Pro Tools and Garritan

[stellarsound]

Hello,
I'm new. I recently purchased GPO to use on my Powerbook G4 1GHz with 1G RAM. I'm running OSX 10.2.8 and Pro Tools 6.1.2.
Although I am delighted with the quality of the sounds, I am SHOCKED at its performance. I can only run 3 banks simultaneously before it crashes my computer. I've never had a problem like this in Pro Tools before, I can normally run 32 audio tracks with about 26 plugins without a problem, plus, Pro Tools has NEVER been crashed by a plugin til GPO.

Why is this product being billed as Pro Tools compatible? :confused: :mad:

[Shazbot]

Some people have posted here previously about how great GPO works with Pro Tools, so... :confused:

[Garritan]

Stellarsound,

Seems like there is something unusual going on. Your system should not be crashing. Shaz is right about people having good results with ProTools.

We need to identify the problems and help solve it. I just spoke with Native Instruments about your problem and they asked for you to send a crash log. Please email me a crash log to forward to them so we can identify what's going on and find a solution.

Gary Garritan


vbmenu_register("postmenu_173274", true);

[stellarsound]

Hi Gary,
thanks for your response! Excuse my rather hot headed post, I was just dying to use GPO and a bit surprised by the performance.
I'm not sure what a "crash log" is, where would I find it?

thanks!



Stellarsound,

Seems like there is something unusual going on. Your system should not be crashing. Shaz is right about people having good results with ProTools.

We need to identify the problems and help solve it. I just spoke with Native Instruments about your problem and they asked for you to send a crash log. Please email me a crash log to forward to them so we can identify what's going on and find a solution.

Gary Garritan


vbmenu_register("postmenu_173274", true);

[Garritan]

stellar,

A crash log is usually generated in a dialog box when the program crashes. It should generate a text file.

I just heard again from Native Instruments who wrote "One of our testers just built a Pro Tools project with 5 instances of GPO, each running 5 instruments. This worked fine - no crashes at all. The user with the problem is running both an old version of OSX and anold version of Pro Tools. I'd suggest that his first step might be to upgrade both."

Perhaps upgrading your ProTools and OS may help. The update to the new Player (that's in beta now) should also have better performance.

Gary Garritan

[Jeff Turner]

Stellarsound,

To generate a crash log, go to the apple menu at the top left of your screen. Click on ABOUT THIS MAC, click MORE INFO. The Apple System Profiler will appear. Choose the "Logs' tab and you'll find the Pro Tools crash log there.

I'm PT also and haven't had any crashes. Good luck.

Jeff

[dubaifox]

[QUOTE=Garritan]I just heard again from Native Instruments who wrote "One of our testers just built a Pro Tools project with 5 instances of GPO, each running 5 instruments.QUOTE]

Really? Is this the new Beta version, or the current one. I have read the posts here quite a while I don't recall anyone saying they were having great succes with PT. It is very stable for me, but I seem to be able to get no more than say 7 or 8 instruments playing at the same time.

I can load all kinds of voices and instances no problem. But when they are playing back, the CPU load goes up every time a voice comes in, until the CPU spike freezes the app and I have to quit.

This on a Dual 1.25 with 1.5 gig ram, latest versions of everything. I have only just started experimenting with Digital Performer, but still using my 002r as the output device, and I noticed that with just three voices playing (one of them the organ) my CPU meter was going nuts up to 50%. (what a great instrument though!!!!)

In the recent poll there were only 4 people who were saying they were using Pro Tools with GPO. I'd sure love to be able to to a Wagner Score on my Mac.:)

[stellarsound]

Thanks for all that guys,
the crash log is below, you were right about the new version of the player though Gary, I downloaded it and now can handle 8 voices at once. I'll update to OSX 10.3.2 (Panther) and Pro Tools 6.4 today and let you know how that is affecting performance.
thanks, and by the way, what a great library, the tubular bells are fantastic, as is all the percussion :D :D

stellarsound, dublin, ireland.

[edit: System information removed and forwarded to NI]

[Garritan]

Stellar,

Glad you are getting more voices now. We removed your crash log since it contained system information and its probably not a good idea to make this info public. The information was copied and sent to Native Instruments. Good luck with the new updates.

