Strange behavior

[CrimeLab Audio]

Hello everyone,

Please pardon my ignorance. It's my first post to any such forum.

I'm experiencing some strange behavior from my PT10-MacPro setup. Even with as little as one track with one plugin running my CPU meter spikes and overloads.

I've heard it said that this is symptomatic of hyperthreading being engaged, however my machine is a MacPro 3.1 withOUT hyperthreading technology.

I've optimized, reinstalled, changed the number of processors working, and changed buffer settings... all with no results.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to make PT10 operate smoothly with this model MacPro?

Thanks in advance.

[CrimeLab Audio]

btw...

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro3,1
Mac OS X 10.6.8
Motu HD192
Pro Tools 10 LE

[C]

Reduce your CPU setting inPlayback engine to 1 less than half the total cores available.

24 cores = 11 in PB settings
16 cores = 7 in PB settings

[CrimeLab Audio]

Thanks Ceri,

I've already tried that. It's an 8 core, NON-hyperthreading machine, so it lists 8 cores. I've tried it set from 1 to 7, all with the same results.

[dford]

Originally Posted by CrimeLab Audio

btw...

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro3,1
Mac OS X 10.6.8
Motu HD192
Pro Tools 10 LE

We run numerous 3,1's with ProTools 10 (HD not LE), any CPU spikes when the system is configured optimally using means a poorly written third party plugin. Do you have any instantiated?

Considering your plugin processing is happening on your host processor, what other types of applications/programs are you running?? Spotlight indexing, virus software?!

Check out Activity Monitor...


Dev

[CrimeLab Audio]

Thanks Dev,

I did a fresh install and tested it with no third party plugins. Same thing.

I checked out the activity monitor as you suggested, but I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking for, or even what I'm looking at.

Oh, and no virus protection or anything like that. I'm not sure about Spotlight indexing. Could you elaborate please?

Thanks again for the help!

[dford]

Originally Posted by CrimeLab Audio

Thanks Dev,

I did a fresh install and tested it with no third party plugins. Same thing.

I checked out the activity monitor as you suggested, but I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking for, or even what I'm looking at.

Oh, and no virus protection or anything like that. I'm not sure about Spotlight indexing. Could you elaborate please?

Thanks again for the help!

Check this page out.

It explains how to disable spotlight indexing and how to optimize your setup on Snow Leopard.

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...739?popup=true

I suggested checking out activity monitor to see which processes are using the most processor cycles. You might find another application on your computer is causing your system to have trouble.

All I can tell you for certain is that this is not normal behaviour for that model running ProTools.

Hope that helps!

Dev

[crizdee]

Hi,

Disconnect the Motu 192 and boot PT whilst hold the N key, now you should be in the payback engine settings, and at the top in the select box where you choose the audio interface, choose built in audio as the audio engine and run with the built in audio and see what happens. Also make sure the buffer is set to 256 or 512. Run just a few audio tracks and a few plugins and see how well it runs.

Let us know Howi it runs on the built in audio.

Chris

[CrimeLab Audio]

Thanks Chris!

You read my mind. I've stripped it down to PT, and some Waves plugs, now running without the MOTU.

It seems to run smoothly until I get to about 15% CPU usage. At that point I start seeing the same "jumpiness" that I've seen described as a symptom of hyperthreading issues. It becomes too unstable to run if there's a paying customer looming.

Thanks again everyone for your time!