Went back to 8.0 cs3, smooth sailing!

[Eric Seaberg]

Originally Posted by IntelDoc

Eric,

Please take one of your 75 track sessions and add elastic audio to the drums. Make about 50 changes (random ones to make it easy), save the session, log out and re-open the session and try to TURN OFF E.A. Render it as COMMIT and see what happens. That is when I started to notice things. If that was not happening I would have stayed on 8.01 but being dominately a mixer right now I could NOT stay there as my edits would not resolve when I tried to commit.

Everything I'm doing is locked to picture with on-camera players, so EA doesn't work for me... don't need it and don't want it. We put ProTools in the truck and designed it to be nothing more than a 128-track 'tape-recorder'. Minimal plugs, maximum I/O and track count, but I am using 'satellite' with an Avid Nitris and put pressure on the system in other ways. It's done everything I've asked it to do.

Obviously I'm not pushing the DSP as you are, or calling the same sub-routines in the code and that's certainly the biggest difference, but there are a lot of errors other users have seen doing what I'm doing and I don't get them.

If I have a chance, I'll try your scenario to see what happens. Maybe there's something totally magical about the way our HP is setup?

[DigiTechSupt]

Originally Posted by Venture Studios

Just wanted Digi support to know. I tried all their suggestions, updated my video drivers, swapped my card slots, used the 8.0 system driver with 8.0.1 and still had non stop 6031 errors. I reverted back to a clean install of 8.0 cs3. It's been 3 days now. I've had no 6031 errors and no clicks or pops. Just wanted to post this so it's documented. Digi the 6031 errors in 8.0.1 are not my computers fault, it's faulty programming that's leading to an overly sensitive error response.

Your evaluation both correct and incorrect - we know that the trigger for 6031's are caused by system interrupts. The only way those could be happening are due to computer configuration. Just because you don't get 6031's or experience clicks/pops in 8.0.1 does not mean that the interrupts are not occurring - they still are, Pro Tools just isn't able to account for certain interrupt situations (which should be rare) that 8.0.3 will account for.

Ultimately, no matter how you slice it, it's computer configuration at 'fault' - if those interrupts didn't occur, you wouldn't get 6031's and, as you can see, there are many customers using 8.0.3 without 6031's.

Now, as far as it being too sensitive to these interrupts - that's something that may be the case. The engineer that implemented the code is back in the office now, so I'll be speaking to him and a few others about what can be done for those experiencing 6031's. Since no one was willing to work with us directly (let us see your system to test and determine which software/hardware was causing the interrupts), we have only our beta team and others that we've been able to work with in-house. ALL cases, as I indicated before, were solvable and it invariably came down to drivers, hardware misconfiguration or some other system configuration setting. What are certain people ignoring this evidence entirely and still shouting about 8.0.1 being a P.O.S., exactly?

MEAT, x9blade and odeu have been more than vocal about this - and are not giving us a fair shake as far as what we've done to accommodate them. Odeu has never even posted config info. How can we troubleshoot without specifics? We've offered anyone experiencing these errors to pay overnight shipping both ways and look at their system in 1-2 days so they would have minimal downtime. I'm confident we could have determined the cause, but doing long distance troubleshooting can be difficult, especially with PC's. We've responded to every thread as best we can and will continue to work toward a solution for everyone.

[DigiTechSupt]

Originally Posted by MEAT

Isn't it so odd how digi is ignoring this thread????

MEAT - We're not ignoring this thread.

We can't see every thread as it's posted. We can't even read every thread posted on the DUC, so we're invariably going to miss some.

THAT is why you won't always see replies from us. Please keep that in mind for future reference. If you need a response, please use the Tech Support Request Form.

[DigiTechSupt]

Originally Posted by IntelDoc

Eric,
Great that you are working and I am by no means BITCHING about this. I just felt that it was a pretty lazy patch and yes it did cause issues on my system. I too can record high track counts but when I get into heavy edits, etc. that is when things started to happen.

Please take one of your 75 track sessions and add elastic audio to the drums. Make about 50 changes (random ones to make it easy), save the session, log out and re-open the session and try to TURN OFF E.A. Render it as COMMIT and see what happens. That is when I started to notice things.

What did you notice, exactly?

What I'm asking for are specifics about your system, what you're doing and any troubleshooting you've tried.

One thing I should mention is that we recommend doing edits on EA enabled tracks - either do your edits first, consolidate, then apply EA or vice versa. This is covered in the reference guide in the elastic audio section.

Now, with that said, what worked in 8.0 should work in 8.0.1. To help, I'll need details, though.

FWIW I can do what you're describing easily on the PC system I just tested this on.

Your problems sound entirely different than the 6031 issue being described in this thread, so you may consider starting a new thread specific to your problem.

[Przemek]

Originally Posted by DigiTechSupt

Ultimately, no matter how you slice it, it's computer configuration at 'fault' - if those interrupts didn't occur, you wouldn't get 6031's and, as you can see, there are many customers using 8.0.3 without 6031's.

First - thank you for answers.

