Avid proves yet again how useless they are

[BScout]

Originally Posted by Protone

I didn’t say I can’t. But it is laggy and unresponsive on my system (mac book pro 16” i9, also tried with eGPU) especially with sessions that have lots of tracks/clips. But anyway, I don’t want to hijack this thread and discuss the details of the issue. Let’s just say that I have tried pretty much everything, and only solution avid support offered was that I should move to hd monitors since protools is not officially supporting 4k.

Are you using HDX (in a thunderbolt chassis)?
Found this happening with HDX and the latest Pro Tools. Switching to Hybrid helped considerably. Can't figure out why -- initially thought it was thermal throttling but the internal temps of the laptop (same i9 MacBookPro 16") are fine. Then switched to a native (CoreAudio) audio interface and the problem went away. Then went back to HDX and it returned. Something about running the playback engine on the CPU vs the DSP cards helped. Since the HDX I/O was needed, HDX in hybrid mode fixed things. But this needs a better solution to allow HDX to run as normal.

[originalscottyg]

Originally Posted by BScout

Are you using HDX (in a thunderbolt chassis)?
Found this happening with HDX and the latest Pro Tools. Switching to Hybrid helped considerably. Can't figure out why -- initially thought it was thermal throttling but the internal temps of the laptop (same i9 MacBookPro 16") are fine. Then switched to a native (CoreAudio) audio interface and the problem went away. Then went back to HDX and it returned. Something about running the playback engine on the CPU vs the DSP cards helped. Since the HDX I/O was needed, HDX in hybrid mode fixed things. But this needs a better solution to allow HDX to run as normal.

Interesting observation. I'm using HD Native TB with an Omni on an i9 MacBook Pro and have no issues using a 4K TV as a computer monitor.

[Protone]

Are you using HDX (in a thunderbolt chassis)?
Found this happening with HDX and the latest Pro Tools. Switching to Hybrid helped considerably. Can't figure out why -- initially thought it was thermal throttling but the internal temps of the laptop (same i9 MacBookPro 16") are fine. Then switched to a native (CoreAudio) audio interface and the problem went away. Then went back to HDX and it returned. Something about running the playback engine on the CPU vs the DSP cards helped. Since the HDX I/O was needed, HDX in hybrid mode fixed things. But this needs a better solution to allow HDX to run as normal.

Yes, I am using HDX in a tb chassis. I'll try with core audio and see if there is a difference, thanks! I have had these issues for years, with many different configurations, but it hasn't been this bad before. Let's see if removing HDX from the equation gets me back to tolerable levels of sluggishness! (I have tried without the displays AND without HDX, using only the MBP display. That way all is good. Never thought HDX could be the cause)

Interesting observation. I'm using HD Native TB with an Omni on an i9 MacBook Pro and have no issues using a 4K TV as a computer monitor.

Have you worked with REALLY big sessions? As far as I know it is heavily dependent on the amount of objects on the timeline, and CPU usage. For example, tv commercials with 10-20 voices and reasonable amount of audio runs very well, but a drama final mix project with 400+ voices and thousands of clips is a total nightmare. Hitting r/t few times to zoom in/out, leads to several seconds of waiting for each step of zooming. Same exact project without external monitors runs smooth(ish).

[originalscottyg]

Originally Posted by Protone

Have you worked with REALLY big sessions? As far as I know it is heavily dependent on the amount of objects on the timeline, and CPU usage. For example, tv commercials with 10-20 voices and reasonable amount of audio runs very well, but a drama final mix project with 400+ voices and thousands of clips is a total nightmare. Hitting r/t few times to zoom in/out, leads to several seconds of waiting for each step of zooming. Same exact project without external monitors runs smooth(ish).

Yes. I just did a mix for a flying theater theme park ride and did the pre-mixing at home on the 4k monitor and it was fine. I had about 350-400 tracks of live orchestra (every section done as a separate pass with lots of extra height, surround, and room mics setup for immersive mixing - 2 Decca trees, main and mid room, on the 4 percussion passes ) plus another 250ish tracks of sound effects. The only issue I had was CPU running at about 60-70% and spiking sometimes, as I had a ridiculous amount of routing going on to feed multiple channels of height speakers, etc.

[JFreak]

... and yet the thought did not occur to you that you could perhaps record a 2-track (or 5.1 track or whatever) of some sections, then making them inactive? My point being you only need max performance when you do those 500 tracks live on one take. After that you can spare your resources and keep working on what you are working on.

[originalscottyg]

Originally Posted by JFreak

... and yet the thought did not occur to you that you could perhaps record a 2-track (or 5.1 track or whatever) of some sections, then making them inactive? My point being you only need max performance when you do those 500 tracks live on one take. After that you can spare your resources and keep working on what you are working on.

I have done some submixing and bouncing in the past, depending on the application. But the schedule was extremely tight in this case, and pre-mix time was very limited, so I wanted to keep the mix as virtual as possible until the final dub in the venue.

Also, mixing for a flying theater ride is a very unusual speaker configuration where the are multiple, horizontal rows of speakers arrayed in a vertical plane behind a curved perf screen that the audience is pushed into while sitting on a ride vehicle. So, bouncing down to stereo or 5.1 isn't really possible.

The session ended up working fine. The CPU spiking was only occasional, and totally manageable. In fact, Pro Tools was quite a champ! Also a note that this was before 2021.6 came out and I was using voice packs for a total of 768 available voices.