Pro Tools 12.x performance with MBPr

[Thenewexhibit]

Originally Posted by TNM

no, my idle is max 40, usually 30 ish. something is wrong...hmmmm

Your idol is 30-40% when you have pro tools and or a session open and not playing?

If so, what now? hahahah Take it in to apple?

Also, what version of Pro Tools and OSX are you using?

On another note, I also looked at activity monitor, and pro tools was showing approximately 140 for CPU%. Does that seem normal? I also just installed pro tools 12.5.2 a few minutes ago, and oddly, I think the system usage in pro tools went down a good 10%. It seems less sporadic which is good. However, the fans still come on and keep going at a noticeable level. I even opened an older session that was smaller that never had this problem, and it's happening with this older session now too.

[TNM]

Originally Posted by Thenewexhibit

Your idol is 30-40% when you have pro tools and or a session open and not playing?

If so, what now? hahahah Take it in to apple?

Also, what version of Pro Tools and OSX are you using?

On another note, I also looked at activity monitor, and pro tools was showing approximately 140 for CPU%. Does that seem normal? I also just installed pro tools 12.5.2 a few minutes ago, and oddly, I think the system usage in pro tools went down a good 10%. It seems less sporadic which is good. However, the fans still come on and keep going at a noticeable level. I even opened an older session that was smaller that never had this problem, and it's happening with this older session now too.

cpu usage can theoretically be up to 800% for an 8 thread system, in activity monitor.

yes that's correct,i have a session open right now but not playing, full of aax instr and fx, and audio tracks as well. 40 degrees.
I have istat permanently in my menu bar (istat menus it's called) which is a great little cheap app that shows real time cpu usage and temps, also shows cpu usage of each thread individually.

What is your temps when pro tools is CLOSED and just browsing web? Right now I have 10 tabs open in safari, I have vlc open in the background playing white noise to sooth my tinnitus, and the temp is 29 degrees celsius.

[Thenewexhibit]

Originally Posted by TNM

cpu usage can theoretically be up to 800% for an 8 thread system, in activity monitor.

yes that's correct,i have a session open right now but not playing, full of aax instr and fx, and audio tracks as well. 40 degrees.
I have istat permanently in my menu bar (istat menus it's called) which is a great little cheap app that shows real time cpu usage and temps, also shows cpu usage of each thread individually.

What is your temps when pro tools is CLOSED and just browsing web? Right now I have 10 tabs open in safari, I have vlc open in the background playing white noise to sooth my tinnitus, and the temp is 29 degrees celsius.

Man, that's rad to hear. Mine is usually idoling around 50-60 degrees when the conputer is just on and doing nothing. Something's gotta be messed up.

How high does your fan get when you're playing back that session? Also, what OSX and version of pro tools are you using?

Thanks for taking the time to tell me about all of this. I do appreciate it!

Originally Posted by Thenewexhibit

What does that mean to force into intel only?

Another strange thing now is that my fan comes on after I start up my computer now. Tried a smc and a pram. This is crappy. Any ideas anyone?

Also tried running the session without my external monitor or the focusrite, and it still has high fan speeds and the session is putting the temp up to the mid 90's C.

Have it diagnosed at the Apple Store.
Sounds like hardware problems then.

[TNM]

Originally Posted by Thenewexhibit

Man, that's rad to hear. Mine is usually idoling around 50-60 degrees when the conputer is just on and doing nothing. Something's gotta be messed up.

How high does your fan get when you're playing back that session? Also, what OSX and version of pro tools are you using?

Thanks for taking the time to tell me about all of this. I do appreciate it!

on the laptop i still have el capitan 10.11.5 installed but i AM planning to format and go back to yosemite, as this laptop came with it and just simply ran better (and so does PT 12).

PT 12.5.2 vanilla.

I have a uad thunderbolt apollo twin duo i use with the macbook. I also have an apollo 8 in the studio for the imac.

When i am working in the studio room, i attach the apollo twin to the 8 to give me two extra dsp and a big knob monitoring controller, and then i run the macbook just off of the internal sound (which is actually very very good, the best around as far as notebook integrated sound goes).
I have it running into a powered monitor (ik iloud) on my laptop desk. Sometimes i do compose there too, just depends on the mood. Sometimes i take it to bed with me and write there.

