The Scandal (a long musing)

[Charles Deenen]

I'm running a G5 and have the same problems as decribed above. However, the "freeze/loop" problems went away when I switched PT to use only 1 processor. No more freeze/loops after that, allthough several crashes during auto-save (in combo with a C24).
But like everyone else, haven't seen these problems before 7.4.2, and also didn't see them during the 8.0 beta cycle (when I was using a clean system with only a few plugs). I have a feeling it's a combo with something else.

-cd

[DrFord]

I will say that I experienced MAJOR crash problems as in 30 seconds of session open, zoom in and BAM! Crash... after opening up a session from an MBOX2 pt 7.4.2. It decimated everything to the point that I was about to chuck my tower out the window.

Then I decided to just uninstall completely and re-install.

Totally fixed.

Yes there are bugs, but as long as you are willing to step back and breath, a little elbow grease will fix all. Now I will not be opening any more LE sessions on my HD tower for a while, but I have a laptop with a 002r, so I will jsut open sessions there, and make stems. Then I can new session and import audio.

Problem solved.
Other than that my HD system is bulletproof.

[Netherworld]

thanks for all the responses - i won't take the "flame bait"

i knew i would be opening myself up to flaming speculations, but that's ok - i've got my protective suit on - it bothers me not

thank you very much DigiTech - i will follow up with you offline and won't post in this thread beyond this post - i do appreciate all the feedback. let me find a suitable session to send that will represent most accurately what i am experiencing.

no - not LE - HD2. odd - seemed like a "slur"....i only need 16 or so tracks to do what i need to do.

didn't know my "newness" to the forum precluded me from commenting on my feelings and observations. funny....

best wishes everyone - i tried hard to be honest yet respectful - if it didn't seem that way i apologize...

and to mr. "BaileyBass" - thank you for confirming some of my theories on human nature: i'd rather be unintentionally "passive aggressive" than purposefully "aggressive"....peace to you.

jb

[Chris Many]

Digi... how about this idea:
Since there are many users who have very specific, repeatable problems on their systems why not offer to swap them out with working systems from Digi? Just pick a number you'd be willing to ship (how about 10), make an offer on DUC and see if anyone responds. Then you won't have to TRY to find out why one system works and another doesn't... you'll have 10 rigs there you can turn your engineers loose on that DONT work right out of the box. You might not be able to swap out every single plug, but I'll bet you have plenty of users lined up to temporarily trade you a problematic system so Digi could dig in and find out just WTF is going on.
I know it might cost you a little in the short run, but you could certainly make a case from an R&D budgetary viewpoint.
The RTAS/VI problem is just not going away. Some people have it, some don't. It might be much worse on some systems and not so bad elsewhere... wouldn't you like to have a definitive answer as to WHY? I know I would.
I know the "reasons" to only use a single core on an 8 core system, but just standing back for a second doesn't that sound a bit ridiculous? A recommendation to NOT use the full power of a MacPro? Or that the consumer has to be extremely wary about even having a "non compatible" plug in installed on his/her machine? A software engineer can't write a routine that would see and isolate that problem for you? We're so used to the problems and work-arounds, that I think that we've lost sight of the forest for the trees a bit. Only being able to load up 4 VI's on a massive MacPro without a BSOD, a stutter/click/pop or any of the varied bugs that litter DUC should really just be intolerable with the state of technology that exists today.
I, for one, appreciate your presence on the DUC and I know your fighting the good fight to get these things resolved. But maybe it's time to think outside the box a little and actually get some faulty systems in there so your technologists can get to the bottom of some of these problems.

[marcioguitar]

I am just wondering the issues you guys are having, I have PT 8 running on a Mac Pro 2.5, complete tool kit, most of VIs, I use them a lot and I don't remember when I had an issue!

[Premo]

Chris Many - It sounds like you're mis interpreting the RTAS Processor setting

From Digitechsupt
" Many NI plug-ins, as well as ones from Spectrasonics and a few others, are not fully RTAS optimized, which means they have code that will not run properly on a processor dedicated to RTAS processing. By reducing the number of CPU's you give that code it's own processor to work from, so that it's not interrupting what's going on with the RTAS processor(s)."

Thus, you're not 'losing the full power of your machine' you're just changing the way Pro Tools balances the load of RTAS optimized processors against the non RTAS optimized plug-ins.

If you're not using 3rd party plug-ins and just all Digi distrubuted which should all be RTAS optimized fine, then sure leave that setting cranked up. But there shouldnt be any harm in turning it down.

Some plug-in coding like Native Instruments stuff needs to be entirely rewritten from the ground up before it's going to work correctly as RTAS. Their plug-ins just don't work right anymore.

Are there specific Digi plug-ins that require you to turn down that setting? I've yet to see one. Structure and all the AIR Stuff works great with 8 cores for me. Its when I add in IK Multimedia, Omnisphere, NI and any other VI's out there is when the trouble started brewing and I knock that setting down.

