Persistent DAE error 9073

[TL4500]

Background:

I bought a Samsung RF711 Laptop just under a year ago. Four cores @ 2.2Ghz. 8Gb RAM. Windows 7 64 bit. NVidia graphics card. I ran Pro Tools 10.0.0 on this machine until the laptop “died” a few weeks ago. I used to get the “You are running out of CPU power……” 9128 error fairly often, maybe once or twice a session. It was a pain but I got along. I recorded quite a lot of “demo” stuff at home but the main thing was getting together eight songs for an album. I recorded drums and guitar for five songs and had most of that mixed when my first machine went down.

I bought a new replacement laptop a couple of weeks ago.
This is my set up (Sandra report is at the end of this post):
Lenovo G700 laptop 4 cores @ 2.1 Ghz.
Windows 8.0 64 bit.
8Gb RAM
NVidia GeForce GT 720M
M-Audio Fasttrack Ultra 8R (latest drivers downloaded last week)
Pro Tools 10.3.7

I posted a couple of times regarding errors (DAE 13001) with install and inability to open Pro Tools. Eventually I managed to get Pro Tools 10.3.7 installed and running. It would not even try to open (just closed without error messages) when I first launched it, but compatibility mode for Windows 7 and “Run as administrator” worked.

When I first opened up each file that I had been working on I was getting error messages telling me my I/O settings had changed. On opening each file I found that the M-Audio Fast Track Ultra 8R input names had changed from Input 1 etc. to Analog Input 1 etc. After I changed all these within the mix window the errors went. Fine.

All I have been trying to do is play the songs and listen to where I had got to with mixing a few weeks ago, so any errors mentioned from here onwards are just with playback, nothing else.

I went through the recommended Windows setting changes listed in the little book that comes with Pro Tools and in my “Pro Tools for dummies” book:
Disable UAC, Configuring system standby and power management, disable autoplay, disable error reporting, stand by power to on, sleep off, system sound disabled, high performance, unchecked all visual effects.
ONE POINT TO NOTE: The instruction to “Enable DMA” could not be carried out as there is no “Advanced” tab in the IDE Controllers panel.

I always disable Mcafee and disconnect from the internet before opening Pro Tools. I never have anything else open when I open Pro Tools.
After I had done the Windows optimisations and opened Pro Tools I was plagued by errors. The most common one:

“You are running out of CPU power. Remove some native plug-ins or increase the CPU usage limit in the Playback engine (-9128)”.

Also: “DAE can’t get audio from the drive(s) fast enough. Your drive may be too slow or fragmented, or a firewire drive could be having trouble due to the extra firewire bandwidth or CPU load (-9073)”.

Also: “The audio device buffer overflowed. If this occurs frequently try decreasing the H/W buffer size in the playback engine panel or remove other devices from the audio firewire bus (-6085)”.

An interesting point at this stage is that out of the five songs concerned, most have about 20 Pro Tools tracks but one has around 100 tracks. The one with 100 tracks seems to be less prone to stopping than the others?

I looked online for instructions for “Trashing preferences”.
I followed these instructions:

Find C/Program files/Common files/Digidesign/DAE. I deleted the “DAE prefs” folder.

Find C/Users/main acc folder/Appdata/Roaming. I looked for the “Digi design” folder to delete but this folder was not there, so I could not delete this one.
I then opened Pro Tools and closed it again.

When I opened again and tried to open a file I got the message “Your I/O set up has changed since the last time this session was saved. Check the I/O set ups window to see what has changed. The following plug-ins were made inactive because they could not be found in the plug-ins folder – Air distortion (1)”. When the file opened up I noticed that the Air distortion plug-in was greyed out and also when I right click a field in the mix window to add a plug-in the number of plug-ins available has reduced dramatically. Question at this point: where do I find plug ins should I wish to load individually? Is this possible?

I started at this point to search Google/the know knowledge base/forums for similar issues. I understand that this is a necessary starting point but it appears that there are dozens of factors that influence these issues and no two peoples systems are exactly the same. It may provide clues as to possible options but you can find yourself uninstalling/reinstalling Pro Tools as a full time job.

