DP 8 grinds to a halt opening DP 6 projects

[bongo_john_uk]

I wanted to pick up some old projects done in DP 6.

Turns out DP 6 won't install anymore on Mountain Lion due to a bug in the authorisation part.

So I thought I would see if DP 8 was worth upgrading to, so I downloaded the demo. I am running on a 2009 mac pro with 12gb RAM.

However, when opening the old projects which ran fine on the same machine in DP 6, DP 8 cannot keep up, drops audio and the GUI is jerky.

What shall I do? I can't use my copy of DP 6 (unless I downgrade to Snow Leopard which I can't due to some device drivers for new hardware), yet DP 8 seems to be have serious performance issues.

These old projects have a lot of tracks, but DP 6 could handle them no problem.

[NazRat]

Could be a plug that's causing problems. Hold the option key when starting DP and pick Safe plug mode. Open the session and see if it plays OK without 3rd party plugs - you don't have to clear missing, they'll just be bypassed. If it plays fine you'll have to figure out which plug is the problem.

[bongo_john_uk]

Thanks for the tip and I will check that.

However, I think that is an unlikely source as it is a recent freshly installed mountain lion system without any 3rd party plugins installed.

I had to upgrade the OS as recently I bought some hardware that requires drivers not present in Snow Leopard.

[magicd]

In DP8, open the Background Processing window. Do you see any activity here? If you wait until all background processing has been done, do you then get better playback?

Dave

[bongo_john_uk]

In DP8, open the Background Processing window. Do you see any activity here? If you wait until all background processing has been done, do you then get better playback?
Dave

That revealed some interesting stuff..

Background processing is full of thousands of red error messages about analyzing audio (one for every soundbite in the project as far as I can tell) - "Internal error. Library not open. 15008".

Background never completes but if I change preferences to "Wait until analysis is needed", then project runs fine (although some lost in translation weirdness - some levels are way off compared to how they were in DP 6 last time I opened it in Snow Leopard), compared to DP 8 on Mountain Lion.

I need to get this sorted out in order to determine whether to upgrade to DP 8 before the trial is up. Otherwise, I need to reinstall Snow Leopard on a different drive and go back to using DP 6 without some of the new hardware.

[bongo_john_uk]

Edited this as I sadly turned out to be wrong. Problem has just shifted not gone away.

It is background processing analysis errors that caused this.

Weirdly, when I copy the problematic projects to a different drive, the background processing does complete without errors.

So must have been some permissions problem.

[mikehalloran]

Ok....

First off, DP 6.03 works in ML - it may even install but it will not authorize. You need to be in OS 10.6 with Rosetta to install from your CD. Then run the updaters to 6.03. If your CD is 6.02 or 6.03, I don't think Rosetta needs to be installed. Then authorize with your CD.

Repair Permissions.

You can now update the OS to ML and DP 6 will work. So will DP 5.13. I tested both thoroughly when OS 10.7 and 10.8 came out. I never tested this in Mavericks - I'm just not that curious.

Repair Permissions again.

Try the following: Do Get Info on each project folder. Is your admin account listed? If not add it. Make sure that all accounts have Read and Write privileges. Check the box to Apply to contents of the folder. This is what fixed many of my projects.

Next. Are you running DP 8 32bit or 64bit? Do Get Info. Check the box for run in 32bit and see if it makes a difference.

Turns out DP 6 won't install anymore on Mountain Lion due to a bug in the authorization part.

Not a bug. It's incompatible with OS 10.7 or later. There's a difference.

If you copied your DP 6 projects from another Mac without doing it through Time Machine or Migration Assistant, then you may have another issue where your files need to be fixed before DP 8 can read them (even if DP 6 can). Been there. Post that and someone can direct you to the appropriate threads.

If, by any chance, these projects are still sitting on another Mac or drive, zip them first and then copy them over to your machine, unzip and see if they will load into DP 8 in 32bit mode. Zipping first is very important.

There are other suggestions but try these first.

I have been through all of this. I had a large number of projects that started life on other Macs in earlier versions going back to DP 2.6. All opened in DP 5,6 and 7.01 up through ML. Things got weird in 7.12 and most did not open in 7.24. I managed to fix all of my projects except two through various means. Those last two never did open properly in DP 7.24 but open just fine in DP 8 64bit. Some of the solutions I found on these boards, I got a couple from Tech Support and I figured out a few on my own.

It can be done.

[bongo_john_uk]

Turns out DP 6 won't install anymore on Mountain Lion due to a bug in the authorization part. Not a bug. It's incompatible with OS 10.7 or later. There's a difference.

I don't fancy installing 10.6 then upgrading again. I never upgrade an OS. I always buy a new harddrive and do a fresh install. Also why I keep project data on other drives, not my OS one.

