Need help with my home studio rig (PT10 bogging down)

[melovine]

I have a 2011 Imac 27in With a 2.7Ghz processor and 16 gb of ram. I am running Pro Tools 10 and Logic 9. I am trying to utalize my home computer for editing and mixing in protools and loading the sessions off of my 500g OWC Mercury Elite drive through FW400.

The sessions have roughly 40 tracks a piece and once i get into mixing I continually get H/W buffer error messages and the CPU cant keep up.

I have it set to use 4 processors, running at 95%, 1024 Samples

So right now my options (that I am aware of) are to increase the RAM (thinking of getting two sticks of 8gb, totaling 24gb of RAM)

Or purchasing an external SSD and running it through my computers Thunderbolt connect, running the sessions off of this drive instead.

Are these two options going to alleviate my issue? will increasing the RAM at this point (seeing that I already have 16 gb) yield any benefit in Pro Tools ?

Thanks really desperate for help right now!

Jon

 

[Arsonstudios]

more ram wont help you with pro tools 10 as its not 64bit. in logic you could freeze tracks in pro tools you could print tracks to free up cpu.
not sure if the hard drive would change much

 

[Machinated]

consolidate your tracks down when it's time to mix and bounce down your virtual instruments to audio.

should help your ram and give your CPU a bit of a break. I'm on a 2008 Mac Pro and the majority of my mixes don't go over 50% CPU in pro tools. sometimes in logic they'll creep up, but that's more because I'm more likely to be playing about with synths in logic....

 

[Studdy]

6101 error? I dealt with this for a long time. Im one of the people who bought protools 10 before april 7th that year so i got screwed out of my free upgrade to 11, i basically spent the first year almost unusable. I have never been pleased with avid since and although i really like protools I cant justify giving them another penny. Let me know if it 6101 error, if so i can help you the best i can.

 

[DavePiatek]

My thought is that it's a CPU issue, but I can't rule out that Pro Tools isn't just being Pro Tools. :Spin:

If you haven't wiped your machine in a while, I would suggest that before going out and getting a new machine. I do a complete wipe on my audio computer every 6-9 months to keep it nice and snappy.

 

[LeSedna]

The thunderbolt won't help : it will only allow faster access to data which will end up in the ram instead

Increasing the RAM shouldn't help either as I don't think your problem is RAM limitations, 16Gb is more than anyone would need unless they would run extensive orchestral libraries or things like that.

It is obviously just your CPU not being fast enough. 1024 at 95% seems like a hard limit. What kind of plugins do you run ? My MacBook Pro from 2011 didn't peak that high with only 40 tracks unless I had serious processing going on ?

At this point the only solutions for you are either a CPU upgrade if this is still possible on a 2011 imac, a new computer, or just a more drastic workflow of freezing or stripping down sessions.

I don't know PT though

 

[egan.]

I actually think RAM would help. It's not just about pro tools but everything else running on the computer.
Other things off the top of my head, I had to set my CPU limit to one less than max (7 of eight in my case). For whatever reason this helps even if it's counter intuitive. Obviously close other running apps. Killing wifi, networking and bluetooth makes a difference in some cases. Go through the full list of Avid optimization and see if it helps.
FWIW I do all my mixing on a 2011 macbook pro with 16GB or ram and while I do occasionally hit the roof it almost always relates to shit like multiple instances of ozone or other really power hungry plugins. Point being, "enough power" is really relative.

 

[FrankTheSmith]

If your using amp sims that have or any plugin that uses oversampling or have a "high quality" button you could turn that to the lowest setting until you render it all out. I'd always instinctively set them all to the highest quality and after about 40 tracks with nothing rendered I'd start getting warnings/clicks and pops/audio dropouts. Most I've done was about 70 tracks with nothing rendered once I turned over sampling/hi quality off.

 

[JeffTD]

If your using amp sims that have or any plugin that uses oversampling or have a "high quality" button you could turn that to the lowest setting until you render it all out. I'd always instinctively set them all to the highest quality and after about 40 tracks with nothing rendered I'd start getting warnings/clicks and pops/audio dropouts. Most I've done was about 70 tracks with nothing rendered once I turned over sampling/hi quality off.

I've never understood this. If you get to a certain point of CPU use, even during a render the shit will stop bouncing. It's not like you can just go willy nilly maxing out your system only for the bounce portion of it, as if your computer gets 8x more powerful during the bounce process, right? People don't think that, do they?

