Digidesign and Apple are both stumped. Can anyone help?

[treelegs]

I just started a new project and I am having serious issues.

I have an mbox 2 7.4 cs7 (latest firmware and so on)

I have a Mac Pro 2.6 dual core with 8 gigs of ram running 10.4.11 with 4 internal 7200 rpm drives. one for applications, one for files, and two clones.

When I run heavy sessions (42 tracks, and sometimes up to 4 plugins on many tracks since I am doing electronic music- and a few samplers and midis open) after about 20 mins or so I start to get glitches and Pops, it soon gets to the point where it is almost white noise. I then have to close pro tools and restart the computer to get another 20 min window- if I just close and re-open protools the pops come right back. It has been very difficult getting work done. I also get alot of cpu error messages such as 6101 and the 91.. one ( I forgot the specific number).

Here are things I have tried
-Clean instal of the OS and pro tools
-Optimizing the computer for pro tools (energy saver and what not)
-Running off of my clone drives (which does not get used)- rules out hardrive issues
-Stress testing the computer at the apple store (passed fine)
-Removing ram sticks to determine if one is corrupt
-Switching usb ports and removing all but the bare nessecities to see if it is an Mbox power issue
-Buying a new Mbox 2
-Playing with ever playback engine setting possible.

and nothing has helped- Digidesign has told they cannot help any longer and apple does not know whats up.

It only happens on heavy session, but my CPU monitor shows that I am not even close to maxing out CPU and with 8 gigs of ram I should be fine. This computer should be able to handle this load of work- and has in the past. The problem has slowly gotten worse and worse over time and it still getting worse yet- meaning less time before the popping starts.

I tried opening a 38 track session with no plugins (which ran real smooth) and then adding 5 Vienna Instruments Plugins and the popping started- then when I deleted the tracks the popping stayed.

It makes no sense why there is a 20 min issue and then it jacks up- if it is too taxed it should happen right when I open.

If it was a heat issue I imagine the stress test would have shown something- plus restarting and opening protools right away does not give the computer a window to cool.

On occasion if I let my computer sit and the pops will go away only to come back a few mins later.

Please if anyone can help it would be huge! I am at the end of my rope and my deadline is looming.

this only happens with protools btw.

Thanks Guys,
Jeremy

[treelegs]

It seems like setting the rtas processors to three makes the pops go away- but I get a 6101 error after a second of playing and it wont even play half of the midi.

[the tortoise]

Seeing as you've been pretty comprehensive in your troubleshooting and both Digi and Apple have helped you out with their own systems, my guess would be that there's a third-party plugin problem.

If even one plugin is installed on your PT system that is not up to date/has bugs, it can kill the whole setup. Try taking everything out of your plugin folder, reintroducing them one by one and building up sessions with each to see if there are any issues.

The only other thing I can think of is a dodgy MacPro.

Good luck!

[Bob Olhsson]

Have you tried running 4 gigs of RAM?

[junkfunction]

treelegs,

My friend had a very similar issue with his DAW.
It was a Dell with a Digidesign factory 003 (firewire) connected to a texus instruments (I think) PCI firewire card. We had similar audio pops/clicks to what you describe, especially when running Reason and Live. What's worse though, is that we often had times when the screen would go black for a second before briefly returing, only to repeat back to black (not to mention whatever audio was playing at this point glitched then froze).

Like you, it got progressively worse over time, however this does sometimes vary. Dell nor Digidesign could come up with an answer so eventually we wrote off the machine (we still have it though) and started using a Dell XPS laptop instead.

After a lot of troubleshooting though, I do believe it was something to do with the firewire card (or indeed it's way of interfacing with the motherboard). It wasn't a software issue because we too reinstalled the OS, and nor was it the 003 because it worked fine when connected to another machine. Essentially, the system temporarily halted with a black screen and frozen audio, almost as if the CPU had received some sort of hardware interrupt (assumably from the firewire card?). Dell have a very extensive hardware test partition factory-installed on the hard drives (we had 2 on RAID 1) - we ran all the tests (bar the extended hard drive ones which would have taken days to complete) and nothing failed. We never got round to changing the firewire card but I think that may well have been it since it was a 3rd party device and Dell's tests didn't cover it.

It has been a while since we had this and I've definitely forgotten a few things - I'll add more detail if I remember it!

I hope this helps you

[Schlitz]

Did you upgrade to an Nvidia card? I think there's rumbling of issues with Nvidia drivers.

[junkfunction]

Funny you should say that, we did have an nVidia card supplied by Dell in the machine... maybe at some point the latest video card drivers were installed hence the problems began?

[manning1]

treelegs .
this is only one of many possibilities.
and i might be wrong.
it might be a disk drive performance issue.
particularly if the disk your useing has a small cache .
your 7200 rpm drives...are they small caches like 2 or 8 mb ??
in depth details on your disk drives might help .
all i can tell you is fat disk caches are important for audio work.
particularly at high sampling rates n bit depths.
and ALSO as trak counts get bigger.

are you working at 44.1/16 or higher rates ??

[peeder]

Sounds like a memory leak somewhere along the line.

