Error -6101 in PT 10

[Cutlerbri]

I just finished a session where I was getting a lot of stoppages with the message: (paraphrasing) "CPU overload. Consider increasing buffer size in Setup or take off some plug-ins".
I increased buffer size as high as it would go and took off some plugs but was still getting the stop and the message. I changed the processor allocation from one to two and managed to get it stable enough to bounce out my mix.
But it seems to me my session wasn't unreasonable (16 tracks, 20 plugs). You can see my gear in my signature below. Do you think the problem was having only 4 gigs of ram?

[Chief Technician]

I cannot say for certain that 4 GB of RAM is the source of your problem. I can say for certain that 4 GB of RAM is really low. The OS needs at least 2 GB of RAM. More RAM is not going to hurt your situation. Whether or not it improves your situation is uncertain.

Are you using any virtual instruments in your session?

[Cutlerbri]

Yes, Jonathan. Just two tracks of Xpand and BFD Eco. But I was getting the error message before adding the VI tracks. Everything else is audio. My poor old iMac can't take much more ram. I think I can go from 4 gigs to six by adding a 4 gig to one of the slots but that's about it. This is really the first time I've had this problem. I have not yet experienced this in PT 11. From what I understand, PT 11 is less taxing on the CPU situation. But I still need to do some sessions in PT 10, thus my problem.

[albee1952]

Shooting in the dark here, but you might try disconnecting the keyboard(M-audio) to see what happens. You could also record the BFD tracks to audio and disable the instrument tracks as that might free up RAM Truthfully, a Core 2 is not much of a powerhouse these days, and each iteration of PT seems to want more horsepower than the last(IOW, your computer maybe had better performance with LE8 than it has with 100)

[Farmer Dave]

I get these frequently in 10.3.8, several times a day, but not constant enough to stop me from working. I usually work in very large Post Production sessions with complicated bus routing, lots of automation, Channel Strip on every track, etc.. And I thought - fair enough, maybe the CPU is taking a hit.

However I'm seeing it today in a session with only ONE stereo track and NO plug-ins. The CPU usage reads from 0-1% and this error is popping up still.

The buffer is already as high as it can go (1024) and there are no plug-ins in the session.

So in my case anyway, it's not a matter of doing what the warning window says. It doesn't happen to the degree I need to rip my system apart to track it down - yet. I'll keep my eye on it since now I'm sure its not necessarily the session I'm using, if even the most basic playback session is still showing the issue.

----------------------------
10.8.5
11.1.2.214
10.3.8.378
2.66 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
16GB RAM - 1066 MHz DDR3

Eucon 3.1.0
Artist Mix
Artist Transport

Audio Hardware - Coreaudio Aggregate MOTU HD Express & 828mk3 Hybrid

ATI Radeon HD 4870:
NVIDIA GeForce GT 120:
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[Cutlerbri]

Thanks, Dave. I think I'll get that BFD Eco track off of there and see if it helps. And yeah, Dave, it's weird when this message pops up when there is seemingly very little stress being put on the CPU. Hmmmm....
But I'll ask this again in case anyone knows. Isn't one of the selling points for PT 11 is that it leans less heavily on your native system (64 bit AAX verses 32 bit DAE)? I'm only running PT 10 any more because my only drum VI is BFD Eco. As soon as I can afford some other drum VI that is AAX I might very well abandon PT 10. Your thoughts?