[DigiTechSupt]

Originally Posted by Chris Many

Digi... how about this idea:
Since there are many users who have very specific, repeatable problems on their systems why not offer to swap them out with working systems from Digi? Just pick a number you'd be willing to ship (how about 10), make an offer on DUC and see if anyone responds. Then you won't have to TRY to find out why one system works and another doesn't... you'll have 10 rigs there you can turn your engineers loose on that DONT work right out of the box. You might not be able to swap out every single plug, but I'll bet you have plenty of users lined up to temporarily trade you a problematic system so Digi could dig in and find out just WTF is going on.
I know it might cost you a little in the short run, but you could certainly make a case from an R&D budgetary viewpoint.
The RTAS/VI problem is just not going away. Some people have it, some don't. It might be much worse on some systems and not so bad elsewhere... wouldn't you like to have a definitive answer as to WHY? I know I would.
I know the "reasons" to only use a single core on an 8 core system, but just standing back for a second doesn't that sound a bit ridiculous? A recommendation to NOT use the full power of a MacPro? Or that the consumer has to be extremely wary about even having a "non compatible" plug in installed on his/her machine? A software engineer can't write a routine that would see and isolate that problem for you? We're so used to the problems and work-arounds, that I think that we've lost sight of the forest for the trees a bit. Only being able to load up 4 VI's on a massive MacPro without a BSOD, a stutter/click/pop or any of the varied bugs that litter DUC should really just be intolerable with the state of technology that exists today.
I, for one, appreciate your presence on the DUC and I know your fighting the good fight to get these things resolved. But maybe it's time to think outside the box a little and actually get some faulty systems in there so your technologists can get to the bottom of some of these problems.

Are you volunteering?

I don't know about swapping out a system - I've done that before and, due to issues with the process in the past, it's nearly impossible to make happen now.

However, I can do a 'sys-in', where we send someone a call tag to ship their system to us, we check it out and ship it back to them. I've done that on a few occasions, as well as going over to customers places if they live in the Bay Area and work through their problems.

The bottom line is that I've been able to get every system I've worked with into a state that's doing quite well. The problem comes when people install unknown/incompatible plug-ins or have system configurations that aren't supported (UAD cards, etc).

G5's are really being pushed to their limits in Leopard and it's critical that they really use only the most efficient plug-ins.

I'd be more than happy to get a system in here and use it as an example case.

I'm going to look into the possibility of system swaps again...it may be time to push for making an exception or two.

One more thing - Premo is right about the processor settings. RTAS has some specific code requirements to be able to run entirely on an RTAS dedicated processor. If the plug-in isn't entirely RTAS optimized, it has to have a separate processor to run the non-RTAS compliant code. You're still using that processor.

Only being able to load up 4 VI's on a massive MacPro without a BSOD, a stutter/click/pop or any of the varied bugs that litter DUC should really just be intolerable with the state of technology that exists today.

I'd be curious which 4 plug-ins you're using? And, yes, I would agree that it should be intolerable, however, I run a good sized number of VI's on my MacBook Pro (typically 10-15) without problems so, like I said, following the plug-in compatibility info and reducing the # of CPU's when necessary is important to good performance.

[JFreak]

I'm running PT8 on OSX 10.5.6 using G5/Quad and have ZERO problems. On the other hand, I use zero RTAS so that might be one thing. Another thing might be that the last G5's were PCI-express which is the current tech so I might have best of both worlds, hardware-wise.

But I have installed my Leopard fresh on a formatted system drive. That might be the biggest factor. Whenever a major version comes out, you should *always* start fresh so the possible problems are not related to old system configuration. Always do this, always, even if it takes few precious hours. It saves many more!

[Andre Knecht]

Originally Posted by Netherworld

[…] i'd rather be unintentionally "passive aggressive" than purposefully "aggressive"....peace to you.

jb

And now that you know, it can’t ever be unintentional again. That’s a bonus.

For everybody.

[toneski]

Hi Everybody,

Please all forgive me for going slightly off topic.

Firstly can I say I am not in the league of the big boys, (and I say that respectfully not sarcastically - as I know that there are many well respected professional studios / engineers / musicians / producers who visit the DUC).

Secondly can I add my support to Digi Tech support guys. Reading through the forums and advice given by users and also Digi Tech has helped me greatly in the past. I know the frustration we all feel at times with the VI issue and it isn't a new one and I am sure that at times Digi Tech guys would have liked to say more about what Digidesign are planning to do about this issue but for legal / commercial etc reasons have not been able to do so, however this I feel adds frustration to all of us.
The part I would like to pick up on it the opnion expressed by Digi Tech that PPC / G5 has had it's day. I would generally agree with this, we are at the tail end of the usefulness of this technology. I am running a G5 Dual 2.7GHZ machine and yes I am able to run a few VI's at 96KHZ but it isn't great and generally I get around this by printing as soon as possible.

As I started out saying I am not in the same league of others who may be on this forum. I am a nurse and at work at present, (I don't generally contribute to the forum from work, but I am on my break and felt I would like to chip in here), and I purchased my HD2 system the first year it was out with a G4 Mac. This was before the accell cards came out and we were on PCI technology. I then upgrade to HD3, which cost money and then a month later the accell card came out and I then had to pay another £1300, (roughly $2400 at the time), to get the card I had just purchased upgraded to an accell card. On top of this I have upgraded as I have gone along with the numerous software upgrades along the way, purchased additional Digi software and plugins, etc. I say this all with no bitterness, thats life I suppose, I say it to highlight these have been major decisions and investments in my life on a nurses salary, but then I suppose thats the price you pay for being an, (very serious), amatuer muscian trying to run a professional setup.

I am sure I am not the only none professional musician / engineer / producer etc with an HD system who is now stuck with PCI cards, utilizing a computer that I feel even Digidesign acknowledge is coming to the end of its usefulness who cannot afford to pay the really high crossgrade fees or afford to go down the Magma route. So please Digi reconsider the pricing on crossgrades. I think that even the well respected producers / musicians / engineers who can afford to pay the current crossgrade cost feel that really it is too high to in essence carry on utilizing a technology that is approximately seven years old, (I think thats when I brought my HD system) and also considering the investment we have made already.

Again I say all of the above with no malice, etc. I'm just trying to highlight the perdicument some of us are in.

Once again apologies for going of topic and thank you for listening digi.

Regards
Tony