Pro Tools 7 & Application Switching, PT7 won't play after switching apps Options

[aleman]

I'm running Pro Tools 7.0 on Tiger (10.4.3) on a mirror-drive G4 with dual 1.25 Gig processors and 512 MB of RAM. For the most part PT7 runs beautifully.

The problem I have occurs when I'm running PT7 and then switch to another application (like my internet browser, or iTunes for example). When I switch *back* to Pro Tools after using the other application, I can't play my file anymore. Any attempt to hit the "play" button (either using the spacebar or my mouse) fails.

The "play" button gets highlighted for a split second, and then the "stop" button gets highlighted immediate afterwards and PT won't play. I don't get any error messages.

It's worth noting that this does NOT happen when I switch back and forth between Reason Adapted and ProTools. It's only with my other apps.

Anyone else experience this, or have an idea what's causing it?

Thanks in advance.

[scrambles]

I used to have this problem as well. I was never able to pinpoint what caused it. Usually it would occur if I left a session open for a few hours at a time, especially if it was inactive. But i had it happen occasionally while working in a session... one minute its playing fine, the next I get exactly what you described. i always closed PT and Reason and may have even restarted the CPU a few times to fix it.

This was probably in 6.4 or 6.7 in Panther 10.3.9 (sorry can't remember with all the frequent upgrades). Currently I'm running 6.9 in Tiger 10.4.2 with no problems.

All I can add is that I don't think it is a processing power limitation b/c I didn't necessarily have many tracks or soft synths running. It would happen in very basic sessions. Also I am using a Dual G5 2.0Ghz.

For what its worth...