[Cranky Mike]

We experienced this exact same problem on our Pixstor SMB NAS. We spent many hours troubleshooting the issue with Pixstor as we assumed it was an SMB setting on the NAS that was causing the problem. No other programs had issues with the NAS as we also have picture work we do here. We have a Nexis as well and like you it did not display this behavior. We experienced the problem on multiple Mac's, 2019 Mac Pro, 2013 Mac Pro (Trashcan) and 2012 Mac Mini's, running multiple operating systems Catalina, Big Sur or Monterey and running either Pro Tools 2022.12 or 2023.6

We also found if you move the .ptx file to ANY other location except the directory where is Audio Files folder is kept for that session (PT default) it will locate and load files as expected. You can even just create a sub folder in your main project session folder and put the .ptx file in there and again the session will open quickly and not stall on locating individual files.

After months of troubleshooting we finally found if you go to Pro Tools Preference on the Processing page there is a setting for Parallel Task Optimization. Set this to Off and the session will locate and load files at the expected speed of your NAS. The Pro Tools default is set to High so any new user will need to change that setting in order for Pro Tools to work as expected on the NAS.

We have put a ticket into Avid to let them know about the issue. We will see if it will be fixed or not but at least this makes a very expensive, very fast NAS usable for Pro Tools.