Hi all, I’ve been having some strange issues with my machine and working with Pro Tools the last few months and was hoping someone here either experienced something similar or had suggestions for troubleshooting. All of this will take some explanation, so please bear with me.
I have two macBook Pros. One is a 2012, and the other is a newer 2014. Both are laptops. The 2012 model has a 2.5 ghz intel core i5 processor, while the 2014 macbook has a 2.8 ghz intel core i5 processor. The 2014 model is my main computer, while the 2012 one was just an old laptop I still have, not really being used. For most of this discussion, I’m referring to the 2014 macBook. I’m using a Roland Studio Capture USB audio interface. Everything seemed to be working ok, until I updated to Elcaputan in November of 2015. I’m not saying that Elcaputan is the cause of the issues, but I’m saying that’s when I think I started to see these things start to appear, gradually. First, pro tools had very rare, random errors of “cpu overload” during playback or recording. My buffer size was set to 256 samples, which hadn’t changed, but these cpu errors started to appear more frequently and with less playback or recording time between them. Then I cleared out some old files, did a clean install of everything, and everything was ok again, for the time being. That only lasted for about 2 months. Near the end of January, the cpu issue started coming back, with vengeance. There were times when I couldn’t even play through a measure of a session without it popping up with the error, and the only way to resolve it was by restarting pro tools, or sometimes the whole machine. Recordings started to sound like record players, because of all the popping and clicking when it did allow the session to play back without the error. And then there were the days that nothing went wrong. Recording was perfect, no errors, everything was fine. But those perfect days started to become fewer and fewer, while nothing was really changing. I updated everything to the latest versions, including plugins, pro tools, my interface driver, mac os, etc. By the beginning of May it had gotten worse again, this time starting to effect the system sound itself without pro tools. If I send system audio to my interface simply from the output of the sound preferences, audio plays back perfectly, for about 5 minutes. Then it just stops. The interface is still on, everything looks ok, no errors, but no audio either. If I restart the audio stream, or the song playing, etc. it is fine for another 5 minutes, then the same thing happens. Confused by all of this, I made a backup of the entire 2014 machine, and cloned it to my 2012 macbook. Strangely, none of these issues happen on my 2012 macbook. No cpu overload errors, no dropping out of audio, no pro tools crashes due to this, and no popping on recordings. But, the computer is significantly slower then my 2014 model, so I’d rather not make it my primary machine. But I still don’t understand why this older laptop is performing better then my newer, more powerful one. I then took my 2014 macbook to the Apple store, to see what the genius bar had to say. They sent it out for repair, and I got it back after they replaced the logic board and fan. This still had no effect on the system or the issues I’m having. So now I’m in the technology blame game. I called roland, and explained everything, and they told me it’s a problem with my computer. But Apple tells me there’s nothing wrong with my hardware. And if it was something software related, wouldn’t it show itself in the clone of this machine on my 2012 macbook? All of my sessions are on an external hard drive. I’ve tried moving some to internal, with no change in performance. I’m running pro tools 12.5, and elcaputan version 10.11.4 on both machines. My sessions are usually somewhere between 50 to 80 tracks or so, with numerous plugins on each track, which is a lot, but why then, does the older laptop sail through it like it’s nothing? If anything, the older laptop should be having the issues that my newer one is having. Also, I’m using an artist mix control surface, powered by Econ and the EuControl software. All of that is up-to-date as well. I’m not sure what my next step is now. Do I do a clean reinstall of everything, and risk that my problem still may not be solved? Do I just deal with it like this? Or do I switch to my older laptop and deal with the lag of VoiceOver, etc. for better pro tools performance? I do have wifi and bluetooth enabled on both machines, because I’m working on getting ethernet in the room I’m I’m in at the moment, but in the meantime I still need internet. Turning one or the other or both off for long periods of time has not seemed to effect protools performance, for better or worse on either machine. I apologize for the lengthy post, and hope I wasn’t too detailed, but any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Please let me know if I need to clarify anything. Thanks so much, Rocco Fiorentino -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Pro Tools Accessibility" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ptaccess+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
