Protools Freezing while Mixing Mac Studio M1 Ultra

[sidelinerecords]

Pro Tools Studio 2022.6
Apollo X8P & Satellite Octo - Thunderbolt 3

Mac Studio3,2
Apple M1 Ultra
20 Cores (16 performance and 4 efficiency)
macOS 12.5
64 GB Memory



Peripherals:
MX Keys Keyboard - USB Dongle

M570 Track Ball - USB Dongle

Tascam DM3200 - USB (HUI Remote)


Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD 2TB - M.2 NVMe with Enclosure (Protools Drive) - Thunderbolt 3

Free: 585.61 GB (585,608,937,472 bytes)
Capacity: 2 TB (2,000,054,960,128 bytes)
Mount Point: /Volumes/SLR Mobile
File System: Journaled HFS+
Writable: Yes
Ignore Ownership: Yes
BSD Name: disk4s2
Volume UUID: 4D4D3747-3708-37D9-A0B4-B7A48B440C0E
Physical Drive:
Device Name: SSD 970 EVO
Media Name: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Media
Protocol: USB
Internal: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)

Problem:
Began on the 18th while running through mixes for a project I'm finishing up. Noticed that Pro Tools, and sessions took quite a bit longer than usual to load, since I've had the new system (about 3 months).


Once in the session, plug-in windows were opening slower than usual. Opening System usage I saw that Cores 9-11 held at 30% usage, but overall system usage was RED and at 100%.
I went to hit playback again, and I got the "remove some plugins" error. I deactivated ALL plugins in the session, but the system usage remained at 100%. I went to save again, and Pro Tools froze, so I Force Quit the application. Reopened the session a few more times with mixed results. Sometimes I would be able to run the session for a bit, before freezing. Another time, it froze when I went to bounce the session. Another time I tried saving (while playing audio) and PT froze while playing a split second loop like a machine gun.



Opened a different session, started mixing and the sum of the previous issues arose.



When I hit ⌘+S (or ^+⌘+s) it immediately freezes to a machine gun sounding loop of audio repeatedly until I force quit Protools.

Freezes when I try to bounce audio as well.


Troubleshooting steps:
Removed plugins, replaced them in batches by company,

Reinstalled Pro Tools 2022.6
Reinstalled Rosetta 2

Trashed the prefs
Reinstalled & Updated all plugins
Verified Optimization
Removed Tascam (HUI)
Removed EVO SSD and Launched same sessions from internal SSD
Removed Interface & Satellite

Verified Ilok and other plugin Authorizations are up to date


Diagnostic reports:
I have few reports. Should I just copy and paste them here? In the meantime, here are a few screen grabs.


Thanks In Advance!

[GoButtonGuy]

We have similar wonkiness with my M1 Pro. Ours is with getting the cpu error with plenty of cpu left. Freezing tracks without rebooting doesn’t help if the session is already throwing errors. Doing a “save as” to generate a new session doesn’t help either.

Monterey 12.5 isn’t yet qualified. Same sessions, plugs, etc on an Intel Mac show no issues. We’re chacking it up to running unqualified under Rosetta. It’s pretty frustrating at times because things that worked great while working on the same session even that day don’t work as expected.

One thing we’ve found is when there is a multi channel renderer, in our case the Atmos or L-isa Studio, it’s more common. On a less capable Intel Mac no issues. What I’m doing is not upgrading the OS and keeping in sync with the latest qualified release and hoping that does the trick. It’s a drag to have a powerful machine and have these issues particulaly when other similar tools like Live and Logic don’t have these issues.

I don’t have a solution other than to say you aren’t alone.

[s.d. finley]

If you use AutoTune Unlimited there is an issue with the latest version. You have to roll back to the one before.

[Obsidian Dragon]

Several others have reported the issue when pressing ⌘+S. This seems to be a common problem. Is there a work around instead of pressing ⌘+S? Sorry to sound stupid but I don't normally use the ⌘+S key combination in my workflow. I'm old school and just use "File" "Save."

[Ben Jenssen]

I guess one could use prefs/operation/autobackup to aviod ⌘+S if that's a problem. Kind of a workaround.

[Darryl Ramm]

Thanks for providing lots of great detail and posting this here, out of where it was lost in that other thread.

What IO buffer size and sample rate are you running at?

Make sure "ignore errors" is *not* checked... you want reliable triggering of AAE errors while troubleshooting.