Second - yes, you are right - " it's computer configuration at 'fault' with 6031's" but the problem is much deeper IMO - who cares how you call it, 6031, "disk too slow" or "change buffer settings" - those errors shouldn't appear on our systems, simply because othar DAWs work perfectly. I understand, that Pro-Tools is different, but in that particular case different=worse. So - it is not computer fault, it's PT fault. Of course our computers are not super tight configured and we may have some old drivers and even viruses - but the point is why other software can live with it and PT cannot? One can download reaper and start working in 10 minutes from decision - using the same computer and the same hardware. Hundreds racks, many plug-ins, no problem. Switching back to PT - no way, 6031 with one stereo track. Switching back to cubase - works. I did it, I have to make coffee for client and install cubase in 10 minutes to be able to record stupid 2-track piano demo from kurzweil keyboard - no plug-ins, no fx, just one stereo track.
I understand that PT is not an easy piece of code - of course. But to be honest - who cares?

Originally Posted by DigiTechSupt

Now, as far as it being too sensitive to these interrupts - that's something that may be the case. The engineer that implemented the code is back in the office now, so I'll be speaking to him and a few others about what can be done for those experiencing 6031's.

You are joking, aren't you? Or you are just telling us that NOW you are talking about it at all? When it all started? And you are waiting for what?

Originally Posted by DigiTechSupt

Since no one was willing to work with us directly (let us see your system to test and determine which software/hardware was causing the interrupts)

I understand that this offer is for US customers, not me from Eastern Europe?

[Venture Studios]

Originally Posted by DigiTechSupt

Your evaluation both correct and incorrect - we know that the trigger for 6031's are caused by system interrupts. The only way those could be happening are due to computer configuration. Just because you don't get 6031's or experience clicks/pops in 8.0.1 does not mean that the interrupts are not occurring - they still are, Pro Tools just isn't able to account for certain interrupt situations (which should be rare) that 8.0.3 will account for..

I appreciate the response, but I think Digi's stand on this is a little warped. Yes in theory its my computers fault that the program is having interrupts as you say, but these interrupts present no problems to me running Pro Tools other then these error messages. You have taken these interrupts that created absolutely no problems in the past and have now created a problem. Yes its MY computers fault that it doesnt run your oddly coded new program properly. It ran all your other programs fine, but its all my computers fault now.

Imagine going to get your car inspected and the mechanic says "Your steering is a little tight" and you say "well ive never noticed and it doesnt bother me one bit" so then you get the car back to find that your car shuts off randomly. You call the mechanic and he says "Yea I decided that it was unsafe for you to drive with tight steering, so everytime your steering gets even the slightest bit tight I made your car shutoff"

That would be a ridiculous thing for your mechanic to do! Are you seeing what we're saying!

Originally Posted by DigiTechSupt

Now, as far as it being too sensitive to these interrupts - that's something that may be the case. The engineer that implemented the code is back in the office now, so I'll be speaking to him and a few others about what can be done for those experiencing 6031's. Since no one was willing to work with us directly (let us see your system to test and determine which software/hardware was causing the interrupts), we have only our beta team and others that we've been able to work with in-house. ALL cases, as I indicated before, were solvable and it invariably came down to drivers, hardware misconfiguration or some other system configuration setting. What are certain people ignoring this evidence entirely and still shouting about 8.0.1 being a P.O.S., exactly?

As the previous poster also mentioned... This would be completely appalling if this is the first time you are mentioning something to the engineer about what can be done for the people experiencing 6031's after all this time!

Also about seeing our systems directly, thats not the issue. The issue is the program has run fine for years on our systems and now you're saying its our fault because of an oversensitive error message. The key word here is OVERSENSITIVE. If every time you got a tiny bit of static in a phone call, the phone company cut your call off you'd be pissed. Now imagine you don't get static and the phone company still cuts your phone calls off.

[Fullsound Recording]

If I can be down for a week and help you help me,, then ill send my box in.

But insured both way guys..... I will pull the Accell cards and pack them in a seprate box of course as the cards would surly get destroyed on the way in or back..


digi support is so awesome man

Im there!

Call me / email me guys, and ill make it work.

thanks so much for your willingness to go over and above here.

thanks

:)



Jeff Herrmann
(FSR) Fullsound Recording
Seattle, Wa.
206.841.5997
www.fullsoundrecording.com
[email protected]

[DigiTechSupt]

Second - yes, you are right - " it's computer configuration at 'fault' with 6031's" but the problem is much deeper IMO - who cares how you call it, 6031, "disk too slow" or "change buffer settings" - those errors shouldn't appear on our systems, simply because othar DAWs work perfectly.

Again, a misguided (misinformed) evaluation - we are NOT like any other DAW. There are fundamental differences, as you can see. We have always taken an audio integrity 'high road', if you will - back when Pro Tools was designed, computers weren't truly up to the task of doing audio, so we put in safeguards that would throw an error rather than let clicks/pops get into the audio. We still maintain that philosophy. Early DAWs had problems with this - the ones that could even record audio, that is. Progress with computer speeds and engineering have progressed to the point where it's not as much of an issue as it used to be, so this argument becomes less relevant - but I still wanted to relate it as a point of references.

