Just another CPU, -6101 error...

[Seraplane]

And I can tell you right now, my CPU is not the problem. I just checked it and it's not using over 45% while playing back the recording. I have six audio tracks with audio recorded on them, five of which have a 7-band EQ plug-in and all of which have the Compressor/Limiter Dyn 3 plug-in on them. I have four MIDI tracks, three with Minigrand plug-in and one with XPand2 running an organ sound. The project runs without the error message, and quite smoothly, if I make all of the MIDI inactive. If I make the MIDI active, it works fine til it comes to a part of the song where two MIDI tracks are playing at the same time, then I often get the error 6101 saying I'm out of CPU.

I have been adjusting settings on my Mac lately, so I'm hoping I didn't cause this. I assume it's just a Pro Tools thing. I've recently been addressing some latency issues. My Playback Engine has no Delay Compensation set on it, but I did check the box for "Minimize Additional I/O Latency." I've got my CPU usage limit bumped up to 90% (lot of good that does) and I even have the box that says to ignore error messages during playback checked (also, lot of good that does). I bumped my sample rate up to 1024, too. I'm not really sure what to tell you, so I'm just giving you as much information as possible. Also, whenever I hit "Ok" on the Playback Engine Window, I get a pop-up saying that the current playback engine does not support a sample rate of 44.1 kHz. Not sure what that is about. I'm using 44.1 kHz and it still runs after I exit out of that.

Edit: Running it on Macbook Pro 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3, Mac OS X Version 10.6.6, Pro Tools 9.0.1, interface is Presonus Firestudio Project.

The errors have become so frequent that it makes it impossible to record. Please help.

[Seraplane]

Another thing worth mention is that I don't have a 7200rpm external firewire drive. I just learned that apparently I should be recording on it. I am not doing that. Could this have anything to do with the error?

[Chingy]

I have the exact same machine as you (with an Mbox 3 Pro) and an external firewire drive and also receive the same type of errors. I think this is mostly just how bad PT is at handling RTAs virtual instruments - I get the errors when I have like just 3 instruments. I've tried using Vienna Ensemble Pro to host the AU plugin version of the instruments, but PT still complains. Maybe bounce the instruments down? Or switch to Logic if you're want to actually use VIs.

[Seraplane]

I could bounce them down, but then I would not be able to make some adjustments on them. I suppose I could bounce them down and keep the MIDI tracks and just make them inactive until I need to change something. This workaround, however, is really frustrating and I just wish Pro Tools would work correctly.