Originally Posted by sidelinerecords

Problem:
Began on the 18th while running through mixes for a project I'm finishing up. Noticed that Pro Tools, and sessions took quite a bit longer than usual to load, since I've had the new system (about 3 months).

What could have changed? Do you have macOS auto update disabled, etc? Did you update anything?

Pro Tools and sessions take longer to load... do you mean that Pro Tools itself also took longer if you don't open a session? Do you notice anything on the splash screen taking longer to happen? Especially an individual plugin to load. If so that might be sign of corrupted preferences or a plugin problem. Also do you notice Activity Monitor CPU meters doing anything unusual without a session open?

The first thing to do is always just trash prefs, use Pete Gates PT Prefs utility makes this easier to do (and get correct). After you trash prefs the next Pro Tools startup will take a long time while Pro Tools rebuilds it's plugin cache. If Pro Tools has been slow to start up itself, then exit after the first restart and try again and see if it's now back to starting up as fast as it was originally (again here talking about Pro Tools startup separate from a session).

I know you say you trashed prefs, but like many of your other comments you don't say what happened or how/why you are making decisions to try different things. ANd here I'm specifically asking you to use trashing prefs to see if it makes a difference in Pro Tools startup times without a session and with a sesion. But you need to trash prefs, then start Pro Tools, then exit. Then start again to see if there is a change in startup performance.

And keep trashing prefs between trying different other troubleshooting stuff.

Once in the session, plug-in windows were opening slower than usual. Opening System usage I saw that Cores 9-11 held at 30% usage, but overall system usage was RED and at 100%.
I went to hit playback again, and I got the "remove some plugins" error. I deactivated ALL plugins in the session, but the system usage remained at 100%. I went to save again, and Pro Tools froze, so I Force Quit the application. Reopened the session a few more times with mixed results. Sometimes I would be able to run the session for a bit, before freezing. Another time, it froze when I went to bounce the session. Another time I tried saving (while playing audio) and PT froze while playing a split second loop like a machine gun.

The Pro Tools system usage metering suffers from problems, as some of us have been pointing out on DUC for years. You are better off looking at MacOS activity monitor. That might give a little more useful clue here (or might not).

CPU meters are also not helpful in many cases because they don't show the low-level latency problems that actually cause a AAE CPU error, but sometimes they show stuff going crazy, and that may be the case here... but lets rely more on Activity Monitor meters.

Troubleshooting steps:
Removed plugins, replaced them in batches by company,

Great! Plugins are the big suspect here, CPU problems, problems saving sessions... all point to plugins as a suspect.

But what happened? If you remove all third party plugins and things like Command-S now works? ...if so then that is pretty clear evidence that you do have a faulty plugin (plugin code gets called when Pro Tools saves a session).

Ideally remove all .aaxplugin files from the plugin folder, the trash prefs (esp. to delete the PT plugin cache in case that might be corrupted), then restart pro tools

Reinstalled & Updated all plugins

That's maybe a good thing to try, *if* removing all plugins had allowed Command-S to then saves a session OK. If not then the problem is not a plugin (next thing to exclude would be a corrupt session). And if you suspected plugins enough to reinstall/update them then you should probably have keep at troubleshooting them...

[QUOTE]
Trashed the prefs
Reinstalled Pro Tools 2022.6
Reinstalled Rosetta 2
Verified Optimization
Removed Tascam (HUI)
Removed EVO SSD and Launched same sessions from internal SSD
Removed Interface & Satellite
Verified Ilok and other plugin Authorizations are up to date
[QUOTE]

Unfortunately some of the stuff you have been trying is likely not good use of your time. Especially reinstalling Rosetta, removing HUI and iLok/licensing stuff. Resist the urge to chase Unicorns, ... troubleshooting for corrupt prefs, plugin problems, corrupt session, interface/satellite problems,... all great stuff, but if totally stuck then after carefully troubleshooting all that and hopefully talking to Avid support I'd be jumping straight to doing a clean install of macOS--on a spare drive or container volume so as not to lose anything on the current boot image.

For now I'd likely be focusing more on plugins. You *maybe* can turn up stuff there from more testing (depends on exactly what you've done and saw and so far I can't follow the troubleshooting/decision process here -- please help me do that). And yes it might be Pro Tools is borked, but Plugins cause so many frigging problems and they are one thing we have control over using or not.. so that's the thing to really exclude/include carefully.