The other difference is that we use a real-time engine vs. a block processing one. The difference there is that we're more sensitive to anything that interrupts Pro Tools processing. Other DAWs aren't as sensitive, but there are tradeoffs for it - I don't have the time to go into details, but if you dig into understanding how they process audio and all other signals, the shortcomings should be relatively apparent. And whether they 'work perfectly' is more a matter of where you're willing to compromise. I think there are just tradeoffs being made - every app has it's shortcomings, some are just more apparent than others - which also speaks volumes about what most people actually understand about what they're DAW is doing.

With that said, there certainly are some nifty tricks being used to make other DAWs less sensitive that could be integrated into Pro Tools - and that's something we're working toward.

So, you can't really compare Pro Tools to other DAWs and say 'XXX works, so should Pro Tools'. It's not the same at all. Eventually maybe we'll move our entire engine to one that does block processing, but currently we're a completely different animal than all other DAWs.

In this case, however, I highly doubt we're going to revert to previous behavior. Knowing we fixed what could be a problem for some, at the expense of exposing systems that are not configured as well as they could be, is a decision I think we can live with. We know it's difficult to understand sitting where you are - and I don't have any magic balm to apply to make everything better. All I know is what I've told you. Yes, it sucks to be the one in your shoes, having to figure out what it is about your system causing the problem, but we do know it's solvable (at least in every case we've experienced). This is one of the not-so-great points about PC's - it being an open platform, the quality and quantity of hardware and drivers can be mind-boggling. One errant driver can bring down the whole system. Sometimes the only way to determine what's going on is to see the computer and run some diagnostics, especially in cases where the system is not one specifically off our compatibility grid.

You are joking, aren't you? Or you are just telling us that NOW you are talking about it at all? When it all started? And you are waiting for what?

What I meant is that he's back in after being out for at least a week (possibly more - paternity leave). We've been discussing this all along, as you could see if you've followed the dozen or so threads discussing this issue (all seemingly created by the same 4-6 people who are experiencing this...I bring that up because it's crazy that I have to respond to so many threads with the same info over and over, using time that could be better spent...I mean, I understand the anger and frustration, but it's doing no one any good to spread this between so many threads, especially as far as getting info critical to a solution goes..). The only thing that can be discussed is determining possible ways to get to the bottom of your configuration issues - possibly a diagnostic tool, or the viability of giving you diagnostic software and showing you how to use it. Or possibly finding a way to get someone out to personally look at your system.

And FWIW I rarely, if ever, joke about work matters.

I understand that this offer is for US customers, not me from Eastern Europe?

Not necessarily. Where in Eastern Europe are you, exactly?

[DigiTechSupt]

I appreciate the response, but I think Digi's stand on this is a little warped. Yes in theory its my computers fault that the program is having interrupts as you say, but these interrupts present no problems to me running Pro Tools other then these error messages. You have taken these interrupts that created absolutely no problems in the past and have now created a problem.

But, but - did you read what I've written? Why are you glossing over the fact that I keep stating that this fix was implemented to avoid possible problems that we identified with clicks/pops during playback that may also, in certain circumstances, get printed to audio?

True - you, personally, may not have experienced the problem. However, the fact that you're getting these errors means that you were just as much at risk for pops/clicks and either never noticed them (some can be extremely short - too short to hear) or were high enough above the error threshold to avoid them. At the very least, we now know that your system is likely to experience the issue, given you're experiencing the errors after the fix was implemented.

Yes its MY computers fault that it doesnt run your oddly coded new program properly. It ran all your other programs fine, but its all my computers fault now.

What else can I say? I mean, I've explained what we fixed, what cause the problem (interrupts), where the problem originates (device drivers, software, hardware, etc) and that the solution is to identify the source and disable or update the driver or hardware that causing the interrupts. If that doesn't clearly identify where the problem lies, I'm not sure what else I can add to make it any more apparent.

I've offered every bit of support we can give - what more can I do to fix this? We're not going to change to code - that would just be trading one set of upset customers for another (the ones whose problems we solved with this fix..).

[DigiTechSupt]

Originally Posted by Fullsound Recording

If I can be down for a week and help you help me,, then ill send my box in.

But insured both way guys..... I will pull the Accell cards and pack them in a seprate box of course as the cards would surly get destroyed on the way in or back..


digi support is so awesome man

Im there!

Call me / email me guys, and ill make it work.

thanks so much for your willingness to go over and above here.

thanks

:)



Jeff Herrmann
(FSR) Fullsound Recording
Seattle, Wa.
206.841.5997
www.fullsoundrecording.com
[email protected]

Jeff -

Let me get things coordinated here - I'm actually going to see if we have someone that can visit you, since it's likely we have a rep up there that may be available to help.

I'll talk to all the parties necessary to pull this off quickly and smoothly and we'll coordinate with you for when and where...hang tight...