 

[FrankTheSmith]

I'm not saying turn everything high quality then render the whole song into a file, just like mix until you like the guitars, turn the guitars on high quality and freeze them. When I tried rendering a whole session on high quality with my laptop rather than my desktop it would be fine.... except tracks cutting in an out every few bars haha

 

[JeffTD]

^^I'm just more curious about how people use that setting; I've always felt that the "low quality while mixing, high quality while rendering" option on plugins was stupid for the reasons I described above. Cubase always kicks back CPU errors if I'm peaking too often in a bounce.

 

[Heabow]

If you haven't wiped your machine in a while, I would suggest that before going out and getting a new machine. I do a complete wipe on my audio computer every 6-9 months to keep it nice and snappy.

You meant OS clean install? If so, that must be a pain in the arse! I had to do this last year and reinstalling/reauthorizing all my plugins was just a horrible and time consuming experience (virtual instruments missing and/or library/presets missing, authorization issues...). I guess it's a good way to keep the system nice but I think you have tons of plugins so it must be a real job! (or I'm missing something and making my life much more complicated than it really is)

 

[HOFX]

My thought is that it's a CPU issue, but I can't rule out that Pro Tools isn't just being Pro Tools. :Spin:

If you haven't wiped your machine in a while, I would suggest that before going out and getting a new machine. I do a complete wipe on my audio computer every 6-9 months to keep it nice and snappy.

This makes no sense. Unless you're using your mix computer to browse the internet and visiting gimmicky sites that install crap on your computer. If you have an install that doesn't change much other than new vsts, DAW and OS updates, this shouldn't happen.

 

[Machinated]

^^I'm just more curious about how people use that setting; I've always felt that the "low quality while mixing, high quality while rendering" option on plugins was stupid for the reasons I described above. Cubase always kicks back CPU errors if I'm peaking too often in a bounce.

you realtime bouncing?

If i have oversampling/high quality on render options on, it just means my mix bounces way slower than usual. never had a mix fail to bounce in PT or logic....

 

[JeffTD]

you realtime bouncing?

If i have oversampling/high quality on render options on, it just means my mix bounces way slower than usual. never had a mix fail to bounce in PT or logic....

Happens with realtime or offline, but I'm talking CPU use levels of like... the mix stutters on playback sometimes because you're hitting 95+% cpu kind of thing..

 

[Machinated]

Happens with realtime or offline, but I'm talking CPU use levels of like... the mix stutters on playback sometimes because you're hitting 95+% cpu kind of thing..

I never heard of that before....... either way, I think a lot of people undervalue how important bouncing files down to audio is when it comes to mixing. choosing guitar amps/drums/synths etc isn't a mixing decision so by the time it gets to mixing they should be decided on.

 

[abt]

Your problem is Pro Tools 10. Upgrade to 11 and the problems will go away. PT10 is 32bit so it can only access < 4gb of RAM. Hit the DUC and I guarantee that everyone on there will tell you to you need PT11.

 

[Studdy]

Lots of people use protools 10. What error are you getting? -6101?

 

[Studdy]

Try moving all your third party plug-ins from the Plug-Ins folder to the Plug-Ins (Unused) folder. If performance improves dramatically gradually move your plug-ins back to the Plug-Ins folder.

Let me know if this works, if not I have more suggestions, I played the pt10 error game for a while but it's fairly solid now. Cheers

 

[Heabow]

A little off topic and sorry to highjack the thread but I get repetitive crashes with PT10 since I installed VMR, Air EQ, Decapitator and Vocalign Project 3 3 weeks ago or so. Since that, I got crashes even when launching a mix session. I mean, it does not even open it sometimes. I reinstalled VMR, VTM, PT10 and I still get issues. Often PT says that it has not enough memory when I want to open VTM. Never got this! Today, I had two error messages about virtual instrument DB33 and Amplitube that PT did not found. Closed PT then relaunched the session and it was fine but it's annoying as fuck. So I don't know if Slate plugins are guilty actually... Looks like a PT issue for me. It gives me headaches when I mix but during a recording session with clients I can even imagine the pain!

Studdy, I'll try your plugin folder thing and see if it helps. Otherwise, I'd like to know what I can do to solve this.