AAE 9073 error - sound cutting out and freezing on multitrack

[ahughes3]

**** Update from today ****
@Darryl Ramm

• So, I dug out my UMC202HD, downloaded the Behringer ASIO driver for it and installed it.
  
• I disabled the audio interface from the windows sound control panel as advised.
  
• I'm now listening to playback directly through the audio interface and pro tools is set to 1024 buffer.
  
• I'm not using the QX1222USB Mixer now (just keeping that for live).

@albee1952 - I haven't yet ditched the Hitachi drive, but I am looking to get another SSD to load into the PC itself.

@The Weed - I am currently looking at buying an Audient ID4 Mk2, do you think that will run better than the Behringer in terms of driver? I've been watching some videos and people seem to rate it high.

When I now try and playback the same track as before, the vocal is still cutting out every so often. It's not as bad as it was and I haven't had the 9073 error again yet. So it looks like I'm making progress, but I guess I'm not getting down to the barrel scraping point to find resolution.

I'll take another look at the troubleshooting guides.

Thank you all, greatly appreciated.

[ahughes3]

Not sure where my last reply went, I'll give it an hour or two to see if it reappears. It was talking about some more steps I've taken and how things seemed to be slowly improving.

Well scrub that, I didn't even get 30 seconds into the track this morning before the dreaded AAE 9073 error popped up again. To say I'm frustrated is an understatement.

If my previous reply doesn't appear, I'll repost it later. I'm off to pull my hair out again!!

[albee1952]

One thing to try; copy this session to the desktop and open that version(to see if it runs any better on the SSD).

Also, how much free space is on the Hitachi drive? What plugins(if any) are used in the session?

Is it only this one session or all?

[ahughes3]

It appears my message previous to the one before this never got posted so...

*** Update from today ***

• I've now been through all the troubleshooting guides and done the optimization settings. No change.
  
• I've now hooked up my UMC202HD and installed the latest ASIO driver from their website. Not using the mixer, I'll just use that for gigs.
  
• Disabled windows from using the Audio Interface for playback and recording.
  
• Haven't looked to replace the Hitachi drive, but I may do that if I can't get things working any other way.
  
• I'm currently thinking of buying an Audient ID4 as people seem to rave about it. Do you think it would come with a better quality driver?
  
• The Hitachi drive is only around half full and it's a 7200rpm so my understanding is that it should be ok, which Darryl also seems to agree with.

So today, with my audio interface connected, along with my headphones, I tried to playback a track again and it seems to have taken a step backwards. I don't get more than 30seconds into a track and it's throws the AAE 9073 error.

I will try and copy the track to my SSD system drive and check that. I'll update once I've tested it.

Thanks as always for the advice folks.

[Darryl Ramm]

Telling us you have done "everything" really does not make clear what you have tried. It would be great if you could list exactly have you done e.g. a list that makes clear things like...

you were able to make BIOS related optimization changes.
you uninstalled asio4all. (that stops Pro Tools switching to use that when you don't want it to).
you trashed prefs
you removed all .aaxplugin files from the plugin folder (I like to be sure to trash prefs after doing this... you will have no plugins to use, that's OK for now)
you created a new admin user and retested from that account
you tested starting with a new empty session? (not a template)
you looked for background apps/processes running and
... and so on for everything you tried

---

For all these tests sure the Pro Tools playback engine is set correctly to the ASIO driver you installed. Check each time you start Pro Tools. Look at all the playback engine options to make sure you have the right one.

trash preferences frequently as you you try other things

Do tests cumulatively, eg. remove all .aaxplugin files and leave them removed as you try other tests.

Again this is very unlikely to be disk/storage related and you can exclude that anyhow by trying to create a new test session on the boot drive SSD and also testing dragging an existing session folder there.

If you have done the basic troubleshooting tests and optimization correctly and are not making progress then I would avoid spinning time on this and instead go for a full clean Windows install, hopefully just on another partition on your SSD drive. Ideally from a clean downloaded Windows installer, not a recovery partition. Do the minimal install, avoid letting plug and pray install drivers... manually install the mimimim drivers you need, say the NVIDA GPU drivers and the interface ASIO driver and install only Pro Tools, and do a quick test (you should not even need to do optimization for what you are doing... but you can try that as well). If that does not work then something is potentially sick with your hardware.

[ahughes3]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Telling us you have done "everything" really does not make clear what you have tried. It would be great if you could list exactly have you done e.g. a list that makes clear things like...

Apologies Darryl but I didn't realise that I had said I've done everything. I simply said I have done all of the optimization steps. Meaning I've been through each one and taken the steps they mention. i.e. the BIOS step, I did it. The Updating all drivers, I did it. I have also done the same with the troubleshooting guides that look like they apply to my situation. Some were about Pro Tools not starting or plugins not loading. I don't have those as problems.

you were able to make BIOS related optimization changes.
you uninstalled asio4all. (that stops Pro Tools switching to use that when you don't want it to).
you trashed prefs

Yes, Yes and yes.

you removed all .aaxplugin files from the plugin folder (I like to be sure to trash prefs after doing this... you will have no plugins to use, that's OK for now)

Not entirely sure I understand. I installed all plugins to a completely separate folder on my Hitachi drive. They are not inside Pro Tools. Is this what you meant or did I misunderstand?

you created a new admin user and retested from that account
you tested starting with a new empty session? (not a template)
you looked for background apps/processes running and
... and so on for everything you tried

I didn't see anywhere it telling me to create a new user admin account from the troubleshooting guides. Happy to try that next.

