PT 8 Playing Wrong Audio File... very strange

[crashboombam]

First of all...I'm not a newbie. I've been working w/ Pro Tools since it was called Sound Tools back in the day. The only reason I'm telling you is because this problem is going to sound absurd. Working on PT8 (cs2) HD2 running a Mac Pro 2.66 w/ Leopard 10.5.6. Tracking to a session that was created at another studio on PT8 LE 003 mac G5. The session played back fine originally but after recording a couple of tracks, the bass track began playing the vocal track (both of these tracks were cut at the other studio). I soloed the bass track and heard the vocal track playing in its place. The waveforms on the bass track were absolutely the correct waveforms of the bass track but a different audio file was playing. There was no bussing on the session at all. Everything was being sent thru the master outs 1 & 2.
I deleted the bass track from the session and re-imported it back in. It played correctly. There were two plugins on the track originally from the other studio(Filterbank and BF 1176 both RTAS). I inserted the waves PAZ Freq. Analyzer and then soloed the track and it began playing the vocal track again. If that's not crazy enough, the PAZ was analyzing the bass and not the vocal track. However, the 1176 was responding to the vocal track. I know this sounds totally nuts but I can recreate it over and over again. I've recently upgraded from 7.4 and am concerned about mixing on PT8 if files are going to be randomly doubled or not play at all. Have any other users experienced this? My only guess is that is has something to do w/ the 1176 plug or something between HD and LE. None of the other tracks had that plugin inserted. But why would it keep playing the vocal? When I tried to scrub the audio on the track, no audio played at all. I can fix the problem but it keeps reoccurring. Any ideas? Thanks!

[trombino]

I have this happen to me all the time since upgrading to 8. It's not repeatable for me though - it seems random. If I close and reopen the session it usually goes away, but not always. I cross my fingers every time I open a session now praying that things play back properly.

[SLK]

Had this problem once. In my case it was in a sd2 session where I had some aif's playing as well. After trouble shooting for a while I tried importing the aif files in and converting them to sd2's. The problem disappeared. The aif files came from a logic session.

Good luck.

[crashboombam]

All files are aiff / 24 bit 44.1. Sorry for not mentioning that earlier. It's early in the tracking phase. The session has less than 16 tracks... very simple. A couple of plugins (eq - mcdsp) and the one 1176 - all rtas. The cpu usage is virtually none.

[audiobob]

Have not had this happen in PT8 but did years ago back in the OS9 days. At that time the drive needed to be defragged. Not sure if that's your prob now tho.

[BDWillis]

I've had this happen only a couple of times in nearly 15 years of Pro Tools usage, the most recent being way back in PT 5. In both cases the fix was to run Disk Warrior (Alsoft) on the audio drive — DW repairs the drive's directory so PT is once again being steered toward the correct files to play back. Good luck!

Warmest Regards,
Brian

[crashboombam]

The drive was from the other studio running a G5 PT 8 on a 003. The guy ran the session today at his place and could not recreate the problem. Same drive. I don't think it's a drive issue. It's only happening on an HD rig and not LE. Gonna take the drive to another HD PT8 system this week and try to recreate. Any other suggestions? Thanks

[JC925602]

Could it be that you are listening at the sidechain input of one of the plug-ins?

Also, have you tried to copy the session to one of your drive instead of using the client drive?

JC

[crashboombam]

Not listening to sidechain input. If I delete the track out of the session and import it back in using session data it plays back correctly. As soon as I solo the track it will start playing the vocal file. There are no groupings, busses, or anything like that. The guy who created the session is using PT pretty much like a tape recorder. He doesn't know how to do any heavy lifting. The craziest thing is, when I put the waves PAZ on the insert, it responds to the bass track but the compressor responds to the vocal. I haven't copied the session over to a different drive. We did the overdubs listening to the direct bass file and muted the bass amp problem file. The guy took the drive back to his place and used the same drive/ session and it worked fine on his 003 rig. I'm gonna try bringing the drive to another HD rig and see what happens.

[Howardk]

I had this exact problem with ProTools 8, and session works fine with PT 7.4 (same computer, just a quick restart to another system drive).

Basically you see one waveform, but hear another. In my case, if I remove the plugins then the problem goes away, until I replace the plugin. It made for a number of very embarrassing moments in front of a client (who expect me to be the expert and have my tools under control).

PT 8 is "nice try" but clearly not ready for prime-time and I am back on 7.4. My reasons are:
- New GUI is too gray to see (the GUI gray scale and colors need to be fixed) http://duc.digidesign.com/showthread.php?t=234140
- Beat Detective no longer works http://duc.digidesign.com/showthread.php?t=241101
- Random audio playback timing problems http://duc.digidesign.com/showthread.php?t=241177
- Audio routing madness (the problem in this thread) http://duc.digidesign.com/showthread.php?t=240897