I'd like comments to these observations. Has anybody noticed this.

For me all the problems I have in DP4, CPU spiking,
my 828 firewire going dead == no activity lights while playing back sequences,
playback stutter and the famous SBFH etc.

Seems to crop up after I have been doing anything in midi. But I have yet to deduce a pattern to it all.

Just spent 5 hours straight with looping drum-patterns, Recording gtr-tracks, soundbite editing etc.
In a small project. Not a single hiccup. Processor cpu load way down low.

Just before this 5 hour strech I had to "force quit" DP4 in the same small project.
(listened to the midi-tracks & muted them to work the audio)
I did NOT even reboot my imac, just rebooted DP4.

I will post a follow up to this one - directly below - not to be too longwinded in a single post.

Cheers: Dixiechicken

Ok everybody - here's my follow up.
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Went back to my small project, opened it up.
Muted the audio tracks, unmuted the miditracks.

Played the sequence a couple times, and adding another midi-track ( a grand total of six ).
After trying to choose a sound I wanted from my Proteus 2000, midi-gremlins re-appeared with a vengeance.

Moving the mouse ( honest I didnt klick no button Mom ) DP4 started to record my 6:th midi track.
Ordnary playback stutters.
The infamous SBFH keeps popping sometimes now, sometimes then.
Sometimes the transportcontrols work - sometimes not.
Oops... my 6:th midichannel seems to have lost all notes below middle C.
( I use my K2000 as master keyboard -- no cpu spiking though - halleluja )

After 15 minutes of this - poof DP4 call it quits (not that I blame the poor bastard) -
luckily it hasnt affected the stability of my system. (hehe)

Top-stat didnt turn up anything really useful. I misstyped vm_stat, but I'll get better I promise.

Either I have managed to f--k up my simple midi setup royally, or if NOT,
somthing fishy is going on.
Tomorrow I'll eat my vitamins and give it another go.
-----------------------

Observations and comments please!

Cheers: Dixiechicken

Hi dixiechicken,

Also had similar problems with MIDI in DP4.

What MIDI Interface are you using ?

I was using MIDEX 8 Interface and a MOTU 828 for audio - did some investigation and found that there were spikes in the MIDIServer CPU usage - using the "top" command in a terminal window.
MOTU blamed these on beta drivers !

Took the MIDEX 8 back and got one of the new MOTU Express 128 interfaces and it runs alot better - not really thrashed it yet but - rechecked the MIDIServer usage and its really low without any spikes.

I'll repost if I have any further problems.

Cheers

For midi Motu:s MTP AV-Usb ( plugged drectly into one of the usb-prts on my iMac
For audio Motu:s 828 Mk-I firewire ( the old one witout cuemix dsp )

My basic gear:
flatpanel iMac G4 800MHz, OS X bootable only, 1Gb of ram and 120Gb Maxtor ultra ATA 133 ide hd (8Mb cache) Mac OS X 10.2.6 swedish - latest patches applied.

Cheers: Dixiechicken

After reformatting my harddrive "with zeros" but without drivers for OS 9. (on my iMac)
Reinstalling everything and applaying the DP4.0.1 update my problems seem to have vanished.
CPU usage is much more efficient.

Dont forget to turn off the screensaver and energy savings settings.
( I have activated the root account to be able to mount certain CD:s on the desktop - this is a bug in Mac OS X 10.2.6 combo-update )

Cheers: Dixiechicken