EZ Drummer demo CRASHING pro tools

[variantboy]

Installed the EZ Drummer demo, and if i try using it as an insert on an instrument track - Pro Tools Crashes. 100% of the time.

The stand alone application runs fine.

The plugin for Logic works fine (vst?)

I'd upload the crash file but it's 800k, and it seems the uploader does not allow compressed files.

My system :
Macbook Pro 17" - Mid 2010
2.66 Intel Core i7
4GB Memory
OS X Yosemite 10.10.3
Pro Tools 11.3.1

Im not a logic user and i'm hoping to get the demo working so i can be sure i am interested in this program - i'm really close to giving up. I have re-installed Yosemite... i have uninstalled pro-tools and cleaned out every library file on the HD and in my user account.. and then reinstalled pro tools. Uninstalled the demo and reinstalled it. Im having no luck.

Please help.

thanks in advance

[Darryl Ramm]

4GB may just not be enough. Although that would be disappointing. Anyhow 4GB really is not enough for many uses of Pro Tools 11. You want 8GB minimum, maybe 16 GB if working with video.

Can you open other sessions work with Pro Tools OK if you don't use this plugin?

Try moving all other third party plugins out of the Pro Tools plugin folder (yes third party ones, even those you are not using, actually you can move them all out and Pro Tools will put back it's standard plugins magically, then you can move back just the EZ Drummer one.)

Make sure you are not testing wiht the same session every time, a corrupt session can easily crash Pro Tools.

Create a new empty session not from template and make sure you are inserting the ES Drummer plugin on an *Instrument* track, not an audio or MIDI track. make sure the session is otherwise boring, like pick a sample rate of 44.1 kHz.

Try using the Mac's "Built-In Output" as the Pro Tools playback engine.

You may get further/faster on the Toontrack forum or with Toontrack support.

[variantboy]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

4GB may just not be enough. Although that would be disappointing. Anyhow 4GB really is not enough for many uses of Pro Tools 11. You want 8GB minimum, maybe 16 GB if working with video.

Can you open other sessions work with Pro Tools OK if you don't use this plugin?

Try moving all other third party plugins out of the Pro Tools plugin folder (yes third party ones, even those you are not using, actually you can move them all out and Pro Tools will put back it's standard plugins magically, then you can move back just the EZ Drummer one.)

Make sure you are not testing wiht the same session every time, a corrupt session can easily crash Pro Tools.

Create a new empty session not from template and make sure you are inserting the ES Drummer plugin on an *Instrument* track, not an audio or MIDI track. make sure the session is otherwise boring, like pick a sample rate of 44.1 kHz.

Try using the Mac's "Built-In Output" as the Pro Tools playback engine.

You may get further/faster on the Toontrack forum or with Toontrack support.

yes - i can open other projects for sure - with many tracks and many plugins. no problems. there were a few occasions where i could not instantiate an ableton live rewire plugin instance - but that stopped being a problem.

am already using a clean session for each test, built in output, 44.1... and am definitely placing it on an instrument track. Still same behavior each time.

I have consulted with the ToonTrack folks, and they've even examined the crash log. They said they could not tell much from the crash log... but suggested something with modifying/deleting the user preferences, but i followed their advice... and it didn't solve the problem.

If it's a memory problem - why does the plugin work with Logic / VST ? and why does the stand alone EZ Drummer app work with no hitches ? I guess it's possible PT manages memory differently than other apps? does something really intensive upon loading up a new instrument track ??

Im a little confused with your suggestion about moving the third party plugins... "even the ones you aren't using"... and then moving just the EZ drummer plugin back. Does this suggest *another* plugin might be messing up the process??? that doesn't seem intuitive to me. Instantiating a specific plugin should make PT invoke JUST that plugin, no ?

man - the toontracks stuff looks like it would be preferable to me to the NI stuff... and NI doesn't even offer a demo. I'd hate to buy that and be in the same boat with studio drummer. ugh. what a drag.

[TOM@METRO]

EZ drummer has been unstable for me here, so for now, I use mostly Addictive Drums. There may have been updates though since the last time I tried EZ.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by variantboy

Im a little confused with your suggestion about moving the third party plugins... "even the ones you aren't using"... and then moving just the EZ drummer plugin back. Does this suggest *another* plugin might be messing up the process??? that doesn't seem intuitive to me. Instantiating a specific plugin should make PT invoke JUST that plugin, no ?

Nope. All plugins load when you start up Pro Tools, they all get to use real memory and run code and are supposed to behave themselves. Emphasis on supposed to. When debugging plugins you want to remove all third party plugin files from the plugin folder (just move *everything* out to some temp folder, Pro Tools will put back it's own plugins). Then put the plugins you need back in groups/individually and see if that works better.

