Old 02-04-2017, 11:37 AM   #1
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Default Spinning wheel of death

Hi,

I'am in the middle of a project and all of a sudden, when I open a file I get the 'spinning wheel of death' for half a minute before REAPER responses. I never had that before, restarting the computer does not help, any suggestions what to do? Is there a log or window somewhere where I can see what causes the lagging?

thanks a lot!

ole
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Old 02-05-2017, 01:05 AM   #2
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Which OSX and Reaper versions? What kind of file do you open, when it happens? A project or media?

Maybe it helps, checking OSX logs:

https://support.omnigroup.com/console-osx/

PS: Which sound device / interface do you use? Are drivers up to date?
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Old 02-05-2017, 01:41 AM   #3
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Originally Posted by Aymara View Post
Which OSX and Reaper versions? What kind of file do you open, when it happens? A project or media?

Maybe it helps, checking OSX logs:

https://support.omnigroup.com/console-osx/

PS: Which sound device / interface do you use? Are drivers up to date?
Thanks for your answer!

Latest Reaper on MacOS 10.9.5 on a late 2013 MacbookPro with 16 GB Ram and 1TB SSD, RME Fireface 400 with latest Drivers.

Very light Project with ~10 Wave Files and ~5 FX yesterday, but I had the lagging before also on similar projects since a week. Until than, super stable. Very strange. I did not change anything on my computer..
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Old 02-05-2017, 02:49 AM   #4
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In this case it seems likely to be an issue of Reaper itself.

You could try a Reaper mobile installation of an older version to compare, maybe the latest V4.
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Old 02-05-2017, 05:36 AM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Aymara View Post
In this case it seems likely to be an issue of Reaper itself.

You could try a Reaper mobile installation of an older version to compare, maybe the latest V4.

Hmm. Not sure
I can't really reproduce the lagging..
Are there any other users who experienced such issues lately?

Anyway thanks!
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Old 02-05-2017, 05:56 AM   #6
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Can you try this please:

Open an empty Reaper Project.
Now open the Project which has the issue you described.
You will see a dialogue window in which you have to check the option: "Open with FX offline (recovery mode)"

Does the Project now load without spinning beachball ?
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Old 02-05-2017, 08:29 AM   #7
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Originally Posted by vanhaze View Post
Can you try this please:

Open an empty Reaper Project.
Now open the Project which has the issue you described.
You will see a dialogue window in which you have to check the option: "Open with FX offline (recovery mode)"

Does the Project now load without spinning beachball ?
Did I understand it correctly?
I open Reaper, the dialog pops up which project I want to load, I choose 'New project', than I open the exististing project which is lagging?
No dialog 'FX..' appear, so I do something wrong I assume
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Old 02-05-2017, 08:41 AM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by o_e View Post
Hi,

I'am in the middle of a project and all of a sudden, when I open a file I get the 'spinning wheel of death' for half a minute before REAPER responses. I never had that before, restarting the computer does not help, any suggestions what to do? Is there a log or window somewhere where I can see what causes the lagging?

thanks a lot!

ole
The pinwheel means an unexpected wait for some hardware in the system. People call it the "of death" because when this unexpectedly comes up, said hardware is often a hard drive. And then you get the person that doesn't back anything up or even have a basic understanding of their file system and you get "OMG it's the pinwheel of death".

So check up on your hard drives first. They do wear out.
Check firewire or USB cables as well.

Or operator error moves like accidentally opening a project from one of your HDD data drives instead of a SSD (when said project requires it for snappy operation).


I would:
1. Make sure backups are current!!
2. Make a copy of the project to a different drive to test.