I found a suggestion for installing Pro Tools from a Setup.exe in the Pro Tools Installer folder rather than the main Setup file (suggested as an for Windows 8 users). This install did not work. I was stuck in a loop of “reboot to continue install”.

I reverted back to installing from the main Setup.exe. This time it seemed like the amount of Plugins installed was back to where it had been previously (i.e. not reduced).

When trying to play a song in Pro Tools I got the error:
“DAE can’t get audio from the drive(s) fast enough. Your drive may be too slow or fragmented, or a firewire drive could be having trouble due to the extra firewire bandwidth or CPU load (-9073)”.

I went through a series of changing Samples, No of processors, CPU usage percentage.

When I got the first DAE error (mentioned above) I had started off with:
512 Samples
85% CPU usage
3 Processors
Level 2

I changed CPU usage to 90%. The song played 1.5 times through before throwing up the same error 9073 (with the same wording).
I Changed to 4 Processors and 99% CPU. again, The song played 1.5 times through before throwing up the same error 9073 (with the same wording).
I Changed to 3 Processors and 90% CPU. again, The song played 1.5 times through before throwing up the same error 9073 (with the same wording).
Although I have 4 processors for some reason, this install now showed 8 available?
I Changed to 6 Processors and 99% CPU. again, The song played 1.5 times through before throwing up the same error 9073 (with the same wording).
I Changed to 256 Samples. again, The song played 1.5 times through before throwing up the same error 9073 (with the same wording).
I Changed to 7 Processors and 99% CPU. The song played 1/3 through before throwing up the same error 9073 (with the same wording).

Last night I thought I would sit and monitor Task manager just to try and spot what else was happening when these errors occurred.
When Pro Tools stopped and the same DAE 9073 error occurred, there was a sudden increase in disk % in Task Manager from:
Service host Local system (network restricted) (9)

This morning the same thing.
When Pro Tools stopped and the same DAE 9073 error occurred, there was a sudden increase in disk % in Task Manager from: Service host Local system (16)
10 minutes later:
When Pro Tools stopped and the same DAE 9073 error occurred, there was a sudden increase in disk % in Task Manager from: System
It happened again, same thing but this time I forgot to note the name of the “perpetrator”.

Hope this is enough for you to go on solve my problem. If you need any more please let me know.

Thanks in advance,

T

SiSoftware Sandra

ID
Host Name : RockMachine
Workgroup : WORKGROUP

Computer
Model : Lenovo 20251 IDEAPAD
Serial Number : 124*********
Chassis : Lenovo Notebook
Mainboard : Lenovo G700
Serial Number : AB2*******
BIOS : Lenovo 7ACN24WW 06/25/2013
Total Memory : 7.88GB DDR3 SO-DIMM

Processors
Processor : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3612QM CPU @ 2.10GHz (4C 8T 3.09GHz, 3.1GHz IMC, 4x 256kB L2, 6MB L3)
Socket/Slot : FC PGA988

Chipset
Memory Controller : Lenovo Core (Ivy Bridge) Mobile DRAM Controller 100MHz, 2x 4GB DDR3 SO-DIMM 1.6GHz 128-bit, Integrated Graphics

Memory Module(s)
Memory Module : Ramaxel RMT3170EB68F9W1600 4GB DDR3 SO-DIMM PC3-12800S DDR3-1600 (11-11-11-29 5-40-13-6)
Memory Module : Ramaxel RMT3170EB68F9W1600 4GB DDR3 SO-DIMM PC3-12800S DDR3-1600 (11-11-11-29 5-40-13-6)

Video System
Monitor/Panel : Samsung S24C300
(1920x1080, 30.2")
Monitor/Panel : CMN Generic PnP Monitor (1600x1200, N173FGE-L23 , 17.6")
Video Adapter : Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 (16CU 128SP SM5.0 350MHz/1.1GHz, 2GB DDR3 1.6GHz 128-bit, Integrated Graphics)
Video Adapter : Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 (16CU 128SP SM5.0 350MHz/1.1GHz, 2GB DDR3 1.6GHz 128-bit, Integrated Graphics)

