8.0.1 breaks PPC VI workaround

[jeremyroberts]

Although listed as "NC" (not compatible) many of us have been continuing to use our investment in PPC macs and "old" software, such as Atmosphere, Trilogy and MachFive 1.2 SIMPLY by appending .dpm to the plug

Through PTHD version 8.0cs3 this has been a working solution.

More than "working" -- it's been productive as hell.

Unfortunately, PTHD 8.0.1 has "broken" this unexpected and undocumented "feature".

The other unfortunate part of this is that MachFive 2.x is a dog -- and there is no shooting solution for Trilogy. AND The so-called replacement for Atmosphere will not run on a G5 without a heavy tax on the cpu.

So we have a currently lean-and-mean rig, but end-of-lifed if we want to use the new PT 8.0.1

Before ANYONE suggests trashing prefs and troubleshooting -- yes, yes, of course. I documented this in other threads today... the ONLY solution was to roll back to 8.0cs3 and magically, everything worked.

DigiTechSupport suggested that I am using obsolete software that shouldn't work...

http://duc.digidesign.com/showpost.p...51&postcount=7

But it does. Until 8.0.1. Why is this? What changed in 8.0.1 that finally broke the older PPC plugs?

Just a warning to other PPC users to be careful here. Have good backups, and your restore files ready to go... good luck.

[woodsdenis]

Originally Posted by jeremyroberts

Although listed as "NC" (not compatible) many of us have been continuing to use our investment in PPC macs and "old" software, such as Atmosphere, Trilogy and MachFive 1.2 SIMPLY by appending .dpm to the plug

Through PTHD version 8.0cs3 this has been a working solution.

More than "working" -- it's been productive as hell.

Unfortunately, PTHD 8.0.1 has "broken" this unexpected and undocumented "feature".

The other unfortunate part of this is that MachFive 2.x is a dog -- and there is no shooting solution for Trilogy. AND The so-called replacement for Atmosphere will not run on a G5 without a heavy tax on the cpu.

So we have a currently lean-and-mean rig, but end-of-lifed if we want to use the new PT 8.0.1

Before ANYONE suggests trashing prefs and troubleshooting -- yes, yes, of course. I documented this in other threads today... the ONLY solution was to roll back to 8.0cs3 and magically, everything worked.

DigiTechSupport suggested that I am using obsolete software that shouldn't work...

http://duc.digidesign.com/showpost.p...51&postcount=7

But it does. Until 8.0.1. Why is this? What changed in 8.0.1 that finally broke the older PPC plugs?

Just a warning to other PPC users to be careful here. Have good backups, and your restore files ready to go... good luck.

Good catch Jeremy. Bummer about Atmosphere and Trilogy

[Ramtitam]

Thank you for the answer. I thought I'd read all threads about this but... I missed that one.

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by jeremyroberts

DigiTechSupport suggested that I am using obsolete software that shouldn't work...

They'd prefer that you upgrade. Losing certain workarounds, like what worked for Spectrasonics stuff, could be intentional or it could be a side effect of some other tinkering they did in 8.0.1.

Either way, at least in their eyes, they're pushing ProTools into the future. Without knowing exactly why the workaround is now defunct, it's hard to say whether that's true or false.

[studiojimi]

Originally Posted by Eric Lambert

it could be a side effect of some other tinkering they did in 8.0.1.

why can't the tinker guy have a partner work with him that uses protools like we do to avoid this kind of stuff?

(cue roaring pink elephant sound byte @ 88.2)

[jeremyroberts]

Originally Posted by Eric Lambert

They'd prefer that you upgrade.

I have a perfectly solid, happy, PPC rig that allows me to do my work every day. It was paid for a long time ago.

I am willing to upgrade to 8.0.1, but not to intel. I have a very solid rig that serves my needs.

My options now are to EOL my machine and buy an intel macPro, which also means an investment in PCIe hardware of some kind (either HD3 card exchange or a chassis) - or I can use these plugs on a slave host, but I need more inputs into HD to do this (read: spend more money on HD hardware) -- and that's not going to happen today considering HD as we know it is grasping for its life. I could add a legacy device such as an adat/24 and do the slave machine thing (but that's a real productivity killer! I already do this for Giga -- and it adds a degree of complication to backups, since it's not all in one place anymore).

So I will probably stay put with 8.0cs3 through January.

I am very interested from an engineering perspective what changed in 8.0.1 that casued this to happen. Hoping DTS or one of the engineering guys can comment.

[DigiTechSupt]

Originally Posted by Eric Lambert

They'd prefer that you upgrade. Losing certain workarounds, like what worked for Spectrasonics stuff, could be intentional or it could be a side effect of some other tinkering they did in 8.0.1.

Either way, at least in their eyes, they're pushing ProTools into the future. Without knowing exactly why the workaround is now defunct, it's hard to say whether that's true or false.

It's not that we 'prefer' you to upgrade - it's that we've tested and shown them to be incompatible or the manufacturer has provided the information.

There was no intentional breakage of any plug-ins or products with 8.0.1 - but with each version changes to Pro Tools may render previously 'workable but technically incompatible' plug-ins to lose functionality, which is why we publish the plug-in grid in the first place.

The other thing is that there is no testing put into incompatible plug-ins, nor would any development time be put into fixing something that breaks usage of an incompatible plug-in. It's a matter of resources, not spite or anything like that.

There were so many changes made in 8.0.1 that even taking the time to ping engineering about what may have caused this would be an exercise in futility - even if they could immediately identify what changed, it would do nothing to rectify your situation. I'm going to speculate that much of it is likely due to major under the hood changes in preparation for Snow Leopard and Win 7 and the move toward 64 bit compatibility.

[midnightrambler]

All this talk of Snow Leopard and 64 bit compatibility makes my brain hurt.

[Tony Shepperd]

Good catch Jeremy...
I upgraded my PPC Dual 2.5 yesterday to 8.0.1 and I have had crash after crash. Unless I get this solved in the next 24 hours, I'm going back to cs3.

[jeremyroberts]

Hi Tony,

I'm sure I don't have to tell you this, but the way I discovered all of this rather quickly was simply making a new session, then importing tracks a handful at a time, until something crashed.

In the mean time, I played with 8.0.1 enough to want it.

SO -- I had to spend some $ today. :-(

1. Purchase Omnisphere. I doubt I have the horsepower to run it, but it sounds freaking great and I am doing a project that will benefit. I'll run it on the winXP box if I have to.

2. I Installed Trilogy on my Giga box. This was easy -- but learning how to configure my RME HDSP9652 for GSIF and ASIO side-by-side took some reading and minor frustration getting it all working.

So now I need more I/O into my 192 -- so an Adat Bridge/24 is on my shopping list. I posted a WTB in the buy/sell forum. I may have found one locally already...

I see the writing on the wall and it's telling me that I need move some VIs away from my CPU for now. My project will never get done if i have to bounce VIs down. And I do not have time to deal with sample library swaps or conversions. I have a spare iLok, so machFive will run on the WinXP machine now in a VSTi host. A PITA, yes, but it solves the problem.

MY MEGA-GRIPE now is the inability to load a session that contains a now-obsolete plug without crashing... so that means getting into the habit of shift-clicking on the file in the finder to launch (holding shift from the open dialog does not seem to do it). THEN determining the plugs that will crash, then hoping I can remember the presets... it's imperfect, at best.

Besides Spectrasonics and MachFive, what plugs are getting in your way (that worked fine in 8.0cs3) ?