Last edited by serr; 02-05-2017 at 08:57 AM.
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Old 02-05-2017, 08:47 AM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by o_e View Post
Did I understand it correctly?
I open Reaper, the dialog pops up which project I want to load, I choose 'New project', than I open the exististing project which is lagging?
No dialog 'FX..' appear, so I do something wrong I assume
After making a new empty Project, do you open your issue Project by going to Menu : File > Open Project ?
Cause this is the way to see that option i mentioned.
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Old 02-05-2017, 08:55 AM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by serr View Post
The pinwheel means an unexpected wait for some hardware in the system. People call it the "of death" because when this unexpectedly comes up, said hardware is often a hard drive. And then you get the person that doesn't back anything up or even have a basic understanding of their file system and you get "OMG it's the pinwheel of death".

So check up on your hard drives first. They do wear out.
Check firewire or USB cables as well.

Or operator error moves like accidentally opening a project from one of your HDD data drives instead of a SSD (when said project requires it for snappy operation).
Why should the OP issue be related directly to possible hardware fail ?

I mean, sometimes (very rarely), i encounter the same spinning ball after loading a Project.
For me, the culprit has always been loading issues with certain (thirdparty) plugins.
I then have to force quit Reaper.
I then open the same Project in recovery mode, thus bypassing all used plugins at load.
I then mostly find the offending plugin(s)
Delete them from project and after that, Project loads just fine.
Just my 2 cents.

I am on OSX 10.12.3 (clean installed) and this OSX just flies for me, and Reaper runs just beautiful on it.
Macbook 2015 retina.
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Old 02-05-2017, 08:55 AM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by serr View Post
The pinwheel means an unexpected wait for some hardware in the system. People call it the "of death" because when this unexpectedly comes up, said hardware is often a hard drive. And then you get the person that doesn't back anything up or even have a basic understanding of their file system and you get "OMG it's the pinwheel of death".

So check up on your hard drives first. They do wear out.
Check firewire or USB cables as well.

Or operator error moves like accidentally opening a project from one of your HDD data drives instead of a SSD (when said project requires it for snappy operation).
Don't know, I am using SSDs exclusivly, relativly new, from my experience the 'spinning wheel..' is often followed by a crash of the program: 'does not react'..
I don't think my lack of knowledge or my backup-plan is the problem here :-)
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Old 02-05-2017, 09:01 AM   #12
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Don't know, I am using SSDs exclusivly, relativly new, from my experience the 'spinning wheel..' is often followed by a crash of the program: 'does not react'..
SSD's can die too.

If an unexpected wait for hardware goes way past anything anticipated in normal operation error trapping, there will be crashing.

Boot from your backup drive and see if the problem follows.
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Old 02-05-2017, 09:08 AM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by vanhaze View Post
After making a new empty Project, do you open your issue Project by going to Menu : File > Open Project ?
Cause this is the way to see that option i mentioned.
Yes, exacttly, but no 'bypassing FX..' window appears :-(
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Old 02-05-2017, 09:17 AM   #14
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SSD's can die too.
Yes, but it doesn't have to be the worst case scenario. If the boot drive is a non-Apple-SSD and trim support wasn't switched on, the drive can become extremely slow over time.

Is trim switched on?
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Old 02-05-2017, 09:26 AM   #15
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Sure. Not trying to suggest the sky is falling...

Boot from the backup system drive for the first quick shotgun.
Copy the project to a different drive for the next.

Then dig into the root cause.


re: trim support
I guess I never really formed an opinion on this one way or the other. I see Apple enables it by default for their approved 3rd party drives that they install themselves. So they must agree on something to its usefulness. They just blanket have it disabled for all other 3rd party drives by default and have this long legal CYA warning about using it. I believe Linux has a blacklist for 3rd party drives that do not use/support trim. Windows just greenlights... everything.

I A/B'd it a few years ago now and found no difference so just left it off and dismissed it. All my SSD's are performing just the same as they did on day 1. That Apple only uses drives that support it and enables it by default for them suggests I should reconsider that. So maybe... I'd see better specs than I did on day 1? Can't very well see better performance than SATA III allows... Hmmm...

I'm also not clear on what exactly the argument is from the drive makers that do not support trim and use their own management system (programmed into the drive firmware).

