OS X PT 6 Mbox PT issues.....

[AdamF]

Hi guys,

After everyone helped me troubleshoot my RAM issue with my new machine, (thanks to everyone here), I was still getting the unexpected quits and other quirky crashes with PT 6.

Brief Timeline:

PT 5 user since 98 or so, 5.2.1 on my old quicksilver 933 with digi 001 was ROCK for years, never a single problem.

2 months ago decide its time to take the plunge, make mistake by buying non os 9 boot FW 800 G4 1.25 dual machine. Initially had ram issues, resolved, OS became stable, still running 001 with PT 6.1 on 10.2.8 somewhat successfully.

1 month ago: Tried 6.2.2/10.3.1 and other combos but still got consistant crashes on importing audio/extended use. After reinstalling OS and PT countless times came to the conclusion from some outside help it might be 001 at this point (exhausted every other option) which doesnt like to play nice with PT6. Decided to sell of 001, get mbox (I only use 2in/2out to board, considered oo2r) and see how it goes.

Currently: Just got mbox, reformatted installed clean 10.3.1/6.2.2 installed waves, filterbank, grm tools NOTHING else, Motu express xt usb drivers, no mouse drivers (logitech). No more external scsi, i'm down to the bare min here. G4, 1.25 gigs of confirmed good ram, 3 internal ata drives (no ext firewire or scsi), mbox, motu interface (3 outboard items, karma, supernova, planet earthe emu).

Right now I can run PT ok, (10.3.1/6.2.2) but I open one of the sessions I was working on before on my 001 and I get "USB interrupt...blah blah..remove plugins..etc." and i'm not even close to maxing things out. I go to move my cpu usage up to 99% and it crashes. Import audio, it crashes. Change hardware buffer, sometimes it crashes, sometimes it doesnt. I've gone through permissions, reinstallation, every digi trouble shooting technique and my own being a proficient mac/PT person for years.

This whole troubleshooting process has killed nearly 2 months of my time and now I have several projects that wont be ready for wmc which is the biggest time of the year for me.

Last night I came to the revelation that maybe this is it, it's time for logic (which ive never really used or cared for). I use reason and want rewire support. I was thinking of hacking this machine or reverting to an OS 9 boot machine to get PT 5 running again so I can at least get some work done. That seems like going in the total wrong direction but I really love pro tools. Otherwise, maybe its time for logic/reason/rewire. I dont need the latest and greatest, just a STABLE, RELIABLE setup.

If anyone has any input i'd appreciate it..shared problems/issues, possible resolutions...

[where02190]

Sorry for your woes, sounds like you tried to fix something that wasn't broken.

We've remianed in OS9.2.2 and PTle 5.2.1 because of posts like this. Maybe you should consider selling the X only machine and getting a dual boot. OS9 for us is rock solid, and with the power of the dual 1Ghz g-4 Quicksilver porperly optimized for PT5, we can take the software to it's limits.

[AdamF]

Hey Where... yea i hear ya..

The only thing that is killing me is I wanted rewire support. Started using it and its the bomb. I've been looking into the quicksilver dual 1 GHz swap idea.

[Muxlow]

Currently: Just got mbox, reformatted installed clean 10.3.1/6.2.2 installed waves, filterbank, grm tools NOTHING else, Motu express xt usb drivers, no mouse drivers (logitech). No more external scsi, i'm down to the bare min here. G4, 1.25 gigs of confirmed good ram, 3 internal ata drives (no ext firewire or scsi), mbox, motu interface (3 outboard items, karma, supernova, planet earthe emu).

That hardly sounds like "bare minimum" to me. If PT is this screwed up for you (most of us are rolling along fine with PT, in spite of some issues), then start over and strip your machine down: WAY down!

First, do your clean install and make sure that OS X is okay. Run it, use it, LEARN IT and make sure that it's running correctly. If you don't understand how OS X works, get a book and start reading. It's not OS 9. It's better.

Then, plug in your MBox and install PT. NOTHING ELSE. No Motu hardware, no waves, no filterbank, no Reason, no grm, no usb drivers, NOTHING! Then, start a NEW, EMPTY session and see how far you get. Start with simple stuff like recording audio, bouncing to disk, etc. Chances are, it'll be fine. If it's not, consider your instincts vindicated and tell Digi to go to hell.

