DAE ERROR 6 - Any help will be appreciated!!

[Philharmony]

Hey guys,

I bought a special High-End Audio PC two years ago (2 CPU's, 4 hard drives, 64 GB Ram). For almost an entire year I regularly get a DAE 6 error when working on sessions. Sometimes I get a "Disk too slow or fragmented (-9073 error)" even though all of my four hard drives are defragmented and work perfectly fine.

I do not get a DAE 6 error on smaller sessions, it's mostly bigger sessions with more plugins that encounter the error. Then I import my current session to a new blank session and there's a 50/50 chance whether or not I'm going to encounter the error again. Most of the times the new sessions works fine up to a certain point, then Pro Tools completely freezes and I have to restart my computer. Afterwards the new session also gets a DAE 6 error. It's really frustrating!

I have tried to consolidate all audio files and remove unused audio from the session, it helps a bit but I still get the error.

My audio interface is a RME UFX.

Please help me fix this issues as it's slowly but surely driving me insane!

Thanks in advance,
Phil

My Computer:

Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit
Intel Xeon CPU E5-2650 v2 @2.60GHz (2 Processors)
2 x 8 Cores
64 GB RAM
Audio Interface: RME UFX
Pro Tools 11.3.1

[The Weed]

Maybe something in the first post of this thread can help.

Also, if you are using USB, try firewire with an approved TI chipset card or vice versa and use a USB cable.

Plus RME released new drivers and an updated Totalmix last Friday.

[albee1952]

Another 2 cents worth, don't defrag drives(I haven't defragged a drive in 8 years). Copy a troublesome session to another drive(even C: for testing) and see if it gives the same message from another drive. If it DOESN'T, back up everything right now as maybe(and yes, its a "maybe") that drive is starting to fail(don't be fooled by how "new" the drive may be. I have had new drives fail in a week).

If it DOES throw the same message, maybe the session has some file corruption at work? A solution worth trying for that is; create a new blank session at a different sample rate(IOW, if the old session is 48K, make this new one 44.1K or vice versa). Import Session Data and let PT do SRC(sample rate conversion). This method has saved me 2 sessions in the past(so its worth a try).

Last idea, Hold SHIFT while the session opens(which makes all plugins inactive). If that allows the session to run without the error, maybe you have a bad plugin? Make all the stock plugins active and test(its probably NOT a stock plugin gone bad). Then enable a few 3rd party plugins at a time and see if you can pin the issue to 1 plugin

[Philharmony]

Thank you so much guys! I greatly appreciate your help!!!

I have optimized my system according to Avid's instructions when I first got the computer two years ago. I've now checked that all optimization settings are still intact and they are.

@The Weed:

I have updated the UFX driver's as well as TotalMix. Still no luck.
I'm now using the UFX via USB and I'm definitely going to give Firewire a shot. Thanks!

@albee1952:

I held shift while the session opened and tried to weed out a bad plugin or even the culprit of my error. Nope, it's not the plugins I guess. They worked fine. I even managed to work for awhile 10-15 minutes until pro tools hung up again. :-(

The session is saved on an internal drive called "D:" which is my audio sessions drive. When I copy the session to "C:" (which is a Samsung SSD) the same DAE Error 6 occurs. I thought about buying a new internal SSD but I think the drive isn't the real culprit (even though I'm not 100% sure).

I played around with various buffer sizes (256 & 1024) on my RME UFX. That doesn't affect the error and it still occurs no matter what buffer size.

Today I talked to the tech support of the manufacturer of my PC in Hamburg for half an hour and we tried to solve the issue with no avail. We disabled Turbo Boost and C-State Transition in the BIOS of my computer as requested in Avid's optimizations for Windows. Unfortunately, with no luck either.

When I'm in a session where the DAE error occurs, I can click outside of the audio (for instance at minute 6 where no audio clips are) and no error occurs. When I click somewhere else (for instance at minute 2 where the audio is) I get an DAE 6 error.

Please help me. This error is really frustrating and a huge waste of time.
I've been using Pro Tools since version 7 and know the ins and outs. But at this point I'm even considering giving up on Pro Tools completely and try a new DAW as I'm super disappointed with how things are going.

[Philharmony]

Hi guys,

Thanks you so much. I truly appreciate your help!

I have optimized my system according to Avid's instructions when I first got the computer two years ago. I've now checked that all optimization settings are still intact and they are.

@The Weed:

I have updated the drivers for my UFX and Totalmix but the error still occurs. I currently use USB but I'm definitely going to give Firewire a shot too. So thanks for you input! I have checked out your thread and I'm going to follow your instructions as well.

@albee1952:

I held shift while the session opened and then worked my way through different plugin manufacturers to find a faulty plugin or even the culprit. However, no luck either. All plugins worked fine. The session was stable for another 10-15 minutes until PT froze again. Then I restarted my computer and there he was again: Good old buddy DAE Error 6.

The session is saved on an internal drive called "D:" which is my audio drive. When I copy the session to "C:" (which is a Samsung SSD) the same DAE Error 6 occurs. I thought about buying a new super fast internal SSD but I think the driver isn't the real culprit (even though I'm not 100% sure).

I played around with various buffer sizes (256 & 1024) on my RME UFX. That doesn't affect the error and it still occurs no matter what buffer size.

