Anyone else with slow graphic redraws in 2018.1

[fixxer49]

Originally Posted by TNM

good call...

It could be a rogue plugin in VEpro.

This was happening to me with hornet magnus mk2. All i did was have one instance on the master fader.. after about 20 minutes my free ram had almost disappeared and things DID get impossibly sluggish. Your post triggered the memory and it took ages to work out by process of elimination. (i believe the dev has fixed the leak in the plugin after i reported it, so don't let this put you off his plugins or anything).

There are heaps of free memory apps on the app store, perhaps the OP could install one and check free memory at time of slowdown, and then hit the memory clean button to see if it temporarily fixes the issue.

Or it's possible he is simply just using all that memory with all the VI's..

I do know that every time my free ram gets under the 500mb mark here, safari becomes terrible to just click and activate a tab, and in general the OS becomes very slow. So i think you might be on to something!

Test Session: 480 MIDI Tracks + 10 native instances of Kontakt as separate instrument tracks. No issues yet. Session and GUI responsiveness are very acceptable.

[TNM]

Originally Posted by fixxer49

Test Session: 480 MIDI Tracks + 10 native instances of Kontakt as separate instrument tracks. No issues yet. Session and GUI responsiveness are very acceptable.

well same here, i only get a bit of a slowdown when all 8 cores on the pro tools meter are close to maxed, so therefore only during playback.

My projects are pretty heavy and pro tools for me, has been the snappiest daw on mac os sierra by far, logic next, then S1, then cubase way behind, which i find really laggy which is a shame.

I generally have about 16 vi tracks, 128 midi tracks and 64 - 100 audio.
My vi tracks are usually all kontakt.

480 midi tracks means you are doing full orchestrations and film scoring, right?

I've never been close to that in my life.. even when i recorded an entire midi opera composition for someone in my pro studio days, the project wasn't that big! That's huge.

Either that or you have a massive template so you have access to whatever you need instantly, but you are not actually using midi on 480 tracks

[fixxer49]

Originally Posted by TNM

well same here, i only get a bit of a slowdown when all 8 cores on the pro tools meter are close to maxed, so therefore only during playback.

My projects are pretty heavy and pro tools for me, has been the snappiest daw on mac os sierra by far, logic next, then S1, then cubase way behind, which i find really laggy which is a shame.

I generally have about 16 vi tracks, 128 midi tracks and 64 - 100 audio.
My vi tracks are usually all kontakt.

480 midi tracks means you are doing full orchestrations and film scoring, right?

I've never been close to that in my life.. even when i recorded an entire midi opera composition for someone in my pro studio days, the project wasn't that big! That's huge.

Either that or you have a massive template so you have access to whatever you need instantly, but you are not actually using midi on 480 tracks

yes, full orchestra mockups (much of which actually gets used in the final product these days, for better or worse...)

400 tracks is actually not as crazy you might think: I keep all my keyswitches on separate tracks from the music itself to make it easier to prepare for live scoring (which essentially doubles the track count), and also layer multiple libraries each for most of the major sectional parts - strings, brass, woodwinds. A full string section will run about 50-60 tracks at least. Sometimes 75+, if you're adding in runs libraries - like OSR and Cinestrings - which i rely on a lot for added realism. And I'm on the LOWER end of the template track count spectrum!
The final audio output is way more conservative - usually less than 20 audio tracks.

[TNM]

Originally Posted by fixxer49

yes, full orchestra mockups (much of which actually gets used in the final product these days, for better or worse...)

400 tracks is actually not as crazy you might think: I keep all my keyswitches on separate tracks from the music itself to make it easier to prepare for live scoring (which essentially doubles the track count), and also layer multiple libraries each for most of the major sectional parts - strings, brass, woodwinds. A full string section will run about 50-60 tracks at least. Sometimes 75+, if you're adding in runs libraries - like OSR and Cinestrings - which i rely on a lot for added realism. And I'm on the LOWER end of the template track count spectrum!
The final audio output is way more conservative - usually less than 20 audio tracks.

of course, for full orchestra mockups the way you structure it, 400 + tracks can be quite common indeed. I just meant i couldn't say how my gui would be in that scenario as i have never encountered it. :)

I use all those audio tracks cause all my external synths get recorded and i usually use maybe 64 different sounds a project so there's the 64 tracks. I only use Vi's when i want some realistic strings or something, but still, it's only for ambient or pop :) and the integra is good enough in most situations anyway.
I use multiple instances of kontakt rather than a couple with multiple parts and outputs, cause PT balances the load WAY better with multiple stereo instances. way.

It's really good to know that even with close to 500 midi tracks, your gui and everything is responsive. That's great news by the way.

[fixxer49]

Originally Posted by TNM

It's really good to know that even with close to 500 midi tracks, your gui and everything is responsive. That's great news by the way.

Update: I've left this 490 track test session running for about 3 hours now, and everything is working fine!!! I even added some Aux w/ Altiverb, Soundtoys and Izotope Ozone 8.

*** So, this means the responsiveness issue definitely has something to do with VEP6. ****

The thing is, I keep a super tight ship as far as plugins go.
i don't really have any obscure plugins (either AAX, or VST/AU). It's pretty much all major developers.

my VST plugin folder on my main machine consists literally of these and nothing more:

- Waves Mercury + Studio Classics
- Vienna Ensemble Pro
- Soundtoys
- Sonnox
- Altiverb
- Ozone 8
- Kontakt
- Absynth
- Guitar Rig
- Play 5 (could be the possible culprit?)

(I'm a little looser on my slave machines, i haven't checked the VST folders in a while. Could out of date or weird plugins on a slave machine really affect pro tools performance via VEP? Only one way to find out...)

[fixxer49]

Update:
Adding just two blank instances of VEP 6 [unconnected] really messed up the GUI responsiveness.

Great, cos I only rely VEP integrating with Pro Tools for... i dunno, everything.

[TNM]

well this is huge news, as i was going to buy VEP this month..THANK YOU for the heads up.. So far i have only been playing with VEP in stand alone mode without PT open, as i am just trying to learn the interface and functions...

gonna run some tests today.. if it slows down the PT gui here too, i won't even continue with the demo.. pro tools is my priority before anything...

But at least i'll be able to add a voice to the choir for you whether VEP is causing the same issue here or not. Will let you know by tonight (just before 6am here).

Cheers

[fixxer49]

well... i haven't fully isolated the culprit yet. It's def something INSIDE VEP, but it may not necessarily be VEP itself. And of course, this only started w/ the recent Pro Tools update(s). I need to check my plugins (AU & VST) and troubleshoot a bit more. I've also put in a ticket at VSL.

[fixxer49]

Originally Posted by TNM

It could be a rogue plugin in VEpro.

Solved!
I've got things running pretty nicely now, I'm hiding/unhiding and edit window scrolling my little tush off, AND I've got 400+ tracks and quite a few active VEP instances.
My solution:
I removed ALL plugins from the Components (AU) plugin folder.

After removing all the AU plugs, VEP is no longer causing non-response or GUI lag issues!
Not a problem at all for me - I only use VST versions w/ VEP anyway.

[john1192]

Originally Posted by fixxer49

Solved!
I've got things running pretty nicely now, I'm hiding/unhiding and edit window scrolling my little tush off, AND I've got 400+ tracks and quite a few active VEP instances.
My solution:
I removed ALL plugins from the Components (AU) plugin folder.

After removing all the AU plugs, VEP is no longer causing non-response or GUI lag issues!
Not a problem at all for me - I only use VST versions w/ VEP anyway.

ooh .. thats very interesting .. !!!