Pro Tools 9 Crashes When Using a CoreAudio Device With More Than 48 I/O

[siraltus]

(For those of you who have already seen my earlier thread on this, sorry for the repost, but I've finally done enough testing to figure out the exact cause of this crash.)

Pro Tools 9 crashes with a KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE exception of type EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS) in thread com.digidesign.framework.DAE if you select a CoreAudio device with more than 48 I/O as the playback engine. This seems to be a serious bug in the Pro Tools 9 software. Currently, the only workaround is to use a CoreAudio device with 48 I/O or less.

Note: I am not trying to either input or output more than 48 simultaneous channels of audio into or out of Pro Tools. I am perfectly aware that Pro Tools 9 without the Complete Production Toolkit 2 is hard-limited to 32 simultaneous live I/O, and this has nothing to do with my problem. I am trying to use a CoreAudio device with more than 48 I/O as the playback engine (e.g., simply hear the audio coming out of the master bus).

Background:

I have a MOTU PCI-424 system with a 24 I/O and two 2408mk3 interfaces, as well as a M-Audio ProFire Lightbridge running on a 2008 Mac Pro 8-Core 2.8GHz with 16GB of RAM and OS X 10.6.5 (though his happened on 10.6.4 as well before I updated). I'm using the latest MOTU PCI-424 (v1.5.38352) and Lightbridge (v1.9.3) drivers.

If I select the PCI-424 system with all three physical interfaces on and connected (total I/O is 72), Pro Tools 9 crashes every time.

No crash if I select the PCI-424 device as the playback engine but turn off one of the physical interfaces, reducing the number of I/O available to Pro Tools on the PCI-424 CoreAudio device to 48.

No crash if I select the Lightbridge (this has 36 I/O) as the playback engine.

If I select my aggregate audio device that combines all of my interfaces into a single device with 108 I/O, Pro Tools also crashes every time.

I also created another aggregate device using the Lightbridge and my Mackie d.4 Pro DJ mixer (which is a class-compliant FireWire device that doesn't use drivers). This device totals 54 I/O and selecting it as the playback engine crashes Pro Tools consistently as well. (Selecting the d.4 Pro mixer alone as the playback engine does not cause a crash.)

I did the testing on my existing system as-is, then repeated it on a new user account and finally a fresh installation of OS X 10.6.4 and 10.6.5. I was using the full 4.7GB Pro Tools 9 installer for all testing. Crash occurs consistently in all of those environments. Other audio apps - Cubase 5.5.2, Logic 9.1.3, Live 8.2.1 - work without issues with all of the CoreAudio devices listed above.

This is definitely a bug in Pro Tools 9 - Avid, this is embarrassing. I submitted this as a case to Avid Support. Please fix it ASAP!

Question to the forum - can anyone who has a Pro Tools 9 (not HD) setup totaling more than 48 I/O test this on their rig?

[crizdee]

Originally Posted by siraltus

Question to the forum - can anyone who has a Pro Tools 9 (not HD) setup totaling more than 48 I/O test this on their rig?

Hi,

I assume you have complete production tool kit? otherwise you can't go past 32 i/o


Chris

[siraltus]

Originally Posted by crizdee

Hi,

I assume you have complete production tool kit? otherwise you can't go past 32 i/o


Chris

Chris,

I don't have CPT/CPT2; however, it has nothing to do with this problem.

CPT/CPT2 allows you to buss more than 32 channels of audio in and out of Pro Tools at once - without it, you simply cannot assign more than 32 I/O in the "I/O" setup dialog. I am not trying to do that.

My problem is not being able to use a CoreAudio device with more than 48 outputs as the playback engine ("Current Engine" drop-down menu in the "Playback Engine" dialog).

[MuziqMaker]

I have a MOTU 2408 and a 24I/O also and there's no way in Pro Tools 9 to choose which I/Os you want to totally disable. Removing the check mark doesn't do anything so far as priority. It only greys out the selections.

[nst7]

This does not answer your problem, but I just wanted to point out that even with the CPTK2, you are still limited to 32 I/O. Nothing changes in that regard. Just in case you were thinking that might solve your problem.

[siraltus]

Originally Posted by nst7

This does not answer your problem, but I just wanted to point out that even with the CPTK2, you are still limited to 32 I/O. Nothing changes in that regard. Just in case you were thinking that might solve your problem.

You are right - I stand corrected.

It's really sad, still. PT 8 was limited to 18 I/O and it didn't crash when I was using it with an interface with twice the I/O (M-Audio Lightbridge, which has 36 I/O).