Tracks off? Has anyone else experienced stuck DP resources?

[toodamnhip]

I have noticed for many years now, that DP does not seem to fully release resources from tracks in a sequence that are theoretically "off".
Theoretically, shutting a track or aux channel OFF should FULLY release its resources. In my experience, this is not how DP operates. I would like to know if anyone else has noticed this, or found a fix for this issue?

I have a fairly huge file full of various stylistic collections of audio. Once I finish a style compilation, I shut off ALL tracks, auxes, busses etc, and move to the next stylistic collection.

Unfortunately, the file has become laboriously slow. And, like I have found for years, if instead of shutting tracks off I DELETE all the tracks that are not being used, I get my fast performance back.
Thus, DP is slowing from tracks that are "off".

So the solution for me has been to duplicate the larger file, and work on a copy. In the copy, I delete all the other collections I am not using, instead of shutting them off.

But all of this shows me clearly that DP is NOT releasing its resources when tracks are off.


Anyone noticed this issue?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

How many tracks are we talking about here? What kind of tracks? MIDI? Audio? How are your resources spread out over various hard disks and what kind of disks? Spinners? SSD? Are there plugins active on those tracks? Are they being bypassed? Shutting the track won't bypass plugins AFAIK.

[toodamnhip]

How many tracks are we talking about here? What kind of tracks? MIDI? Audio? How are your resources spread out over various hard disks and what kind of disks? Spinners? SSD? Are there plugins active on those tracks? Are they being bypassed? Shutting the track won't bypass plugins AFAIK.

How many tracks are we talking about here? If they're off with the track disabled, not sure why this matters? The fact that you ask shows off is not off. My guess, 175 tracks, all off excpet for maybe 25 that are in the current collection being worked on.
What kind of tracks? Audio routed into Aux tracks. All disabled. It is here where we get into a big weakness of DP. As per my tests, Aux tracks are 1/5th as efficient as audio tracks for plug ins. But off should be off.
How are your resources spread out over various hard disks and what kind of disks? SSD drives. Tried USB 3 SSD which tests at 348 speed. And System drive which tests over 900. Neither help the problem.

Runnign a late 2013 Mac Pro with 64 gb RAM. Activity monitor shows the system is not being taxed. This is another DP bottleneck issue in my opinion. The only thing I would wonder about is how much performance improvmenet I might get when I move up to Mohave? Since this problem has occured in various computers and operating systems through the years, I am not hopeful. But if MOTU announced some sort of new efficiency capability attendant with Mohave, I'd be interedted for sure.

[cuttime]

My 2 cents. Change available. I think this is a Mac thing. After years of watching the Activity Monitor I've decided that Macs (and probably all computers) create threads, processes, and memory allocations that just don't go away until you restart the machine. I've noticed this has become more pronounced in later years as Macs have moved to the "Memory Pressure" form of RAM allocation.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

How many tracks are we talking about here?...The fact that you ask shows off is not off.

You should change your name to TooDamnDefensive. Seriously, you think those are unreasonable questions? "The fact you..." find it unreasonable shows how myopic your troubleshooting skills truly are.

I'm sorry I tried to help with your problem. Good luck with that. I'll be sure to ignore all your subsequent posts.

[toodamnhip]

My 2 cents. Change available. I think this is a Mac thing. After years of watching the Activity Monitor I've decided that Macs (and probably all computers) create threads, processes, and memory allocations that just don't go away until you restart the machine. I've noticed this has become more pronounced in later years as Macs have moved to the "Memory Pressure" form of RAM allocation.

Sounds like a good postulate however, if that were true, a restart after disabling tracks would make the file “snappy“ again. And a restart does not make the file snappy again, so I don’t think this is the problem. But thanks for chiming in.

[toodamnhip]

How many tracks are we talking about here?...The fact that you ask shows off is not off.

You should change your name to TooDamnDefensive. Seriously, you think those are unreasonable questions? "The fact you..." find it unreasonable shows how myopic your troubleshooting skills truly are.

I'm sorry I tried to help with your problem. Good luck with that. I'll be sure to ignore all your subsequent posts.

I think you misinterpreted the emotion employed when I typed my answer. I consider it a technical fact that if a person has to ask “how many tracks“ when tracks are supposed be “disabled” shows that disables tracks are not truly off. For if they were truly “off“, one could have 1 million of them and it wouldn’t matter. That is all I meant. I didn’t mean to make you wrong for asking, I just think your question demonstrates the problem.
The problem being——The tracks are “disabled“, “but don’t have too many of them” for they will slow your computer down. What?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

OK. I'll accept that. Thanks for following up. I must be having a bad day. You should see the trouble I'm getting into on Facebook and Instagram. lol

But... if we are talking audio tracks, I am wondering if DP isn't still reading the track and just muting it? I suspect that is the case since you can click on a muted track and it jumps right in (no access lag). Same with MIDI. It may well be reading the data but not sending to the destination.

