Pro Tools 12.2.0.152 Constantly Crashing

[tresenddrums]

I am having huge problems with Pro Tools 12.2.0.152 since the latest update. Loading sessions takes longer, scrolling through sessions takes longer, and if I either let a loop play too long or scroll through a virtual instrument (such as Omnisphere or Trilian), Pro Tools will freeze, forcing me to do a "force quit." It has become virtually unusable for me.

I am a longtime Logic user, but I am brand new to Pro Tools (have only subscribed for a month or so), so this version 12 is the only Pro Tools version I have on my computer.

Below is the gear I'm working with. Please help if you can! Thanks in advance!


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Computer:
MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)
OS X Yosemite 10.10.5
2.5 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB RAM

External Drive for saving Sessions + Samples:
Western Digital My Book (3 TB, usb 3)

Interface:
Universal Audio Apollo Twin DUO

[Southsidemusic]

Hi and Welcome to the Community

I can see one of the big issues here which is your WD my passport drive.

#1 For PT those are 100% death for PT
#2 If you need to have samples and record to the same drive it HAS to be a way better drive, minumum 7200rpm and no green powersaving drives or blue power saving crap.

I would get a new WDC Black or RED drive in a USB3 case and so it right.

These My Passport drives are slow and crappy and as a general rule, never use the same drive for samples and recording and definitely not both of those on a MY Drive, that will make the problems you describe and even if you get a better drive for wither rec or samples, throw that My drive away and get 2 new drivs or host the samples on your main SSD drive in the MBP and get a WDC Black 1TB 7200 rpm qnd USB3 case dor recording to.

That setup will never work ever and you will not solve anything here until you get the correct drives for your tasks.ä
I know you might say - But it worked on Logic or Cubase but PT is another beast of a DAW and require a lot of fiddling and demand certain gear to work.

Best Of Luck

[tresenddrums]

Thanks so much for the advice! I didn't realize all that. Now I will definitely upgrade the drive that I record to.

I see on WD's website that the Black may be PC only. Can I use it with a Macbook Pro laptop?

I've read that Avid recommends an OWC Mercury Elite drive. Do you have experience with those?

Thanks again!

[Southsidemusic]

Originally Posted by tresenddrums

Thanks so much for the advice! I didn't realize all that. Now I will definitely upgrade the drive that I record to.

I see on WD's website that the Black may be PC only. Can I use it with a Macbook Pro laptop?

I've read that Avid recommends an OWC Mercury Elite drive. Do you have experience with those?

Thanks again!

Basically everyone here on the forum use WDC Black and so do we and we only use Macs, 2 MBP's and Mac Pro Trashcan so win only? Not true.

All Avid recommends are atleast 7200rpm but the WDC Black is a tried and tested harddrive and has a quick seek time (9ms) aswell as modern cache size (64MB) so i would say any size from 1-3TB WDC Black is a No brainer.

If you look at external cases you NEED a USB3 casing as USB2 is just ... Crap for this usage.

I can't say anything regarding OWC but as the WDC Black is soo widely used I would get that. Disregard the windows only as we never used a PC for PT and we use these WDC drives everyday, have 10 of them and they are very fast and reliable.

Here is one reseller:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822236625

And Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Performa.../dp/B00FJRS6FU

Both under 75 USD which is a bargain of the century for what you get

Here is a 2GB for under $120 :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...tem=22-236-624

PLEASE make sure you DO NOT get the wrong one like a green or blue WDC as you might think Oh, those are cheap and get one as they are death to PT

[Darryl Ramm]

The WDC Caviar green drives are toxic as Christopher says, you *must* get rid of them. Suitable only as a backup/archive drive, and personally for me too slow even for that.

But a couple of questions/comments.

How large is the boot drive inside your MBPr?

Samples normally go on the boot drive, if they will fit put them there.

The MBPr has a *superfast* M.2 based PCIe SSD that is factors faster than the fastest spinning disk. So fast that you want samples there, especially any samples for plugins that stream. And so fast that you can often put audio and sample files on that boot drive and it will work just fine (even without Pro Tools disk cache). So first thing to try is put everything on that drive if you can, if you cannot fit samples there at least copy over the session folder and all content and see the difference when run from that boot drive.

But more... With Pro Tools 12 mere mortal Pro Tools standard users get the disk cache feature that used to be Pro Tools HD only. But confusingly you have to turn that on by setting a cache size in the Pro atolls Setup>Playback Engine dialog panel. With 16 GB in your MBPr I would start at a cache size of 4 GB. I would still get as much stuff in your boot drive as possible and then turn on the Pro Tools disk cache.

