ProTools 12 Ultimate - CPU Overload without playing

[jeam25]

Originally Posted by Aquic

Hi, I do not have as much technical knowledge as you guys, but I've been using ProTools since its version 4, back in the year 1997-1998 if my memory does not fail, and this has never happened before. The processor was never a problem for ProTools because that's what the DSP cards were for, to process. And at any case, when we all started loading plugins in native mode because our sessions used up the capacity of our DSPs, at least in my particular case, the only thing that was running out in my system were the 192 voices, because I have always worked with large sessions. But never in my life the processing capacity of the CPU was 60%, it never reached beyond 25% -30% in the most complicated session.

In truth, I do not have as much technical knowledge as you do, but as we say in my country: "It does not enter in my head" that my current system, flagship of a company, with 64 gigs of RAM which is more than 200% of the RAM that I have ever had in any previous computer, and that fast PCIe SSD hard drive, 12 Cores, etc ... have these CPU consumptions so exaggerated, REMEMBER ... Without even doing play. This is really annoying. Who is in charge of Avid at this moment, Homer Simpson?

Hi i know this is frustrating but i have a pretty shy system compare to yours and at idle PT blank session don't have a single unit of cpu % usage . Right now i working a session with 7 instances of Xpand 2 , 3 Kontak players , 2 Ezdrummer , 2 Ample sounds aco guitars VI , 1 East West SO Play and 2 Hybrids . All of this gives me 1% of usage at idle on that session and around 8-10% on playback . All os this using HS 10.13.4 that is not supported yet because it have serious cpu problem with PT according to Avid . So there have to be something else going on there . I know other users can agree on this too.

But if you have patience we all can help you to find the cause .

[SomeOtherGuy]

Perhaps related, as I'm getting a ton of CPU Overloads, booting up Pro Tools and not even opening a session, I get this (see pic attached). I have 64 GB of RAM, BTW.

[SomeOtherGuy]

Ah, never mind, I was experimenting with Disk Playback Cache size and had it set to 32 GB, so that's why. I reset it back to the Normal setting, and memory usage has gone way done. Just was trying everything to get rid of these damn CPU overloads, none of which I ever had prior to 2018.1 PT + High Sierra.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by SomeOtherGuy

Ah, never mind, I was experimenting with Disk Playback Cache size and had it set to 32 GB, so that's why. I reset it back to the Normal setting, and memory usage has gone way done. Just was trying everything to get rid of these damn CPU overloads, none of which I ever had prior to 2018.1 PT + High Sierra.

You probably don’t want to leave it at “normal”. Set it to a few GB for great caching of typical sessions.


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[ZEUSS]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

You probably don’t want to leave it at “normal”. Set it to a few GB for great caching of typical sessions.


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After much experimenting I feel that It doesn't matter if your all SSD based on a fast buss. Just takes more memory away for no gain. I set mine to normal and its exactly as if I had audio in ram with the cache.

[BScout]

Originally Posted by ZEUSS

After much experimenting I feel that It doesn't matter if your all SSD based on a fast buss. Just takes more memory away for no gain. I set mine to normal and its exactly as if I had audio in ram with the cache.

You see the improvements depending on what kind of audio you work on. Disk cacheing with RAM shows a lot of improvement when you have thousands of small files on your tracks. Common for film/post (dialogue/sfx/etc) and some types of music.

Large single files (even if edited to lots of small clips), low track counts don't show much/any improvement.

Video is not cached under any circumstance and obviously samples for Sampler instruments are not affected by it at all since cacheing only works for audio used directly by the Pro Tools session.

For me with 4 SSDs (all drives), it helps tremendously. I'm currently set to 24GB -- if I set it to normal, some of my sessions will halt when it gets to dense sections. The other alternative would have been to distribute evenly all my audio over the 4 SSDs but that becomes an organisational nightmare in some ways (but was how I used to do things).

Also, if you use a NAS/Fibre storage, the disk cache acts like a buffering on the whole system. This is where all audio is centralized for all sound editors and re-recording mix engineers (no local copies.) In large facilities it is required.

[xylie6]

If it wasn't for the same stupid issues, year after year, what would we talk about at the DUC?

Anyway, doing the normal things like turning WIFI off, as well as the other optimizations go a long way to reduce the problems. I think AVID gets the blame for things that they can't control, like too many OS revisions, poorly coded third party software, and computers that are not dedicated or optimized.

I agree with the statement that we should not be the beta testers for software companies. People depend on these programs for their jobs. The talent doesn't want to hear that a computer glitch ruined the last attempt or a live recording. For me, it goes back to asking what you want from your computer and software. The simpler, the better for sure. Get it working then leave it the hell alone.

[TNM]

Originally Posted by jeam25

Hi friend 4-5% cpu at idle is not normal . For me that point that something its messing with the cpu in the background . Tomorrow when you are there do a re-check on your system OS optimizations .

depends on what VI's and effects.. even with dynamic processing, some VI's just won;t release their resources on transport stop..

[jeam25]

Originally Posted by TNM

depends on what VI's and effects.. even with dynamic processing, some VI's just won;t release their resources on transport stop..

Hi TMN i was referring into q blank session . I think i clarified that in another post .