If you get that far without issues, start adding these other apps and hardware ONE AT A TIME, playing with each new thing for a few hours (if not days), until you 'break' your system again. When/if it breaks, you'll have found your culprit.

When you do, report back and let us know what it was (I've got $50 saying it's related to the MOTU interface/usb drivers). Also write letters to the vendors in question so they know what's up.

And just for the record, YES, Digi made some real stupid decisions with PT 6 (deep sleep, those database folders, etc.) and YES, it has some bugs and stability issues, and YES, I'm probably not going to buy ProTools when my Digi001's days are over, but the vast majority of PT 6 users ARE NOT having these crippling issues you describe. It's not perfect, but it's not this bad.

Just my 2¢ ~

[cliepe12]

AdamF,

I have almost the exact same history as your. I started with a G4 733 with OS9 and 5.1.1. I then updated to 5.2.1. It was Rock Solid the whole time. I didn't have a single issue. Then I bought my new FW800 dual 1.25. Initially, I had bad RAM also. I will never take any company up on their free RAM offers again.

6.0 was a complete mess. 6.1 was better and 6.2 has been better still but I still suffer from these issues. All of these issues have been present since moving to PT6. I have done all of the trouble shooting steps, Reformatted my HD and reinstalled PT a number of times. there is nothing on this computer except for Pro Tools, legit Waves Plugins and the stock software that came with the Mac + MS office. I have also tried a clean install of the operating system with out MS office or iLife and experienced the same issues.

Here they are:

1. PT Unexpectedly quits about 20% of the time when closing a session or quitting Pro Tools.

2. It quits about 70% of the time when trying to preview an audiosuite plugin.

3. Quits about 50% of the time I try and change my HW buffer setting or my CPU usage on larger sessions. (on PT5 it just gave me a warning or an error message, but NEVER quit)


The following issues happen less frequently, but still annoying!!

1. A Quit when bouncing to disk. It seems to happen more frequently when I am on Level 4 (as opposed to the default level 2) in the disk settings (I am spacing what this is actually called and I am not on my PT computer.)

2. Very seldom, seemingly completely random kernel panics (about 1 every few months) only assoiated with Pro Tools. I have never had a Kernel panic ouside of Pro Tools except when the Mac had bad memory in it.



My reason for sharing all of this again is to make the point that there ARE real issues with Pro Tools 6. Some blame user error or a lack of knowledge about OSX, but if it is User Error, how come I can use PT5 for years on a number of different computers and not experience the same kinds of problems as i do on PT6.

I like to think of my self as someone who knows OSX pretty well. My system is very clean, and I know how to do a lot of things with it. (I am also pretty familiar with Unix)

My computer is Rock Solid especially since moving to Panther. I have experienced no crashes other than Pro Tools related crashes.

I have been able to still use my PT6 setup for many projects and paying clients because I have learned how to work around my list of known issues. I think the ability to be creative and work through software issues will always be a needed skill/dicipline, but I have also never used sofware as buggy and frustrating as Pro Tools 6.

DIGI!!! If you are reading these posts!!! Please work to fix these issues. I understand from a programing point of view, it could be many things. (operating systems, new hardware, Apple updating their software every day and introducing new conflicting changes) but how come I am able to use Logic or CuBase on other peoples Macs without a hitch????

I am done now.

[nerd513]

my pro tools has always run perfect ive used 5.1 6.0 6.1 6.2 i think people should learn how to run install and maintain their equipment before blaming digi and apple.i use an mbox and an 002r on 2 different computers. no problems ever. i use an mbox and a G5 1.6 1256 ram at home for mixing. and an imac g4 800mhz 1 gig ram and a 002r at studio for tracking.waves gold installed on both computers. like i said everything is great on all systems. so if u r having problems its prob 4 a reason the software runs fine if everything is maintained properly.

[cliepe12]

my pro tools has always run perfect ive used 5.1 6.0 6.1 6.2 i think people should learn how to run install and maintain their equipment before blaming digi and apple.i use an mbox and an 002r on 2 different computers. no problems ever. i use an mbox and a G5 1.6 1256 ram at home for mixing. and an imac g4 800mhz 1 gig ram and a 002r at studio for tracking.waves gold installed on both computers. like i said everything is great on all systems. so if u r having problems its prob 4 a reason the software runs fine if everything is maintained properly.

