PT11 launch time

[mesaone]

No Sandra just yet, until I figure out if this is actually a problem or the way of the world.

Home PC (4-core 3.2 GHz, SSD boot drive): Pro Tools 11 takes 45 seconds to launch (from opening the application to being able to select a project). Seems to hang when initializing MIDI devices, when all I have hooked up is two USB controllers. Same deal after disconnecting the MIDI devices.

Work PC (12-core 2.8 GHz, mechanical boot drive): Ten seconds. Fewer installed applications. No hanging, the progress bar moves cleanly throughout.

Both computers run through the plug-in loading at the same rate. Home PC lags, as above. Does core count actually make that much of a difference, or is this evidence that Home PC as a problem? Both have been optimized according to Avid's recommendations. Both have an almost identical set of plug-ins. Both are the same OS and PT version. Both have the same amount and speed of RAM.

I plan on doing a repair install of Windows 7 once I receive my new (larger) SSD for the Home PC.

[junkgear]

There could be a number of things that affect the boot speed of PT.
What is the bus speed of your Home PC vs The Work PC. A higher bus rate will pass data faster.

What is the SATA speed on both computers?
Are both computers running the same version of Windows?

If you do a drive performance test on both systems, which one posts better numbers?

[mesaone]

SATA II 3Gbps. Both have the same OS (Win7 Pro SP1). Next time I'm in front of the work computer I will run CPU-z to compare the bus speeds,and then do a hard drive performance test and report back. Or post both Sandra reports.

I was also hoping to find out how quickly Pro Tools 11 launches for other users, so I can get an idea if 45 seconds is way outside the norm.

[19 frets]

Have a look here:

http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=341558

This may be related to your problem. Sure wish someone could come up with a fix. This is a major PITA for me.

[mesaone]

Originally Posted by 19 frets

Have a look here:

http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=341558
:

I'll give that a shot tonight. I do have a thumb drive on the home machine that is always plugged in while running PT. It holds the Plugin Alliance licenses I prefer to keep mobile... I'll just authorize my machine itself, remove the thumb drive, and see what happens.

Thanks for the link!

[mesaone]

So I thought to uninstall any errant drivers that had to do with MIDI.

• I use MIDI Yoke and Bome's Mouse Keyboard to transpose the MIDI signal from my MV-8000 by a semitone (for some reason Roland's pads start at C#). I figured I could do without, so I uninstalled them.
• I have a NanoPad as a backup for my PadKontrol, but I never have to use it. So I uninstalled the driver.

Still no change. I've noticed that in many applications (Reason, Reaper, Cubase, Addictive Keys, etc) there is an option to choose "ASIO Avid Driver". When chosen, I get an alert saying "Error when trying to open audio device! Bad device". I could not find any installed files that match this. I figured maybe there's a remnant somewhere from when I had my Mbox3. All I found was an installer in C:\ProgramData\Avid\Installers\Mbox and a few DLL files in the Pro Tools directory.

I'm at a loss, there's been no improvement in load times. It gets stuck on Initializing MIDI devices for about 30 seconds.

[musicman691]

mesaone:
Do you have any NI stuff on your machine? Komplete 8 or 9 likes to install a MIDI driver for some NI hardware that messes with MIDI related to PT (it messed with PT10 seeing my 11 Rack). Deleted the NI MIDI driver and all is well.

Oh yeah - startup time from clicking the PT11 icon to quick start menu is 20 seconds or less on the system in my sig file

[mesaone]

Originally Posted by musicman691

mesaone:
Do you have any NI stuff on your machine? Komplete 8 or 9 likes to install a MIDI driver for some NI hardware that messes with MIDI related to PT (it messed with PT10 seeing my 11 Rack). Deleted the NI MIDI driver and all is well

I have some NI products, but not Komplete. Where is the driver usually located? There's no listing for it in Programs and Features.

Just ordered a 256GB Samsung 840 Pro yesterday. I'll be hooking it up via SATA III, then duping my current C: drive onto it. From there, a repair install, and I'll see what happens.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by mesaone

I have some NI products, but not Komplete. Where is the driver usually located? There's no listing for it in Programs and Features.

Just ordered a 256GB Samsung 840 Pro yesterday. I'll be hooking it up via SATA III, then duping my current C: drive onto it. From there, a repair install, and I'll see what happens.

I had to use Spotlight to find it on my iMac; you're on Windows so I can't help there other than to try the Windows Search function. I can say you won't find it in Programs and Features.

[19 frets]

Possible fix!!!

This fix was suggested by Bassboxben over on the RME Forum. Ben is not a RME user, he actually uses an Maudio Firewire 410 interface with Cubase 7. But many Cubase users have reported the same issue. A long pause while setting up MIDI.

Ben suggested first reading this article:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar0...pcmusician.htm

The article describes how to delete "hidden" or "disconnected" drivers from your device manager listing. Apparently these unused drivers are not ignored by Pro Tools and Cubase when it scans for MIDI devices. I am speculating that other DAWs "test" for the presence of these devices and ignore them if they are not connected.

I made the registry change so that unused/disconnected so called "hidden" device drivers would be displayed in Device Manager. I had a ton of them.

My system is several years old and I have had a large number of various devices connected to it over time. Each one of these devices has installed a device driver.

Also, I change my configuration periodically so every time I move a device from one USB port to another (like thrumb drives or external USB drives) or from one I/O interface to another (like adding or removing a SATA hard drive) a new device driver gets installed. The old device driver remains in place until manually uninstalled or deleted by a proper uninstall routine (which often does not happen).

The process of deleting probably 75-100 unused drivers manually took a while, but after completing this manual process, I crossed my fingers and restarted Pro Tools 11. Pro Tools started normally, but when it got to "Initializing MIDI Engine" stage, I looked away from the monitor to mark the time on my watch. My normal wait time here is a minute and one half to two minutes. By the time I looked back at the screen, Pro Tools had blown past "Initialing MIDI Engine" and was asking what file I wanted to work on. As an added bonus, when I selected a recently used project, it loaded the audio tracks faster than I have ever seen too.

I am blown away by this. This problem has been bugging me for several years now and it is such a time saver and a work flow improvement to finally have this resolved. Now, both Pro Tools 10 and 11 load the way they are supposed to and the way I have seen them load on demonstrations on the web.

I hope this helps others here who have posted with similar system load sluggishness related to MIDI devices. It seems that Pro Tools and Cubase are both using a MIDI device scan method that does not ignore disconnected or deinstalled devices that don't need to be scanned.

If I am off base, let me know, but it sure has worked to improve my Pro Tools load time drastically and I am a happy camper. Woohoo!!!

Thanks Ben!!!!