DP 5.01-- User reports

[Shooshie]

but shooshie, by all accounts RP only addresses apple installers. That much is known. so it doesn't make empirical sense that RP heals DP or anything other than an Apple application's permits. Just because one takes a step and an unwanted behavior disappears, there isn't necessarily a causal relationship. we all know how computers are and that sometimes a second attempt, or a night's rest can set things straight for no apparent reason. It was the same with PRAM or desktop rebuilding on OS9, as far as I can tell.

I agree with you, Danny, though I'm not sure that we're merely addressing installers. Is it possible that an installer leaves permissions tangled in areas that repair does affect? I'm not sure I trust "all accounts." There's too much unknown there--gray area as Frodo said. When you get down to the details, there always seems to be an exception here or there that technically isn't this or that, but functionally reaches beyond its defined purpose. I'm by no means claiming to know something about that. It's just one of those intuitive things after years of experience where you just "know" that when pushed, even the experts sometimes admit to underestimating a technicality in a given situation.

But what you said is also very true. At best, we're guessing when we come up with a causal relationship between A and B. I see such relationships as strongly suggestive, and will sometimes file them away in my mind as factual, but I'm always willing to let go of them at first sign of a higher truth. I've even seen cases where a programmer who actually wrote the code to something will claim absolute knowledge, then will be overridden by a 2nd programmer who inserted another line of code somewhere by request from the boss when programmer 1 was out to lunch. (I used to work for a company that programmed databases--one of my few non-musical jobs, and a short-lived one of about 9 months) Things are rarely absolute!

Shooshie

[Spikey Horse]

Did someone asked about continuous scrollers in DP5 not working? .... I am sure they did although I can't find the thread now .....spooky...... anyway it works fine for me in SE, GE, but not in TO (which I have in CW). Was that always the case? I never really use it.

DP5.01
10.3.9

[danny]

shooshie good points, BUT "all accounts" is based mainly on Apple documentation where the function of PR is described as a process affecting permits for apple's own apps and nothing more.

somewhat off-topic:
There are so many settings in Studio Setup which interact with one another. Buffer sizes, playback buffers, work priority, etc., etc. There is potential for so much variation in the way different users have set this up. Isn't it getting to be time for companies like MOTU to become more helpful by building in auto analysis of one's CPU power, interface, disk performance, etc., and providing some presets optimized for different tasks, such as working with VI's (very low latency), mixing (very high latency), etc.? This is a very simple example, but i imagine you get where this thought leads.
A big convenience, and would reduce variables which cause users to have such widely diverse experiences.

[Shooshie]

shooshie good points, BUT "all accounts" is based mainly on Apple documentation where the function of PR is described as a process affecting permits for apple's own apps and nothing more.

Danny, as I said in an earlier post in this thread, repairing permissions seems to be partly superstition, and may be part of a psychosomatic "fix" to some problems. I don't doubt for a second that I've fallen victim to that "fix" from time to time! Nevertheless, I'm still not writing off the possibility that repairing permissions fixed whatever was the problem, but I'm at least diminishing it to a healthy doubt until there is further evidence one way or the other.

Shooshie

[Frodo]

Hey, I have (at least) one question about DP 5.x:

This issue of "inserting" and deleting measures was always a puzzle to me. When new measures are inserted, it seems that they aren't "inserted" at all, but "added to" the beginning of the sequence with measure numbers: 0, -1, -2, ....

Is DP 5.x any different?

Is it any easier or different to delete measures in DP 5.x?

Thx.

[grimepoch]

Fuel for the fire...

I *never* repair permissions on my machines and I never run into these problems. I just hate the concept that permissions on files cause such problems anyways. I've never used an OS that had permission problems, so I just avoid messing with it.

What *has* worked for me is trashing the preference file, reinstalling after COMPLETELY removing all parts of an applicaiton that I was updating, or drivers, or whatever else I was doing at the time.

It's sad to say, but yes, reinstalling an OS and all the parts can make a huge difference. I did this test on THREE machines with 10.4 upgrading to 10.3. On each machine I updated the machine, ran benchmarks, cleared the whole system, installed fresh, rebenchmarked. The difference was striking. I in fact noticed the machine running slower after I had installed 10.4 the first time which is what prompted the experiment.

I feel the same is true with DP and other components. Programs install crap ALL OVER the place in the audio library area. What does need to be documented is how to EXACTLY remove all parts of a program that is installed. Just like the MIDI issues, most of the time I have noticed issues with CoreAudio more than anything else I believe.

Summary...updates can work like crap from apple & other venders. If someone just reinstalls a driver and it works, this doesn't mean it was motu. the way core audio deals with that driver could also be suspect.

[Klaus]

What made my rig go fast and unproblematic is
deleting caches.
I use Rootmachine
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/18060
it has 3 levels of deleting caches, and deleting 'deep system cache' helped at one point really, I think I posted in
http://www.unicornation.com/phpBB2/view ... ache#72526
Then no Spotlight ( even disabled at startup ! )
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/18141

Best

Klaus

[tripit@earthlink.net]

My problem w/5.01 thus far:

CPU meter can be hovering around half when I start a project, but then after working with volume automation only for a while, the CPU meter goes up to around 90%, starts spiking red frequently, and the audio quality degrades (sounds like dropouts).