Any heated opinions on all this?

Last edited by serr; 02-05-2017 at 10:33 AM.
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Old 02-05-2017, 11:41 AM   #16
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What causes a spinning beach-ball too, is your computer talking to the cloud and not getting the answer it expects. That could be because of a bad connection, a missing password, or a bug.

If I've not used iTunes for days, I'm no longer authenticated and if I dare open iTunes while REAPER is running, I'll get a fairly long spinning beach-ball too. It seems to block REAPER, but I can still use cmd-TAB to other apps. And canceling the authentication is the fastest way out.

It used to happen twice every time, meaning the problem came back some minutes later, which is a pita if you're live. The latest iTunes seems to do that only once.

Just to say beach-balls don't necessarily come from the application itself.
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Old 02-05-2017, 11:47 AM   #17
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I'm also not clear on what exactly the argument is from the drive makers that do not support trim and use their own management system (programmed into the drive firmware).
Me neither, but I suspect that the drive manufacturer knows why.

And from what I've read about it, TRIM seems a solution that should be implemented on the drive controller* and not handled by an operating system that might be too old, contain a bug, might be corrupt, or might have a PEBCAK problem.

The problem, for me, is that SSD's in theory should be far more reliable than spinning rust. In practice however, I'm still afraid to use them for mission critical tasks, because the recoverability is almost zero and there's no warning of coming failure.

* Besides, most drive controllers have ample power to do so, as most use a setup with 3 on chip ARM processors, one not being used at all...
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Old 02-05-2017, 12:43 PM   #18
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Me neither, but I suspect that the drive manufacturer knows why.

And from what I've read about it, TRIM seems a solution that should be implemented on the drive controller* and not handled by an operating system that might be too old, contain a bug, might be corrupt, or might have a PEBCAK problem. ...
Hard to argue with that I would think.

Apparently some of the blacklisted and/or complained about drives were intended and advertised to have TRIM support. So... that means Apple recognizes poor/failed implementation of this and further will disable this for the whole system as a behind the scenes workaround.

I also don't see ads for drives promoting NOT using TRIM and instead pushing something else.

Hmmm... again.

It's got to be a very small variable in the long and short of things right?
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Old 02-05-2017, 01:56 PM   #19
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So... that means Apple recognizes poor/failed implementation of this and further will disable this for the whole system as a behind the scenes workaround.
Trim support for non-Apple SSDs was disabled in Yosemite and later brought back with 10.10.4 ... or was it 10.10.5?

Fact is it works like a charm, but needs to be activated at the command line. Google for "OSX trimforce" for details.

For my taste, this is a method to force people to buy Apple's original SSDs, but on the other hand, when I see newer replacement SSDs without trim & bootcamp support, I'm scratching my head.
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Old 02-05-2017, 03:08 PM   #20
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What I meant to say was more to ask DOES that means Apple recognizes poor/failed implementation of this and further will disable this for the whole system as a behind the scenes workaround?

There doesn't seem to be a strong push from either direction.

Anyway, with it disabled I see expected max SSD speeds on a SATA III bus and expected top speeds of a SATA II bus with a SSD on a SATA II bus.
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Old 02-05-2017, 03:54 PM   #21
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odd my trim is on and didnt do anything 10.10.5 maybe the ssd is the issue
, i'm using samsung 840 and 850
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Old 02-05-2017, 06:25 PM   #22
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Originally Posted by o_e View Post
Don't know, I am using SSDs exclusivly, relativly new, from my experience the 'spinning wheel..' is often followed by a crash of the program: 'does not react'..
I don't think my lack of knowledge or my backup-plan is the problem here :-)
But it's important to rule out the drive before you, well, before you rule it out : ) If you were having some slight lagging problems earlier and now it's a problem, that's a classic drive issue BUT it could very well not be. Turn wifi off. To rule out a corrupt part of the project run another one. If you think may be plugin related make a new project and load them up and see. Also imperative to boot from another drive and run the project from another drive. It's just better to totally rule something out before going too far down a different road.
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Old 02-05-2017, 11:03 PM   #23
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What I meant to say was more to ask DOES that means Apple recognizes poor/failed implementation of this and further will disable this for the whole system as a behind the scenes workaround?
I don't know, but guess, that trim deactivation would be on a per disk basis. By default trim is activated for internal Apple SSDs only and off for third party SSDs. And this already is some kind of per disk support, right?

