There is a growing thread on the Digidesign User Conference on 9019 and 9031 errors on Pro Tools 8.0.3 It was started by Nathaniel Reichman asking... Since moving from the various 8.0.1 releases to 8.0.3, I frequently get the message: "DAE is having trouble keeping up. Your disk may be too slow...firewire, etc., etc. (-9019)" which is followed by a beachball and then: "DAE error -9031 was encountered." And this repeats until we quit the app and relaunch. Sometimes hours go by with no problem, sometimes we get this 3 times in an hour. We haven't seen this in PTHD, only on the PTLE/CPTK system listed below. We tried trashing databases and volumes folder. After some system and workflow checks Reichman confirmed... Nothing has changed in my typical post workflow or drive usage since PT 7.3. Thanks for posting, but I really doubt the non-contiguous file theory. If that were true, none of my projects would have worked with any version of Pro Tools. For now, I blame the .3. "Garnoil" responded.... Ok, so it must be .3. I am on 8.03 and although I had one massive, annoying, problem (0922 too many files corruption), 8.03 *at least for me*, has been a great improvement. I run HD2 and push it to the limit, I mean 192 voices (160 tracks+) + full HD film at 2k resolution. So far, so good but of course there are lots of bugz to fix, some worse than others. Good luck! Then Digi Tech Support weighed in... I see you have an eSATA hotswap tower in there - is that what you're using for playback/record? If so, have you tested with other drive types? 9019 is a drive error related to drive communication speed - we usually see it on PC's where drives are not in DMA mode. The 9031 error is usually related to having illegal characters in the drive, file or folder name - is that possibly the case here (keep in mind that previously fudged illegal character acceptance is no longer possible, so what may have 'worked' before no longer will)? Reichman responded.... Yes. And I know it's not officially approved, but it's performed flawlessly every since PT 7.3 on a G5. I thought I cleaned out all of my illegal characters in the PT6-7 transition. Thank you for writing back so quickly. I'll report back if I learn anything. The "smpkeys" chipped in.... I just experienced this same problem. I've been on 8.0.3 for about 2 weeks and have not seen this, however , tonight I was using the playlist lanes view for the first time, and that's when it occurred. All my drives are internal SATAs - 1 for OS, 1 for audio, 1 for samples. Not using any video in my session, and no illegal characters. Reichman - have you found a solution with your setup? Reichman replied... Haven't found a solution yet, primarily because it is happening infrequently now. Occurred once yesterday when opening an AudioSuite plug-in window. Every time it does happen, it will continue persistently until I save, quit and restart PT. When I get out from under this mountain of work, I'll try another drive type for a while and see if that helps. For the record PT 8.0.3 is really stable. For PT8 doubters, now is the time to get on board (is Frank Kruse reading this? :) ) Digi Tech Support came back with a request... Can you guys do something for me - after you experience the error, quit Pro Tools as soon as possible after it, then send me your LogFiles folder from inside your Pro Tools folder. Zip it up and send it to: vi [at] digidesign [dot] com. Put the thread number (265212) and '9031' in the subject of the message. "Sunzate" added... I'm getting these errors right now with a midi-only session, controlling the PLAY EastWest orchestral plug-in. Never seen it before today. Recently updated to 8.0.3. Let me know how I can help. Then "Oroz" asked... I'm getting the DAE error -9031 a lot! Can you further explain what do you mean by illegal characters in the drive? How can I solve it? Digi Tech Support replied... Your Pro Tools Reference Guide has a list of unsupported characters. You should make sure that no drive, folder or file name contains any of those characters. This error on Mac is also caused by incorrect drive format. I would recommend backing up your audio/video drives and erasing them using the Disk Utility, then copy the data back and test again. Oroz asked... Do you think that it may be because I'm recording to a partition (dedicated to audio) of the internal drive? If so, would a USB external drive be a solution? Since I'm on an iMac there's only one Firewire 800 port. I have read successful stories from guys using USB drive as an alternative but I'm not sure. Digi Tech Support replied... Recording to a partition or to a USB drive is not recommended or supported and definitely could be a cause for these errors. Please see the General Troubleshooting thread for more details. With an iMac that has only one FW800 port, get a FW800 to FW400 cable to connect to your drives and interface. smpkeys posted... Just happened to me again on Saturday. This time when it happened, I was changing the output of a channel. Digi, I've zipped and sent my log file using the directions posted earlier.  One more thing - I had trashed prefs about 2 hrs before this crash. So a couple of lessons from this thread. You cannot use USB drives for Pro Tools sessions. USB needs processor time to negotiate the data transfer on and off them and does it when it gets round to it. Where as Firewire has dedicated chips on the interface to manage the data transfer in a timely manner. You must have correctly formatted drives irrespective of what platform you are running on. On the Mac platform that must be Mac OS Extended with journalling. I recommend you format your drives with Disk utility rather than any 3rd party formatting software. Check the characters that are used for naming anything. Drives, folder, file names.

I have a couple of problems that clients have asked me to resolve that have related to Digidesign Databases. You may have noticed that Pro Tools creates a folder called Digidesign Databases on every drive that gets attached to your Pro Tools system. If you ever let an error message that looks like this…."Could not complete Import Audio Command becauseAssertion in "CNeolOBlock.cpp", line 164"Basically any error message that includes the word ‘Assertion’ or ‘line xxx’. Quit Pro Tools, saving your session if possible, and then once Pro Tools has quit, drag the Digidesign Databases folder to the bin and empty the bin. You can then restart Pro Tools and open your session and Pro Tools will create a fresh Digidesign Databases folder and all should be fine.