Find someone at Digi who actually understands computer programs.

(And wasn't just fired. )

[s0nguy]

I would start by running 2gb of ram and stressing it. if it still pops I would point my finger to a heat issue... have you tried to externally cool the unit under heavy processing?

-s0nguy

[docbop]

Looking at it from a programming point of view I would say you have some software with a memory leak. You've tried removing RAM, have you tried rearranging the sticks to see if the problem occurs faster or slower. Could be a bad stick of RAM and until the range of RAM it is in is used no problem. I still think heat too. Try running with the case open and fan blowing on the mobo and RAM.

if a memory leak it is going to tough to find have to talk to all the software companies and asking if they have reports of memory issues.

[Stiff]

What RAM are you using? Brand and sizes...

[AASteveo]

Maybe it's the plugins? You mentioned that a smaller session worked fine until you inserted plugins, then the popping started.

Where did you get these plugins? Were they purchased or hacked? Are they up to date? Maybe you should try re-installing them and see what happens.

[PlatinumSamples]

Originally Posted by treelegs

I tried opening a 38 track session with no plugins (which ran real smooth) and then adding 5 Vienna Instruments Plugins and the popping started- then when I deleted the tracks the popping stayed.

When you instantiate a plug-in in Pro Tools it'll stay resident in memory.. you'd need to close the session, open a different one then reopen the original to clear the plug-ins from RAM. You'll notice with plug-ins the first time you instantiate them they take longer to open than subsequent times you instantiate them.

If this is only happening with the Vienna Instruments, and after a period of use.. it sounds like they're leaking memory.

Rail

[treelegs]

Heat was the issue.

As far as the plugins go- I forgot to mention made sure every the thing was update- thanks for the suggestion though.

I set my Rtas processors to 3, recorded some of my heavier plugin tracks and it worked well for about 40 min- then the pops- so i restarted the comp, opened the side and ran a fan over it- it is works great.

Thank-you guys so much for the suggestions, they were very helpful.

My only question now is, why three processors has a hard time handling my really heavy tracks- is this normal for my kind of computer? I figured it could take more. Maybe I was wrong.
thanks again.
Jeremy

[T_R_S]

1) Use Premium RAM OCZ for example
2) Install Leopard 10.5.4
3) Upgrade all your PI to the Leopard versions.
4) Install PT 7.4.2 CS1
5) Set your CPU to 2 with a Quad Core or 4 with and 8 Core
6) Run no more than 24 tracks on each Firewire 800 drive.

If that fails, then follow the Troubleshooting guide on the DUC

[s0nguy]

i hate heat issues... very hard to pinpoint and can really kill workflow.

-s0nguy

[Sonic Nomad]

Had a similar issue thanks to bad power.
My fault for not running a power conditioner.

[Bob Olhsson]

FWIW not a lot of software has been tested for very long with more than 2 gigs of RAM.

[peeder]

Often when someone discovers it's a heat issue they were doing something we would all shake our heads at....for instance, cramming the CPU into a closed, unventilated box for noise abatement, or buying cheap RAM that didn't have heatsinks.

Worse is when people read something like this and run around saying "Pro Tools overheats your computer!" Operator error, the most egregious cases, is usually never admitted to...but citing these tales is another form of operator error.

[topperf]

5) Set your CPU to 2 with a Quad Core or 4 with and 8 Core

I've got 8 cores, why not use, for example, six of them?

[Denny McNerney]

Originally Posted by peeder

Sounds like a memory leak somewhere along the line.

Find someone at Digi who actually understands computer programs.

(And wasn't just fired. )

you and allencollins should start a comedy show.

[treelegs]

So it seems that heat is aggravating something that is slowing degenerating. I open the side of my computer and run an electric fan over it on the lowest setting. That gives me two hours of work. this worked for a two or so weeks, not after about two hours the popping has started again. I then turn the fan up to two and the popping goes away- I assume that it is just a matter of time till I have to turn it up to three. All my ram is heat sinked and nothing is hot at all. Its actually quite cold in my little studio since I never have heat on. From touch its does not seem like anything is over heating.

Any ideas guys? I wish i could just buy a new comp, but the is not and option.

thanks guys,
jeremy

[Alndln]

Originally Posted by treelegs

So it seems that heat is aggravating something that is slowing degenerating. I open the side of my computer and run an electric fan over it on the lowest setting. That gives me two hours of work. this worked for a two or so weeks, not after about two hours the popping has started again. I then turn the fan up to two and the popping goes away- I assume that it is just a matter of time till I have to turn it up to three. All my ram is heat sinked and nothing is hot at all. Its actually quite cold in my little studio since I never have heat on. From touch its does not seem like anything is over heating.

Any ideas guys? I wish i could just buy a new comp, but the is not and option.

thanks guys,
jeremy

I'd start with taking the CPU fan/heatsink off and cleaning it with a proper paste cleaner and re- applying some Arctic Silver paste.

• Arctic Silver Incorporated - Home

[computa]

Had a problem like this 2 years ago and went thru same gauntlet and it was the ram that was bad. even new apples can come w/ bad ram. it happens.