I/O issues

H Man

New member
I was recently working on a project (in Protools 10) and for some reason I lost the Presonus Studiolive as my output...and now its showing the Main L & R as my choice for an output.

This is the error message I received:

Some paths were made inactive because they could not be assigned to existing path definitions.

And the detailed log report says:

The input path "Input 3" was made inactive because its stem is missing.

My question is "how" did I lose the stem?...and what can I do to get it right. I didn't set this up. Help!!!
 
Hi.
Is the studio live broken or did you just lose connection?

If it's not broken, you'll have to go to setup>playback engine and select your interface again.
If that goes fine but the IO still isn't right, go to setup>I/O, select all paths, delete and restore defaults. Do this on both tabs; Input and output.
 
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I/O Issues

I was recently working on a project (in Protools 10) and for some reason I lost the Presonus Studiolive as my output...and now its showing the Main L & R as my choice for an output.

This is the error message I received:

Some paths were made inactive because they could not be assigned to existing path definitions.

And the detailed log report says:

The input path "Input 3" was made inactive because its stem is missing.

My question is "how" did I lose the stem?...and what can I do to get it right. I didn't set this up. Help!!![/QUOTE]


Hi,
I have recently experienced the same problems you describe above. I have figured out at least some of the problem and solution.

Part of the problem is that the "Setup/IO" screen in ProTools is a GLOBAL setting, not just for the session you are working on. So, if you screw something up in that screen, all of your sessions will be affected. I'm sure there are reasons to be in there, but unless you know for sure what you're doing, I suggest you leave the "Setup/IO" screen alone with default paths. That means not renaming paths too!. I would like to experiment, but it's too painful to correct mistakes (unless there are ways that I haven't yet discovered)!

Now, the solution is fairly simple and yet tricky. If you get the "input path "Input 3" was made inactive because its stem is missing" error, then you have a track with "Input 3" as the input path. If you are looking at the mix window, it will be about 1/3 of the way down where it says I/O. The path will be darkly grayed out indicating it's not a legitimate path. Click on the button, choose interface, and select one of the inputs shown that are legit. On my setup it's either Input 1 or Input 2. Do that for every track that is darkly grayed out. The two tricky parts, to me anyway, are that this also applies to "hidden" tracks, if you have them, and the fact that you can't select "No Input" as a valid selection on the first pass at correcting the error(s). You can check to see if you have hidden tracks by clicking on the |-> (bar right arrow icon) in the lower left hand side of the edit window (or select View-Other Displays-Track List). (Oh, and be sure you do this from the edit window and not the mix window or you'll be stuck with the track list showing every time you open your session. There's a fix for that too, but it also is painful.) Once you click on that icon, the track window appears. All the tracks that are showing in your edit window will have a dark gray dot next to it. Tracks with a light gray dot are not showing, so you have to check those tracks and correctly select an I/O path for those as well. Once you have checked all the tracks, and have entered in a correct I/O path, then save and close the session. When you reopen the session, you should not longer received that error (if you do, you missed a track). Once you reopen the session, you can also set any tracks to "No Input", save and close the session, and it will now be retained.

Hope this helps,
TweedyBird
 
Why would he want to change all instances of input 3 to input 1 or 2?
Presumably he was happy enough using input 3....
 
Well, it's not that he "wants" to, it's because Input 3 is now invalid for some reason. I haven't experimented enough to say why these inputs become invalid, perhaps they were deleted and re-created or re-named, as I say I'm not sure. However, because "Input 3" is now invalid, he must select an input that is valid. Input 1 or 2 are the valid choices that I have, but they may not be the same as his choices. He just should choose one of whatever valid choices that do appear and proceed from there.
TweedyBird
 
Chances are ProTools says it's invalid because it temporarily defaulted to built in audio (where input 3 would be invalid).

If he returns to his proper interface ProTools will still list those active inputs as invalid until he re-selects them.
As described he may have to reset the IO layouts too.

This happens to me all the time because I work on a laptop and move between two interfaces.
ProTools always takes a pot luck guess at what interface I want to use, but never ever picks the right one. :facepalm:
It pretty much always defaults to sound flower or built-in audio, rendering all my I/O 'invalid'.
 
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