PT 2018 Native Latency

[nob turner]

I think I've mentioned most of my tech details in previous posts in this thread. In the interests of simplicity, here it all is:

2013 mac pro 3.7GHz quad, OS X 10.11.6
16GB RAM
Original UA Apollo 8 TB interface, UAD V9.7.0 software

I tried PT 2018.7, and was unable to track at buffer settings below 256 samples at 96kHz - PT would stop. Sorry, I don't have a record of the specific error messages I received, but it was the standard thing when this occurs. With 12.8.3 I can consistently work down to 64 samples without problems. Dynamic plugin processing has always been off. Video engine disabled. Ignore errors turned off. Cache size was set to Normal, but I'll try 2GB. Since I'm not running Mojave, it sounds like turning hyperthreading off isn't a big deal.

I don't run UAD plugins during tracking, of course. In fact, I run a bare minimum of plugs while tracking, for obvious reasons. I try to keep them updated, which is a challenge. My test sessions with 2018.7 had NO plugins instantiated.

I admit that I think it's unreasonable that every time there is an update of PT, I have to become Mr. Tech Support and spend a lot of time tracking down problems. With most other software, that would be the kiss of death. I do understand that PT is much more complex than Microsoft Word, with 3rd party plugins, etc. But I am not running anywhere near what would be considered the edge. Pretty danged plain and simple here.

[Darryl Ramm]

It's Pro Tools, needing at times to be a "Mr. Tech support" comes with the product. And does as well with other DAWs, maybe not as much but it does.

Cache size set to "normal" means the Pro Tools fancy disk cache is disabled, it uses the "normal" macOS disk caching instead. I would still try disabling hyperthreading, it should take a few minutes to test. But with symptoms like this I would especially suspect plugin incompatibility (yes even when you have no plugins instantiated).

If you upgrade Pro Tools versions and start getting AAE CPU errors... trashing prefs, temporarily removing all third party plugins, doing other basic things should take tens of minutes to try out. May not solve the problem, but if it does not you at least know a lot more about what is not the problem and can either just roll back or decide to do more like try a clean macOS+Pro Tools install on a test drive etc. (something more likely to want to try if the computer has been though multiple macOS in-situ upgrades).