And if you did need to buy an external drive, the WDC Black drives are well regarded HDD options, but I would want to know what you needed that for in some detail, and what your budget was before recommending any model drive. Especially as you can get much better performances, reliability, robustness from an external SSD than a HDD. And if you have high-end needs you can even get external SSDs about as fast as that superfast internal SSD, but you have to pay for that performance of course. And you have thunderbolt and USB SSD options, either may make more sense for you based on other uSB and Thunderbolt usage on your MBPr. If you need to move this computer around/track on location or mix on the go then I would definitely go with a much more abuse resistant SSD over a fragile HDD.

And the bad news... I actually suspect the problem you are having is not disk IO related. Pro Tools sure needs good disks, even with disk cache, but it is very good about throwing AAE errors when encountering problems. A hang is more likely to be caused by bad plugins, or at least a bad interaction of Pro Tools with a plugin. This could also be caused by a corrupt session.

Things to do to debug that is...

Trash preferences (follow instructions under the "Help us help you" link up top of this page.

Does it happen for any other sessions? Try making a quick test session if you need to, using some of the same plugins/content as the problem session. If that test works OK try doing a "Save In" from the current session to a new one and open that new session? Any better?

Temporarily move all the .aaxplugin plugin files out of there folder to some place else (like the unused folder). Pro Tools will automagically put back its standard plugins. Try opening the session and see if it is now stable. Put back the third party plugins in batches or one at a time if needed until you find what one is causing problems. Plugins you are not even instantiating in the session can cause problems so do you need to go this route, just disabling/removing plugins in an insert is not enough.

The order of which things you try are up to you, but I would first get at least the session files and any streaming plugin samples off the kniwn toxic Cavuar Green HDD just so you are close to something expected to work reliably. And thise green drives are so bad I would not waste time trying to cheat with disk cache on them.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by tresenddrums

Thanks so much for the advice! I didn't realize all that. Now I will definitely upgrade the drive that I record to.

I see on WD's website that the Black may be PC only. Can I use it with a Macbook Pro laptop?

I've read that Avid recommends an OWC Mercury Elite drive. Do you have experience with those?

Thanks again!

If you want to buy a pre-packaged external HDD (I would not recommend that until you consider an SSD). Then generally external Thunderbolt, FireWire 800, or USB3 (not USB2) Packaged HDD from Glyph, Lacie, G-Tech or OWC are the go-to vendors, especially for Mac users, but always confirm the drive is at least 7,200 RPM. Firewire 800 is pretty dead so I would avoid drives that only have that.

On a Mac, Pro Tools needs your audio drive to be formatted as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". (Oh while on that what file system is on your current external WDC drive?)

If you want to build your own external HDD than a WDC Black in a USB3 or Thunderbolt enclosure is a *great* way to go. WDC likely are saying PC only on retail upgrade packaged drives as they come formatted as NTFS and you need to reformat them as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" and they likely just do not want to deal with the consumer support hassles.

....But did I mention considering a SSD first? Oh yes I did. several times now

[Southsidemusic]

Darryl, when you say format HFS+ we have formatted all our external drives as MAC OS Extended (Journaled) so is that the same thing?

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Southsidemusic

Darryl, when you say format HFS+ we have formatted all our external drives as MAC OS Extended (Journaled) so is that the same thing?

Chris, they are *exactly* the same thing, but thanks for catching that. HFS+ is a historical/geekier/developer term, "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" is the user/consumer facing terminology you will see in Disk Utility, the Finder etc. and what I should have said. I'll go edit my posts.

[Southsidemusic]

Thanks for the info and clarification Darryl

[tresenddrums]

Thanks so much for your help. I've tried everything you've suggested, but I'm still having trouble with crashes. It seems to crash when interacting with virtual instruments. It always crashes when I'm scrolling through patches of virtual instruments (doesn't seem to matter what manufacturer, because it happens with Omnisphere/Trilian, Diva, Addictive Keys) or when I duplicate a track with one of those virtual instruments.

This is what I've tried since my first post:
- All my virtual instruments and samples are located on my Mac SSD drive
- I bought a WD Black + USB3 enclosure, where all my sessions are now stored and recorded to (which is formatted as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)").
- set disk cache to 4gb
- I trashed the preferences as instructed
- I uninstalled Pro Tools and then reinstalled Pro Tools

Is there anything else I can try? Right now it is impossible for me to loop a drum beat and scroll through virtual instrument patches and/or duplicate that virtual instrument track.

Does it have anything to do with the order things were installed? I had Logic Pro X installed for a few years as well as all my virtual instruments. Then when I decided to switch to Pro Tools, I just installed Pro Tools (i.e. after all the virtual instruments were already installed).