works), so if you have a potentially 'incompatible' machine, it's worth persevering, but you'd be excused from missing it, cos the USB workaround is subsumed in the section on 'Intel 9xx chips', in the Compatibility document.

I checked on potentially upgrading to PT 7 to see if that might fix the buffer errors also, but found the same chipset incompatibilities as for 6.4, and so, based on that, decided against upgrading, but have now found a new fix for my laptop.

Hope this 'rave' helps.

[Petander]

Has anyone had buffer issues dissapear after upgrading to 7.0?

Yes - for whatever this info is worth - my friend using a Toshiba Satellite P4 used to have lots of those errors with 6.7. No more with 7.0 -there may be other reasons though, I did a clean 7.0 install by myself and disabled every possible thing and then some. The previous laptop configuration may have been a part of the buffer issue, it was full of crap when I took a look at it and then started from format.It´s tough to disable all those nasties in a modern laptop, there´s not much you can do in BIOS ,not with this Toshiba at least.



Anyway, now it works without problems with both a 002R and Mbox2. Just don´t let it overheat.


By the way: He is using the internal 80G drive only so there´s a bad bottleneck and he can still only bounce about ten tracks when mixing down...


I used for overdubbing drums on top of some large sessions (from my setup) last week and it worked without a glitch. We also recorded some looong live jams last weekend, no errors or stopped recordings. That lappy got some CPU benefits with HT enabled, thanks for 7.0. I forgot the Davec2 counts now but they were ok -except for bouncing, of course.