Pro Tools and 9093 Errors

[Stephen333]

Hey guys, this is my first post, but I've been using this community for a long time. I wanted to reintroduce a topic that I know has been covered at some length in this community, and provide a bit of backstory on my journey to fix these issues.

To start, let’s go over the computers I'm going to be bringing up.

The main rig here is a 2019 Mac Pro, 128gb of ram, 3.2GHz 16-Core Intel Xeon W processor, and 4TB SSD startup disc on 10.15.3 Catalina. This rig operates primarily as an HDX2 rig, connected to two Burl Motherships, although all tests have both been performed via HDX and with no HDX connected running exclusively native.

Pro Tools Ultimate version 2020.5
Basically every major plugin manufacturer is represented here, and certainly the entire product line of most of the big guys; UA, Waves, Fab-Filter, Plugin-Alliance, Izotope, McDsp, and of course Acustica.


The second engineer's rig is a 2018 Mac Mini, 32gb of ram, 3.2GHz 6-Core Intel i7 processor, and a 1TB SSD startup disc on 10.14.6 Mojave. This rig is native.

Pro Tools Ultimate version 2020.9
Basically every major plugin manufacturer is also represented here, and certainly the entire product line of most of the big guys; UA, Waves, Fab-Filter, Plugin-Alliance, Izotope, McDsp, and of course Acustica.



My issue is simple and is easily repeatable: on any session utilizing a larger amount of plugins there is a great risk of running into continuous 9093 (or 9173 if native) errors. Pro Tools system meters show the all-too-common peaking around the center cpu core, and meter performance is incredibly chaotic, jumping around indiscriminately. This most often happens in mix sessions with long plugin chains and lots of delay comp being used, but it also happens in basic tracking sessions with delay compensation barely being utilized. Acustica plugins send Pro Tools meters into disarray (plenty of forum posts about this), but these issues will happen with no Acustica plugins in a session at all as well.

I have elevated support tickets currently with both Avid and Apple, and Acustica promptly closed the support ticket we had with them a few months back and were largely not helpful in the matter, though I don't think they are solely to blame here, their plugins are just better at revealing some of the issues at play.

Both systems perform roughly the same with the sessions, despite the fact that CPU, RAM, etc... usage on both isn't even approaching the limits of the systems. On the Mac Mini we usually hit 30% usage before the errors can't be avoided, on the Mac Pro we often can't even get to anything past 15% of our available resources before a session is deemed unplayable by Pro Tools.

Here are some of the various fixes we have tried to no avail, if I am missing anything that can help, please let me know:

• Trash Preferences (thanks Pete Gates)
• Reset SMC/PRAM/NVRAM
• Always operate on highest buffer
• we dropped all of our mix sessions to 48kHz just to get a bit more plugin usage
• Create fresh new admin account
• Fresh installs all around
• used CPU setter to disable hyperthreading
• manually checked RAM as well as using Memtest86
• checked all issues on both HDX and Native
• checked for any clocking issues in setup
• updated plugins/removed potentially outdated or hazardous plugins
• spread plugins over multiple auxes in high count plugin chains
• computer optimized by every optimization guide we could find and is used only for PT

I understand that there are a lot of standard workarounds for working in Pro Tools but the fact of the matter is that both of our systems in use, despite being dramatically different in available system resources, operate at roughly the same level.

Has anyone figured out a solution to this that doesn't involve moving to another DAW or utilizing Vienna or something similar? It feels like Pro Tools has a self-imposed ceiling on CPU usage that doesn't allow it to scale across the cores properly.

Any ideas?

[arche3]

If its not Virtual Instruments. Just plug ins. You have to find the one or few that do this. I can almost guarantee its one of your plugs.

Sent from my SM-G986U using Tapatalk

[Wolfgang Eller]

Originally Posted by Stephen333

[*]computer optimized by every optimization guide we could find and is used only for PT

Spindump/Tailspind?

[Ru_C]

Originally Posted by Stephen333

Any ideas?

Hi Stephen, I was going to post about this separately, after i'd done a bit more testing, but I may as well jump in on this thread in case it helps.

I recently put an HD Native system together (HD Native Pcie card, with 2xAVID16 I/o's. connected for 32 I/o, OSX 10.15.6, PT Ultimate 2020.9.1)

It's installed in a Hackintosh (I know, naughty me).

