How can i trust ProTools - why should i ever trust ProTools?

[Eric Lambert]

You should trust PT because nearly every scenario similar to your has been successful. You're having issues, and that's very unfortunate, but it's not typical, and there's a good explanation for it.

At this moment there are two separate studios in my company running 1hr+ sessions and there are no hiccups. It's something they do often. Not trying to rub it in; I'm trying to offer hope.

If it were me, I'd be bypassing any and every plugin that isn't fully necessary for the record. Your test may not have had issues with 64 reverbs but there's absolutely no chance that all of them are *needed* during the recording stage, and if so you should consider putting a few on auxes instead of 64 on inserts. This is simply a lot of processing.

I'd want to know more about the specific error you're getting. Avid intends for these to give hints about the culprit.

[s.d. finley]

Originally Posted by chris.d

How can i trust ProTools - why should i ever trust ProTools?

Mac Mini M2 Pro
OS Ventura 13.2.1
ProTools, 23.03.0.89 lastest, approved for ARM
RME Madiface USB


I just had my first 2 sessions
Nr. 1
Ordinary song recording session
In two days i had 2 DAE errors that ended recording in the middle of a take. (8 Tracks, 0 plugins used)

work around:
curse
appoligize
redo takes

Session Nr. 2 was a live-in-the-studio recording session. The band plays improvised sets of 30min.
DAE Error stops the recording after 22min into the first set.
(16 Tracks, 0 plugins used)

work around:
react fast
hit record again
5 Min later DAE error again
hit record again
after the set:
curse
appoligize
install reaper (2min)
have no problem for the next two days
(except that i know ***** how to handle the program and feel like a total dumbass)



was testing the previous PT version (rosetta .bla bla, don't remember the numbers...) with no issues
2 hours straight recording
64 tracks

192khz
32bit float
128 (smallest buffer)
64 reverbs on tracks



The first PT version i saw was 6.1
From 7.1 i used PT professionally as my main DAW, aprox 22 years


time and time again i've seen new PT versions and systems useless until somehow one finds the 'magic' combinations and tweaks.



In 2023, despite compability charts recommendations ProTools is basically useless in a live recording situation.


Why do we have to go through this?

With every single version update?



Once again I'm UTTERLY disgusted (for lack of original expressions)



AVID:
why don’t you get? its 2023!
we use 7GB/s writing speed SSDs
teraflop CPUs

you mention you have fast HDs, do you have a dedicated HD for audio only?
Also you have another interface you can test? Or even test with Mac Built in audio just to troubleshoot and to confirm RME isn't the issue.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by s.d. finley

you mention you have fast HDs, do you have a dedicated HD for audio only?

Also you have another interface you can test? Or even test with Mac Built in audio just to troubleshoot and to confirm RME isn't the issue.

Please can we stop it with this ancient misinformation. There is absolutely no need to have a dedicated audio drive on any modern Mac, all that is likely to do is offer worse performance than the internal super fast NVMe SSD.

Checking the MADIface might be a good idea if other more likely things have been looked at first. But what *exact* RME USB drivers are being used might be useful to know... e.g. pre-release or production drivers and exact version.
---

How about starting at the beginning and doing all the standard stuff... under "help us help you" up the top of every DUC web page.

What *exact* AAE errors (they can't be DAE errors?) are happening? what is the actual IO buffersize used live?

What exact specs for the computer... including how much memory? what is disk cache set to?

Is the system *fully* optimized? Yes everything done at least to start with.

Do standard troubleshooting... trash prefs, remove plugin files (*always* suspect plugins... *always* try to quickly prove if/if not they are a suspect by temp. removing the .aaxplugin files, plugins do not need to be being used to cause problems, including AAE CPU errors or memory leaks, just being installed in Pro Tools is enough), test from a new admin account, make sure other apps are not running, ... etc. etc. posts complaining about stuff like this are largely a waste if time... you should just be doing the standard troubleshooting steps before posting and reporting results/asking for help if stuck.

