DAE - 9073 On A Fairly Powerful System

[BigEvil]

I've searched the DUC and Digidesign Support site for a solution to this but so far it still seems largely un answered and addressed.


Here's What We've Got!

"DAE can't get audio from the drive(s) fast enough. Your Drive may be too slow or fragmented, or a firewire drive could be having trouble due to the extra firewire bandwidth or CPU load. (-9073)


First Off, my system is as follows:

*Mac Pro(2 x 2.66 Ghz Dual-Core Intel Xeon)
*7GB 667 MHZ DDR2 RAM
*Mac OS 10.4.11
*Pro Tools 7.4 cs3
*HD3-Accel PCIe (passed Digitest)
*NVidia Geforce 7300GT w/ 30" Apple Cinema Display
*USB Keyboard
*USB-Hub w/ 3 iLoks & 2 MIDI Controllers
*4 Internal SATA Drives(all HFS+ Formatted Seagate Barracuda drives for Mac Pro) as follows:
Bay 1-250GB-Macintosh HD-(system drive and pro tools software)
Bay 2-750GB-Internal Recording Drive(drive I run all of my sessions off, I record to this drive and use it for all sessions)
Bay 3-500GB-Sample Drive-(has approx. 225GB of Samples for various plug-ins and programs I use.)
Bay 4-750GB-Recording Backup Drive(simply a nightly backed up copy of the internal recording drive)
*At Times there are MAXX SATA 250GB or 500GB Drives via Firewire 800 (this problem happens with and without them connected)


I've tried checking "Pause During Playback" under the transport menu, I've also tried trashing prefs, changing drives, saving copies to other internal and firewire drive's, adding and removing ram and changing my playback settings and HW buffer size. Also, the problem consistantly occurs even when running with or w/o plug-ins.

I simply can't get this rig to be stable enough to run relatively modest sessions(60 tracks, 20TDM plugs, 5RTAS Plugs) and it DEFINITELY starts to get really slow and have the -9073 more frequently when trying to keep things on the fly at 80+tracks or so.

It's just very frustrating as a user with a system I have spent a large amount of money on yet have to be very conscious about letting it constantly catch up with me. I'm fortunate enough to not use my facility for work other than my own but this setup would be embarrassing for any studio owner.

Please advise, I'm holding off on the 7.4.2 & 10.5.4 upgrade until I feel like this -9073 is solved and won't be even worse when I make the change.
Thanks
-BigEvil

[pmklein]

I think 7.4 is up to cs6 now. Try updating that first. Also, try deleting the Digidesign data bases, if you haven't already.

[LeGato]

Is this happening on all you sessions? I have a hunch that it doesn't... Go to the session that you are having problems with and go to the edit window, shrink the window down all the way so that you can see the whole session from bar 1 to the very end (ie bar 2000 or whatever), select "all" in the groups and go to a track and select "volume" so all the tracks have the volume info showing check the very end (the very last bar) of the session and make sure that there is no automation info of any kind, ie. volume, mute, pan, etc. This will cause -9073 errors.

The reason why it makes this info at the end of the session is because we are doing overall volume (or pan, whatever) changes on the track with the bar tool while the session is still running in play mode so it creates a fade marker at the end of the session.

Hope this works for you,

RS

[BigEvil]

unfortunately it's happening in almost every session i do, w or w/o automation of any sorts. worst part is, about a month ago I decided to wipe the whole system, clean install, format all drives, re download all plug-ins and programs and I'm still having the issues across the board.

[LeGato]

Definitely no shortage of power and speed in you rig. Have you tried running a session with one drive at a time to see if one or all drives still gives off the 9073? It sounds like it's not a drive issue however, I wonder if going back a couple steps on the OS would help, say 10.4.9.

[BigEvil]

I've upgraded to CS6, cleaned prefs, databases, tried multiple sessions with and w/o ANY plugins and I'm still having this issue. I'm really at a loss of words here. I'm almost contemplating upgrading to 10.5 in naive hopes that this will simply go away. Digi, please advise.

[scottgreiner]

I've seen similar things before... try a fresh install of Protools after doing a complete de-install. Repair permissions blah blah - all that stuff that Digi recommends. Then before you add back all your 3rd party plugins, try running a session on just the basic Digi plugin set. Of course you'll have bunches of unavailable plugins in the session, but at least you'll remove a lot of variables. It sounds like you might have a non-compatible plugin.

If it works, start adding back your plugins to the folder 1 by 1 until you find the culprit.

If it doesn't work, it could be bad RAM or a busted Digi card. Try removing RAM and running on just the core card.

Troubleshooting sucks. Good luck!

[Shawn Simpson]

60-80 tracks is by no measure a "modest" session. In reading your post and what you've done, I failed to see where you mentioned what sample rate and bit depth you are using. I did see that you mentioned changing playback and h/w buffer settings, but not what you did.

There are a number of reasons that the dreaded 9073 can occur, but most often it's due to either a slow drive (too full, inadequate rotational speeds, inadequate seek times), too many tracks at an excessive sample rate and bit depth, or inadequate DAE playback buffer settings.

To put it into perspective, I just did a tracking session with about 40 tracks going down at once. I opted to cut at 96/24. One firewire 400 drive was ok as long as I had the playback buffer at 4. It also made the system feel a bit sluggish; it took a small amount of time to start playback and record. I added a second firewire 400 drive and divided my tracks between those drives via disk allocation and I was able to lower the buffer setting to 2 which made the system much more responsive.

I've battled the 9073 for years and it's never once been due to fragmentation, a plug-in, or a corrupt install. My bet on your system would be that you're exceeding the drive's capabilities. It doesn't matter how fast your computer is or how many plug-ins you're running. It only matters what your sample rate, bit depth, track count, and edit density is.

[BigEvil]

Originally Posted by Shawn Simpson

I've battled the 9073 for years and it's never once been due to fragmentation, a plug-in, or a corrupt install. My bet on your system would be that you're exceeding the drive's capabilities. It doesn't matter how fast your computer is or how many plug-ins you're running. It only matters what your sample rate, bit depth, track count, and edit density is.

Yes, while I do agree with you that most likely it would be drive capabilities I'm almost always recording at 48/24. I sometimes do 44.1 but usually 48k Never 96 or 192. HW Buffer has been back and forth between every setting and this happens with delay comp on and off. In my system usage everything remains very very un taxed yet it always happens....

[Shawn Simpson]

Originally Posted by BigEvil

Yes, while I do agree with you that most likely it would be drive capabilities I'm almost always recording at 48/24. I sometimes do 44.1 but usually 48k Never 96 or 192. HW Buffer has been back and forth between every setting and this happens with delay comp on and off. In my system usage everything remains very very un taxed yet it always happens....

HW buffer will have no effect on this problem. Neither will any sort of delay compensation or system usage. What is your DAE playback buffer set on? Can you confirm that you've tried higher settings there? And what were the results?

Even at 48/24, 60-80 tracks is a lot to ask of a single drive. It might be possible and even common for some systems, but it's not light duty for sure. What kind of drive is it that you're using in there anyway? You said it's a SATA drive, but what is the make and model?