New "Mac Studio" from Apple

[Phil O'Keefe]

Originally Posted by Eric Lambert

Any reason why you're not bumping that up to a higher buffer, or is that strictly to see what the machine can handle?

As mentioned before, I'd be curious to see another report of the Sol Levante test with a more typical value of 512 or so.

I was mistaken - the buffer was set at 128. I tried it again last night at 32, and I got errors, but what is strange is that it is even worse at 512 and 1024. For some reason, my Mac Studio seems to work better with smaller buffer setting than it does with the largest ones.

Has anyone else noticed similar buffer-related performance issues?

[AlexLakis]

Originally Posted by Phil O'Keefe

Has anyone else noticed similar buffer-related performance issues?

Check out this thread, Avid logs a bug re: buffer sizes: http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=419155

[Phil O'Keefe]

Originally Posted by AlexLakis

Check out this thread, Avid logs a bug re: buffer sizes: http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=419155

So apparently it is a bug and Avid knows about it, and I’m not crazy after all.

Thanks!

[Matt Red Room]

ignore. Thanks Darryl.

[Darryl Ramm]

This is a grab-all thread you posted to. It would have been much better for you getting help, and for other users in this thread if you had just created a new thread. Maybe a moderator can move this to a new thread--I've asked (please do not create another new thread now).

Originally Posted by Matt Red Room

I am having an odd issue with an NVME drive on a sonnet PCIe card and I am wondering if anyone else has come across it. I have scanned this thread and read of buffer spikes, but nothing like this specifically as far as I can tell.

If I try and commit a HW insert with a session on the NVME drive it freezes after about 30 seconds. If I do the same action on an external, much slower, drive it works fine.

Avid is postulating that the NVME card (x16) and the drive is too fast for the software.

I am running a Mac studio, HDX, Echo III desktop. Rig works fine except for this nuance.

It is very unlikely that the storage is "too fast" for anything and causes problems.

And why are you not running sessions off the internal faster still NVMe Studio drives? That will sure test whether "faster" drive causes problems. It won't but you should prove that to yourself with a quick test

If you had a problem on the fast internal drive and then did a save session in to the external drive and that worked that is a very good indicator that the session is corrupted and the save session in helped fixed it. Did you do actually do a Save Copy In to move it between drives?

You provide little info and no info about what other troubleshooting you have tried that I suspect would be more useful.

But what exactly do you mean by "commit a HW insert". What exactly are you doing? There is no session "commit" state you control. This happen when you try to create an insert of when you save the session or when it autosaves? And if this was happening to hardware inserts is it happening to plugins? Since it's HDX I'd sure suspect that well before a drive issue, you got HDX plugins or native plugins on the insert chain? Or none? What happens when you run all native with a different interface (Mac built in I/O). There is just so much troubleshooting that should be done here before any assumption that this is related to disk storage.

And what exactly "freezes", what do you exactly see happening and how do you get out of this?

Basic stuff done? Like trashing prefs? Moving out all .aaxplugin files? Testing from a newly created admin account. Trying a different session? Trying a Save Copy In to the NVMe SSD, the the Mac boot SSD. Can you reproducing starting from a new empty session? Test all this again from a newly created admin account. All standard troubleshooting stuff that hopefully Avid support walked you though.

What do the Pro Tools logs show? Compare what is logged between simple session runs where you create a failure (and do nothing else) and where you do the same and it does not fail. The logs are mostly greek, but look for the difference, sometimes they give a good clue.

But if you manage to exclude everything else then back to storage land:

What exactly are all the drives are you using? And with what filesystems? You using RAID? What RAID and how is it configured? What is disk cache set to? Is your session fully cached (disk cache meter green?) (that helps ensure that actual disk IO rates here are not going to hit the expansion chassis while you are tying to work).

And uh the Sonnet 4x4 card and whatever you have on it is all bottlenecked down to PCIe 2 speeds because you have to switch the Sonnet chassis to PCIe 2 speeds to support the HDX. That would drive me a little nuts paying $$$ and still having storage performance crippled like that. Any chance you have a second Sonnet chassis you can hang off the Studio? Not that I think that's causing your problem, but it's going to slow down your SSD significantly. But if all over troubleshooting fails and you manage to get stuff pointing to the NVMe drive storage. You can try just running with a different playback engine, should not need to physically pull the HDX card out of the Sonnet chassis... thats an awful long shot ("crazy") idea that the IO hitting the chassis causes problems for HDX/Pro Tools. I would eat my hat if that was actually the case.

