Bad times with Mac Studio, HDN, and aurora 16

[kindkind]

Avid TB3 chassis with HD Native card. The system recognizes the aurora 16 after installing the latest lynx driver, shows up as 32IO. Great! But major problems.

its all crackles, and the system will not play. This also happens using coreaudio for youtube. Sounds like clock issues and PT cries about the clock, but aurora is set to internal, and also audio/midi setup is matched to that, verified. I have no other devices turned on such as other converters. SOMETIMES the system will play in PT, and in youtube etc. Pretty odd.

Also, PT started not even opening, saying way low on memory. So i reinstalled PT, same thing. Then i used the new erase all settings and data function to essentially wipe the Mac Studio (i guess this is the new clean install??). But i get the low on memory error now, wont open PT, and youtube is all crackles. Changed clock to 44.1 but still bad.

I am not sure where to start. Obviously uncharted stuff here, but HDN has been confirmed to work in the TB3 chassis, and people have been using HDX in the chassis on M1, so maybe its possible. First of all Lynx support has not had any ideas for me yet, but I know Paul is really good.

I have the aurora on firmware 28 and could potentially up it to the latest 31, but waiting for Paul to confirm 31 will work on my old rickety 5,1 under mohave since it looks like this is going south fast. LT-HD card is on the latest firmware.

Monterey 12.3 obviously, M1 max. No joy yet trying to jumble together old stuff with new stuff...

[kindkind]

Lynx says the Aurora is invisible to osx. And I was incorrect that the Mac couldn't see the Aurora until installing the lynx driver. I re-formatted the drive and got the system to acknowledge the Aurora without the driver.

Still got clicks and no play, then the 9006 out of memory error.

There's a post a couple days ago with someone who has an HDN running on a mini m1. It's impossible for me to troubleshoot the enclosure since I don't have any other cards. Might have to return everything.

[Darryl Ramm]

If Pro Tools is running out of memory etc. you've got something gooched and while it might be related to interfaces it probably is not (well especially if you have installed third party plugins... always more likely for them to leak memory than Avid's own HD driver) so KISS, simplify, start just getting stuff working using Built-In output or whatever it's called as the playback engine. Physically disconnect the expansion chassis, start up the Mac and see if you can use Pro Tools. If not then standard troubleshooting, trash prefs, remove plugins etc. All stuff you should just do automatically, and do that before reinstalling stuff, start at "Help us help you" up the top of each DUC web page.

Make sure no background apps are running, things like Google Chrome etc. maybe with memory leaks. If you installed any weird apps, AV software etc. uninstall it if you can't be sure what exactly is running.

You should not need to uninstall any of the drivers you installed, they just won't get loaded with the hardware physically disconnected. (but you do need to physically disconnect all that for now).

Once that all works OK then worry about your interfaces. And what IO buffer size, sample rate are you trying to run at? What drive is your audio files on, is disk cache enabled? The small buffer option checked?

Disconnect your external drives as well and create new empty test sessions on the internal Mac SSD. Add some audio to those and see if they play OK. Once that works then try the sessions on the external drives you have. If they look like part of the problem what exact make/model/spec and how exactly are they attached to the Mac?

How are you installing stuff and exactly what versions? Please tell me you have reinstalled Pro Tools and all your plugins and other apps from their installers and checked everything is claimed to be compatible, and you did not use the system migration assassin.

Still getting out of memory errors looking at memory usage in the Mac Activity Monitor will give clues. Post screenshots or numbers from there that look weird or ask if still stuck.

[francois]

Maybe starting with PT newest update that is compatible with Monterey?

[kindkind]

I did a completely fresh wipe install 3x, only installing the pt 2021.12. no other plugins. There is nothing on the machine other than PT and the stock apple stuff. The memory error has popped up each time. But same with the clicks and no play. Lynx says it's very unlikely related to the Aurora.

Pt will not open, it crashes when getting to the verifying audio engine stage. Sometimes it does open and allows me to record a session, I just did one at 96k. If I hold N it will allow me to open using aggregate I/o etc.

No external drive is available right now, so only internal.
After a fresh wipe PT will try to open a session using the HDN, but will usually result in clicks and the clocking error, though it has played stuff successfully, as I said. When the memory error occurs, PT will not open up at all for a while. Activity monitor shows PT at 412mb mem.

I could do sessions from my system drive on the 5,1 no problem.


.

[kindkind]

Clean install no migration. Using the installer from my avid page, 2021.12, not using avid link anymore, same results.

[_JJ_]

Just some ideas... During your installations are you sure the System Prefs >> Security & Privacy panel isn't blocking drivers, etc? Sometimes you won't get a popup message but actually have to give permission in that control panel while installing.

You mentioned YouTube but I didn't think you could share the PT audio interface with system sounds. Any possibility that is causing your clock issues? You should probably choose a different output device (internal studio or monitor) for the Mac's output.

[kindkind]

On your suggestion I selected my monitor as the system sounds device. But the next time I opened PT I got memory error, after a restart.

I added some screen shots.

Its a hodgepodge of errors. I can get to the hardware engine screen and take the disk cache up to max, increase buffer to max, and the system will then open up PT, and allow me to record a session. In the session, I then take the buffer back down to 64, and I am currently recording 10 tracks.

And so now I saved that successful session, closed PT, reopen, and PT won't open, its doing the memory error on audio engine initialization.

[Darryl Ramm]

Why are you using HD Native? Disconnect that crap and get your basic stuff running. If it did not work reliably with built in output why did you reconnect the HD Native crap? vs. spend time continuing to debug in a simple config? Why are you using aggregate IO, use the outputs only, no aggregate, just the stereo Built-In output or whatever it's called that drives your monitor audio out. Leave it set to that only and do not change while you troubleshoot other stuff. Stop reinstalling crap. You are wasting time.

Did you test starting with a new empty session? Did you trash prefs? Did you try creating a different admin user? All the quick simple standard stuff. Did you ever use system migration utility? - No I see that now, good. Do you have a shared desktop to iCloud? Why do you have disk cache set to a large 16 GB if you are running out of memory, that's absolutely backwards to do. Set it to "normal" and leave it there while you troubleshoot. Edit: OK I see 2021.12 in the screenshot.. and you are not installing anything else? No complete plugin bundle? No third party utilities or apps, no other apps? nothing just a clean macOS and you install Pro Tools 2021.12 and get these problems? Where are your screen shots etc from Activity Monitor? I gave you a detailed list of things to try/info that you could provide that might help for a reason and you are seen to be wasting time thrashing around.

[kindkind]

Pro tools works fine with HDN disconnected using aggregate IO.

The cache size set to normal, 28 GB, 1GB, doesnt seem to affect PT. but changing stuff around does sometimes get the system to work.

I can have full 20 tracks recording at 128k buffer on normal disk cache, then close PT, and PT will not reopen.