DP 4.6 Playback Overload

The Sound · Post by **The Sound** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 9:32 pm

Hi,
I am new to this forum and this is my first post. I am running a new system that I am not very familiar with. It is working quite well except for one problem.

I am transfering old recordings from a pair of DA88's into Digital Performer and so far I have done 5 tunes 3-5 minutes in length with 8-15 tracks.

The recording seems to work fine, but sometimes at playback I get the following message in a popup window:

"-Audio Playback has overloaded your computer's processor. Digital Performer has detected an error in the audio. Samples may have been dropped.

-You can continue or disable this alert

-You may want to increase the size of your MAS buffer in Configure Audio Hardware dialog. You can also deassign audio voices or remove some effects"

I am not using any effects or EQ. My buffer size is 1024 (as high as it will go) the buffer size per voice is 300000 samples.

My system is a Dual 2.3 G5 with 1.5G ram, DP 4.6, Motu 2408, 2x DA88. I have disabled Dashboard.

When I look at the Activity Monitor during playback, I see a huge spike when I press Play and then it drops way down.

Has anyone seen this happen? Am I overlooking some settings? Any info will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
-Matt

The Sound · Post by **The Sound** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 9:54 pm

I posted this and them saw the recent thread about "Processor Spiking"

Just another note - I have tried setting work priority to high, med, and low and still get problems. All 1.5Gigs of RAM are present as well. I am using Tiger 10.4.3 and did software updates last night.

-Matt

chrispick · Post by **chrispick** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 10:52 pm

The Sound wrote:The recording seems to work fine, but sometimes at playback I get the following message in a popup window:

"-Audio Playback has overloaded your computer's processor. Digital Performer has detected an error in the audio. Samples may have been dropped.

-You can continue or disable this alert

-You may want to increase the size of your MAS buffer in Configure Audio Hardware dialog. You can also deassign audio voices or remove some effects"

First of all, Matt, thanks for posting your stats. You'll find a lot of help and cooperation that way.

Re: the above message -- This alert isn't necessarily a cause for alarm. For instance, it can sometimes occur if you're trying to conduct many or proc-heavy changes while the system is in playback (e.g., moving plugins around in inserts). The remedy, of course, is to stop playback when committing these changes.

However, I find this alert usually occurs when...

a.) Your system is struggling with throughput (i.e., the audio sample is large -- say, 88.2 k or higher -- and I/O is a bitch. The solution: Faster, more efficient drives or downconvert audio files to smaller rates.

or --

b.) Your system is struggling with prioritizing hardware processes (i.e, working your third-party PCI or firewire gizmos). The solution: Try medium or low priority settings. I have to do this when using a 2048 buffer with my FW1804 and UAD-1 card.

Hope this helps.

BTW: I don't really find Dashboard interfering with DP in any significant way. Others may have differing experiences, but they always seem to co-exist fine on my box.

The Sound · Post by **The Sound** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 11:10 pm

Chrispick, thanks for the encouragement.

Can you tell me anything about the part where DP says "Samples may have been dropped"?

Is it just referring to that particular playback, or could I be losing something in my actual files?

Also, I just did a couple more transfers and I noticed that immediately after recording tracks my hard drive spins up for a while and the Activity Monitor says DP is using like 137% of the cpu. After the drive winds down a few seconds later I seem to have a better chance of a successful playback.

-Matt

chrispick · Post by **chrispick** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 11:17 pm

The Sound wrote:Can you tell me anything about the part where DP says "Samples may have been dropped"? Is it just referring to that particular playback, or could I be losing something in my actual files?

Don't worry. It's referring exclusively to the playback. Your files should stay intact.

richardein · Post by **richardein** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 1:48 am

The Sound:

First of all, welcome. This is a very good forum. James Steele, who runs it, deserves a lot of credit for organizing and monitoring discussions here so that they remain informative, focused, and civilized. There are also genuine experts and movers/shakers lurking about, including some MOTU employees. Now, to your problems:

This may sound nuts, given that you have a very powerful machine already, but I notice that you have "only" 1.5 gig of ram. Obviously, that's quite a bit for wordprocessing and the like, but audio and video, as you surely know, crave memory. I would strongly suggest increasing your ram. There's been some discussion around here that completely maxxing out a system may not be a good idea, but I have not found that not to be the case so far in my own work. More ram is a good thing.

It is vitally important that you get high quality ram. People far more knowledgeable than me have weighed in here on the ins and outs of this. Sorry, I don't have ram specs at my fingertips but they should easily be looked up.

Following up on something Chrispick said, for an experiment, try converting one set of your converted 16 tracks from 48 to 44.1 and seeing if that clears up your problem. I'm not suggesting you down-convert as a matter of course, but if you are still getting errors at 44.1, which you shouldn't, then that will tell you that something is seriously askew with your setup.

