audio suite render followed by long spinning ball

[citysoundman]

Hi gang,

I'm running Ultimate 2021 on a 2013 Mac Pro, 6 core (native).

Let's say I audio suite render a long file, say something over 5 minutes; or I render many regions simultaneously - the render completes normally but it is always followed by a pretty long spinning ball. Like 30 seconds of spinning after doing a render on a 10 minute file. This behavior seems to be kind of new for me, at least new-ish, I don't recall this happening like a year ago but I'm not really sure (I can't really connect this to any version).

When rendering a short file or a few small regions there's no spinning ball.

When I work in HD/HDX studios this doesn't happen. But most of my work these days is at home where I am native, and this always happens on my system. I tried trashing all my prefs but it didn't help.

Is this expected on a native system?

[Darryl Ramm]

Audiosuite is all native system processing, regardless of whether the system has DSP for TDM or HDX. And HD Native sure makes no difference.

You need to troubleshoot and optimize your system. And you might want to think about the native processing power or systems you are comparing.

[citysoundman]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Audiosuite is all native system processing, regardless of whether the system has DSP for TDM or HDX. And HD Native sure makes no difference.

You need to troubleshoot and optimize your system. And you might want to think about the native processing power or systems you are comparing.

Thanks Darryl, this is helpful. Makes sense that Audio Suite performance is determined by Mac processing power. My Mac has 64GB RAM so it's not lacking for memory. Not sure, but are there any PT settings that affect audio suite performance?

I've tried trashing PT prefs, and I also use CleanMyMac. Any ideas for general troubleshooting/optimizing?

[Darryl Ramm]

Unfortunately I don't have a good feel there, I barely ever use audiosuite (ha but just used it a little today). I'd just start with running though all the standard optimizations.

I mostly wanted to just make the quick point that audiosuite uses native processing to help you think about this.

While Pro Tools is beachballing how responsive does the finder or any other apps you have open feel?

I do want to encourage folks to check memory use. I've seen systems recently where people are using a lot of disk cache and also have VIs and have left Google Chrome (a memory pig) etc. and other stuff running etc. and are using a lot of memory. Just confirm you are OK by looking at the macOS activity monitor memory page, down the bottom at the memory pressure chart, you want to see a nice green lines. And I'd watch this while doing the audiosuite processing in case one of the plugins has a memory problem that peaks memory use badly as you run it.

Other folks here may have a lot better general idea for troubleshooting this, or maybe very specific ideas about minimizing those spinning beach balls.

[citysoundman]

Other apps work fine when the ball is spinning...
Great idea to look at Activity Monitor! thanks again

[citysoundman]

OK I just did a test, RX9 de-reverb audio suite render on a 9 minute file. The AS seems to go pretty quick, then there's a weird pause for a few seconds, then I get the spinning ball for 38 seconds.

During the render, activity monitor shows PT CPU percentage at over 120%, ranging up to 135%. I didn't realize it would go over 100%, that's interesting.

Then CPU drops to 45% when the render is done. As soon as the spinning ball starts, the Pro Tools line in activity monitor goes red and says Pro Tools (not responding).

So it's clearly hanging...but why?

[Darryl Ramm]

100% is just one core… 200% CPU would be all of two cores etc. it’s a great way of presenting CPU use. What is Activity Monitor memory pressure showing during this time?

Your session files are all local, like to the internal SSD? Not a NAS or SAN or cloud drive (bad idea)… what is disk cache size set to and how well is the session cached… if the system had to suddenly write the modified audio out through the cache to slow storage it may cause a delay… but hopefully not beach balls.


Does anything like this problem happen with trivial audiosuite plugins like invert? Only iZotope plugins?

[citysoundman]

Files are all stored on local external SSD.

But I think you hit the nail on the head asking about other AS plugs! Avid Gain works with no issues, no spinning. It seems that the more complex the plug-in I use, the more I get of a pause/spinning ball. It really ranges from no spinning, to a few seconds, up to 38 seconds with dereverb.

I have some regular work where I use RX deverb and declick on 10 minute podcast files recorded in someone's home, then other regular work mastering lots of VO localization tags - I use McDSP ML4000, it lets me expand, compress & limit all in one shot - so I'm almost always using the more intensive plugs.

Thanks for helping me get a handle on this! I still don't know why I'm getting the spinning ball but I think I'll ask Izotope and see what they say.

[Cheesehead]

I had these similar problems with Audiosuite and bounce to disc and it turned out to be a permissions problem on the disc.
Another time it was caused by an external thunderbolt dock, whereas writing files to an internal drive was instantaneous.
It may not be your problem, but worth a try.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by citysoundman

Files are all stored on local external SSD.

Mmm I'll bite on that as well. I think a longer shot than a plugin but worth checking... what exact make/model external SSD and how exactly is it connected to the computer? And what file system is on it? All audio files in the session are stored on that one location? Like all in the session folder?

A good quick test if you have space may be to drag a copy of that session to the internal super fast NVMe SSD and try running it there.

And what is your disk cache meter showing??