GUI freezes frequently on M1 Mac starting in 2021.6

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by Teej

JFreak, do you have any Waves plugs on the M1 machine? I saw someone linking the PT 2021.7 beachballing to Waves plugs, but haven't had any confirmation or time to test it myself.

No.

I have been WavesHell free since they broke their promise to support every major platform. I consider Avid DSP a major platform, but that is all I have to say about this. I have said enough during the past years.

With that said I will WUP again once Waves supports Avid DSP.

(I have Waves Mercury that I am not using out of principle...)

[dominicperry]

Originally Posted by Ben Jenssen

There are many forums that have these kinds of "advisors", Apple Support Community comes to mind, where people get "points" for giving copy/paste "advice". Janne is not like that. We are lucky at the DUC. Here people are generally polite and they read posts thoroughly before giving good advice when they can.

I support Jannes point about clean installs. I've been a believer in this for decades. Big part of my having stable working systems. I wish some one with these problems had the time and an empty drive to test it. Two or three hours should do it. And make backups along the way in case problems arise again. That's troubleshooting.


Added: BTW, I disagree strongly with Janne and others' determination that Migration assistant should be avoided. The only thing it fails at is transfer of large complicated programs like PT. I use it everytime I do a clean install, and as long as I deselect transfer programs, everything works fine; licenses, system settings, preferences, contacts, bookmark, passwords, everything. Makes the whole thing doable in an evening.

Fully agree that Janne is excellent and helpful in almost every post. I'm objecting specifically to this issue, and I've also made my point.

On the separate subject of Migration Assistant, I agree that for Documents it can work well. It's also worked for me for complete machine restores (back to the original machine). But it is often not successful for new machines or for Applications. However, I have abandoned Time Machine as it is not really possible to transfer TM backups to new disks. I won't go into detail, other than to say every few years I like to consolidate all my backups (of every sort) onto a single, new, bigger disk and it is not possible, even with specialist tools like SuperDuper! to move TM backups reliably. I now do a fresh install of everything with every new machine, and all my working documents are stored in Dropbox (which has a 'local LAN' feature for quick transfer to a new machine, rather than having to wait for it all to copy over a broadband link). I've joined the CCC evangelists for backups and restores.

[Ben Jenssen]

Originally Posted by dominicperry

On the separate subject of Migration Assistant, I agree that for Documents it can work well. It's also worked for me for complete machine restores (back to the original machine). But it is often not successful for new machines or for Applications.

I've used it successfully on PT macs going from cheesegraters to imacs to mac minis and on OS versions as far back as at least Lion. Just don't let it migrate applications. That's been my experience.

[rssoundinc]

Ridiculous bad.

[rssoundinc]

1/4

Just have to vent here. Also, as the forum only allows for a certain length of post, this will be multi-part.

I use 2021.6 on a fully loaded M1 MacBook Pro every day. And every day is a minor nightmare. I'm using a full spectrum of plugins - 100+ UAD, Waves, Slate (who I know aren't "official" but work extremely well), Plugin Alliance and more.

It's so bad that sometimes I can't smoothly do operations without being interrupted by a 5 second beach ball / pinwheel literally every few keystrokes. My wife thinks I'm nuts because there are times during the day when she hears a muted "f******king AVID!" coming from the studio walls. It's bad. REALLY bad.

[rssoundinc]

2/4

After countless hours day in and day out since the release of this in June, it seems to be a graphics issue. There's weird anomalies that occur once every so often with the screen redraw. I have noticed that when I'm zooming in and out and pulling up various plugins, the beach ball appears. And there have been multiple times where I am scrolling up or down or left or right in the edit window and there are temporary blackout spots on the screen where regions should be on a track. Inexplicable other than the code isn't up to par. When trying to work fast - ie, client deadlines or, worse, with a zoom client over audiomovers "Listento" - this is a frustrating mess.

Also, after extended time with a session open, at some point, a combination of plugins eventually causes playback to come to a sputtering stop at which point the DAW has to be completely closed and the session reloaded to be able to resume playback.

[rssoundinc]

3/4

Some have suggested rolling back to 2021.3, however, there are unique problems with that version as well - obviously it wasn't approved for the M1 - and even though it runs relatively smooth, having spent months with that version, one particular sore spot was when loading plugin and track heavy sessions, near the end of a session recall, the DAW would simply sit and hang for sometimes up to 3 or 4 minutes before turning over my session to me to be able to work.

For $600 - which I just paid to Avid prior to the 2021.6 release, even though I've been a customer since 1998 (there's ZERO gratitude from Avid) - I expect better. Especially when Logic works nearly flawlessly, according to colleagues, for $200, and when UAD's Luna is free for me, being an Apollo x8 user.

[rssoundinc]

Pt 4/4

So, curses to Avid for not investing more resources into making sure this is better than it is. And for anyone posting "workarounds" like "a clean install" of Mac OS, you've gotta be kidding. Who's got f'ing time for that? Lol. Maybe if you're a teenager who has time to kill, but I have clients and deadlines and in between a family and a parallel career in live audio, forget about it. I simply haven't dumped pro tools yet becuase I've been on it so long. But this is testing my patience to its last end. And, no, I'm not going to stop and open a ticket every time something that should've been obvious in beta testing was taken care of. I'm not getting a discount off that $600 I just had to pay for the privilege of "owning" this lemon. Jeez. Going back to my session, where I just now had the "sputtering stop" and some weird anomalies with graphics. Ugh. Soldier through it, though; I have bills to pay.

[Ben Jenssen]

Originally Posted by rssoundinc

I have clients and deadlines and in between a family and a parallel career in live audio, forget about it.

So, if PT is important to you and your business, why have you put yourself into a position where the only computer/PTversion you have is one that's not working?
If you've been using PT as long as you say, you should know that you don't just jump to a new computer, a new OS version and a new PT version, and expect things to just work. You test it first! And if it's not stable, then you stay with what you have! Geez.

[arche3]

@rsslundinc

Um u should not be on an m1 mac. I am a producer/composer in NYC. I'm on 5.1 and 7.1. I have a m1 macboook pro and air at home. I would not use them for my job yet. They are not supported. You are just asking for trouble easily avoided.

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