Beach Ball Hell - DP Keeps Locking Up

TnMike · Post by **TnMike** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 12:23 am

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:In my experience, the beach ball has ALWAYS been related to hard drive access (but certainly RAM can be a culprit).

I believe you are using FW drives for audio. Can you try an internal drive (SATA?) and see if that helps?
I only use FW externals for storage, NEVER for audio files.

I use an internal drive (SATA) for my VI's and a firewire for my audio files. Would it be better to switch these? Will VI's run quick enough on a firewire drive?

NealF · Post by **NealF** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 5:03 am

Just a thought, I'm on Tiger and DP 5.13. Would it help to switch to Leopard.

Rush909 · Post by **Rush909** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 7:40 am

I am thinking the same thing... just not sure if all my plugins will work in Tiger... is it the same AU architecture in Leopard or at least have developers modified their plugins to work with Leopard already?

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 8:23 am

To answer a few questions at once...

Re: Leopard - it all depends on whether your plugs, VI's AND OTHER PROGRAMS will run (were updated by the mfg). Also, any drivers for external devices. But I swear by (not at) Leopard. I won't go to 5.2 as it has some serious issues - not the least of which is Firewire performance can be seriously degraded in that update depending onthe hardware combination you are using.

Re: hard drives - I have EVERYTHING on my SATA internal drives and my machine is very happy that way. FW external is for long term storage and SFX sample storage only. My Firewire bus only supports my audio and video interfaces while I'm in a session.

fokof · Post by **fokof** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 8:24 am

Neil , have you try without any Waves and AU plugins yet ?

I always load the plugins I need for the project I'm working on.
In long term , I find it more stable. Now , I always go for the same ones over and over again that I know are stable. (UAD1,Wavearts)

I would try to get rid of suspected plugins first.

Rush909 · Post by **Rush909** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 8:31 am

DP 5.2 is out???? I thought we are still on 5.13... gotta check that motu.com more often...

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:To answer a few questions at once...

Re: Leopard - it all depends on whether your plugs, VI's AND OTHER PROGRAMS will run (were updated by the mfg). Also, any drivers for external devices. But I swear by (not at) Leopard. I won't go to 5.2 as it has some serious issues - not the least of which is Firewire performance can be seriously degraded in that update depending onthe hardware combination you are using.

Re: hard drives - I have EVERYTHING on my SATA internal drives and my machine is very happy that way. FW external is for long term storage and SFX sample storage only. My Firewire bus only supports my audio and video interfaces while I'm in a session.

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 9:08 am

Rush909 wrote:DP 5.2 is out????

No, Leopard 10.5.2 is out.

NealF · Post by **NealF** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 9:12 am

Rush909 wrote:DP 5.2 is out???? I thought we are still on 5.13... gotta check that motu.com more often...

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:To answer a few questions at once...

Re: hard drives - I have EVERYTHING on my SATA internal drives and my machine is very happy that way. FW external is for long term storage and SFX sample storage only. My Firewire bus only supports my audio and video interfaces while I'm in a session.

I always thought that having the samples on the same drive as the audio would make the head work too hard. If it's streaming.

Is that not the case?

I haven't tried getting rid of my Waves plugs yet. Not quite sure which files to pull out. Is it just the files in the Waves Plug Ins folder? Or do I need to get rid of the shell too. Have no clue what the shell does.

Also, is it a valid test to leave the pluggins there but not use them for a while, or do I have to get rid of them?

TnMike · Post by **TnMike** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 9:24 am

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:Re: hard drives - I have EVERYTHING on my SATA internal drives and my machine is very happy that way. FW external is for long term storage and SFX sample storage only. My Firewire bus only supports my audio and video interfaces while I'm in a session.

My G5 dual 2.7 came with two internal hard drive slots. One for the operating system drive (which came with the computer) and an empty slot (which I have filled with a 250 gig hard drive (SATA.) If I put everything on the internal drives I would have to put the VI sample files on either the operating system drive or the audio drive. Where should they go? I always heard they should go on a separate drive by themselves. I have no more room for additional internal drives...where are your VI's and audio files...same drive?

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 9:29 am

NealF wrote: I always thought that having the samples on the same drive as the audio would make the head work too hard. If it's streaming.

That is certainly true in a sample intensive project. In such instances I use my second internal SATA drive to split the samples. Most of my projects of late aren't anywhere near as intensive in terms of VIs or samples.

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 9:31 am

TnMike wrote:I always heard they should go on a separate drive by themselves. I have no more room for additional internal drives...where are your VI's and audio files...same drive?

I see no problem sharing my OS drive with samples. Once the OS loads, access is relatively minor in terms of OS needs. I'd probably put the VI's on the OS drive and dedicate the second internal to soundbites, etc.

Rush909 · Post by **Rush909** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 9:50 am

I think you just need to remove the WAVESHELL from your components folder that way DP does not load any WAVES plugs into memory....

NealF wrote:
Rush909 wrote:DP 5.2 is out???? I thought we are still on 5.13... gotta check that motu.com more often...

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:To answer a few questions at once...

Re: hard drives - I have EVERYTHING on my SATA internal drives and my machine is very happy that way. FW external is for long term storage and SFX sample storage only. My Firewire bus only supports my audio and video interfaces while I'm in a session.
I always thought that having the samples on the same drive as the audio would make the head work too hard. If it's streaming.

Is that not the case?

I haven't tried getting rid of my Waves plugs yet. Not quite sure which files to pull out. Is it just the files in the Waves Plug Ins folder? Or do I need to get rid of the shell too. Have no clue what the shell does.

Also, is it a valid test to leave the pluggins there but not use them for a while, or do I have to get rid of them?

Rush909 · Post by **Rush909** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 9:53 am

I know for my problem it's HD or Audio driver related for sure, cause when I try to '.' goto a part of the track and the beach ball comes up all audio abruptly stops!!!

mattfort · Post by **mattfort** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 10:51 am

How about this....

For all of us getting the hangs while locating, editing, etc... How about we all list our plugs and MAYBE we have a common issue????

NealF · Post by **NealF** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 1:59 pm

I'm using Waves Musician 1, and Ren Maxx. Also Altiverb 6.

Plus a few free ones:

Pluggo ColorTone FREE
SSL LMC-1
Roger Nichols Digital: Inspector (Free)
Andrew Garber Warp Drive AU
Izotope Vinyl (Free)

I haven't used the free ones much. I've had the free ones for a long time and the program didn't freeze until recently.

The Waves were the most recent.

BTW, I took the WavesShell out and still Waves shows up in DP. So then I took out the whole Waves folder (from the Application folder). Waves still shows up in DP. There must be another place where DP is getting them from.