Closing and re-opening the project fixes this temporarily, as does Quitting and re-launching the application. Then about fifteen minutes later, I have to repeat.


This is on my G4 PB 1Ghz/1GRAM w/Traveler attached, doing a 48/16 project on an OMF import from an Avid Symphony.

Oh great. Sounds like a memory leak. Damn! When is MOTU going to start beta-testing their stuff? Maybe they need to look for NEW beta testers. Their current testers just aren't catching the bugs. MOTU? You listening? Please give it some thought. We paid users really do feel like full-time beta testers. It shouldn't have to be like this. We accept a certain amount of this because we love the software so much, but you could do so much more in the market if you'd just make DP solid again.

Shooshie

You took the words righty out of my mouth. I don't know how and who MOTU is doing beta with, but with this many problems, it seems that the beta cycle is not doing what it should. A lot of these little bugs should have been caught in beta.

I'm still having some serious issues with DP5 and PT. For one, the QT movie wait for note issue is still there in 5.01. For two, the prefs seem to be corrupting every day or every other day. It's become very time costly to have to trash prefs, reboot, reset prefs to DAE etc.

[tommymandel]

I use Auto-Tune too, and 5.01 is fine.
I downloaded their AU version, which they are saying is preferable to the MAS one. It's a slightly different version number too, and also, once you have bought one format of it, you are allowed to download all or any of the other formats of that plug-in. Have you tried replacing Auto-Tune MAS with Auto-Tune AU? That's my suggestion.
Caveat: when I instantiate Auto-Tune (AU), everything slows down for about 2 seconds, and it sort of fades in visually. But then I've been fine. AU's gotta be better than MAS, if not bulletproof.
Tommy

[Frodo]

What made my rig go fast and unproblematic is
deleting caches.
I use Rootmachine
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/18060
it has 3 levels of deleting caches, and deleting 'deep system cache' helped at one point really, I think I posted in
http://www.unicornation.com/phpBB2/view ... ache#72526
Then no Spotlight ( even disabled at startup ! )
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/18141

Best

Klaus

Klaus, thanks so much for the links and heads up. The Spotlight issue alone has already yielded improvements even where I wasn't particularly concerned in my case. I'm giving all of this info some serious attention.

Wow.

[grimepoch]

Me too!

I have used 'cocktail' to remove a lot of the cache's earier, but I am going to try this as well.

I am also SURE that disabling Spotlight will be an improvement, I've heard as much from other OSX users who use different software (video) that require lots of CPU bandwidth.

[danny]

this is another one.... those caches are there for a reason, one of them being performance. i wouldn't take this as gospel or get into it myself without a lot more research.

[grimepoch]

A cache is a temporary storage location, cleaning them out frees up resources. Once you are going again in a project, if something needs to be in a cache, they'll get pushed back in. The problem is what I refer to as 'cache creep', when it just gets out of control.

[Klaus]

I like this, 'cache creep'
I'm not cleaning cache every minute....,
but when I went for 'cleaning deep system cache'
with Rootmachine, I had a feeling this cleaned 'some confusion' of the Mac / OS.
I was also wondering what exactly does cache cleaning, esp. the different levels of it, and asked earlier maybe even in this thread.
Anyone has an insight or easy reading weblinks ?

Thanks

Klaus

[Frodo]

I like this, 'cache creep'
I'm not cleaning cache every minute....,
but when I went for 'cleaning deep system cache'
with Rootmachine, I had a feeling this cleaned 'some confusion' of the Mac / OS.
I was also wondering what exactly does cache cleaning, esp. the different levels of it, and asked earlier maybe even in this thread.
Anyone has an insight or easy reading weblinks ?

Thanks

Klaus

Klaus--

this might be a good place to start. This information is courtesy of The X Lab @
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/maintainingmacosx.html

Most of the activities performed by tools like Cocktail, Onyx, Yasu, and others that are portrayed as maintenance are, in fact, troubleshooting steps.

Accordingly, cache cleaning, repairing permissions, prebinding, and other tasks are not regular maintenance tasks.

In some cases, such as System Cache cleaning, they can have unintended consequences. For this reason, we also advise you not to let third-party utilities perform automated maintenance other than running the standard UNIX maintenance scripts.

We will now dispel some common maintenance myths.

Cache cleaning

System and User cache cleaning are troubleshooting steps, but not part of regular maintenance.

Caches are used to improve the performance of both the operating system and applications. Removing System and User cache files for other than troubleshooting purposes defeats the purpose of cache files, which will be rebuilt automatically at your next restart or login, adding time to those processes.

Potential side effects of System-level cache cleaning are discussed in our "Side effects of System cache cleaning" FAQ.

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/syscachecleaneffects.html

Accordingly, cache cleaning can be an important troubleshooting step, such as when used in our "Resolving Disk, Permission, and Cache Corruption" FAQ, but it is not regular maintenance.

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/repairprocess.html

I've held off on cache cleaning for the moment, but disabling Spotlight was pretty darn cool! I hardly used it anyway because the Finder is so well designed.