NOTE, i *do* have it on a coolermaster laptop stand, so it's elevated and has good airflow, so that might make a difference too.

[Thenewexhibit]

Originally Posted by TNM

on the laptop i still have el capitan 10.11.5 installed but i AM planning to format and go back to yosemite, as this laptop came with it and just simply ran better (and so does PT 12).

PT 12.5.2 vanilla.

I have a uad thunderbolt apollo twin duo i use with the macbook. I also have an apollo 8 in the studio for the imac.

When i am working in the studio room, i attach the apollo twin to the 8 to give me two extra dsp and a big knob monitoring controller, and then i run the macbook just off of the internal sound (which is actually very very good, the best around as far as notebook integrated sound goes).
I have it running into a powered monitor (ik iloud) on my laptop desk. Sometimes i do compose there too, just depends on the mood. Sometimes i take it to bed with me and write there.

NOTE, i *do* have it on a coolermaster laptop stand, so it's elevated and has good airflow, so that might make a difference too.

Thanks for the heads up on all of this. When you were testing it today with the session open with the temperature at 30-40 degrees, and the idle with everything else safari related at 29 degrees, was your laptop on that cooler?

Also, as far as the cooler goes, what model do you have, and are the cooler fans loud?

[TNM]

coolermaster ergo stand III.. it is always on that.. the fan is not audible unless you put your ear just about touching it, but it's not really going to cool the macbook much. This is because, the mac exhausts from the rear.. its only really to have an integrated 4 usb hub, all the different angles, and the cable management. It's a wonderful product.

[Thenewexhibit]

Originally Posted by TNM

coolermaster ergo stand III.. it is always on that.. the fan is not audible unless you put your ear just about touching it, but it's not really going to cool the macbook much. This is because, the mac exhausts from the rear.. its only really to have an integrated 4 usb hub, all the different angles, and the cable management. It's a wonderful product.

Thanks for the heads up! I appreciate it! On a other note, I took my computer to the genius bar today to have it diagnosed, and everything came back normal. No problems were picked up. He said having the windows reopen after shut down can actually tax the computer a bit, so he suggested leaving it unchecked when shutting down.

That being said, he cleaned out the dust from the fans too. It now runs quiter, but, unfortunately the problems still persist. Fans come on on any session, and this never happened before. Although the fans are quiter, it still gets very hot and is noticeable; around 95 degrees cecius when playing session in pro tools, and around 80 in idle. It's also still around 56 degrees ceclcius after startup and there is nothing going on on my computer.

It's strange that we have the same machine, yet the temps are 30-60 degrees off at times. Thanks for getting back to me about all of this.

What would you guys do? I mean, at this point for now, realistically, the only thing I can do is continue to work, but it concerns me about the computer not performing like other's computers do.

[Darryl Ramm]

Fans come on and it never happened before.... I would suspect a finger or software problem well before a hardware one.

I don't think there was an answer to what was asked by somebody earlier about the GPU. Are you running discrete GPU only or is automatic switching enabled? Whatever you have set try the opposite.

You can try a full clean install of OS X (ideally not El Crapitan) and just see if that happens again. Do that install onto a spare disk partition or a separate external drive. Start with just web browsing (with no plugins/extensions) before installing ILM, Pro Tools. And then see how that works before installing any third party plugins. I'm suspicious of bad things from lots of the crapware like Pro Tools collaboration, Avid app manager, Pro Tools First, etc. uninstall all that crap. Ditto for other bloatware like Adobe CC and Microsoft Office 365. Keep all that crap off your DAW system if you can, or if you can't then it's up to you to test before and after with each one.

[Ray JB]

Pretty sure you've got thermal issues in your MacBook Pro.

I had the same kind of problems on my laptop (Retina i7 MBpr 2013 16GB RAM 512 GB Flash SSD) and when it was checked by Apple, they ended up replacing the motherboard. "Thermal issues" was the buzzphrase from the repair folks. This was showing up in PT10HD with a session of say 4 tracks of audio. Fans would ramp up If there was a video track the fans would kick in until lift-off nearly occurred.

Get it seen to.