Lag On Moving Tracks/Inserting Plugins on Audio, Assigning

[cody]

Hey all -

Working on an epic IMAX film which we've just recorded orchestra. Got several hundred tracks in total and am mixing in 5.1. I'm going off my SSD and have no problem with playback or recording automation rides.

I do, however have a quite annoying problem that anytime I reorder a track, make a new track, assign a send or put in an insert I'm experiencing 10-15 seconds of delay. This only happened after my track count got pretty big, but seems odd. I have no MIDI in this - just a bunch of mono audio tracks (some stereo) that are being bussed through stems of 5.1 Pretty big and complex, but surprised this is the issue and not playback.

Plenty of RAM since my samples aren't loaded and I have an upgraded MacPro (12 core 3.33.) DP 8.07 in Mavericks.

Thanks for any hints. Gotta turn this mix around in less than a week and this problem is demoralizing! Any hints would be appreciated!

[cody]

Sorry - posted in the wrong section - please move! Apologies...

[Shooshie]

Are you using virtual instruments? And if so, are they in V-Racks? I'm not 100% sure that this would affect the particular actions you described: adding tracks, etc., but I'm not sure it doesn't, either.

Here are the things that pop into my head:
1) V-Racks (instruments that are NOT in V-Racks)
2) turn off pre-rendering in plugins and run in real time
3) Prime Seconds (?) Is this what I'm thinking of, which affects the buffering of samples before it plays?

I think there are other things, too, but I don't have DP open, and I don't want to create any rumors with misinformation.

You may consider working in version 7.x. It seems like version 8 has introduced a few lags in response time when enabling/disabling tracks, and making changes like those you mentioned. Again, I'd have to test it to see if I'm right about ANY of this, but those are the things that pop into my head, here, without DP to look at.

Shooshie

[cody]

Going back to 7 is an interesting idea. I spent awhile on the phone with tech at MOTU and have basically come to the conclusion that I just have to wait! The lag is severe at times - up to several minutes! But I can load DP without my 2408 on and then everything works normally. So when I'm doing a lot of routing, etc, I quit and reboot. Very strange...

As far as your list - done everything on there! There's not a single VI or MIDI track in the session...I'm running plugs in RT and have messed with prime seconds, work quanta, you name it.

I'm going to bring the session on a drive to the MOTU guys at NAMM. I can't believe that I'd be the only person to try to run 5.1 stems with a few hundred tracks....(although it does sound ridiculous!)

[cody]

Today it's somehow getting more sensitive and spinning the beach ball more often....is there a way to turn off soundbite monitoring when you're editing? (the variable pitch as you edge edit?)

That might help????

[Shooshie]

Just curious, Cody; when you say you have several hundred tracks in 5.1, do you mean you have several hundred tracks x 6, or several hundred tracks ÷ 6? That is to say, do you have, say, three hundred 5.1 tracks for a total of 1800 channels? Or do you have 300 channels for a total of fifty 5.1 tracks?

Either way is a lot of tracks, but 1800 channels would definitely be a huge strain on any system. These days, DP could probably do it with a Mac Pro, but I'd expect some issues like those you describe, especially when reordering tracks, inserting new ones, etc.

Back when Pro Tools was doing about 16 tracks for millions of dollars (ok, that was an exaggeration, but not by too much!), I was recording and mixing 80 stereo tracks (160 audio channels) in DP, along with 350 MIDI tracks. That was about 2000 - 2001, and the multiprocessor Macs we had then struggled with that load, but they did it. Graphics were running slow, making a real-time fader edit very hard to do, but the darn thing worked, and with plugins galore. That was when I realized that MOTU and DP were probably the real leaders in digital audio of the time. What I was doing was simply not possible in any other DAW I knew of at that time.

The thought that DP is still doing that is nice to hear.

One thing that I did to help with the load was to create track maps which visually showed me where I had data in each track, where they overlapped, and where there were holes where I could consolidate data. I had recorded hundreds of snippets of music. Many were linear in the same track, but many were in their own tracks, even if the actual soundbite in that track only lasted a few seconds or a minute or so. Once i could clearly see this, I began consolidating tracks. Sometimes it meant automating the pan, so that certain soundbites sounded like they were in another track, but for the most part they fit nicely together in far fewer tracks. I got some songs with hundreds of tracks narrowed down to 50 or so.

Just an idea. Maybe you can't do that, but I'm thinking that 300 + tracks over the course of a single movie cannot all be playing at once, and could probably be consolidated a great deal. Ultimately they're all going into 6 tracks.

Another method would be to mix all those tracks down to essential stems, then when you've got 6 or 12 stems, mix those for the final output. Again, a track map might help with planning these mixes and stems. I used 12" x 18" pads, used a ruler to draw columns and rows, then used real time or barlines to indicate data, shading in where it goes. The Tracks Overview does the same thing, essentially, but I needed it on paper where I could mark it up and move things around.

Shooshie

[cody]

Sorry - I totally lost track of this thread! Happy to report that we ended up getting through it. Yosemite actually helped somehow - although I'm not sure how...

But we ended up doing stereo folds through the 5.1 stems for the Soundtrack Album.

I talked the MOTU guys at NAMM and they thought it could be a PCI conflict of some sort. I suppose I could troubleshoot....but am enjoying just a wee-bit of time off before the next gig!

Definitely a strange problem!

Thanks again.