And with long running sessions that fail I would pay attention to making sure other apps/background tasks are not running, eg. no web browsers, backup software that might start trying to do stuff, crapware like Avid Link, get as much of that uninstalled if you can etc. And I would be looking out for possible memory leaks/exhaustion esp. from faulty plugins... what does Activity Monitor "memory pressure" show as these problems happen? There *might* be increased risks here if the Mac is a smaller memory config that ends up paging to fast SSD... it might work for a while, then reality will catch up with you. So can make noticing low memory problems more difficult. Any interesting looking Mac Console (Console.app) log messages around the times of these crashes? Get the Mac off any networks while tracking, physically unplug any Ethernet and disable WiFi, and test with it in this config... incase it causes something to get upset with no network. I might also take extra precautions and disable spotlight indexing not because of the IO load it puts in the drive (that is negligible with these superfast SSDs) but because if the indexer mdm processes do go bezerk they can sometimes cause CPU spikes.. the sort if things you might have with lots of mdm errors in console log files... that Apple software seems to still manage to get itself in trouble.

Its a waste of time posting here hoping Avid is going to listen to your feedback here and improve the product or engineering processes.

[gthm]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

There is absolutely no need to have a dedicated audio drive on any modern Mac

Really sorry, off topic thought, it is just so ridiculously expensive to add a large(st) internal on a Mac, always has been. Annoying and discouraging.

Will this ever change?

Daydreaming over here..

[Carl Lie]

Also curious if you did any migration from on older mac. That can screw things up.

C

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by gthm

Really sorry, off topic thought, it is just so ridiculously expensive to add a large(st) internal on a Mac, always has been. Annoying and discouraging.

Will this ever change?

Daydreaming over here..

Yes OT, and you don’t need a large internal SSD to track to.

If you want fastest/simplest storage the you pay the Apple tax. Apple are in a dominant position having crippled external storage to slow old Thunderbolt 3….. and sure that with a good SSD is still way fast enough to track to…. It is just the reverse claim that you *need* a dedicated audio drive is just completely wrong.

Apple understands price elasticity. Way back when I worked for Silicon Graphics we would have internal debates about the high cost of our HDD…. And ultimately they would end with “but customers *are* willing to pay… and we simply had overall margin goals that had to be met. We would resell some third party storage products where we needed to to be competitive. In a similar way, I expect somebody running the Mac product line business will want to either sell high margin Apple storage or push price sensitive folks to third party external storage. Their business competitor is the iPhone product line and the high margins those teams see.

If the Mac Studio NAND cards ever open up it’s possible we might see better upgrade pricing there, but that is going to take Apple clearly enabling that/providing security info/tools to folks to enable.

[JFreak]

Opinions do vary.

The internal drive is so wicked fast I always top it up, even if I didn't need all of it today.

But if your everything is already on a fast enough drive, then why not save some and use the externals you already have.

I myself hate externals.

[climber]

Originally Posted by gthm

Really sorry, off topic thought, it is just so ridiculously expensive to add a large(st) internal on a Mac, always has been. Annoying and discouraging.

WHAT?

until the new machines came out with th HD on the MB this was totally simple. I've done it many many times on many Mac's, even laptops.

[Carl Lie]

I'm going through bringing a new Studio Max up to spec for my studio. One thing about PT and a new computer is you download all the Avid plugins and you stress test with them only and find you can run 64 D-Verbs along with Avid's channel plugin with ease (yesterday I had 80 tracks with 40 VIs).

The true test though is to load the plugins from other manufacturers that you actually plan to use. Once one does that the power is reduced substantially.

Though not the case here, it can baffle one as to why everything was so fast initially.

C

[Darryl Ramm]

^^ yep. But one nice thing is you often don't need to install *any* third party plugins, or even Avid optional plugins, on a system that is only used for tracking (esp. if its a record a live performance). And heck if about to set up some critical tracking sessions, just move all .aaxplugin files to the Unused Folder, and you'll be running with just the core plugins installed... which are very well trusted. You can copy all those .aaxplugin files back when done.

I've been meaning to suggest to Pete Gates adding something to PT Prefs to make this even easier.