Yesterday I talked to the tech support of the manufacturer of my computer for half an hour and we tried to solve the issue with no avail. We disabled Turbo Boost and C-State Transition in the BIOS of my computer as requested in Avid's optimizations. Unfortunately, with no luck either.

When I'm in a session where the DAE error occurs, I can click outside of the audio (for instance at minute 6 where no audio clips are) and no error occurs. When I click somewhere else (for instance at minute 2 where the audio is) I get an DAE 6 error.

Any more ideas on how I might get rid of the error?

Thanks,
Phil

[johncornfield]

Hi
I don't know if you sorted this issue yet but DAE error 6 is apparently a hard drive error but I have been getting this a lot recently and I have found it is linked to plugins in some way but not sure which ones as it is hard to track down, but I have found a way of releasing the error for a while at any rate, what I do is :-
Quit protools, open services, look for Pace Licensing Services, right click on it and stop it, then right click again and start it, then launch tools and load the session then it would run for a while again.

for me the dae error 6 always happened in the same place in the session and sometimes just hitting play would trigger it.

Do you also get random authorisation errors for plugins, I do and the same procedure would clear it so to me it is not a drive error at all and pointing to Ilook issues maybe.

I currently have a support case open and they are a little baffled by it at the moment, it would be interesting to find out if any one else is getting similar issues.

[nikydvt]

Originally Posted by Philharmony

Thank you so much guys! I greatly appreciate your help!!!

I have optimized my system according to Avid's instructions when I first got the computer two years ago. I've now checked that all optimization settings are still intact and they are.

@The Weed:

I have updated the UFX driver's as well as TotalMix. Still no luck.
I'm now using the UFX via USB and I'm definitely going to give Firewire a shot. Thanks!

@albee1952:

I held shift while the session opened and tried to weed out a bad plugin or even the culprit of my error. Nope, it's not the plugins I guess. They worked fine. I even managed to work for awhile 10-15 minutes until pro tools hung up again. :-(

The session is saved on an internal drive called "D:" which is my audio sessions drive. When I copy the session to "C:" (which is a Samsung SSD) the same DAE Error 6 occurs. I thought about buying a new internal SSD but I think the drive isn't the real culprit (even though I'm not 100% sure).

I played around with various buffer sizes (256 & 1024) on my RME UFX. That doesn't affect the error and it still occurs no matter what buffer size.

Today I talked to the tech support of the manufacturer of my PC in Hamburg for half an hour and we tried to solve the issue with no avail. We disabled Turbo Boost and C-State Transition in the BIOS of my computer as requested in Avid's optimizations for Windows. Unfortunately, with no luck either.

When I'm in a session where the DAE error occurs, I can click outside of the audio (for instance at minute 6 where no audio clips are) and no error occurs. When I click somewhere else (for instance at minute 2 where the audio is) I get an DAE 6 error.

Please help me. This error is really frustrating and a huge waste of time.
I've been using Pro Tools since version 7 and know the ins and outs. But at this point I'm even considering giving up on Pro Tools completely and try a new DAW as I'm super disappointed with how things are going.

Also for me DAE- ERROR 6 has been constituted an haevy drawback. I observed that launching "System usage" the load on the disk has alaways had been quite relative: generally not more than 2% except in some moments suddenly appearing, without remarkable cause: plus or mine no variations of musical transients in the track in which the load of track grew suddenly till 100% and ProTools hangs itself. I tried every solution (I use a Vajo VPCZ1 i7 8GB Ram Windows10 64Bit SSD 1 TB) also recording the new tracks on a Usb3 Drive or on C drive, but without remarkable improvements.
Some days ago Windows underwent a very consistent automatic upgrade (many minutes) after wich the System looked like more fast and functional and the DAE-ERROR has quite desappeared (I really dont' know how long). So perhaps this error have more complex and general origins (interferences with the S.O. considering that also MacOS now begin to suffer of the same draw back) than the mere slowing down of an hard disk.

[mjslakeridge]

PhilHarmony: You didn't mention in your original post, but is your D drive a 7,200 RPM drive? Using slower HDD's or "Green" drives for PTools is not recommended.

[johncornfield]

I do sympathise with you, for me it is getting worse and worse and still no closer to solving it, I have tried everything in my power, even took half the RAM out, I had 64 gig, and all other cards just leaving the HDX card and video card, I did have it overclocked but have reverted it all to default, done all the tweaks and more to BIOS and windows, the drives definitely arent the issue, I am using SATA 3 WD blacks connected directly to the mobo, same problems with both drives, even tried an internal SSD, and bought 2 brand new drives, still the same, I am in the middle of an album mix and have probably lost around 10days now, do you have a support case running?

[Wizzoboy]

When you bought the SSD and 2 brand new drives, did you use one of them to replace the system drive? Don't discount a drive problem. Drive failure can be very subtle at first. Some time ago I had problems with PT slowing down and not running properly. I traced this to an external drive that was starting to run hot and introducing very small errors. These errors were impacting the usb bus and hence the computer. Once replaced, no more problems. Get yourself Acronis Drive Monitor, which is a free application, to have a look at the state of health of your drives. This is my system drive. The drive that was failing had uncorrectable sector count errors and a rising running temperature.