FAST! Software In Use With Pro-Tools 12 -Video links

[guitardom]

Originally Posted by martinaston

I keep my system drive uncluttered and do regular routine clean ups but that's all. I will say though that having an SSD as the sytem drive, an SSD as my samples drive and another SSD to write audio to, this has also made a massive difference and I think that using Fast! with this setup it is finding the optimum configuration for my system.

SSD's are far, far superior to the old drives, I would never go back. I don't therefore know if Fast! would be of any great advantage on older type drives although I think they say it does improve their performance.

Bro what is Diskcache please?

My OS's are heavily tweaked and optimized. I am guessing that is the reason I am not seeing any benefit. All that stuff is taken care of.
My audio drive is still a "spinner", but its not even an issue until I start hitting around 100 tracks. In theory, it should help a slower drive more than it would help a faster drive.

Disk Cache might be HD only, cant remember. It loads portions of the audio around your playhead into ram to give you a faster response time for start/stop and take the drive transfer out of the equation.

[martinaston]

Originally Posted by guitardom

My OS's are heavily tweaked and optimized. I am guessing that is the reason I am not seeing any benefit. All that stuff is taken care of.
My audio drive is still a "spinner", but its not even an issue until I start hitting around 100 tracks. In theory, it should help a slower drive more than it would help a faster drive.

Disk Cache might be HD only, cant remember. It loads portions of the audio around your playhead into ram to give you a faster response time for start/stop and take the drive transfer out of the equation.

Quite possible.

Have you got any O/S tweaks apart from the Sweetwater ones on the net?

[unkJE]

Originally Posted by guitardom

Disk Cache might be HD only, cant remember.

Disk Cache in PT12 Native from 12.2 up:

http://blog.rspeaudio.com/2015/09/av...-with-new.html

Pro Tools 12.2

Disk Cache - This enables you to play large sessions of lower grade storage or even network attached storage by preloading the media from the session into RAM. In the Playback Engine the Cache Size setting how much Memory (RAM) the Avid Audio Engine (AAE) allocates to pre-buffer audio for playback and recording. In most cases, the default setting of Normal is the best Cache Size for most sessions. Now you obviously need a lot of RAM but you can configure how much RAM Pro Tools can use and PT will start loading media into RAM working from both sides of the cursor until the whole session is loaded or it fills the RAM you have allocated.


http://duc.avid.com/showpost.php?p=2317644&postcount=5

Go to Setup (menu) > Playback engine. You'll find it at the bottom of that window. I have it set to 5 GB. There's really nothing more to it.

(Thanks, Stig!)

[unkJE]

Originally Posted by martinaston

Have you got any O/S tweaks apart from the Sweetwater ones on the net?

Avid Knowledge Base – Computer Optimization Guides – Mac and Windows

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...oting/en367983

[unkJE]

Originally Posted by martinaston

I have been making posts about Fast! software which I have been really impressed with having installed it 48 hours ago it has so far returned a big dividend in speeding up my PC system and has improved the performance of Pro-Tools on my system, including eliminating the infamous -9173 error.

I'd like to know, if you used Disk Cache and all the Optimizations, would Fast! offer any improvement - large or small?

[guitardom]

Originally Posted by unkJE

I'd like to know, if you used Disk Cache and all the Optimizations, would Fast! offer any improvement - large or small?

Its free to download and try out. I saw 0 improvement, so might have to try it out with your setup. Also to note, with Disk cache set at default, nothing changed. Still no improvement using it.

[guitardom]

Originally Posted by martinaston

Quite possible.

Have you got any O/S tweaks apart from the Sweetwater ones on the net?

I am a bit geeky to say the least on this stuff. My systems are optimized FAR more than what they and Avid show, which are basic at best.

[martinaston]

Originally Posted by unkJE

Disk Cache in PT12 Native from 12.2 up:

http://blog.rspeaudio.com/2015/09/av...-with-new.html

Pro Tools 12.2

Disk Cache - This enables you to play large sessions of lower grade storage or even network attached storage by preloading the media from the session into RAM. In the Playback Engine the Cache Size setting how much Memory (RAM) the Avid Audio Engine (AAE) allocates to pre-buffer audio for playback and recording. In most cases, the default setting of Normal is the best Cache Size for most sessions. Now you obviously need a lot of RAM but you can configure how much RAM Pro Tools can use and PT will start loading media into RAM working from both sides of the cursor until the whole session is loaded or it fills the RAM you have allocated.


http://duc.avid.com/showpost.php?p=2317644&postcount=5

Go to Setup (menu) > Playback engine. You'll find it at the bottom of that window. I have it set to 5 GB. There's really nothing more to it.

(Thanks, Stig!)

Howsit going UnkJE? I have 32 GB RAM installed and I have tried the method you describe but I don't see any difference really in performance by changing the setting from anything than Normal - it does seem a waste of a huge amount of RAM that could be used...I will try setting it to 5GB see what happens now Fast! is in the equation.

Fast! Has made a discernible difference to my system in all respects and I cannot praise it highly enough really; I do think that my multiple SSD's have benefited in conjunction with it though so I can't comment on standard hard drives. Not just Pro-Tools, my whole PC system is performing better than I ever dreamed it could to be honest, in the last three days since I have been using Fast! my productivity is up and everything, internet speeds, file transfers etc., have all increased dramatically and that's all I can say - it may not work as dramatically on older or less powerful systems than the one I have built, but it has turbo-boosted everything on mine, with no side-effects or gremlins. It has to be worth trying I guess.

[martinaston]

Originally Posted by unkJE

I'd like to know, if you used Disk Cache and all the Optimizations, would Fast! offer any improvement - large or small?

For me, on my system, the difference in overall speed and stability has really been quite dramatic; I seem to have hit a sweet spot with all the normal Avid recommended tweaks and Fast!, Pro-Tools is performing much more reliably, it feels as though it is quite invincible and that nothing can trip it over seriously.

I am going to start loading a session with as many plug-ins as I can until it overloads just to see how dramatic the Fast! improvements have been, I reckon my system is closer to Thunderbolt than Firewire now using Fast!

All I can say really, my experience has vastly improved...

[The Weed]

I think this is a case of YMMV. I just tried the demo on my PT computer - W10, PT12.7.1 - and it bogged it down. PT was slow to open, so were other programs and opening a browser took longer than usual. Rolling back to the image I made before trying it out. Fortunately I don't stress PT and I'm not - touch wood - having the 9173 and other errors some are experiencing. Now, of course, I've totally hexed myself