Don't underestimate how vital it is to check your equipment regularly. Run Apple's Disk Utlity and repair permissions and disks often. Like every several days. Get some decent additional diagnostic/repair utilities. Others may disagree about this, but for me, the best are Disk Warrior and Data Rescue. I have run into problems using TechTool Pro to repair disks and don't even know if Norton Utilities is still available. Others may have more and different experience with these.

I, too, have removed Dashboard. I agree with Chrispick that it doesn't seem to make much difference, but it can't hurt - and it's one more distraction I really don't need.

Finally, I would try not multitasking at all when playing back. Turn off your networking/sharing. Don't run videos, work in photoshop, etc, etc.

Hope this helps.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 2:13 am

Thanks for the kind words, Richard.

I was thinking the same thing you were about RAM. I bought a dual 2.3 GHz G5 recently, and bumped the 512MB RAM up to 2.5 GB. I should pop for more soon as RAM is relatively inexpensive nowadays. It's troubling to see these occasional stories about powerful machines spiking when they shouldn't. The Sound... if you can afford to, try increasing your RAM, as there just might be too much virtual memory stuff going on in the background.

alphajerk · Post by **alphajerk** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 10:15 am

you are recording to a secondary hard drive? just making sure.

that system should be more than enough to record and playback those tracks... im only running a dualgHz G4 w/ 1gb ram and can record/playback 40+ tracks at 256 buffer with no problems.

JoeMc01 · Post by **JoeMc01** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 11:17 am

Here's my related problem:

I just last week wiped my hard drive and installed Tiger in my 1g iBook and saturday bought DP4.6 and installed it. Oh yeah, I have 768 in ram.
Today I am trying to mix an 8 channel live recording(24/48k) and I am having terrible cpu spikes. Minimal plug-ins and this is way worse than when I would do 30 channels on Panther and DP4.12.
I am using 2 MOTU 896's, I have my host buffer multiplier set to 2, I have the buffer size set to 1024, I have tried the work priority on all settings and still can't make the spikes go away- although it may be best on medium.
Any ideas?
Get rid of Tiger and go back to Panther?
More Ram?
Certainly I must have something set wrong... ?

The Sound · Post by **The Sound** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 11:43 am

Hi,

I am the original poster, and no I am not recording to a secondary drive, I only have the one 250G drive. My one friend has a G4 laptop running panther without a hitch, and another friend has a similar system to mine (G5 dual 1.

but is running panther with no problems. I am wondering if I should use panther as well. I certainly need a system that is stable - I am switching from a 3x DA88 system to a Mac.

When I get these spikes I am using DP only, no other tasks. I agree that my system 'should' be able to handle whatever I throw at it.

-Matt

boonier · Post by **boonier** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 12:31 pm

JoeMc01 wrote: Get rid of Tiger and go back to Panther?

Ive heard that Panther is better for DP on a powerbook because it uses less cpu overhead.....had i known initially i would have partitioned and installed both. its a bit of a hassle to have to back everything up and re-install to do now

incidenttly if you have SoundFLower, Jack OSX or anything similar running in the background and ur not using it, switch it off cuz it eats CPU. i had it set to load automatically whenever i logged in. It also seems to play around resources more when other stuff is running..

JoeMc01 · Post by **JoeMc01** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 12:32 pm

I am using an external firewire drive- 7200rpm.
Everything was fine with Panther and 4.12.
I just order a 1g stick of ram-- we'll see how that goes.

alphajerk · Post by **alphajerk** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 2:18 pm

The Sound wrote:Hi,

I am the original poster, and no I am not recording to a secondary drive, I only have the one 250G drive.

well thats a MAJOR problem. go buy a new secondary hard drive and record to that... BIG no no.

alphajerk · Post by **alphajerk** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 2:19 pm

JoeMc01 wrote:I am using an external firewire drive- 7200rpm.
Everything was fine with Panther and 4.12.
I just order a 1g stick of ram-- we'll see how that goes.

i havent found external FW drives to be much good to use real time.... i would use a secondary internal and use a FW for backups [offline stuff]

mastermix · Post by **mastermix** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 2:33 pm

alphajerk wrote:
JoeMc01 wrote:I am using an external firewire drive- 7200rpm.
Everything was fine with Panther and 4.12.
I just order a 1g stick of ram-- we'll see how that goes.
i havent found external FW drives to be much good to use real time.... i would use a secondary internal and use a FW for backups [offline stuff]

True...or alternately, purchase a PC firewire card for use with your
firewire drive to reduce contention on a single firewire bus.

This guy is on a 1GHz iBook strapped to 2 MOTU 896s -- soaking the
living crap out of the firewire bus and whimpy CPU and RAM!

Also, when you go from Panther to Tiger, a clean install of Tiger and
DP is highly recommended -- including clean authorizations of all
software.

Kris...

MOTUnation.com

DP 4.6 Playback Overload

DP 4.6 Playback Overload

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