I don't see any mention of troubleshooting the session... CPU errors, slow startups, problem saving, with problems happening at some point in time and persisting... all could be consistent with some session corruption issues. Do problems only happen with this session? What about other sessions? What if you do a Save Copy In of the current badly behaving session, restart Pro Tools and open that new copy session? What happens starting with a new empty session (not a template and not a clone/copy of anything, just totally empty) and adding content there?

You likely should be in touch with Avid support already... and once you get a case started please post the case number here. That may help get things looked at, or may help others who also need to open cases for similar problems.

Diagnostic reports:
I have few reports. Should I just copy and paste them here? In the meantime, here are a few screen grabs.

Unfortunately the screenshots are illegible, these are all App Crash reports from your killing/Force Quitting Pro Tools right... they *might* show something interesting. That Rosetta is busy is likely not interesting. If Pro Tools and/or it's plugin is thrashing, Rosetta being busy is not a surprise. I'd rather see actual text than screen shots, can you put the crash reports on file sharing site and post the link here. It's a gamble if something will stand out that I can see, but you will likely want to get these reports to Avid Support.

Besides the application crash report you might have useful info in the Pro Tools logs ~/Library/Logs/Avid/Pro_Tools*. Especially if you can find some old logs from before you started to have problems and compare them to now where you do. It's hard, no way to say what exactly you are looking for, but I've seen plugin errors jumping out in the logs.

[sidelinerecords]

What IO buffer size and sample rate are you running at?

48kHz 32 Bit Float 1024 Samples for the buffer size

Make sure "ignore errors" is *not* checked... you want reliable triggering of AAE errors while troubleshooting.

OK

What could have changed? Do you have macOS auto update disabled, etc? Did you update anything?

I did perform a MacOS "security" update.

Pro Tools and sessions take longer to load... do you mean that Pro Tools itself also took longer if you don't open a session? Do you notice anything on the splash screen taking longer to happen? Especially an individual plugin to load. If so that might be sign of corrupted preferences or a plugin problem. Also do you notice Activity Monitor CPU meters doing anything unusual without a session open?

Nothing specific hanging on the splash screen. The app icon bounces quite a bit, whereas typically, there isn't a bounce at all. Protools is hanging at about 70% CPU usage, even in a clean session.

I know you say you trashed prefs, but like many of your other comments you don't say what happened or how/why you are making decisions to try different things. ANd here I'm specifically asking you to use trashing prefs to see if it makes a difference in Pro Tools startup times without a session and with a sesion. But you need to trash prefs, then start Pro Tools, then exit. Then start again to see if there is a change in startup performance.

My method was trying all of what is described on the help page. If nothing works/changes I move on to the next suggestion. I'll try trashing prefs on my next round of troubleshooting.

Unfortunately some of the stuff you have been trying is likely not good use of your time. Especially reinstalling Rosetta, removing HUI and iLok/licensing stuff. Resist the urge to chase Unicorns, ... troubleshooting for corrupt prefs, plugin problems, corrupt session, interface/satellite problems,... all great stuff, but if totally stuck then after carefully troubleshooting all that and hopefully talking to Avid support I'd be jumping straight to doing a clean install of macOS--on a spare drive or container volume so as not to lose anything on the current boot image.

I followed the guidance of unplugging all peripherals etc. But admittedly a bit panicked considering I'm at the tail end of a large project, and this was the last thing I was expecting to deal with. Gearing up to send Avid Support as much info as I can.

I don't see any mention of troubleshooting the session... CPU errors, slow startups, problem saving, with problems happening at some point in time and persisting... all could be consistent with some session corruption issues. Do problems only happen with this session? What about other sessions? What if you do a Save Copy In of the current badly behaving session, restart Pro Tools and open that new copy session? What happens starting with a new empty session (not a template and not a clone/copy of anything, just totally empty) and adding content there?

Every session has the problem at this point. Whether or not I have plugins activated.

Unfortunately the screenshots are illegible, these are all App Crash reports from your killing/Force Quitting Pro Tools right... they *might* show something interesting. That Rosetta is busy is likely not interesting. If Pro Tools and/or it's plugin is thrashing, Rosetta being busy is not a surprise. I'd rather see actual text than screen shots, can you put the crash reports on file sharing site and post the link here. It's a gamble if something will stand out that I can see, but you will likely want to get these reports to Avid Support.

Besides the application crash report you might have useful info in the Pro Tools logs ~/Library/Logs/Avid/Pro_Tools*. Especially if you can find some old logs from before you started to have problems and compare them to now where you do. It's hard, no way to say what exactly you are looking for, but I've seen plugin errors jumping out in the logs.[/QUOTE]

Linked the logs since everything started here. I habe no Idea whaty I would be looking at TBH. https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...dU?usp=sharing


Thanks Again.

