ProTools HD 11 Crash whilst Recording

[Izesvk]

Hi all,

I have never posted on a forum before. I have been operating a commercial recording studio for only a number of years, and for the most part the system has been rock solid. I previously used a HD system for about 6 years and experienced crashes only very occasionally. I upgraded to ProTools HDX (DSP) and have also experienced for almost 12 months almost no crashes. However within the last week I have had several recording sessions affected by ProTools crashing in the middle of a take (with no plugins instantiated, and not necessarily a large number of audio tracks armed either). This is very disconcerting, and have wondered whether anyone has experienced this problem. I have 20GB of 32GB RAM allocated to session audio. I imagine it could be caused by one of the memory cards being faulty. Or is it possible it could be something else?

SJ

[albee1952]

How about some details on the system? Since your rig ran fine for a year, what is now different? Did you install some OS updates? PT updates? New plugins?

Do you have a backup plan?(a way to roll back to a previously solid main drive). Drive imaging and/or cloning is an absolute MUST for anybody that depends on a computer. I NEVER install even a .0x update(PT) or anything without saving an image BEFORE, or cloning my system drive, swapping out the fresh clone into the machine, and update THAT system drive. If anything goes sour, I swap the old drive back in so I can work(and deal with troubleshooting at my convenience)

[Izesvk]

Thanks albee1952,

The system is:
MacPro 2.4GHz 12-Core Intel Xeon with 32GB memory
Mac OSX 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion)
Avid HDX1 DSP Card
Avid ProTools HD 11.1.3
SSL Deltalink MADI HD (latest V2 Firmware)
SSL Alphalink

I have Time Machine backups of the system on a remote drive, and all of my sessions are RAID mirrored on a separate DAS server. I have always disabled automatic OS updates. I haven't installed anything for several months except a plugin by Flux (Alchemist AAX Native) within the last 2 weeks. I will remove this and also start diagnosing the system more closely. It has been difficult recently as I am also trying to complete my PhD and additional teaching appointments at a local university which has made it very difficult to find any time to attend to this problem. If anyone has/had any experience with this problem it just might help to streamline this process. I will address hardware and software faults. Memory diagnosis, operating system diagnosis, and I will also trash Avid preferences and see if I can determine what is causing this.

SJ

[Jeffrey Talbot]

You might just start with the basics.... run Disc Utility to check for errors and repair permissions to start.

Past that, you could un-install everything Avid... at least the PT program... and re-install.

Also, you might try logging in as a different user on your computer, and see if that makes a difference.

Sadly, anything might be causing the problem, both on the Apple OS side, to the Avid/PT side.