Music randomly stops playing unless Playback Engine Buffer size is changed

[jmac146]

Hi all,

I have a rather ancient setup of PT 11.3.1 but its been working well for me minus a couple of things - one of those being that although there are no error messages, randomly there will be no sound that comes out of my speakers. The only way to make the sound come back is to close/open PT again, or, simply to change the H/W Buffer size in the playback engine. not a major issue, but annoying none-the-less. it happened on my old ancient desktop and also now on my newer ASUS laptop, so doesn't seem to be PC Hardware related. I use an MBOX PRO Firewire.

Any ideas are appreciated. Thanks!

[nsureit]

Your playback engine may be buggered.

[albee1952]

Tough to offer any advice with almost zero information on the setup Look near the top of this(and every DUC) page for the link named Help Us Help You and have a good read.

[jmac146]

Here's my sandra report. There are no error messages that occur in PT on either old or new computer. I am using the Mbox Pro Firewire...
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...box_3_Pro.html

As mentioned in initial post, the music stops randomly, not performing any actions, just simply listening to the playback of the music. Once I switch the buffer (to any buffer size) it works again for a short time.

Let me know if there are any other details needed to help. Thanks -

SiSoftware Sandra

ID
Host Name : LAPTOP-E3KA58ML
Workgroup : WORKGROUP

Computer
Model : ASUS N501VW
Serial Number : G3N0CX0********
Chassis : ASUS Notebook
Mainboard : ASUS N501VW
Serial Number : BSN1234567**********
BIOS : AMI (OEM) N501VW.307 04/17/2019
Intel Management Engine (ME) : 11.0.0.1180
TPM - Trusted Platform Module : Intel 2.0

System Memory
Total Memory : 16GB SO-DIMM DDR4

Processors
Processor : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz (4C 8T 3.29GHz, 3.3GHz/3.5GHz IMC, 4x 256kB L2, 6MB L3)
Socket/Slot : FC BGA1440

Chipset
Memory Controller : ASUS Core6H (Skylake-H QC) Mobile Host Bridge/DRAM Registers 100MHz, 2x 8GB SO-DIMM DDR4 2.13GHz 128-bit, Integrated Graphics

Memory Module(s)
Memory Module : Samsung M471A1G43DB0-CPB 8GB SO-DIMM DDR4 2Rx8 PC4-17100SO DDR4-2132 (15-15-15-36 4-51-16-5)

Video System
Monitor/Panel : LG Generic PnP Monitor (3840x2160, LP156UD1-SPB1, 15.5")
Video Adapter : Intel(R) HD Graphics 530 (192S 24C SM5.5 350MHz/1GHz, 768kB L2, 2GB DDR4 2.13GHz 128-bit, Integrated Graphics)

Graphics Processor
OpenCL : NVIDIA Corporation GeForce GTX 960M (640S 5C SM1.2 1.18GHz, 2GB)
OpenCL : Intel(R) HD Graphics 530 (192S 24C SM2.0 350MHz/1GHz, 512kB L2, 6.4GB DDR4 2.13GHz 128-bit, Integrated Graphics)
D3D 11 : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M (2GB)
OpenGL : NVIDIA Corporation GeForce GTX 960M/PCIe/SSE2 (2GB)

Pen & Touch
Touch : Integrated
Multi-Touch : Yes
Simultaneous Touches : 10
Pen Digitiser : External

Storage Devices
Disk : SAMSUNG MZVPV512HDGL-00000 (512.1GB, PCIe3x4, M.2, SSD)

Logical Storage Devices
Hard Disk (C:) : 476GB (NTFS, 4kB) @ SAMSUNG MZVPV512HDGL-00000 (512.1GB, PCIe3x4, M.2, SSD)
Hard Disk : 633MB (NTFS, 4kB) @ SAMSUNG MZVPV512HDGL-00000 (512.1GB, PCIe3x4, M.2, SSD)
SYSTEM : 256MB (FAT32, 4kB) @ SAMSUNG MZVPV512HDGL-00000 (512.1GB, PCIe3x4, M.2, SSD)

Storage System
Storage Pool : Primordial (477GB)

Peripherals
LPC Hub Controller : ASUS HM170 (Sunrise Point) LPC Controller
Audio Device : ASUS ICH100 (Sunrise Point-H) HD Audio
Audio Codec : Realtek Semi 0668
Audio Codec : 32768 0000
Disk Controller : ASUS ICH100 (Sunrise Point-H) SATA Controller [AHCI mode]
Disk Controller : ASUS ICH100 (Sunrise Point-H) PMC
Disk Controller : Samsung PM963 2.5" NVMe PCIe SSD
USB Controller : ASUS ICH100 (Sunrise Point-H) USB3 xHCI Controller
SMBus/i2c Controller : Intel ICH SMBus

Printers and Faxes
Printer : Microsoft Software Printer Driver (300x300, Colour)
Printer : Microsoft XPS Document Writer v4 (600x600, Colour)
Printer : Microsoft Print To PDF (600x600, Colour)
Fax : Microsoft Shared Fax Driver (200x200)
Printer : Microsoft IPP Class Driver (600x600)

Scanners & Cameras
Scanner : Microsoft Brother HL-L2395DW series [b422002a03fe] (Scanner, USB)

Biometrics
Voice : Analog NUI Voice Virtual Sensor (Voice)

Network Services
Network Adapter : Bluetooth Device (Personal Area Network) (Ethernet)
Wireless Adapter : Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265 (Wifi4 (802.11n/HT), AES-CCMP, 300Mbps)

Power Management
Battery : ASUSTeK ASUS Battery 96.01Wh/8.42Ah

Operating System
Windows System : Microsoft Windows 10 Personal 10.0.19044
Platform Compliance : x64

[albee1952]

Hmm, if its happening the same on 2 different computers, it could be the Mbox failing, or the firewire cable(try another one as they do fail, and for no apparent reason). Another possible thing is a plugin that lost its authorization(next time it happens, make plugins inactive, starting with those on the master track).

Having said that, the Sandra shows 16GB of RAM but only shows a single 8GB stick. It should show 2 sticks, so that's confusing to me. Hopefully, you have 10-15% of open drive space on whichever drive you are recording to.

[Darryl Ramm]

You are running an unsupported Pro Tools/Windows config.

And you are chasing this behavior that is well (no audio, change IO buffer size to bring it back) known to hit folks at times, AFAIK it's unclear exactly what causes this.

All you can likely do is check the interface drivers are up to date, check everything is fully optimized, get on a supported version of Pro Tools. Try out different Thunderbolt and firewire cables etc. and if that does not work try a different interface.

Not sure why we are looking at Sandra reports if this happened on another computer. But... running a Windows laptop, is one of the larger crap shoots with a Pro Tools systems. I don't like what may be a single DIMM paired with motherboard memory, you may not know for sure both memory channels are matched (unless the vendor did that and claims it). You have 16 GB of memory, which I'd consider a minimum config, but matters greatly what you are doing. But I doubt this has any relationship to your problem.

Pro Tools 11 is also just old, it predates many feature improvements (largely HD/Ultimate features moving to standard), and importantly the AAX plugin processing improvement that happened in the last several years (which would be most important if you are getting AAE CPU errors, but might also mean you can operate reliably at smaller IO buffer sizes).