Pro Tools 10 CPU Overload

[trebot000]

Hello Everyone,


I know there may already be posts about this on here but I just want to make mine specific to my issue.

My computer specs should be posted on my profile. I posted them at the bottom of this thread.. I just signed up today so hopefully they are visible to anyone reading this.

My issue is this. I open a session from template, for example, a jazz template. I take out the template MIDI drum track, get rid of the template plug in, and replace it with a Kontakt5 to play and record a track of my own.

On another track I insert Guitar Rig 5 with a bass amp preset. GUitar Rig 5 can be CPU heavy. but the preset I am using is not in this case.

Next thing I know there is a message saying something about CPU overload and to remove Native plug ins. So I remove the rest of the pre inserted template plug ins. This now leaves me with Kontakt5 and Guitar Rig 5.

The first time today, I had the two I mentioned, GUitar RIg 5 and Kontakt5, plus a synth plug in and the whole system jammed up. It made a glitch sound and I couldn't CtrlAltDelete out of it. Everything froze up while it made this sound. I had to hit the power on my computer to shut it down.

After that I rebooted and reopened the session. I could not even play along with the bass and drum tracks for more than a few seconds before the CPU overload box popped up again.

I adjusted buffers and processors in the playback engine tab. I shut off my WIFI and bluetooth.

Any suggestions???? This really does suck. Thanks in advance.

HP Envy14 i5 1110nr
Windows7 Home
Seagate Solid State Hybrid 750GB 7200RPM
8GB RAM
NativeINstruments Komplete Audio6
ProTools 10

[Darryl Ramm]

Post a Sandra report please, and explain which disk drive is the system drive, which is the audio/session drive and which is for Kontakt samples (if you have a dedicated sample drive).

You need to start getting organized, what exact versions of everything are you running? Windows, Pro Tools, Kontakt. Other plugins etc. What exact error messages are you getting? What interface are you using (presumably the KA6 but please confirm) and what version drivers do you have installed? What are the playback Engine settings (all of them) that you have tried -- telling us you have just changed something is not useful.

Darryl

[trebot000]

Ok sorry for the lack of detail. Here we go.

Operating System is Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

The actual message that pops up is this. "You are running out of CPU power. Remove some native plug ins or increase the CPU usage limit in the playback engine dialog. (-9128)"

My Playback Engine settings are as follow:

Komplete Audio 6 Driver
H/W Buffer 128 samples
Host Processors 4
CPU usage limit 95%
Host Engine box is unchecked
Delay Compensation engine none
Plug In Streaming buffer 250ms Level 2

For the Komplete Audio Interface Driver version 3.0.2 37 Firmware version
In the interface contol panel the settings are as follows
Audio Processing
44100Hz Sample rate
128 samples Process Buffer
2ms USB Buffer
Device Monitor
Streaming Processing state
8.3 ms output latency
Direct monitoring
Monitor status is off

As of right now my software, Pro Tools 10 ver10.0.0, Kontakt 5 64bit ver 5.0.3.5812, Guitar Rig 5 ver 5.1 runs off of my C drive which is a
Seagate ST750LX003 Momentus XT 750GB Solid State Hybrid Drive - 750GB, SATA 6Gb/s, 7200RPM, 32M, 2.5". All sample libraries for Kontakt5 are on the C drive as of right now.

I have an external drive. A Glyph GPT50 2TB. I planned on saving my sessions to this drive but haven't yet because I just got this drive. I was also planning on moving all my sample libraries to this drive.

I hope this was a bit more detailed.

The only thing I really changed when my problem occured was I changed the host processors from 4 to 2....I don't know I read it on a forum somewhere..but I switched the host processors back to 4.

The message i mentioned at the begining of this post pops up with only Kontakt 5 and Guitar Rig 5 as inserts. Kontakt is a MIDI drum track and Guitar Rig 5 is inserted on a stereo audio track. I push play to play it back and within seconds, maybe 5seconds, the box pops up.

Please let me know if you have any advice. I apologize for my ignorance to this stuff. I just want to get this running so I can make some music. Thanks again.

[Darryl Ramm]

I have an external drive. A Glyph GPT50 2TB. I planned on saving my sessions to this drive but haven't yet because I just got this drive. I was also planning on moving all my sample libraries to this drive.

Uh Oh. Bzzzzzzzztt ;-)

This is very likely the root of this problem, you need to get your Audio/session files on this drive. Do NOT put your sample file on this drive. Leave the sample file on the system drive. You never want the sample file IO contending with the audio file IO on the same disk (like you have right now).

After you have installed the disk, in the PT Setup>playback engine set the buffer size to 1024, 128 is likely way to small for this laptop doing VI work. #CPU=4 is also way off for a dual core i5. Start with this set to 1. Get things totally stable and everything properly configured first then later try reducing the buffer size if needed for lower latency or seeing if the system can handle tweekeing #CPU up slightly for more VI processing.

A Sandra report may still help... (even better make it after you install the new drive).

Darryl

[trebot000]

Thanks. I will have to head out for work so I will get back it on Sunday. I appreciate the advice.

Quick question, what is a Sandra report? How do I run it? Thanks again.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by trebot000

Thanks. I will have to head out for work so I will get back it on Sunday. I appreciate the advice.

Quick question, what is a Sandra report? How do I run it? Thanks again.

