Thinking about buying Protool 12

[spock999]

Thinking about buying Protool 12 so I was wondering if my rig will work or should I stay with Cubase Pro 8. I allready checked out the avid pro tools 12 system requirements and I look OK but I would like to get some feedback from the real users .

Mac Pro 2008
OS 10.9.5 (Maverick)
22 Gig Ram
Apricon SATA 3 Card With 2 SSD (500 MB/s R and W)
UAD Satelite Duo Firewire
UAD PCIe Duo
UAD Apollo Silverface Duo Firewire
Mackie Contol (Original with latest firmware)
Mackie Octamic 8 pre

[Darryl Ramm]

Your plugins all need to be up to date.

You should rent Pro Tools 12 for a month to see if it is OK.

Start with a clean OS X install on a spare partition, do not upgrade to El Crapitan.

[Southsidemusic]

And don't use "22GB" ram. Make sure there is an even anount like 8/12/16/24/32 GB etc.

Pull out the uneven ram sticks. Also you need to record to a secondary drive and
It NEEDS to be a minimum WDC Black 7200rpm or an SSD Drive.

[deanrichard]

Personally, I think you're better off simply staying with Cubase 8.

Originally Posted by spock999

Thinking about buying Protool 12 so I was wondering if my rig will work or should I stay with Cubase Pro 8. I allready checked out the avid pro tools 12 system requirements and I look OK but I would like to get some feedback from the real users .

Mac Pro 2008
OS 10.9.5 (Maverick)
22 Gig Ram
Apricon SATA 3 Card With 2 SSD (500 MB/s R and W)
UAD Satelite Duo Firewire
UAD PCIe Duo
UAD Apollo Silverface Duo Firewire
Mackie Contol (Original with latest firmware)
Mackie Octamic 8 pre

[weezul]

Originally Posted by Southsidemusic

And don't use "22GB" ram. Make sure there is an even anount like 8/16/32 GB etc.

...wh.. what? why does this matter. I understand ram works better when it's dual channel and equal for each channel but I'm fairly sure it won't make any perceivable difference to the performance of a well coded program. Can you explain how you have come to this conclusion of outright removing sticks of RAM? Surely when it comes to samples or Ram Cache, even if the bays are not equal, the extra RAM still has a massive benefit outweighed by any dual-channel bus speed/buffering mismatch. I've ran 12GB of ram for years.

I've seen some crazy explanations for Pro Tools' behaviour but this is the most interesting yet....I'm not saying it's not true, I'm just wondering where the pool of evidence is for such a suggestion that it hampers pro tools' performance

[Southsidemusic]

Well mis-matched ram had been an issue for ages here on the forum and i don't have the patience or time to search and look them up but having that (22GB) ram will most definitely find its way into an error issue now or later.

How do you get a dual channel or more to equal out at 22? That is mismatched and well known to be an issue.

PS. I didn't say there was a "pool" of evidence, all i need to know is there has been more than one and less than 100 who have had issues with that and therefor i mentioned it to eliminate that as a villain.

[Carl Lie]

Go for the short rental and see how it goes. You'll probably enjoy much of what PT has to offer.

Come here with questions.

C

[weezul]

Originally Posted by Southsidemusic

having that (22GB) ram will most definitely find its way into an error issue now or later.

We will just have to agree to disagree. I've never heard/seen anything of the sort from any program on Mac OS or Windows. I can see how it would run slower, but not how it could just 'create' problems if the machine is already stable and running. Surely the OS just sees the amount of RAM, and it's access is controlled by the BIOS/CPU architecture which will slow the speed down to that of the weaker stick. The value in ram is 0 or 1 at the address specified. Why would that change, especially in realtime while a program is open and executing.

I've just had a quick search online, and at the DUC and found nothing that even hints that this was ever a problem (for Pro Tools or otherwise) and/or it was confirmed to be the source. Perhaps the computer could lock up/freeze and randomly reboot but if it's been running fine all this time, I'd say it's a non-issue when it comes to pro tools specifically.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by weezul

We will just have to agree to disagree. I've never heard/seen anything of the sort from any program on Mac OS or Windows. I can see how it would run slower, but not how it could just 'create' problems if the machine is already stable and running. Surely the OS just sees the amount of RAM, and it's access is controlled by the BIOS/CPU architecture which will slow the speed down to that of the weaker stick. The value in ram is 0 or 1 at the address specified. Why would that change, especially in realtime while a program is open and executing.

I've just had a quick search online, and at the DUC and found nothing that even hints that this was ever a problem (for Pro Tools or otherwise) and/or it was confirmed to be the source. Perhaps the computer could lock up/freeze and randomly reboot but if it's been running fine all this time, I'd say it's a non-issue when it comes to pro tools specifically.

Uh I'd tend to blindly listen to advice from Christopher. I'm not going to comment on the particular configs of memory--just don't have the config specs for your Mac Pro in front of me, and I'd want to know what exact DIMMs you have intsalled. But your understanding of DRAM seems pretty naive. No they are not just 1 or 0. These are very complex timing critical beasts. You want matched DIMMs on each channel of memory. You want matched DIMM timing specs, and ideally identical vendor part numbers.

I have no idea what will work or not, but Pro Tools has a bit more of a bad wrap for being hypersensitive about stuff, including DRAM configuration, specs. That the OS or another app runs fine does not give me any confidence that Pro Tools will. And memory in particular can be a crap shoot. It may run fine, systems can crash, apps can crash, all sorts of weird errors, memory diags may or may not find problems etc. Sure you just plug 'em DIMMs in and they mostly work, but when they don't can be one of the nastiest most complex areas of debugging computer builds.

With Pro Tools 12 being 64-bit and having disk cache in the standard product I'd tend to want any computer memory to be pretty maxed out, especially if working with lots of VIs or large sessions. DRAM is cheap, max it out with identical DIMMs that meet the original/Mobo timing requirements.

But again, rent Pro Tools 12 and you tell us how well it works...

[moonmusic]

Originally Posted by weezul

I'm just wondering where the pool of evidence is for such a suggestion that it hampers pro tools' performance

Digidesign recommended this years ago for stability reasons....It used to be documented when they tested systems and told you what systems to use for best performance/stability....I followed this recommendation based on those documents when I put together my HD system....A lot of those documents are really hard to find or just don't exist anymore.....moon