PT HD Veteran on an LE System - Interesting Problem

[spicyitaliano]

Well gang, I'm on the road. I'm on a tour bus working on a few tunes for the band in a little makeshift home-studio onboard. I'm an HD user, and I push my systems real hard. But now that I'm mobile for a little while, I wanted to bring my rig with me.

PT 7.1, Digi 002R, Mac G4 Dual 1.25, 2Gb RAM, OS 10.4.11. I've also got a WD MyBook external hard-drive connected via FW. I'm confident this drive meets the minimum spec with 7200 rpm, 8.9 ms seek time, not sure on the chipset.

This computer is a PT machine, nothing else on it. Recently wiped the whole system clean and started with a fresh install of Mac OS and PT. I've got one RTAS instrument (SampleTank 2) and two midi files playing back 2 channels in SampleTank. And EEEK it bogs down the system!! [Error 9128: You are running out of CPU power.] CPU is set to 95%, hardware buffer set to 512 samples, playback buffer set to level 2. Whoa now, this can't be right...

Now you're going to ask the obvious things. "Well, are you playing BioShock too?" or "How many instruments you got running" or "Are you sure you got your FW plugged in the right hole??". All valid questions, but this is a PT machine! I never had this problem prior to PT 7. Hell, I've mixed nearly two-dozen albums using the machine, maxxed out track counts, loaded up with plug-ins and live MIDI.

So now with this new install, what's the deal? I must be missing something. Any takers?

[spicyitaliano]

Let me say a couple more things.

There are bigger problems at hand here. Simply opening this session and pressing play causes problems.

"The audio device buffer underflowed. (-6085)"

What the hell does that mean? Seems like something is fatally wrong since I installed everything. Could it be this drive? Let me try to run off of another external drive, and then on the system drive (just for kicks...).

[spicyitaliano]

Let me reiterate that this system has been carefully tuned for PT, with all the specific preferences set, files in place, and proper PT practices in place (OS on one drive, session files on another). Here's what I've tried. Any one of my samplers loaded, MIDI file playing into it, and everything works well. As soon as I attempt to switch samples mid-play, it comes to a screeching halt. Every time. SampleTank, SonicSynth, Stylus, Kontakt. What's the deal??

I tried three different type of external drives: 1) WD Mybook, Glyph PortaGig, Glyph GT 050. All with the same results.

And just for fun, I tried using the internal OS drive for the session. It didn't perform any better as above, actually just the same.

I'm using no effects, no other tracks, nothing else. Just one sampler and one MIDI track. So strange considering I used to own a slower G4 that I could run at least 10 instances of Altiverb on without a hitch. What the hell is going on here?

[spicyitaliano]

Things have gotten worse.

I have tried simply loading up one of my favorite virtual instruments: Minimonsta from GForce. Holy cow, two notes into playing and BOOOM! Crash. I re-loaded PT and tried playing again. All static on top of the instrument's output. Really...what's the deal?

[dogon]

1) How many processors have you allocated to rtas plugins?
I know that this may sound wierd, but it is worth a try.
set it to ONE processor (in playback engine page)
If memory serves correctly, 7.1 had a problem in this area.

2) Have you tried putting your system under load using another scenario? for example, load a song with 20 -30 tracks and throw eq and comp plugs on every track. How does it behave then?

let me know
Dogon

[dogon]

To add to my last post....
You should really update to 7.3 if poss.
I noticed a marked difference in performance with this upgrade.
Also make sure you have the cs updates too.
hope this helps
dogon

[spicyitaliano]

Well I was just about to post another rant after a little more experimentation.

I went back to some of my archives and loaded full sessions that were tracked on this exact system. Many of the plug-ins I no longer have, so I took them all off. This one particular session I had only 8 tracks, no processing. Wouldn't even get off the ground!! I kept getting the 6085 error.

I tried something a bit heavier, 24 tracks, lots of EQ and compressors loaded up. Same thing, before it even started playing.

Talk about a bummer. I hear the kids tell me these Native systems are pretty hot these days but damn Really, this is amazing to me because my 001 system never bogged down, and I produced plenty of records with that back in the late 90's.

[spicyitaliano]

And about the processor change. I switched it back down to 1 processor, and it didn't even seem to make a difference.

It's as if there is something fatally wrong with the hardware. I know the software inside and out, and everything is in the best possible shape it could be. Like the day before Digi put's there latest software on demo at NAMM. Or right before they shoot the DigiTV videos... this system is in top physical shape. That is, unless something is very wrong. Like the FW buss on the logic board or something.

[dogon]

excuse me if this is stupid question, but how do you know the software is ship shape? I thought you had only just gone to 002???

[dogon]

Is this the same computer that you had the HD system running on?
if so, did you trash the prefs, as LE may be getting confused with your old prefs.