Read all about it in it here Help us Help You - READ THIS Before Posting!.

Darryl

[Darryl Ramm]

Without knowing what you really want to do but just looking at that list of NI software makes me think you really should buy a new PC.

You want lots of disk, with separate 7200 rpm drives (that meet PT specs, e.g. WDC Caviar Black or Seagate barracuda) for system boot, NI samples and audio (so at least 3 separate drives). You could also consider a SSD drive for the system drive, but these get expensive if big enough to hold all the samples. Only use SATA III 6gbit/s interfaces.

With lots of VI activity you might even want to split the different VI sample libraries onto their own sample drives, but start with at least one separate sample drive and see how this goes. But get a large tower case PC so you can have several internal drives.

Get an i7 processor system. Get a system with all SATA III 6gbps disk interfaces (should be standard now in PC land). Get matched DIMMs but enough DIMMs that all the memory slots are filled -- that improves memory bandwidth. Get 16 or 32 GB of memory -- under the assumption you might use the NI memory servers to expand outside Pro Tools current 32bit limits, and you'll be ready for Pro Tools 11 64 bit.

There is a price/performance sweet spot with a single chip 4 or 6 core single chip system today (will show up as 8 or 12 cores with i7 hyper threading). If you have huge VI plans and a large budget then you can look at a dual CPU chip system (but you are unlikely to see linear scaling).

I cannot overemphasize how it is not just all CPU and memory --- lots of disk/io rate capacity, and proper/methodical/painful install and setup of the system and all software is critical. Start by blowing away any Windows install and doing your own install to clean out all the crapware. Install Sandra early on and make sure it works. Follow all the Avid Pro Tools systems install and optimization documentation.

Read all the minimum systems requirements for Pro Tools and for all you NI and any other third party software. Between Pro Tools and the NI stuff you have some of the fussiest/most demanding (but amazing) software around.

You can buy special media/Pro Tools built PCs from various places (eg Sweetwater) I think these are a waste of money for more technical/organized folks, but might be life savers for others.

Darryl

[albee1952]

Also, keep in mind that the Glyph drive needs to be run on USB or eSATA as firewire drives are not supported on Windows 7. Kontact has always(AFAIK) been troublesome with Pro Tools

[trebot000]

Thanks for the responses. I do have my Glyph drive connected through USB.

So I asked, or mentioned in an earlier post that I thought I should put my sample libraires on the external Glyph drive. I figured escepially with Kontakt 5 because I have a ton of library content there.

When you say to put sample libraries on a seperate drive, you are refering to things Kontakt 5 sample libraries or Maschine sample libraries correct? Is it safe to put these sample lbraries on a seperate external drive? I figure it should be as long as the computer knows where to find the files when I try and load them. I have had people tell me it is safe to put those libraries on a seperate drive and I have also been told the opposite. From what I gathered it seems as long as I keep the program ,Kontakt,Maschine etc.. on my C drive, the samples can be elswhere. True or false.

Also I appreciate the suggestions on what to look for in a better PC. That will be a little down the road. Maybe I will just use something else instead of Kontakt 5 or any NI software in Pro Tools. I really just want to become proficient in Pro Tools right now. I'm not trying to open a studio or make a living off of it, I just want to be able to use it to make my own music/audio ideas some to life and learn more about/get better at mixing etc.. I can just run Kontakt in stand alone and get better aquainted with that crazy program and I'm sure by that time I will save up enough to buy a better computer. Actaully by the time I really get my head around Kontakt and Reaktor I may be a very old man. Should have some extra computer money saved then.

Thanks again.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by trebot000

Thanks for the responses. I do have my Glyph drive connected through USB.

So I asked, or mentioned in an earlier post that I thought I should put my sample libraires on the external Glyph drive. I figured escepially with Kontakt 5 because I have a ton of library content there.

We've already been over this so I am not sure why are you asking again. Do NOT out your sample files on the Audio/Session drive. Your first test should be to put your audio/session files on this external Glyph drive, no other files at all, and see what happens. And as we've all been trying to tell you as well--with a machine that does a lot of sample VI work you often need three hard drives. One for the OS, one for Audio/session and one for VI samples. Typically the *worst* thing you can do is to put samples on the audio/session drive. What speed is the internal drive, especially if it's not 7,200 rpm and you are putting the samples there you may need another Glyph drive...(My old MacBook Pro17" Core2 Duo is getting a Samsung 830 512 GB SSD to replace its internal 7200 rpm drive largely so I can run EZ Drummer samples from the system drive reliably, my audio drive is an external 7200 RPM Firewire 800 G-Tech drive, I got bored carrying two of these drives around. It's a completely pathetic computer for VI work but let's me put down a drum track to play over).

When you say to put sample libraries on a seperate drive, you are refering to things Kontakt 5 sample libraries or Maschine sample libraries correct? Is it safe to put these sample lbraries on a seperate external drive? I figure it should be as long as the computer knows where to find the files when I try and load them. I have had people tell me it is safe to put those libraries on a seperate drive and I have also been told the opposite. From what I gathered it seems as long as I keep the program ,Kontakt,Maschine etc.. on my C drive, the samples can be elswhere. True or false. /snip/

This means all your NI sample libraries (and any other large ones you install from other vendors).

Not only is this safe, but it is may be a requirement here.

TRUE

Darryl