System Playback Error Disable introducing glitches

[Jesse Skeens]

I was happy to see the option in hardware playback that allows suppresion
of the dreaded DAE error during playback when cpu spikes occur.

Unfortunately it seems to actually introduce a lot of glitches in the process
making it unusable.

For instance I have a session that plays back fine, no errors. If I then
turn on this option all of a sudden my audio plays back horribly.

Has anyone been able to use this function succesfully? I'd love to be able
to ignore those DAE errors.

Jesse

[spkguitar]

The DAE errors were originally in place to PREVENT those audio dropouts. It's Pro Tools way of ensuring a quality output. If something should cause a "hiccup" in the audio stream, Pro Tools will stop and throw an error, and I, for one, am glad it does.

This "workaround" was not created so that you could avoid those errors altogether, and it is definitely not recommended that you ever record any audio, tracking or bouncing, with this feature active.

It's basically designed to avoid the following scenario;

You are tracking a large project and you need to add softsynth tracks. After inserting 3 hefty, CPU intensive softsynths, you try to add another and it bogs down the machine, which causes interruption errors in the audio stream, which causes Pro Tools to throw an error. Now, since you aren't actually tracking any audio at this point, you can turn on the error suppression feature, and track your MIDI track listening to the interaction with the other instruments. The clicks and pops will be present, but you will still be able to continue working and tracking those MIDI instruments. When you are ready to mix and bounce, however, you would want to turn the error suppression feature off, and print the audio output of the instruments to track, disabling all but one at a time. I would definitely never record any audio with it turned on.

Another scenario might be if you were preparing a mix to take to a different studio with a more powerful computer and/or Pro Tools system, you could get a rough mix going and save time at the destination studio.

There are probably a few other scenarios, but I think you get the idea.

Basically, "You can't have your cake and eat it too".

[Jesse Skeens]

Thanks for the reply but I'm not sure you read my message entirely.

I full understand that the DAE error normally means you would have had
a pop/click there.

What I'm saying is that I have a session that PLAYS BACK FINE, no pops
or errors. Yet when I turn on the option to supress DAE errors (even
though I am currently NOT getting any) all of a sudden now my audio is
playing back glitchy.

We're talking about a 3 track mastering project here with minimal cpu
going on. It plays fine with the error supress OFF...

So something about this function actually makes more errors (and
the resulting pops/clicks/glitches) than there were prior to setting
it on (in my case there were NONE before turning it on)

I perfectly expected a little pop here and there in accordance to the
frequency of DAE errors that would normally be expected, but in this
case even a few tracks playing back is rendered useless by this glitching.

Hope this clarifies.

Jesse

[Jesse Skeens]

Ok I found a workaround.

For some reason this new option doesnt like the 512 buffer setting
on my Transit interface.

When I set it to 256 it worked fine.

So there is some sort of buffer issue here.

Jesse