Pro Tools keeps asking me to increase H/W Buffer soze

[Dopamine Dreamz]

I keep getting an error message saying that I need to increase my H/W buffer size but it’s turned all the way up already. I’ve switched to a simpler template and removed plug-ins already. I’m not sure what to do. Please help!!!

[Darryl Ramm]

Hi, Welcome to DUC.

You'll need to do some troubleshooting. Have a read of the optimization and troubleshooting steps under "Help Us help You" up the top of each DUC web page.

Your system is under-configured and should really have 16GB minimum an if you are making use of sample based virtual instruments (VIs) (which consume lots of memory) you might need significantly more than that. You can try troubleshooting for now but you are likely to run into problems with larger sessions. And yes some of these problems will exactly show up as CPU errors (caused by latency as memory pages back in from SSD). The first thing to look at is the memory pressure chart in the Mac System Activity app. Is the chart all green? if not how long does it leave the green for? What does it look like when Pro Tools crashes with the CPU/HW Buffer error?

Make sure your system is optimized. Do everything for now, however inconvenient.

Troubleshooting always starts with trashing prefs, grab a copy of Pete Gates free PTPrefs2 app to make that easier.

These kind of problems are often related to plugins (which can mess with/do anything to Pro Tools even by just being installed and you not using them).

Make sure no other apps are running. Chrome as one example can eat many GB or memory.

You start excluding/including plugins as issues by moving all .aaxplugin files out of the plugin directory, trashing prefs, and start pro tools--which will automagically put back the core plugins. And then test to see if Pro Tools then runs stably and smaller HW Buffer sizes (and it might not say ever run perfectly reliably at the smallest H/W Buffer sizes). Test starting with new empty sessions. Test with Built-In Outrput or Mac Speakers as the playback engine, create a new admin account and repeat all the tests from there.

But even if you manage to get this working I would expect you to run into problems in the future because the system is under configured. Since it's a Mac with fixed memory you'll have to look at purchasing another Mac to solve this or looking at keeping what you do very simple, maybe avoiding use of sample based VIs (you might be able to run say one at a time and then commit/freeze that VI).