I found an easier workaround. DP6.03 on an old drive in an external caddy will run from 10.8 if you create an alias to it on that drive from Mountain Lion. Bizarre, but it works, so that will be my "if nothing else works" option. I would prefer to be able to get DP 8 demo to work though as that would make me happy to upgrade and forget about DP 6.

If you copied your DP 6 projects from another Mac without doing it through Time Machine or Migration Assistant, then you have another issue. Your files need to be fixed before DP 8 can read them (even if DP 6 can). Been there. Post that and someone can direct you to the appropriate threads.

That is really interesting and may be sort out the trouble with DP 8 and the background tasks never completing. Motu support have been very helpful constantly replying to my woes about both DP 8 & 6 with new suggestions, but nothing has worked when I tried it.

Yes, please tell me more about "Fixing" the files.. This seems like the best suggestion so far.. Something about the files DP 8 doesn't like..

[mikehalloran]

I edited my reply with a couple of suggestions - try them first. The Get Info might do it for you.

[bongo_john_uk]

I edited my reply with a couple of suggestions - try them first. The Get Info might do it for you.

Thanks.. I think the zip, move, unpack, 32bit, background process, switch to 64 bit is working albeit quite a slow process. At least it seems to have worked with a smaller old project where end result seems to make DP 8 happy.

I will now try it on the massive project which was my initial concern.

[abtop]

Hello, just experienced the same situation and found an easier fix:
Get the [info] dialog for your project hard drive and check the "ignore ownership on this drive".

IMPORTANT NOTE: don't do that with your system volume (Macintosh HD or so) , doing so might make it unbootable.
If your project is on the system drive, then first copy it to another volume and apply the "ignore ownership" to that volume or drive.

[bongo_john_uk]

Hello, just experienced the same situation and found an easier fix:
Get the [info] dialog for your project hard drive and check the "ignore ownership on this drive".

IMPORTANT NOTE: don't do that with your system volume (Macintosh HD or so) , doing so might make it unbootable.
If your project is on the system drive, then first copy it to another volume and apply the "ignore ownership" to that volume or drive.

Thanks for the tip. Just checked and that works for one drive I had projects on. Background processing doesn't throw a wobbly.

However, the other drive I need to stay bootable (I am keeping an old installation of Snow Leopard on it for emergencies if I need to run old software).

I can also run DP 6 on the other old drive via an alias from Mountain Lion.

Still unsure about upgrading to DP 8 and only have 8 days left on demo. It doesn't seem to run any better than DP 6 did on this machine (2009 mac pro).

Something occasionally pings the processor really hard and it hits red causing a glitch occasionally. Not a show stopper but annoying and hoped it would have gone. No idea why as the processor monitor doesn't glitch in activity monitor, just DP. All my other audio software doesn't do this on same machine. I think I'll continue to phase out DP and only finish off the old projects.

[mikehalloran]

It doesn't seem to run any better than DP 6 did on this machine (2009 mac pro).

That's absurd - see my other answer below.

Something occasionally pings the processor really hard and it hits red causing a glitch occasionally. Not a show stopper but annoying and hoped it would have gone. No idea why as the processor monitor doesn't glitch in activity monitor, just DP. All my other audio software doesn't do this on same machine. I think I'll continue to phase out DP and only finish off the old projects.

Sounds like you have the buffer set too low - certainly the first place to look, anyway. What is the buffer size? It should be set to 1024 or higher when editing/mixing.

The way to get the most out of DP 8 is to be running it 64bit and pay attention to your buffer size. If tracking without CueMix, it should be set low for minimum latency - monitor fewer tracks if necessary. For editing/mixing, change it to a higher setting. Unless using a lot of VIs, 12G RAM should be sufficient.

If porting over and cleaning up older DP 6 projects, you may want to run DP 8 32bit if there are some plugs that you don't have in 64bit. The maximum RAM that DP or any application can normally address is 4G in this case, a limit that is removed when running 64bit.

[James Steele]

I don't have much to add other than IMHO DP8 is a 64-bit beast. That's when it shines. If you have an older machine and want to stay in the 32-bit world, you're better off with DP 7.24.

[bongo_john_uk]

Sounds like you have the buffer set too low - certainly the first place to look, anyway. What is the buffer size? It should be set to 1024 or higher when editing/mixing.

The way to get the most out of DP 8 is to be running it 64bit and pay attention to your buffer size. If tracking without CueMix, it should be set low for minimum latency - monitor fewer tracks if necessary. For editing/mixing, change it to a higher setting. Unless using a lot of VIs, 12G RAM should be sufficient.

I left the buffer at the default 512 for DP 8. I can run other DAWs such as Reaper with a buffer of just 64 without CPU going up much at all and zero glitches. I have 12GB RAM am even using a MOTU audio interface (Ultralite).

I am really unsure why this problem happens with DP on this particular quad machine. All other audio & video apps behave fine. I tried many different suggested fixes over the years but nothing ever got rid of the periodic red CPU peak.