Just When You Thought Your Studio Was Perfect… Technology says ‘hold my beer’.
For many of us, when we’re not actually changing our studios, we’re thinking about what we’re going to change next. There is a universally accepted aspect of studio design which is that you shouldn’t ever make anything too permanent. While the big stuff might not change, the details are constantly changing. So why is it that in spite of all this planning, tweaking and refining we still find ourselves getting bitten by the technology which is supposed to make our lives easier? It’s because of computers…
If you’re old enough to remember studios before computers you’ll remember a time when the piece of equipment most likely to let you down was the patchbay. A more innocent (and more reliable) time!
I had one such brush with technology yesterday. A simple job involving some straightforward audio work and some video which I’ve done before. Along with preparation and planning I expected to be all done by 4pm. I was still working at 8.30…
Technical Issues
Snags, glitches, call them what you will, they are a part of using technology. However we all know that these things have a way of knowing when is exactly the wrong time to misbehave and pouncing when we’re least equipped to deal with it.
Although there were some pretty typical studio issues involving plugins which I’ll refer to later, the real time suck on this was the near complete refusal of my iPad to play nice when recording the screen. Since last time I’d done it there is a new privacy setting which needs to be checked but even then I had no success capturing to my Mac and bizarre results when recording locally to the iPad. Grrr…
Fault Finding
The procedure for quickly locating where in a long signal chain a particular signal is getting lost is a key skill for anyone working in audio. Using available meters first to track the progress of the signal, then in a methodical way checking connections, cables and equipment, this logical sequence is reliable and time-tested. I miss analogue.
Computers are more of a moving target though and while gear and cables can work one day and fail the next, the situation with a computer is more diffuse. All computers are at least a little broken. All software contains bugs but more importantly whereas you can set up hardware correctly and it will work until some specific component fails, a computer is a combination of software, operating system and drivers which all get updated over time. Each update potentially introducing new issues.
How To Find A Bad Plugin Which Is Crashing Your DAW
The first issue I had was with Pro Tools, a boot up plugins scan which usually takes under a minute was taking ten, then failing. Helpfully the splash screen displays progress through the plugins and this check which runs in alphabetical order can give an indication of where the problem lies but it doesn’t follow that the plugin which is displayed is the one which is at fault.
There is a much faster way to locate which plugin is bringing your system down. The procedure here references the folders relevant to Pro Tools on a Mac but the process is the same for other DAWs and on a PC.
In Library-Application Support-Audio you’ll find your Plug-Ins Folder and a second folder called Plug-Ins (Unused). To confirm that it is a plugin which is preventing Pro Tools from launching you can move all of your plugins to the unused folder. If you already have plugins in your unused folder and don’t wish to get your current used and unused plugins mixed up you can create a new folder and move them to there instead.
Confirm that Pro Tools will launch. If it does you can be reasonably confident that it was a plugin which was at fault. To identify which one is causing the issue split your plug-ins into two groups. Drag one half of that group back to your plug-in folder and see if your system launches, if it does, then pull them back out and try the other half - it should hang. If it does then divide the remaining group in half again and repeat the process until you find the culprit.
Irrespective of the number of plug-ins you have, you should find the culprit in around 8 moves.
Beware Of OS Upgrades
We’re all aware of the hazards awaiting us when we update our computers’ OS. In spite of this many people rush in and repent and their leisure. Being the operating system, everything on the computer relies on being compatible and in spite of our best efforts many of us still get caught out. Checking before updating is of course recommended and you can check up to date information either direct from manufacturer’s web sites or, if you are a Mac user, from our Ventura compatibility database.
Eucon 2022.12 - Version Mismatches
However in my experience it’s technology which is dependent on other technology to work which will catch you out most often. A longstanding culprit for me was Eucon, which had a regularly occurring issue when there was a version mismatch between the Eucon software running on the computer and the Avid Control App which was running on the tablet. Helpfully the Eucon software warns you of this fact but it was a regularly occurring issue for users that a new version of Eucon would be made available but the updated, compatible version of the App wasn’t immediately available on the App Store or Google Play. The situation regarding this has improved with Eucon 2022.12 in which your App version can be one version out of date and still work. That has made a lot of people happy as the speed with which apps become available in App stores is beyond the control of Avid.
Too Busy To Fix It
Of course maintenance is key here and rather than changing things in our studios probably the most worthwhile change we can make to our studios is to keep them from changing themselves via automatic updates or unanticipated incompatibilities. However, when the gremlins strike it’s usually when you are up against a deadline and the first casualty of pressure is clear thinking. Rather than stopping work, diagnosing and fixing the problem and resuming the job at hand, the temptation is to try to work around it, to avoid rather than fix. This can work but like someone believing the Gambler’s Fallacy, that if a particular event occurs more frequently than normal during the past it is less likely to happen in the future, just because you’ve fixed a problem in your studio it doesn’t follow that there can’t be a second or a third one about to happen. Most days aren’t like that but like I said at the beginning of this article, if you find yourself believing that a bad day in the studio can’t get worse, technology says “hold my beer”…
Photo by cottonbro studio