Oh mighty AVID, WHY?

[alfaholic]

Snow Leopard 10.6.x - Pro Tools 8.0.4 - Digi 002r - CPU is going crazy, 6086 errors all the time, and most important, when I want to load a plugin whyle PT is runing, everything freezes for more than 40 seconds!

Leopard 10.5.x - Pro Tools 8.x.x - Digi 002r - Everything works as it should, JUST 9019-9031 errors, then I need to restart Pro Tools.

Tried EVERYTHING, always the same. With screensaver, or without, recording on the main drive-partition, or not, delete prefs, or not, my system is working the same.

Please, where is the problem?

[nst7]

Are you recording to a separate audio drive? If not, that could be the problem. Partitioning doesn't really work in this situation.

[n8tron]

I've been having this same problem, both with PT8 and now PT9. Actually, 9 has helped the plugin issue you are describing. But I'm still getting -6086 errors.

I'm recording on a separate internal SATA drive on my mac pro. I thought it was my 002R, but it works fine in other DAWs. Have another thread describing that...

[DigiTechSupt]

Love to try to help, but I'm going to need a lot more info - see the Help Us Help You thread for details about what we need to know.

[n8tron]

my info:

-2x2.66 dual core Mac Pro
-7 GB ramm
-10.6.6
-Digi 002R with Pro Tools 9.0.1
-USB - 2 usb hubs with trackball, keyboard, printer, ilok, vienna key attached, also attached to usb ports are an axiom pro 49 and a line 6 x3 live.
-Nothing but the 002R is attached to any firewire ports. 400 to rear 400 port.
-I have all 4 SATA bays loaded with hard drives. I use one for system, one for recording, one for samples, and one for backup. All are formatted Mac 0S Extended (Journaled). My record drive is a 1.5 tb Seagate, system is a 320gb Seagate, sample drive is a 320gb Seagate.

Plugins:
Kontakt 4.13
Sonalksis essentials 2.0.8
TL Space 8.0
Massey Tapehead and CT4 latests versions
Pod Farm 1.12
Various AIR plugins/instruments, DB33, Mini Grand, etc.

Generally, the pro tools system usage has my cpu at 25-30% standing, and 30-40% playback.


Problem
95% of the time, after a session is opened, I will press play and immediately a spinning wheel will occur for 10-30seconds. then i will receive a "The operating system held of interrupts for too long... (-6086) or (-6093) or a cpu error (-9128)

Afterwords the session may playback fine for a few mins. Then after a few more start and stops the error will occur again (always immediately after playback or recording).

Solutions tried:
I checked all my plugins, non seem to be effecting the problem. (I will un-instantiate the plugins and playback one plugin type at a time). The less plugins I do have the less frequent the error occurs, but it still occurs. I've tried various hardware buffer settings. 256 or 512 seem to work best. I've tried all the different CPU% usage settings, 80-85% seem to work best.

I've trashed prefs, I've switched firewire cables and firewire ports (all of them on my mac pro and 2 on my 002R). I've repaired permissions on my system drive and repaired my other 3 drives. I've set up my OS exactly the computer optimizations guide you have. Airport bluetooth, filevault, time machine etc. all off. Hard disks don't spin down, computer and monitor sleep set to never. etc. etc.

One thing to note is I often use my 002R with digi core audio manager and Ableton Live. This works fine, almost zero problems. I'd say really zero problems recently actually. Another thing to note is I've tried Pro Tools 9 with my MOTU 828 (original) and it works more or less fine, with the occasional "you are running out of CPU" error.

[DigiTechSupt]

What is the partition map scheme on all of your drives? Did you erase the drives using the Disk Utility before using them?

I wonder if you may have a bad cable or drive connection - you may want to try reseating all drives and/or removing 1 or more of them and test a drive in each slot to see if anything changes.

Also, what configuration is your RAM in (what size sticks in which slots)?

[alfaholic]

Hey, hey, this is my place to cry...

Mac Pro C2D, 4GB , EVERYTHiNG by the book, totaly optimized and compatible system.
OS on main drive, Projects on second and Samples on the third drive. I have tried to record on the system drive, everything works nice, tried to run 5 apps simultaneously, everything works good, ok there is more CPU peaks, but that is normal.
All i want to say, as for me, I do not see any improvement by doing optimization, as well as deterioration if it is not used.

As i said, everything works like charm with 10.5.x, ok occasionally I get some error, but nothing serious, most of the time these errors are changing, never had one error all the time, except 10.5.x + Pro Tools 8.0.3 and abowe when 9019/9031 errors ocures, after that i need to restart Pro Tools.

BUT... When I use Pro Tools on 10.6.x everything is slower and heavier. More often I get the same error, 6086 and I have more CPU Peaks.
Loading plugins while session is runing?!?!?! Oh my God, that is sooo frustrating. Sometimes it takes more than 50 seconds with atomic bomb after plugin is loaded!

Just to say something... I love Pro Tools, it is the best way to make music with computer.
Often, I am defending PT, against those who are unhappy, saying bad things (often they are right), but now I do not have explanation for my self.

Same computer, cable, card, same plugins, software, everything is the same except OS...
So? Am i missing something?!

Sorry for my broken English...

[alfaholic]

You can see here what i am talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH89AnHc34c

Plugin loaded AFTER 35 SECONDS!

also, Pro Tools 9 loads the same plugins instantly!

[n8tron]

Originally Posted by DigiTechSupt

What is the partition map scheme on all of your drives? Did you erase the drives using the Disk Utility before using them?

I wonder if you may have a bad cable or drive connection - you may want to try reseating all drives and/or removing 1 or more of them and test a drive in each slot to see if anything changes.

Also, what configuration is your RAM in (what size sticks in which slots)?

Partition map scheme for all drives is: GUID Partition Table
I did use disk utility to format each drive before I used them.

I just tried reseating all the drives and the problem remains the same. I'll try and do some further testing with swapping them out after I post this...

RAM is as follows
top board back: 512/512 Front: 2GB/2GB
bottom board back: 1GB/1GB Front: empty

The two back pairs (512 and 1GB) are what came stock on my Mac Pro. The 2GB pairs I installed a few years ago.

Originally Posted by alfaholic

Hey, hey, this is my place to cry...

I apologize for hijacking your thread, I figure we have a very similar setup and similar problems, why not both work to try and solve them? If you or DigiTechSupt prefers, I'll start a new thread.

[alfaholic]

It was a joke...

We really need help about this...