Pro Tools stuck when loading
 

Something strange has happened, a few days ago everything worked fine and I have not installed anything new since.
Today when I tried to launch Pro Tools it got stuck on the splash screen while loading my UAD plugins, no errors, just stuck. After several restarts, Force Closes and finally uninstalling UAD and then re-installing, I finally trashed the Plugin Preferences and it went past the UAD's but then got stuck on my Waves plugins. When I tried to launch Waves Central this got stuck as well...again no error just hangs. I then completely removed Waves from my machine and Pro Tools launched again but now I am without Waves plugins.
I already opened a support ticket with Waves but since this started with other plugins and is directly related to PT, I was hoping someone here has an answer on what is causing this and how to fix it...
I am on a Mac Mini (late 1028) MacOs 10.15.3, PT 2019.12
Did Apple secretly push some kind of security patch out that is now blocking my plugins?

Any ideas?

Re: Pro Tools stuck when loading
 

I wonder if the Apollo and HDX in expansion chassis are fighting each other? I'd remove the expansion chassis and just try with the Apollo and see how that works out. You may be running into incompatibilities with all the stuff in your system so stripping down to basics audio I/O-wise and going from there would be a good step in troubleshooting.

Did this all work before you went to Catalina? How did you move to Catalina - in-situ install or a clean install of everything? An in-situ install could explain your problems and they're never recommended even though that's considered the Apple Way.

Re: Pro Tools stuck when loading
 

I have had that setup for years with no issues at all.
I have been running on Catalina since January with Zero issues, until yesterday.

Quick update, Waves got back at me and stated that Waves Central in the current version can get stuck from time to time and to remove all usb devices and then try again, that solved the Waves Central issue for me.
However after that when launching PT it got stuck on UAD Plugins again, so I trashed the Plugins prefs via PT Prefs again, after that it went past UAD and everything else but then hung on Waves again...
Really frustrating. Going to open a case with Avid now but this is really weird

Re: Pro Tools stuck when loading
 

It doesn't matter that your setup has been running for years with no issues (that's a poor excuse at best) - it's not functioning now. Like I said one of the steps in troubleshooting is to remove as many variables as possible. That means stripping down to the bare minimum to have your system running and then add things back as you test. Like I said - remove the HDX stuff/external chassis and see how things work then.

And you still haven't answered as to how you went to Catalina. That's important because it's well known that in-situ 'upgrades' of OSX can cause issues. You could have things running that aren't really Catalina compatible. Avid's probably going to tell you the same thing - strip back to bare minimum and go from there. I've been through that with Avid before. I've also done more than my share of troubleshooting complex systems to know what to do.

Yeah it's a lot of work but sometimes that's what has to be done.

Re: Pro Tools stuck when loading
 

Quick test: move WavesHell out of your plugin folder and start PT again. If it starts, you know your problem...

Re: Pro Tools stuck when loading
 

I have same issue. Maybe 4 times out of 10 when loading up a session with any UA plugin, PT hangs for a LONG time. Sometimes just hangs indefinitely, sometimes I get the UA error code -38 (after close to 20 mins of spinning wheel). I've narrowed it down to some kind of communication issue with the UAD cards and the Magma exp chassis. Probably fighting the HDX cards in the chassis communication with the computer or something along those lines.

I should note the 4 out of 10 times is from boot. I typically turn the system off at night.

I'm booting off a Pcie SSD so I only have 1 Pcie slot free, but 2 UAD cards. I tried splitting the cards (1 in the Mac, 1 in the Chassis) but that made it worse.

Prob need to ditch the Pcie SSD Boot drive and then move the UAD cards into the Mac... Anybody else with similar issue and alt solution?

-----------------------------
David
Redondo Beach, CA

Mid 2010 MacPro 5,1 - Racked Cheesegrater
(Yeah, I cut the handles off...now it slides right in!)
2x2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon, 128GM Ram
MACOS 10.14.6 Mojave
Magma Expansion EB-7
PT Ultimate 2020.5
HDX x2, UAD Octo x2

Re: Pro Tools stuck when loading
 

In my case it ended up being a bug in waves... weirdly even though it started showing off via UAD. Waves acknowledged the bug and fixed it, later on there was a fix for it as well in PT 2020.3
Here's how I got mine solved:
First off I trashed the plugin list via PT Prefs, I then ensured I got the latest waves version 11.0.60 (currently the latest) and now PT 2020.5
Then load up again... this solved it for me. UA needed to re-apply basically and with the waves fix everything else loaded.

Hope this helps a bit

Re: Pro Tools stuck when loading
 

Looks like you all found a solution/ work around.....

I just wanted to chime in because this has been happening to me as well. On every version of PT and since V11 on waves, and all versions of UAD.

IN MY OPINION:

I narrowed it down with Waves support to only having to do a Waves Central refresh with their servers, (ie put computer on internet close everything down, fire up waves Central, and log into your account, then click the circle arrow button to resynch/refresh...... close wave Central, , then reopen PT.

I was just freezing on splash screen & did this while replying here and it fixed the issue....

Waves Support said I was supposed to be doing this periodically......

Hope this helps,

If not I at least wanted to document my fix on the DUC !!!

Re: Pro Tools stuck when loading
 

Yes, thank you for confirming. I also found PT stability was few steps up once I got Waves Free many years ago.