Graphics Processor
OpenCL GP Processor : Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 (128SP 16C 350MHz/1.1GHz, 1.8GB DDR3 1.6GHz 128-bit, Integrated Graphics)
OpenCL GP Processor : NVIDIA GeForce GT 720M (96SP 2C 1.55GHz, 2GB 2GHz)
Compute Shader Processor : Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 (128SP 16C 350MHz/1.1GHz, 2GB DDR3 1.6GHz 128-bit, Integrated Graphics)
Compute Shader Processor : NVIDIA GeForce GT 720M (96SP 2C 1.55GHz, 2GB 2GHz)

Storage Devices
Seagate ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB (1TB, SATA300, 2.5", 5400rpm, 16MB Cache) : 932GB (C:) (D:) (P:)
HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GT80N (SATA150, DVD+-RW, CD-RW, 768kB Cache) : N/A (F:)

Logical Storage Devices
Windows8_OS (C:) : 501GB (NTFS) @ Seagate ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB (1TB, SATA300, 2.5", 5400rpm, 16MB Cache)
ProT (P:) : 391GB (NTFS) @ Seagate ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB (1TB, SATA300, 2.5", 5400rpm, 16MB Cache)
LENOVO (D:) : 25GB (NTFS) @ Seagate ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB (1TB, SATA300, 2.5", 5400rpm, 16MB Cache)
WINRE_DRV : 1000MB (NTFS)
PBR_DRV : 13GB (NTFS)
Optical Drive (F:) : N/A @ HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GT80N (SATA150, DVD+-RW, CD-RW, 768kB Cache)

Peripherals
LPC Hub Controller 1 : Lenovo Panther Point LPC Controller
Audio Device : Lenovo Panther Point High Definition Audio Controller
Audio Codec : Integrated Device Tech 7695
Disk Controller : Lenovo Panther Point Mobile 6 port SATA AHCI Controller
USB Controller 1 : Lenovo Panther Point USB xHCI Host Controller
USB Controller 2 : Lenovo Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #2
USB Controller 3 : Lenovo Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1
SMBus/i2c Controller 1 : Intel ICH SMBus

Printers and Faxes
Printer : Nitro PDF Driver 8 (600x600, Colour)
Printer : Microsoft XPS Document Writer v4 (600x600, Colour)
Fax : Microsoft Shared Fax Driver (200x200)

Network Services
Network Adapter : Qualcomm Atheros AR8172/8176/8178 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (NDIS 6.30) (Ethernet)
Network Adapter : Bluetooth Device (Personal Area Network) (Ethernet)
Wireless Adapter : Qualcomm Atheros AR9485WB-EG Wireless Network Adapter (802.11n (HT), AES-CCMP, 72.2Mbps)

[tmitchell]

At the risk of sounding like a snob, in my experiences these lenovo machines can barely support work processing. A good computer is determined not only by the components but the compatibility and build quality of the machine.

It sounds like your troubleshooting and system optimisation are true, but the DAE errors seem fairly concise to me. You are running out of CPU power. There is also no denying that the Digidesign audio engine is extremely inefficient and demands copious and unnecessary amounts system resources. Pro Tools 11 seems to run a lot more efficiently and CPU friendly with its new Avid audio engine.

Providing you have exhausted every avenue of troubleshooting and configuration recommendations on the Avid site I would suggest the following:

1) Buy a Mac Book Pro (Or similar build quality HP)

2) Upgrade to Pro Tools 11

I hope other forum members can provide additional input

[Darryl Ramm]

So you've got only one (you need at least two) disk drive in this laptop, and that drive is underspec at 5,400 rpm (a dedicated 7,200 rpm drive or an SSD is required for Pro Tools audio/session files). And it looks like from the partition names you have partitioned the singe under-spec disk drive into two separate partition one for system/boot and many one for audio/session files and that will result in *worst* performance than just having everything on one large partition.

And you are having a bunch of problems likely related to disk IO performance. All I'm missing is what the surprise is here.

Disk requirements for Pro Tools are included with your product, are available here http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...ility/en419171 and are discussed in many other posts on DUC.

I would also be looking at SSD, spinning HDD are so last century.

You need to be using a dedicated audio spec drive for audio/session files but a 5,400 rpm drive is painfully slow even as a boot/system drive. So I'd be upgrading that as well. Ideally both with a good SSD drive like a Samsung 840 Pro or 840 Evo (SSD drives are not equal, and there are many others I would not use) to replace the internal drive use an caddy to install a second SSD to replace the optical drive you never use. See http://hddcaddy.com/en/lenovo-ibm-hd...hdd-caddy.html. You can use any number of external USB optical drives if needed. You might get away with one SSD drive for both system/boot and audio/session files but to be safe I would use two.