As far as plugs go, I also suspect that they are remaining active, just not sounding.

The way around the audio bottleneck (if my theory is correct) is not to mute, but deselect ENABLE in the TO window. I don't have a solution as far as MIDI data (again, if my theory is correct).

And I always suspect hard arrive access time and overall health, capacity limits, etc. in any computer slowdown. It has most often been the culprit in my system.

[toodamnhip]

OK. I'll accept that. Thanks for following up. I must be having a bad day. You should see the trouble I'm getting into on Facebook and Instagram. lol

But... if we are talking audio tracks, I am wondering if DP isn't still reading the track and just muting it? I suspect that is the case since you can click on a muted track and it jumps right in (no access lag). Same with MIDI. It may well be reading the data but not sending to the destination.

As far as plugs go, I also suspect that they are remaining active, just not sounding.

The way around the audio bottleneck (if my theory is correct) is not to mute, but deselect ENABLE in the TO window. I don't have a solution as far as MIDI data (again, if my theory is correct).

And I always suspect hard arrive access time and overall health, capacity limits, etc. in any computer slowdown. It has most often been the culprit in my system.

That’s exactly what I am doing, deselecting “enable”. This should completely shut the tracks off. And yes, It does make the tracks so that if you hit play, they will not play. But it does not return resources for some strange reason. I had this trouble many years ago and it made a new policy necessary. That policy, is that when I have a lot of bounce tracks totally disabled in the system starts to slow, I put them into a “safety chunk“. So that all the virtual instruments that created the bounced audio or in another chunk. But it is inconvenient to have to do this. Also, because of the way Digital performer imports tracks from other chunks, takes and routings gets screwed up if you have to bring them back creating more work. This is not a new problem, this problem has been extant for a long time. Like my long born automation issues that have finally been resolved thank God (for the most part), , this is another long-standing issue that no one seems to speak about but has plagued me for years.

[dix]

I have noticed for many years now, that DP does not seem to fully release resources from tracks in a sequence that are theoretically "off"....

Not my experience.

I haven't ever compared a sequence with lot's of tracks disabled to one where I deleted the unused tracks, but disabling tracks has always seemed to release the resources. I recently mixed a largeish sound design project with a hundred or so tracks with lotsa processing etc. down to a few stems. Disabling the folder of the original source tracks in the TO made the project feel like I was working with an effects-light, audio-only project. Again, I didn't try deleting the unused tracks because I wanted to keep them available, but just disabling the tracks made a substantial difference.

Your sig implies you're using DP 8.07. Is that correct?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Your sig implies you're using DP 8.07. Is that correct?

[dix]

Your sig implies you're using DP 8.07. Is that correct?

He says his long standing automation issues were finally fixed, so maybe his sig just needs updating

[MIDI Life Crisis]

He says his long standing automation issues were finally fixed, so maybe his sig just needs updating

Somewhat o/t but it's always a balance of when one moves from version to version. If I skip a version (even incremental) something is always a little different.

And I'm not assuming the resources aren't being released when, in fact, it could possibly be a hard drive, buss, or even a slow RAM issue.

I have the same machine and don't see this but I haven't run that many tracks since my last 5.1 sound design for a feature many years ago. With the score, all dialogue, SFX, and heavy plugins, etc., and on a lowly G5, performance was fine.

Spreading the load across cores is CRITICAL in good performance on larger projects, especially where VIs are concerned.

There was something else but it has escaped me at the moment... Let me chase those damn kids off my lawn and I'll see if i can remember what it was...

[toodamnhip]

Sorry guys, been gone updating to Mohave from Sierra. When I posted this, I was running Sierra and 10.11. and Now I am on Mohave up from Sierra hoping to see performance improvements. Up to now, I have found my very large projects only able to run on DP 8.07 which I have found to be more efficient than 10.11. So I didn't want to update to Mohave in order to run 8.07 for its more efficient abilities. We'll see what happens next as I am finally in the modern range of OS. Will DP run better? Will DP be able to run Hughe automation projects? If it can't, I have a B room running light pip into A room so I can still run 8.07 off my original cheesgrater. Adventure time.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Speaking of sigs... "Tons of VIS and plug ins, almost everything out there."

This has always caught my eye. For example... Waves has consistently screwed with DP (and other software). Once Waves was completely gone, performance immediately improved.

Is it possible you have too much of a good thing?