Nerd,
I think you may be an exception. Do you do lots of work on your computers?? Do you run large sessions?? I have a friend who has an 002R and has never had any problems, but he really doesn't use it that much yet. I am not trying to say that you don't use your gear, I am just wondering what you may be doing that is different from myself, and the countless other PT6LE users that have written about similar problems.

Also, do you mean by "no problems ever" that you have never seen a crash, or hiccup? Do you mean that your setups are reasonably stable? My setup is reasonably stable, but there are a number of things that regularly cause problems. I can still get work done.

If you have seen some crashes, are there any patterns??

Also, I think that it is a bit out of line to claim that the people who are having issues don't know how to install and run software. There are many people on this board who are long time Mac/computer users and long time PT users.

I would be interested to know what you are doing differently to achieve perfect performance out of your setups

[AdamF]

Hi guys,

I must say first that I spoke to digi support and they think a USB hub I had on my system (I need it to run with my midi interface, mbox, keyboard and ilok) is most likely the offender. The person was very helpful and also offered me some ideas on issues concerning running sessions off secondary drives that have caused some issues. My first problem to attack will be the hub which i'm going to remove when I get home tonight and install a USB PCI card instead. Apparantly even powered hubs are drawing resources against the mbox which cause crashes when changing cpu usage and things like that as well. I'll confirm that later. Props to digi, for at least really giving me some direction in what seemed to be a doomed situation.

However, Nerd, these problems are pretty well documented by many people. I have a couple friends that are long time seasoned veterans with the same issues. Yea, running a session with a few tracks may run fine, but when youre up to 20-30 tracks with verbs and everything else in the mix.. thats when reliability kicks in. PT 5 was a ROCK all the way to the computer shooting out flames for the most part.

Nerd,
I think you may be an exception. Do you do lots of work on your computers?? Do you run large sessions?? I have a friend who has an 002R and has never had any problems, but he really doesn't use it that much yet. I am not trying to say that you don't use your gear, I am just wondering what you may be doing that is different from myself, and the countless other PT6LE users that have written about similar problems.

Also, do you mean by "no problems ever" that you have never seen a crash, or hiccup? Do you mean that your setups are reasonably stable? My setup is reasonably stable, but there are a number of things that regularly cause problems. I can still get work done.

If you have seen some crashes, are there any patterns??

Also, I think that it is a bit out of line to claim that the people who are having issues don't know how to install and run software. There are many people on this board who are long time Mac/computer users and long time PT users.

I would be interested to know what you are doing differently to achieve perfect performance out of your setups

[nerd513]

like i said no problems ever my systems dont crash. i just did a 4 hour recording session last night.took my hard drive home and proceeded to mix for another 4 hours untill 6:30 am. i did not have a single problem. like i suspected the problem is a user error and not a digi or apple one. ur usb hub u cant use hubs to run ur mbox it has to be dedicated usb port. so this is probably not a digi issue. if u didnt read the information about the usb hubs their could be any number of corners u cut and r prob unaware of. thats y i said it is critical to understand ur gear completely its not just plugging in some wires. u might want to send ur sytem to sweetwater to be installed if u cant get it stable soon.

[cliepe12]

Okay, here is my entire setup. Let me know if you have any ideas

G4 FW800 dual 1.25. 80 gig system drive, 120 gig internal 7200 rpm IBM audio drive. 768 megs of RAM. The stock 256 and a Kingston 512. The computer has been tested twice by my local apple store and no hardware problems have been found. the computer is rock solid other than Pro Tools.

I am running the 001 and i have a tascam TDIF Adat optical converter so that I can run my DA 88's into protools via ADAT light pipe. This is hooked up all the time. This is a farely recent addition and no new issues arose upon adding this. I have PT 6.2.2 LE running on 10.3.2. I realize that this is not yet supported, but this has been the most stable version yet.

I have an Epson printer hooked up to my 2nd usb port on the back of the computer, and a Western digital FW400 drive that I only hook up and use for backups. i never record with it. I don't use USB hubs and I don't have any additional cards installed that may conflict with the 001.

As far as software... the computer is very clean. I have all of the stock apps plus MS office Version X, Netscape, Windows media player, real audio player and iLife 4. That's it.

The only thing that I have not done since getting the computer was create a new volume on my system drive since replacing the bad memory. I was thinking about doing this, but I thought it not worth it because the rest of the computer was working fine. Also, the volume was created with just the stock memory put in. After I had installed all software, I put the bad RAM in. Then I took it out, and rebuilt the system.

Any thoughts from anyone???