DP4 is just unreliable. What's going on here?

jimfisheye · Post by **jimfisheye** » Sat Dec 10, 2005 12:40 pm

DP4.12 with OSX (and Protools 6 and Roxio Toast, Jam 6 for that matter) is quite unreliable. It can record 44 tracks for 4 hours one minute, and crash recording just 2 tracks the next. DP3 with OS9 is rock solid with absolutely no exceptions (yes, I've switched back; no, the problem is NOT hardware related; yes, I know how to set my buffers, etc). My pattern recognition skills are telling me the real problem is that OSX is simply a bug riddled mess but any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Aramis · Post by **Aramis** » Sat Dec 10, 2005 12:43 pm

If you know all the answers why do you ask ????

Aramis · Post by **Aramis** » Sat Dec 10, 2005 12:44 pm

Tiger is the most stable audio recording platform for me .....

Aramis

jimfisheye · Post by **jimfisheye** » Sat Dec 10, 2005 12:54 pm

Aramis wrote:If you know all the answers why do you ask ????

I'd like to know if anyone else has seen this behavior. I do NOT know all the answers to anything.

jimfisheye · Post by **jimfisheye** » Sat Dec 10, 2005 12:56 pm

Aramis wrote:Tiger is the most stable audio recording platform for me .....

Aramis

Is there any documentation that claims that these issues exist and have been fixed with DP4.5/OS 10.4?

Aramis · Post by **Aramis** » Sat Dec 10, 2005 12:59 pm

jimfisheye wrote:
Aramis wrote:If you know all the answers why do you ask ????

I'd like to know if anyone else has seen this behavior. I do NOT know all the answers to anything.[/quote

Ok What I mean is , you are not specific '

A lot of problems mean ram problems and hard disk problem and bad habits in software load problems ....

There is a way to troubleshoot problems ....

Aramis

dmshep · Post by **dmshep** » Sat Dec 10, 2005 1:07 pm

A lot of people are using DP in OSX without problems. I understand the frustrations when you're having crash problems - I was there for a long time until I tracked down a bad stick of RAM. I have no problems whatsoever now and DP runs solidly in both 4.5 and 4.61. Nine times out of ten it's something in your system when you're getting random crash behaviour.

jimfisheye · Post by **jimfisheye** » Sat Dec 10, 2005 1:17 pm

dmshep wrote:A lot of people are using DP in OSX without problems. I understand the frustrations when you're having crash problems - I was there for a long time until I tracked down a bad stick of RAM. I have no problems whatsoever now and DP runs solidly in both 4.5 and 4.61. Nine times out of ten it's something in your system when you're getting random crash behaviour.

Agreed. But the thing is I can load the OS 9 system and beat up on it for 2 weeks with absolutely no problems. If I load the OSX system I'll have a crash within 3 days. I've done a lot of testing over the last month including repeatedly running Apple hardware tests. Am I missing something?
I should add that these experiments are being run on 2 different computers with the same results. (Two 667 TiBooks w/ 768M ram)

Aramis · Post by **Aramis** » Sat Dec 10, 2005 1:30 pm

Please reply with your setup ????

dmshep · Post by **dmshep** » Sat Dec 10, 2005 1:33 pm

The best way to get help here is to post some specifics - your set-up (hardware and software), versions of software and drivers, the kind of crash you're experiencing (does it freeze up? Hang? Suddenly shut down? Are you getting crash reports?), whether it happens with any other apps, etc.

Have you removed the iSight plug-in? It's known to cause conflicts with DP. There are threads around here that go through a lot of possibilities if you run a search. Like this one:

http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... ght=isight

or this one:

http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... ght=isight

or this one:

http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... ght=isight

Again, I know it's frustrating, but it can be sorted out. Run some searches, and post your set-up.

jimfisheye · Post by **jimfisheye** » Sat Dec 10, 2005 4:33 pm

Aramis wrote:Please reply with your setup ????

TiBook 667 w/ 768M ram
OS 10.3.9
DP 4.12
60G 7200 rpm 8M buffer Hitachi internal HD
120G 7200 rpm 8M buffer WD external firewire HD

I get the least amount of crashes with the buffers set to stupid big numbers: buffer size 1024, disk read/write 1000k, buffer per voice 2,000,000 samples.
Possible clue: setting the host buffer multiplier to anything but 1 produces constant glitches in the audio. The red light will be flashing on the CPU meter even though the meter is hovering around 20%.

This setup is for recording only. (Live remote recording where there can be no glitches.) ProTools on a different system is used for post production.

Just read all the posts about the iSight plugin. My system doesn't freeze or quit. I'll get the "HD can't keep up error" (again, sometimes when only recording two tracks). The performance meters are floating around 10 - 20%. When the error happens the disc meter IS pegged (ie. instantly goes from around 20% to pegged). This would SEEM to indicate HD trouble but again - with 2 tracks?; and this NEVER happens with DP3 in OS9. (Sure, I can set buffers too small and force this to happen, but never with the proper settings). I should add that the HD is defragmented with over 50G free space (the internal) or completely emply (the externals).

westla · Post by **westla** » Sat Dec 10, 2005 5:05 pm

Here's a wild guess .... you need more RAM.

OSX needs much more RAM than OS9.

Also that is a pretty slow processor in your computer. Dosen't it make sense that a OS that is 6 years old would require less resources than a new OS?

TheHopiWay · Post by **TheHopiWay** » Sat Dec 10, 2005 5:10 pm

You don't have journaling enabled on any of your drives do you?

jimfisheye · Post by **jimfisheye** » Sat Dec 10, 2005 7:51 pm

TheHopiWay wrote:You don't have journaling enabled on any of your drives do you?

Yes. When I set up the HD Disk Utility wouldn't let me select extended without journaling. I guess I just assumed that's the way things were now with OSX and ignored it (now that sounds kind of stupid of me).
Strange - the "disable journaling" command Apple talks about in disk utility doesn't seem to exist. TechTool has this ability though.
Is journaling a huge resource hog?

I'll post if this cures the problem.

jimfisheye · Post by **jimfisheye** » Sat Dec 10, 2005 7:58 pm

westla wrote:Here's a wild guess .... you need more RAM.

OSX needs much more RAM than OS9.

Also that is a pretty slow processor in your computer. Dosen't it make sense that a OS that is 6 years old would require less resources than a new OS?

Makes sense yes but Activity monitor tells me I've got plenty of headroom left even when throwing 40 tracks down. Since these two machines only record, I'll never need the processing for mixing.