CPU Spikes and loud noise

[Fuzzyc]

I searched the forum as best I could for information and/or a solution to the CPU spike issue in PT but wasn't able to find anything definitive. I see a lot of posts about people having this issue but couldn't find any solutions. I'm running PT 12.5 and occasionally experience a VERY loud noise in conjunction with CPU usage spiking to 100%. I sometimes get it when I record enable/disable a track or if I load a patch in a plugin (SampleTank3 is one of a few plugins where this happens). I try to remember to mute my monitors before doing these things but sometimes I forget. I'm worried I'm going to damage my monitors (or worse, my ears). Is Avid working on this? Any chance that PT 12.6 addressed this issue.

[jchan]

Its supposed to be fixed allready in 12.5.1 so just update
and you will hopefully be fine.

http://protools.ideascale.com/a/dtd/234769-3779

[john1192]

Originally Posted by jchan

Its supposed to be fixed allready in 12.5.1 so just update
and you will hopefully be fine.

http://protools.ideascale.com/a/dtd/234769-3779

looks like the ideascale is for MAC OS ... does not say anything about PC ..

[albee1952]

My experience only; 12.5.2 was awful(constant cpu spikes and -9173 errors). 12.4 is pretty darn solid. 12.6 is certainly worth a try, but as with ANY update or new software install, cover your ASSets. Use drive imaging and/or drive cloning so you have an easy way to revert to a working configuration. Even though I am one of the loudest voices for this, I broke my own rule yesterday and installed Paragon HFS+ for Windows, without backing up first. Guess what....that little program trashed the C: drive. It would no longer boot and running Windows repair would not work. Now I get to spend much of today recovering from an older image, and then installing 12.4(image has PT11,3) and a whole bunch of NI updates that I had just done a week ago.

[risey]

Hi there, I have a similar problem, some users tried to convince me it is because of background tasks I was also using at the same time which was hilarious. As an experiment I stopped most tasks and noticed during session with an i7 5960x that only 4 cores of the 16 available were utilised, I even had a CPU run out of memory error, which was weird, so I watched what was going on during the session the cpu was hitting 69% but many of the cores were at 1% usage.
It seems PT 12 is not multicore friendly at this stage in the game....

Ryan

[Fuzzyc]

Thanks for the info and feedback everyone.

albee1952 - I am actually running 12.5.2 and you are right - tt is horrible when it comes to the CPU spikes. Is it possible to revert back to 12.4? Do you think it would be worth trying that? I wish I knew how 12.6 was with respect to this issue. Hopefully I will get some feedback from someone that's on 12.6 already.

Thanks again!

[sw rec]

Is it possible to revert back to 12.4?

Yes, assuming you still have your 12.4 installer. Just un-install 12.5 (including the HD driver)
then re-install 12.4.

[Darryl Ramm]

And as always also look for plugin issues, temporality remove all third party plugins from the plugin folder and see if they are affecting things. Yes even plugins you don't instantiate in a session can mess with this stuff. That is not to say Pro Tools is not seriously messed up itself for many users, but always take the time and third party check plugins as well.

The other CPU burn/spike bugbear of old is plugins with denormalization issues and they can suddenly cause problems even with minor changes, so if you are using sansamp or dverb or other known broken plugins remove them from the session or try sticking a dither plugin in front of them.