Recording audio with Pro Tools is firstly about writing blocks to disk, everything else is secondary. That is the first thing to worry about with any Pro Tools computer.

Darryl

[tmitchell]

Good point Darryl, I didn't see that! Although a good HD is necessary we have many computers with one single 7200 SATA drive that run PT flawlessly (Although SSD's are great they are very expensive, you would have to way up the viability of putting an SSD into that machine).

[Darryl Ramm]

I disagree with the SSD cost concern, their cost/GB is reasonable, their cost per IOP is fantastic, and they are more robust and reliable than a HDD, especially for mobile/laptop applications. What cost is put on the time like here wasted dicking around with a underspec 5,400 rpm drive? HDD are still great devices for archiving and backups and make sense in applications needing an awful lot of storage like video editing.

[tmitchell]

You are right, although a 7200RPM drive will suffice. My point was it's like putting the interior of a BMW in a Daewoo, but that is ultimately the owner's decision

[sw rec]

Second the vote for a dedicated hard drive. Pro Tools has listed this as a REQUIREMENT for a stable system since day one. From the troubleshooting page:
IMPORTANT! You MUST use a secondary hard drive (not your main OS drive) for recording and playback of audio in Pro Tools. Recording or playback from the OS drive is known to be problematic and the cause of many different error types. If you are using your system drive and encountering errors, the first thing you should do is get a compatible drive.

[tmitchell]

Pro Tools has listed this as a REQUIREMENT

I acknowledge this, but we have over 200 computers running PT flawlessly with only 1 7200rpm HD (with the exception of our two main Mac Pro production computers). The only DAW errors we have had in the last year have been due to illegal characters or user modification of the session file. I can't report a single HD error within the last few years.

Models include: iMac27, iMac 21, Mac Mini, Mac Book Pro, G5 and Mac Pro

[sw rec]

Color this man LUCKY. Call Avid for support, and guess what's the first thing they'll insist you do before they help any further....

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by tmitchell

I acknowledge this, but we have over 200 computers running PT flawlessly with only 1 7200rpm HD (with the exception of our two main Mac Pro production computers). The only DAW errors we have had in the last year have been due to illegal characters or user modification of the session file. I can't report a single HD error within the last few years.

Models include: iMac27, iMac 21, Mac Mini, Mac Book Pro, G5 and Mac Pro

Oh great, another useful, "I play Russian roulette all the time and have never shot myself in the head" post, which does not exactly help the other person lying on the floor with blood running out of the hole in their head.

You seem persistent here on pushing this and I'm not getting why. It is possible on lots of systems to set up one disk drive and get Pro Tools to work to some extent. And the question is always to what extent. Exactly how many tracks, what sample rate, what plugins, what PT version, what exact disk drives, exactly what interface, etc., etc.

I don't know what institution you are at with the 200 desktops running Pro Tools, and it may well provide some wonderful Pro Tools instruction, but I'd not be in a hurry to advertise that it runs so many systems under-configured like this. I'd not do this myself for anything that needed to absolutely work when needed, and not really want to be associated with a teaching organization that decided that was a good idea. But OK you are getting away with it. And why do it, is saving that $50 or so per seat (at least for the raw HDD cost) so critical it is worth the risk? What if a student adds one more track, installs one more plugin etc.? You're really just being lucky. For students hopefully going out into the real world I hope you institution explains to them about how fragile Pro Tools can be and how important it is to set up systems properly, even if you don't do it yourselves.

And we don't know if you are running HD with timeline cache or not, and I assume you are really writing session/data to the local disk not a NAS/SAN etc. ideally students heading towards a pro career should get to use and understand how to set up systems properly in stand alone and NAS/SAN environments.

When somebody is having IO related problems, especially exactly what the original poster is seeing here that is almost certainly related to the disk misconfiguration they need to focus on fixing that misconfiguration, going on about what you have managed to get away with doing with under-spec systems elsewhere does not help them at all.