Play button flashes as stops (not external sync, not wait for midi)

[danjlambert]

Hi all

I've seen a few posts regarding this so I already presume my issue won't be fixed, but worth a shot, as I think I've nailed down how the issue comes about.

Pro Tools 12.6, Mac Pro running El Capitan. Focusrite Clarett 8 Pre X.

More often than not, Pro Tools will end up with the 'play button flashing' symptom - which means I am unable to play a session. Not only this, when this happens, when trying to close the session, pro tools crashes every time without fail.

It's not on wait for note, it's not on external sync, I have trashes preferences, I have shut down/restart etc etc etc etc....

HOWEVER! I've noticed this happens when using Chrome. I do a lot of voice over sessions, and quite often I am instructed to find a video/song (for example) to play for mood. Once I open Chrome (note it doesn't happen every time), and play a song through AudioNetwork for example, or even youtube, this is when Pro Tools dies.

It appears Chrome seems to disable the playback engine is it boots up. Or similar.

Has anyone experienced this, if so, is there a fix?

Changing buffer or re opening session causes a crash.

Thanks!