[operator]

I have a Massive problem with the Playback Engine and Pro Tools 2022.5.
There is no drop down menu, just the Pro Tools Aggregate I/O.
No Mac Studio speakers, nothing, just the Aggregate I/O.
All my interfaces, including a Motu LP32, work fine with Digital Performer, Mac System audio, Davinci Resolve, RX9 and others.
Trying to use the Motu LP32 in aggregate with Pro Tools does not work, it has buffer errors.
I have completely de-installed and re-installed PT 2021.12, PT 2022.4 and PT 2022.5, starting up in safe mode each time to clear any cache problems.
I have made 4 calls to Avid with them remote controlling my computer. They too can not populate the dropdown menu with anything but the aggregate I/O.
They have the gall to say that the problem is with 3rd party interfaces and that I have to contact the manufacturers.
I suppose I have to contact Apple as well as their speakers do not appear in the menu either!
However they let slip that they had had a problem with the drivers of Avid interfaces and the new Mac Studio, so it would be logical to also think that Avid has a problem interfacing with 3rd party interfaces on the Mac Studio. But they just insist that it is up to the 3rd party manufacturers to solve the problem (that is only a problem with Pro Tools!).
I contacted Motu regarding the LP32. They confirm it works correctly with PT 2022.5 on OS 12.4 on an Apple Silicon MacBook Pro. Playback Engine has the dropdown menu, with system audio speakers, airpods, aggregate and the LP32 showing in the dropdown menu.
So Beware if you are considering a Mac Studio, Pro Tools and a 3rd party interface. You may also end up paying a subscription for software you cannot use. Oh, and sorry to say, Avid technical support sucks.

OS 12.4 on a Mac Studio M1 Max.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by operator

I have a Massive problem with the Playback Engine and Pro Tools 2022.5.
There is no drop down menu, just the Pro Tools Aggregate I/O.
No Mac Studio speakers, nothing, just the Aggregate I/O.
All my interfaces, including a Motu LP32, work fine with Digital Performer, Mac System audio, Davinci Resolve, RX9 and others.
Trying to use the Motu LP32 in aggregate with Pro Tools does not work, it has buffer errors.
I have completely de-installed and re-installed PT 2021.12, PT 2022.4 and PT 2022.5, starting up in safe mode each time to clear any cache problems.
I have made 4 calls to Avid with them remote controlling my computer. They too can not populate the dropdown menu with anything but the aggregate I/O.
They have the gall to say that the problem is with 3rd party interfaces and that I have to contact the manufacturers.
I suppose I have to contact Apple as well as their speakers do not appear in the menu either!
However they let slip that they had had a problem with the drivers of Avid interfaces and the new Mac Studio, so it would be logical to also think that Avid has a problem interfacing with 3rd party interfaces on the Mac Studio. But they just insist that it is up to the 3rd party manufacturers to solve the problem (that is only a problem with Pro Tools!).
I contacted Motu regarding the LP32. They confirm it works correctly with PT 2022.5 on OS 12.4 on an Apple Silicon MacBook Pro. Playback Engine has the dropdown menu, with system audio speakers, airpods, aggregate and the LP32 showing in the dropdown menu.
So Beware if you are considering a Mac Studio, Pro Tools and a 3rd party interface. You may also end up paying a subscription for software you cannot use. Oh, and sorry to say, Avid technical support sucks.

OS 12.4 on a Mac Studio M1 Max.

Oh dear, another one. This hopefully should be a straightforward process to troubleshoot but you are not helping yourself by spamming this onto another general thread. Next time please create your own new thread.

All those Pro Tools reinstalls, likely just a waste of time. You might as well sacrifice a goat.

Did you use system migration utility? To do what?

So basic troubleshooting:Trash prefs-doing it properly/carefully... use PT Prefs, physically unplug/disconnect all the external audio interfaces, delete the aggregate device, trash prefs again (frequently as you test) create a new admin account to test from, repeat tests there etc.

Everybody else can get this to work without this problem on thousands and thousands of M1 Macs. So if quick troubleshooting above does not work then don't waste any more time: instead do a clean macOS reinstall and install just Pro Tools (2022.5) and confirm you can see the mac's built in and aggregate devices before doing anything else. Then manually install drivers for other interfaces, making sure you have the correct installers for drivers supported on Apple Silicon on your version of MacOS.

[Eric Lambert]

Today is the first day of my 2-week delivery window. The order still says "Preparing."

Of those who are beginning to see their Studios, did it arrive toward the beginning of that window? End? Did it get pushed back? I suppose I'm a bit anxious.

[reichman]

Originally Posted by Eric Lambert

Today is the first day of my 2-weei delivery window. The order still says "Preparing."

Of those who are beginning to see their Studios, did it arrive toward the beginning of that window? End? Did it get pushed back? I suppose I'm a bit anxious.

I got mine almost three months after I ordered it, and it was two weeks late from the end of the expected delivery window. I know. Loading it up for the first time today.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Robruce

You probably have done this once at least, but again be sure PT has access to "Microphone" in System Preferences>Security & Privacy.
It's possible that step must be performed for each and every install of Pro Tools. So perhaps double check that.

Sorry no cigar, for you or your goat. "Microphone" permission settings do not ever stop an interface showing up (or being selected) in the playback engine dialog. That's a whole different thing. All lack or microphone permission does is stops audio inputs actually passing audio, but the device still shows up.