I did already try a new empty session with just an audio track and no plugins. It did the same error after about the third time.

Background apps are just my video card, my audio interface and iLok as far as I can see.

For all these tests sure the Pro Tools playback engine is set correctly to the ASIO driver you installed. Check each time you start Pro Tools. Look at all the playback engine options to make sure you have the right one.

I'm doing this everytime I start Pro Tools already.

I'm completely ignoring plugins for now and just testing a clean track. I've already tried copying a session folder to the SSD drive (after trashing preferences and checking playback engine settings). It still seems to be the same.

I think I might just do a clean install onto a new SSD and keep the system separate to program files etc. I'm running out of motivation and ideas.

[Darryl Ramm]

OK sounds like you are doign good stuff and may be heading for a Windows install.

Originally Posted by ahughes3

Not entirely sure I understand. I installed all plugins to a completely separate folder on my Hitachi drive. They are not inside Pro Tools. Is this what you meant or did I misunderstand?

Installed? you mean moved? I want you to be very clear on this as incompatible plugins that you are not even using in a session can cause CPU problems by just being installed in Pro Tools. Just removing plugins from use in your session is not enough of a test.

You just need to move *all* .aaxplugin files (well they are actually directories but made to look like files) out of the plugin folder. Which is C:\Program Files\Common Files\Avid\Audio\Plug-Ins . Normally folks just move them to the "Plug-Ins (Unused)" folder. You have to move, not copy those files, leave nothing in that plugins folder.

All Pro Tools plugins need to have been originally installed on the C: drive. You cannot change where you install plugins. But that does not matter now, just move every .aaxplugin file out of the folder mentioned above. Then trash prefs for good measure and start Pro Tools. It should then have no plugins available for you to use in Pro Tools. Even if this does not fix the problem, leave it like that as you test other things.

You are right, the create new admin user is not in the Windows troubleshooting guide, it's in the Mac one but still one I'd try, and it should likely be listed in the Windows guide. It helps find cases of toxic startup/background processes, cases of where preferences/databases are not being trashed properly and a few more things. But with such bad CPU errors with such low workload on a system like this something else is likely wrong, you should be able to run a few tracks on any system without needing to even needing to optimize stuff etc. as long as you are running few lightweight plugins or no plugins. The leading candidates for problems like this are incompatible/buggy plugins likely followed by non-ASIO interfaces (esp. trying to run them at smaller H/W buffer sizes)... and you've already excluded that.

Oh and two more paranoid things I'd double check make sure any and all antivirus software is completely disabled or uninstalled, including Windows Defender. And make sure you are not saving your session into a folder that is backed up to Google Drive or OneDrive etc.

I think I might just do a clean install onto a new SSD and keep the system separate to program files etc. I'm running out of motivation and ideas.

Right, if you have done everything mentioned then heading for a Windows install (make it as clean and basic as possible to start with) is likely a good call, it's not worth trying to keep messing with stuff you may never find.

[albee1952]

I hate to say this, but at some point, you may have to consider that this PC is just not going to work with Pro Tools. I hope I am wrong, but....

Have you/would you consider another DAW? Reaper is one option that is free to try and cheap to buy. Studio One is another(not as cheap as Reaper but very affordable) and Cakewalk by Bandcamp(Bandlab?) is completely free. All 3 of these options are less finicky than Pro Tools and extremely capable programs. Of course, if you want Pro Tools to be compatible with other collaborators, then it makes sense to keep trying

[dominicperry]

Rather than a whole new computer, how about a different interface? (That Ryzen CPU benchmarks around the same as an i9 9900K from 2018, although Avid still don't qualify any AMD processors as far as I can tell).

Those Behringer things are hateful, frankly. Unless they've changed their spots, I can't imagine the drivers are any good.

I know not everyone has a lot of cash, but a cheap Focusrite is the standard low-end interface for a reason. They sound pretty ok these days and the drivers are very reasonable.

I would also advise putting everything to do with Pro Tools on the internal SSD, and then make sure every preference path in Pro Tools points at the internal SSD and not at the spinning disk.

Dominic

[ahughes3]

Ok So possibly some good news.

So I realised today that the tracks I've been using to test, both came from my previous Cakewalk projects folder. I had imported the tracks using Pro Tools built in converter to change them from 44.1kHz to the 44.8kHz in Pro Tools.

So I thought what if I just try my tracks that I made in Pro Tools (no audio, just midi as I haven't started recording audio). So I opened up a midi, drum/bass track and it worked fine, no errors. Four tracks later, still no errors and the sound is great.

So then I thought, what if I tried to convert a clean audio file from a previous Cakewalk project and just try that. So, using the built in converter, I imported an audio clip. Everything works fine. Then I imported the guitar audio and once again everything works fine.

My conclusion is that I think the test tracks were either damaged in the conversion from Cakewalk 44.1 to 44.8 or they became damaged during me editing. I think it's the files themselves! Not the setup.

I'm going to keep running some more tests on converting audio to see. If I get no problems, I will then take the clean track and try to build it up similar to the problem track. If I get no issues, then it's definitely pointing to it being a file issue.

I'm hoping it is.........and it isn't. If it is just a file issue, then problem solved, but I'm going to feel like such an idiot for not spotting it sooner!!

I'll update tomorrow, once I'm more sure.

Thanks
Andy