[sidelinerecords]

What IO buffer size and sample rate are you running at?

48kHz, 32bit Float, 1024 Samples

What could have changed? Do you have macOS auto update disabled, etc? Did you update anything?

I did perform the MacOS Security update on the 18th, prior to these problems.

Pro Tools and sessions take longer to load... do you mean that Pro Tools itself also took longer if you don't open a session? Do you notice anything on the splash screen taking longer to happen? Especially an individual plugin to load. If so that might be sign of corrupted preferences or a plugin problem. Also do you notice Activity Monitor CPU meters doing anything unusual without a session open?

Usually the app icon bounces 3-4 times max before the splash screen. Since this has been happening, a minimum of about 25-30 bounces. Splash screen doesn't seem to hang at any process for a concerning amount of time.

I know you say you trashed prefs, but like many of your other comments you don't say what happened or how/why you are making decisions to try different things. ANd here I'm specifically asking you to use trashing prefs to see if it makes a difference in Pro Tools startup times without a session and with a sesion. But you need to trash prefs, then start Pro Tools, then exit. Then start again to see if there is a change in startup performance.

I followed the directions in General Troubleshooting guides. Admittedly in a panic, since this is the tail end of a large (and grueling) project. Basically if it didn't work, or didn't seem to improve the situation, I went on to the next step.

That's maybe a good thing to try, *if* removing all plugins had allowed Command-S to then saves a session OK. If not then the problem is not a plugin (next thing to exclude would be a corrupt session). And if you suspected plugins enough to reinstall/update them then you should probably have keep at troubleshooting them...

Removing Plugins didn't appear to clear up the issue, even in a clean session. I can't tell you what part of me developed the notion that "new update" meant "works better" (or at all)... I've got Legacy systems/software all the way back to G5 that I know better than to update. Something about the speed of this machine lulled me into slipping up, and I'm paying for it in real time.

You likely should be in touch with Avid support already... and once you get a case started please post the case number here. That may help get things looked at, or may help others who also need to open cases for similar problems.

Putting everything together for Avid Support now. Got a little discouraged/unmotivated over the weekend, lol

Unfortunately the screenshots are illegible, these are all App Crash reports from your killing/Force Quitting Pro Tools right... they *might* show something interesting. That Rosetta is busy is likely not interesting. If Pro Tools and/or it's plugin is thrashing, Rosetta being busy is not a surprise. I'd rather see actual text than screen shots, can you put the crash reports on file sharing site and post the link here. It's a gamble if something will stand out that I can see, but you will likely want to get these reports to Avid Support.

Besides the application crash report you might have useful info in the Pro Tools logs ~/Library/Logs/Avid/Pro_Tools*. Especially if you can find some old logs from before you started to have problems and compare them to now where you do. It's hard, no way to say what exactly you are looking for, but I've seen plugin errors jumping out in the logs.[/QUOTE]

I've attached file link here, couldn't tell you what I'm looking at/for.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...dU?usp=sharing


I appreciate all the help. I'll report back with any info from Avid.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by sidelinerecords

What IO buffer size and sample rate are you running at?
Usually the app icon bounces 3-4 times max before the splash screen. Since this has been happening, a minimum of about 25-30 bounces. Splash screen doesn't seem to hang at any process for a concerning amount of time.

A very quick comment. An icon bouncing a lot can be caused by macOS Gatekeeper checking an app's digital signature with Apple revocation servers. I have no clue what is happening here but one test to try is disconnect your mac from any networks and see if Pro Tools starts up faster, unfortunately just unplugging Ethernet or disconnecting from WiFi might not be enough, some VPN and other software may set up might mess things up.

You can do a simple test in Terminal of

$ ping ocsp.apple.com

If those servers responds to pings within a few 10's of ms that's great, if it fails fairly quickly (typically with ping: sendto: No route to host/Request timeout for icmp_seq 110 errors) when you have no networks connected... also great since ping knows it can't reach the Internet/those servers. If it hangs for a long time/is really slow then something is wrong.

(an example of network confusion I've inflicted on myself is with iPhones connected by cable or Bluetooth to a Mac... with the iPhone trying to route data over wireless. If that wireless connection is terrible/spotty bad things can happen)

I'll look at the logs later.

[sidelinerecords]

Gotcha. Pings returning all around 10ms.