This may not be related to your problem at all, I have no way of guessing, but doing this is a very useful test. And if youv'e been unisntalling and reinstalling Pro Tools and had any third party plugins in place all this time, they will have been there across each install (not if you wiped the system disk and did a clean OS X install however).

Superior Drummer and EZ Drummer have been very stable for me on Pro Tools 9 and 10. I really like that software, it will be a pity if they have broken stuff with 11. Make sure you try re-downloading the latest EZ Drummer installers from ToonTracks. Do the bare minimum install (no expansion packs) and test that.

[variantboy]

ok. thanks for the explanation. in any case - i tried your suggestion - it did not solve the problem.

Inevitably, on both the toontrack and avid forums, I'm met with responders telling me that their setup works just fine - EZ Drummer, Protools 11, and Yosemite. Aside from it giving me a few moments of painful jealousy and disenchantment (haha).. it makes me think it's something specific to my laptop... which of course give me more jealousy and disenchantment.

rats.

i'm having no luck whatsoever... and i really like what i see and hear in the toontrack stuff... and not so much from the demos i see with NI.. and of course, i have no idea if NI will work either.

perhaps i need to just get some additional memory and see if that works. that said - with activity monitor up - i repeat this process and i see no spikes in memory use in pro tools or any other processes. the "memory pressure" monitor stays green and shows no sign of any issues. wouldn't some sort of evidence of an application attempting to grab memory that the system didn't have ??

thanks for your help so far. i'm determined to get this to work... but so far...i'm starting to lose hope.

[variantboy]

Latest -

Installed a trial of Addictive Drums - and it works fine. Can't say i was as impressed with the sounds i was hearing from that as much as the toontrack stuff - but i think that's solely limited to the library made available for the demo.

Interesting.. the mystery is clearly not solved.. but.. at least i have something i think i can work with.

[bradch00]

Originally Posted by TOM@METRO

EZ drummer has been unstable for me here, so for now, I use mostly Addictive Drums. There may have been updates though since the last time I tried EZ.

Yes I remember when you were getting crashes with EZD, since then EZD2 has been rock solid for me on PT10, 11 and (errr yes I did) 12.

[TOM@METRO]

Thanks Brad.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by variantboy

If it's a memory problem - why does the plugin work with Logic / VST ? and why does the stand alone EZ Drummer app work with no hitches ? I guess it's possible PT manages memory differently than other apps? does something really intensive upon loading up a new instrument track ??

Well to state the obvious, the actual code running in a AAX plugin is different than a VST plugin, so they can behave in different ways and certainly have very different bugs, even if they are developed using some common toolkit (and I have no idea what Toontracks uses for development).

You can't really exclude the plugins having a memory related problem by looking at the systems usage stats. The usual thing to look at with the Activity Monitor is the "Page Out" stats. If that is increasing then your system is having to evict dirty pages out of memory to make space. Stats like free memory etc. are often not that useful. But an individual program can try to allocate memory etc. and fail for a variety of reasons and you'll never see it.

I hope you are using the latest AAX EZ Drummer plugins and not trying to use the VST plugins though any VST translation software.

And I would hope that a single small session using say just one instrument track and EZ Drummer should work even on a 4GB system.

You may well run into other problems with only 4GB and given memory pricing but I would be looking at upgrading your MacBook Pro to the maximum memory possible (8GB in the case of this MBP).

The crash log should hopefully give Toontrack some information, I saw your thread on their forum. And they responded to it. Hopefully they have access to tools from Avid, and had a good look at it. Other users here can't really help you with those Pro Tools crash logs, you need to go to Avid support for help with that.

What you always want to do if chasing a problem is keep iterating to the minimum/simplest baseline/recommended config. e.g. remove any other third party plugins, and leave them uninstalled, trash preferences (make sure you follow this instructions for your particular OS X release-- see under troubleshooting steps under the "Help ups help you...' link up the top of this web page. Then try other things, and try trashing prefs again between other tests. One other test to try is to create another admin account on OS X. Log into that and test from there (again starting with an empty session, not from a template, not a copy of an exiting session).

Overall I would have done what you have already done but I would have grabbed a spare drive (e.g. an external Firewire 800 drive in this case) and been ultra conservative and done a clean full Mountain Lion (10.8.5) install. Yosemite leaves me a little cold with apparently too many issues, and I'm not sure why so many users want to rush to upgrade to it. Install Pro Tools 11.3.1 on that and then the EZ Drummer 2 install. Don't install anything else and definitely do *not* use system migration assassin (assistant) to restore anything to that new install before testing (and later only use that to move user files, never apps, drivers, libraries, etc.).