Gary Garritan

[bmonroney]

Stellar,

I have a similar system - 1GHz G4 Aluminum PowerBook. I don't use ProTools much (lean towards DP4 and Logic), but I do use GPO and the rest of the NI products. I Originally I put 1 GB of RAM in the PowerBook, had many problems with crashing and impaired performance, particularly with instense audio use. The problem turned out to be bad RAM...these PowerBooks are very picky about the DDR SODIMMs they use...I ended up replacing my original RAM with 2GB of RAM which is from the same manufacturer rumored to be used by Apple (Nanya) and my PowerBook has become a new machine.

My suggestiong is that you may want to run the Hardware Test that is included on your original system restore DVD (after inserting the DVD, reboot with the option key to select Hardware Test). It wil tell you if you have a bad RAM module. I also suggest that you consider updating your Mac OS to 10.3.x and ProTools to 6.4.x, it seems that audio and virtual instruments in general have improved with all the latest OS and application upgrades. As a beta-tester for NI, I can tell you that the latest Kontakt update is excellent, and I'm sure those improvements are being rolled into the Kontakt Player that powers GPO.

Brian

[dubaifox]

As a beta-tester for NI, I can tell you that the latest Kontakt update is excellent, and I'm sure those improvements are being rolled into the Kontakt Player that powers GPO.


Well this is good news. Thanks Brian.

When you upgraded to 2 Gig Ram, did it improve your GPO performance at all within Pro Tools?

When I increased my ram to 1.5, it enabled me to load more voices, but it did not increase the number of voices that would play back simultaneaously. The CPU load still was getting hammered.

[Garritan]

Stellarsound,

I heard back from Native Instruments. They said that there appears to be no sign of GPO anywhere in your crash log. It doesn't appear that the plugin was loaded at the time the log was generated.

Could you please cause GPO to crash your system and send another log? Please email me the log as it is probably not a good idea to post system info in public.

Thanks,

Gary Garritan

[stellarsound]

Stellar,


My suggestiong is that you may want to run the Hardware Test that is included on your original system restore DVD (after inserting the DVD, reboot with the option key to select Hardware Test). It wil tell you if you have a bad RAM module. I also suggest that you consider updating your Mac OS to 10.3.x and ProTools to 6.4.x, it seems that audio and virtual instruments in general have improved with all the latest OS and application upgrades. As a beta-tester for NI, I can tell you that the latest Kontakt update is excellent, and I'm sure those improvements are being rolled into the Kontakt Player that powers GPO.

Brian

Brian,
thanks for the tips, I'll definitely do all of that and I'll let you know how it's working out.
Lovely to see a community of people willing to help the new guy on the block, even if the first thing he did was complain
:o :o

[bmonroney]

When you upgraded to 2 Gig Ram, did it improve your GPO performance at all within Pro Tools?

When I increased my ram to 1.5, it enabled me to load more voices, but it did not increase the number of voices that would play back simultaneaously. The CPU load still was getting hammered.[/QUOTE]

I can't say regarding ProTools, since I don't use it much, only as a means to transfer projects to/from clients in that format...I work mostly in DP4, which really saw a great overall performance increase with the new RAM, but I doubt RAM alone will translate into more voices...that's always going to be more an issue of CPU speed, memory bandwidth and host program efficiency. My sense is that under OSX, Pro Tools is one of the less efficient virtual instrument hosts, DP4 slightly more so and Logic better yet. I do know that I can now load up a Kontakt instance with 16 GPO instruments playing in DP4.12, with some sort of lighter-CPU reverb like TrueVerb, and it performs well unless I have lots off long decaying notes like harp, piano, timps...these instruments eat up voices quickly.

Brian

[stellarsound]

Ok, updated to the latest osx, the latest kontakt player and the latest pro tools.
The system is definitely running smoother, I can now load 7 voices (depending on the combination) and playback. It is still a little unstable though, the following happens from time to time -

It freezes quite a bit though, it also spits out low bursts of noise and won't playback if it's pushed too hard.
It seems to have trouble when I load a large instrument, i.e the steinways or the concert marimba. The player freezes once I start playing with those.

Any words of wisdom?
p.s. I'll definitely check out the RAM issue, I'll run a hardware test in a while....

[NeoDavinci]

Any words of wisdom?
p.s. I'll definitely check out the RAM issue, I'll run a hardware test in a while....
Make sure the Ambience plug in isn't set too high. It's a major resource hog.
Mark

[stellarsound]

Make sure the Ambience plug in isn't set too high. It's a major resource hog.
Mark
Absolutely, I only use ambience in the final mixdown, I use dverb as I work. Ambience is FANTASTIC though, kicks the [nss][nss][nss] of almost any other reverb, except the waves renaissance, which is next on my purchase wishlist!
steve