For the first few weeks I was plagued by 9093 errors......sometimes big sessions would be fine one day, then give errors the next day...& sometimes tiny ones would cause 9093's after trying to record a single track.

I tried removing all plugins (obviously the AVID ones are auto-regenerated if one does this), & it made not a tiny bit of difference.

Btw. all of this is done at minimum buffer settings (64 samples at 96k) in order to achieve the sub 2ms tracking latency I'm used to with my old HD Accel rig.

After almost giving up & going back to PT10HD, I tried removing the RX580 graphics card, & running using the Intel integrated graphics...& voila...my errors have disappeared.

Is this some kind of conflict happening on the Pcie bus with AVID hardware? Maybe others could shed a light on it, but it seems to have cured my issues.

Obviously being native, there is a point at which the system can't cope, but now it seems predictable, & I haven't had to shift from the lowest buffer setting.

[Carl Lie]

Hi-

I have found Acustica plugins to bring my 12 core mac pro (2012) to it knees. With just once instance.

Still, with your new mac pro I'm surprised you're having issues but I think Acustica plugins do not work well with PT at all.

Carl

[Farhoof]

I am getting these 9093 errors as well on all our HDX2 rigs. I haven't found the culprit yet. I do know it started after upgrading to PT Ultimate 2019.5. Every single rig was fine running 2018.12. For me these errors are bound to PT 2019.5 and beyond. I can roll back to 2018.12 and all errors are gone, same hardware, same plugins.

Hardware buffer is at max. Mac OS 10.12.6, 12core Mac Pro 5.1, 72GB ram, Radeon 5770 (soon upgrading to RX560 and 10.13.6).

[TOM@METRO]

I'm on Windows (and this may be the difference) but I haven't had any uptick in AAE errors with this recent build.

[deanrichard]

This seems like something that should be reported back to the engineering team at Avid somehow. The hardest bugs to find and fix are intermittent. This might provide an important clue that could help them fix it if it's a driver conflict of some sort.

Originally Posted by Ru_C

Hi Stephen, I was going to post about this separately, after i'd done a bit more testing, but I may as well jump in on this thread in case it helps.

I recently put an HD Native system together (HD Native Pcie card, with 2xAVID16 I/o's. connected for 32 I/o, OSX 10.15.6, PT Ultimate 2020.9.1)

It's installed in a Hackintosh (I know, naughty me).

For the first few weeks I was plagued by 9093 errors......sometimes big sessions would be fine one day, then give errors the next day...& sometimes tiny ones would cause 9093's after trying to record a single track.

I tried removing all plugins (obviously the AVID ones are auto-regenerated if one does this), & it made not a tiny bit of difference.

Btw. all of this is done at minimum buffer settings (64 samples at 96k) in order to achieve the sub 2ms tracking latency I'm used to with my old HD Accel rig.

After almost giving up & going back to PT10HD, I tried removing the RX580 graphics card, & running using the Intel integrated graphics...& voila...my errors have disappeared.

Is this some kind of conflict happening on the Pcie bus with AVID hardware? Maybe others could shed a light on it, but it seems to have cured my issues.

Obviously being native, there is a point at which the system can't cope, but now it seems predictable, & I haven't had to shift from the lowest buffer setting.

[Stephen333]

Originally Posted by Wolfgang Eller

Spindump/Tailspind?

Ooops, forgot to include that as well in the things we tried! Yes, unfortunately already been down that path

[Stephen333]

Originally Posted by Farhoof

I am getting these 9093 errors as well on all our HDX2 rigs. I haven't found the culprit yet. I do know it started after upgrading to PT Ultimate 2019.5. Every single rig was fine running 2018.12. For me these errors are bound to PT 2019.5 and beyond. I can roll back to 2018.12 and all errors are gone, same hardware, same plugins.

Hardware buffer is at max. Mac OS 10.12.6, 12core Mac Pro 5.1, 72GB ram, Radeon 5770 (soon upgrading to RX560 and 10.13.6).

Unfortunately we've been experiencing this issue for a good long time now, and 2018.12 and pretty much all the 2018 line was causing us problems.