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odd my trim is on and didnt do anything 10.10.5 maybe the ssd is the issue, i'm using samsung 840 and 850
I'm using a Samsung 850 Pro in a LaCie Rugged thunderbolt housing and trim works. If you use USB, it doesn't, because USB doesn't support trim.
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Old 02-05-2017, 11:12 PM   #24
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Back to the original "spinning ball" topic ... might macOS Sierra's cloud feature play a role here ... I mean, that seldom used files get outsourced to iCloud?

I mean, imagine OSX outsourced a file, that's part of the project to the cloud and needs to download it after loading the project. That could lead to the discribed behaviour and it was reported in IT press, that this feature caused a lot of trouble, including "outsourcing to Nirvana". I don't know, if that all got fixed already.
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Old 02-05-2017, 11:21 PM   #25
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For my taste, this is a method to force people to buy Apple's original SSDs, but on the other hand, when I see newer replacement SSDs without trim & bootcamp support, I'm scratching my head.
I doubt that, since we're only talking about aftermarket sales for older Macs.

The newer Macs have a proprietary connection.

And that aftermarket is way too small for Apple to care about. The only ones a bit affected by it, are the Apple resellers and service points. They were already selling non-Apple drives. I don't think you can even order Apple SSD drives, except as spare part...
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Old 02-05-2017, 11:26 PM   #26
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I doubt that, since we're only talking about aftermarket sales for older Macs.
Fact is by default trim is off for thunderbolt SSDs too. And replacement SSDs also exist for the proprietary ePCI connector, but these don't support neither trim nor bootcamp. An example would be the mid 2014 Macbook Pro Retina. And I ask myself, why do these SSDs have such a design flaw? We already discussed, that some manufacturers say, that their garbage collection implementation doesn't need trim, but why no bootcamp support?

On the other hand it's worth noting, that Apple doesn't support SSD upgrades on newer models at all. I asked Apple Support, if it would be possible to upgrade my Macbook with a 1 TB Apple SSD in an Apple Shop and they said NO. And we know, that it is technically possible. But "aftermarket" Apple SSDs are extremely expensive and hard to get.
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Old 02-06-2017, 12:12 AM   #27
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I have no answer to these questions. And those aren't the only ones, when it comes to Apple's strategy. In short, the plan is to turn into a bank, in stead of a developer of sexy hardware.

The OSX team has been absorbed by the iOS team. Displays and routers are no longer manufactured. The "Apple car" project seems abandoned, according to rumors. Macs are completely closed and it will get worse with Secure Enclave. And so on.

But this thread isn't about Apple, so I'll leave it at that.
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Old 02-08-2017, 03:53 PM   #28
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o_e: Have you tried starting up "Activity Monitor" and sorted process priority based on CPU to the top, to see exactly what process is freezing the system? If you hadn't tried this yet, it could be Reaper is NOT the culprit? If it is, at least you've isolated things a bit.
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Old 02-16-2017, 07:02 AM   #29
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Default Spinning wheel/beachball of Death

IF you are in Mac, check the Activity Monitor. It will usually pinpoint issues.
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Old 04-21-2017, 04:51 PM   #30
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I found a setting on my OSX Yosemite and may be on others in the System Preferences Power setting that needs to be unchecked for sleeping hard drives whenever possible. Was causing my hdd to take 10 sec to pull up my drives when accessed after not being accessed for a while. Angelbird hard drives were making a firmwared trim control in their SSD drives for MACS so calling TRIM on command line was not needed.
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