Subject:ACID PRO 7 w/Pro Tools Problem

Posted by: FrankLP*

Date:11/6/2008 8:44:43 PM

AP6 works great, but AP7 "locks up" when I stop play in Pro Tools. AP7 just plays an annoying tone; the counter sticks in an endless loop on the 1.1.00_ cycling from 0-9 rapidly; and the AP7 play button is locked on.

Any ideas or is this a form of the midi bug that's been reported?

Subject:RE: ACID PRO 7 w/Pro Tools Problem

Reply by: Greg_M

Date:11/6/2008 9:07:01 PM

FrankLP,

Looks like you are getting better results than most. The problem with AP 7 and PT was covered a few days ago in another thread. Looks like it just crashes for most when Rewired to PT.

Greg

Subject:RE: ACID PRO 7 w/Pro Tools Problem

Reply by: pwppch

Date:11/7/2008 7:16:37 AM

ACID ReWired into Pro Tools or any other host has a bug. We have fixed it and it will be part of the soon to be released 7.0a update.

Peter

Subject:RE: ACID PRO 7 w/Pro Tools Problem

Reply by: FrankLP*

Date:11/8/2008 8:03:16 AM

Thanks for the response guys. I'll wait for the fix...back to AP6 for now.

Subject:RE: ACID PRO 7 w/Pro Tools Problem

Reply by: Greg_M

Date:11/15/2008 6:07:55 PM

I just tried Rewiring AP7a with PTLE 7.4cs8 and there were some issues. First of all, playback required a very high buffer setting (1024 samples) in PTLE to be somewhat stable. Lower buffer settings all threw a PT buffer error. Resource usage was very high (greater than 60%) even at high buffer settings. Both Reaper and Reason used less than 10 % resources at a PTLE buffer setting of 128 samples in the same PTLE session.

In addition, some ACID tracks did not play back in Sync with other ACID tracks. This is a showstopper for ACID and PTLE.

The PTLE session was made up of a Stereo Aux input ( with ACID as a Rewired, slaved insert) and a master fader with no active RTAS plugins. The ACID session was the Demo session.

The ACID Demo session when run by itself (not Rewired to PTLE) consumed 6% resourses.

Unfortunately, it looks like there needs to be some more work done to get ACID to function properly as a Rewire Slave in PTLE.

Any other PTLE users tried Rewiring AP7a to PTLE?

Thanks,
Greg

Subject:RE: ACID PRO 7 w/Pro Tools Problem

Reply by: pwppch

Date:11/16/2008 10:32:54 PM

I am not seeing the need to increase PTools buffer sizes with PTools LE. I can run at 256 (my normal setting) with out problems. 128 does cause buffering problems reported by PTools, but I see the same behavior with Reason and other ReWire devices.


In addition, some ACID tracks did not play back in Sync with other ACID tracks.

Can you be more specific here and quantify what you mean by "some" and what "did not play back in Sync" means?

Where the tracks early or late in reference to the PTools clock?

This was with the demo project? The audio only or the MIDI version?

One other consideration: (A stab in the dark)

The demo project is installed on your system drive typically. This can cause a streaming problem in some cases depending on how your system is configured. You might want to try copying the sample project to your media drive or some other non-system drive to see if performance improves.

Thanks,
Peter

Subject:RE: ACID PRO 7 w/Pro Tools Problem

Reply by: Greg_M

Date:11/17/2008 8:43:49 PM

Peter,

I have moved the Demo to another physical internal drive so it is no longer on the same drive as the operating system. Since moving the Demo to this drive, CPU usage is down, but the Demo will not play at any PTLE buffer setting without stalling and throwing the buffer error.

The problems still exist.

The Demo I am using is the audio only version of "Just So You Know".

What I mean by the audio tracks in ACID not playing back in sync is that some tracks sound like they may be experiencing latency relative to the other tracks. Some Tracks are out of time with others. There are no audio or midi tracks in PTLE.

The Demo plays perfectly in Standalone Mode.

I will try one more thing in PLTLE - delete the Digi preferences and Digi Database folders to force PTLE to recreate them. Sometimes that fixes strange problems. I'll let you know.

Edit: I'm editing this post to let you know that deleting the Digi Preferences and Databases did not fix the problem. If you listen to the beginning of the Demo, the first thing you hear come in late is the track "Full String Pizz Hi" then the oboe and it just gets worse as the demo plays.

Thanks,
Greg

Subject:RE: ACID PRO 7 w/Pro Tools Problem

Reply by: pwppch

Date:11/17/2008 9:45:56 PM

Greg,

Thanks for the details. I am looking into this.

What happens if you start a project from scratch in ACID?

Create something or load in one of your ACID projects that you may have created in ACID 6 and used with PTools before.

Peter

Subject:RE: ACID PRO 7 w/Pro Tools Problem

Reply by: Greg_M

Date:11/18/2008 7:22:18 PM

Peter,

Projects created in ACID 6 exhibit the same problems. I put together an ACID 7 project today and it is better than the others, but still has some problems. The problems with the ACID 7 project are 1) you must use a PTLE Hardware buffer of at least 256 samples to play - that means no recording with ACID 7 rewired, 2) As soon as play on the transport is hit you get a buffer error. This is at any buffer setting. Eventually it will play if you keep hitting the transport.

Something is not quite right yet. Thanks for looking into this.

Edit: 11/19/2008 - I did some more testing and found that the reason the buffer errors are being thrown is that the CPU usage when ACID is rewired to PTLE is really high. As soon as you hit play on the transport there is a large CPU spike. When the HW Buffer in PTLE is less than 256 samples, the CPU spike goes to 100% and throws the buffer error and halts the session. Even very small ACID 7 projects seem to be requiring a large CPU demand when rewired to PTLE.

Hope this helps,

Greg

Subject:RE: ACID PRO 7 w/Pro Tools Problem

Reply by: Greg_M

Date:11/22/2008 7:57:35 PM

Bump

Subject:RE: ACID PRO 7 w/Pro Tools Problem

Reply by: pwppch

Date:11/22/2008 8:50:57 PM

We are looking into the problem.

Peter

Subject:RE: ACID PRO 7 w/Pro Tools Problem

Reply by: pwppch

Date:12/3/2008 10:18:24 AM

The Demo I am using is the audio only version of "Just So You Know".

What I mean by the audio tracks in ACID not playing back in sync is that some tracks sound like they may be experiencing latency relative to the other tracks. Some Tracks are out of time with others. There are no audio or midi tracks in PTLE.

The reason these play out of sync is they are one-shots and were rendered at a specific tempo. One-shots do not change due to tempo changes. Since PTools is the tempo master and they are at a tempo that is different (in this case a tempo that changes over time) they play out of sync.

This is how one shots are dealt with regardless of being played through ReWire or not.

WRT to the performance and time out issues: I am working on them.

Peter