Creeping resource usage when idle

[Hollow Body]

Hi,
I'm running pt7.3 on a dell dimension 8200 - 2.53ghz with 1gb ram. (which I'm upgrading soon to 1.5gb and then hopeully 2gb in a few months.)(Windows XP Home)

I usually record in 24bit 88.2.
When I'm running a moderately busy session with some plug-ins - my resource meter (the green cpu thing in pt) will stay about 1/3rd up. Once I take my first action (play, or editing or anything) and then ff I keep playing / recording with no breaks over 3 or 4 minutes, the resources stay relatively low / medium, BUT if I have a break of any time over a few minutes, the meter slowly (or not so slowly) creeps up and will soon go yellow and hit red. At which point I have to end pro-tools with cntrl / alt / delete. Is this normal? When I bring up windows system usage I see pt itself start at around 600k - 675k ram and it says aoubt 50% usage. But once the green meter in pts starts climbing, the windows resources goes to about 715k ram and shoots up to 90-95% usage. Why does it go up when it's idle and go down when it plays or records? (albeit, once it goes too high, nothing can stop it and it crashes.) To be fair, usually I am running a decent amt. of plug-ins but nothing THAT crazy. I found that a certain de-esser (dyn3 or something) seems to go nuts with the resources this way. Could there by another plug in doing this? (DVerb?) (Bombfactory 1176??). I'm thinking that since pt's only goes up from 650 - 715 BUT the % goes up to 95%, tht maybe something else outside of pt's is going nuts. Here is a picture of my windows system usage when this is goin on. Click link below to see windows usage.

System Usage during P Tools freak out.

Does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks!!!
-Doug

[sunburst79]

It sounds like a memory leak, can you narrow it down to one particular plugin? and are all of your plugins the latest updates?

[Hollow Body]

I can try. I actually just updated the message with a link to my windows usage chart. Let me know what you think. And also to answer your question - no I have some Waves Native Power Pack plug-ins that are very old. I'll see if eliminating any of those hanges things. I dont think I'm using too many of those though. I'm wondering if it could also be outside of pt? See what you think of the chart. Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[sunburst79]

I would tend to quess that PT or a plug is a source of you memory leak... did this start since you have updated to 7.3? the first thing i would do wold be to update all of the DIGI plugs- its free. I would pull the Waves out and see if the problem stops. Actually I would suggest pulling the waves out of the session first.

[Hollow Body]

So in the session I had a bus reverb and delay, 2 or 3 eq's, one bomb factory 1176, a waves L1 max on the main bus, a waves ssl compressor on the main bus and 3 waves ssl channels. maybe 20 tracks total. As this thing started to happen I removed everything but the waves channels (I removed the waves master bus compressor and the waves L1 Max and the digi rack eq's and bomfactory 1176 etc..)

The consumption slowed a bit, but eventually started again..I removed one of the waves ssl channels and boom, the cpu usage dropped from 95% back down ro 40%.

Keep in mind that its the cpu usage and not the ram that seems to be spiking.

Based on this do you think there's a problem with the waves ssl channel or because this is a heavy plug in, that this is normal behavior? I don't think it's normal - why would it drop so much by just eliminating one and not all? Hmmmmm.....

[spkguitar]

You are probably experiencing Denormalization. Insert a dither inline before the reverb and see if that helps.

[Hollow Body]

Although that certainly sounds like a similar problem - the problem was still happening even when I took REVERB off the project completely. Just for fun I tried putting dither before everything and still got the problem. Again, this seems to be Waves SSL plug in related. Hmmmm...

[The Weed]

As suggested above, remove your Waves plug-ins completely - not from the session - from your hard drive. You have the latest Pro Tools and have said you have old Waves plug-ins. Not having up-to-date Waves plugins - those for 7x - or any plug-ins that are not up-to-date for 7x is going to cause issues with Pro Tools. And these issues will happen whether you have any of these out-of-date plug-ins inserted on a track or not as long as they are in the Plug-Ins Folder.

This may not solve your problem, but will certainly eliminate a possible cause.

Cheers,