dmitch57

Ah yes. Just what my studio needs. 😀

This is an odd one, not strictly related to Logic, but I'm hoping some folks here might have some insight and/or suggestions. I have a Mac Mini and an LG monitor connected via Thunderbolt. Audio is Scarlett 8i6 via USB-C. The problem is static electricity zaps. Often after walking across the room, when I touch the monitor - any metal part including the stand - I hear a static zap in the main speakers (via the Scarlett). Amazingly, the Mac Mini does not have a 3-prong AC plug, so it isn't grounded on its own. I tried reversing the Mini's AC plug and that does not help. The monitor is grounded. It looks like Thunderbolt carries a ground signal, but I don't know if that means that the Mac is actually grounded via its TB connection to the monitor. I don't get the audible zaps when I touch the Mini. Or any other piece of metal even remotely connected to any of this gear. Only the monitor. Mac, monitor, Scarlett, and audio amp are all plugged into the same well-grounded AC circuit. This did *not* happen when I had an iMac. So it's got to be something about the Mac Mini or the LG monitor. A spooky part of this, and the reason it's such a problem, is that sometimes when this zap occurs, the Mac's core audio goes dead. Audio to the Scarlett or to any built in speakers does not work. The solution is to kill coreaudiod or reboot. Total Twilight Zone stuff. Anyone ever see anything like this? Any words of wisdom? Thanks.

One thing to keep in mind is that booting from an external drive is a bit of a PITA for new Macs. Specifically, creating a bootable drive is fairly convoluted: https://www.macworld.com/article/331916/how-to-start-up-your-m1-mac-from-an-external-drive.html Also - one crucial performance aspect of the system disk's location is its use as a swap disk: the OS has to store temporary data on the system disk constantly (because there is never enough RAM for it to do what it needs to do). The speed of Mac internal disks is just blazingly fast - 2800 MB/s on my M2 Pro Mini. External disks are not going to run that fast any time soon. I'd recommend leaving the OS on the internal disk and putting your stuff, and big things like sample libraries, on the external disk. The Samsung T7 claims a faster transfer rate than I've been able to measure with my Mini (800 MB/s, give or take) so it doesn't make sense to get a disk that's rated faster than that. And that is plenty fast for Logic.

Have you considered MainStage instead of Logic? It's designed for exactly this purpose. https://www.apple.com/mainstage/

Note that AAC is not lossless; you should probably bounce to PCM.

Nice, I didn't know that one. Marquee tool also works for this, but only in the Tracks window.

I'd like to do it that way because I put the chord symbols in the marker track early on in the project, way before I generate a lead sheet. I always hate having to enter them twice. OP might have different reasons of course. 🙂

There's another useful workaround: create the MIDI tracks with channels other than channel 1 (using "New Track With Next MIDI Channel"). Then the automation for those MIDI tracks doesn't interfere with the automation on the actual instrument track.

Yep, looks like you're right. Thanks!

Sure, here you go. TwoAutoPoints.zip Move the faders to somewhere else above 0, select all tracks, and do a "Create 2 Track Automation Points For Visible Parameter". You get this: The kind you get when you do Track > Other > New Track With Same MIDI Channel, with an Instrument track selected.

Here's a TL;DR summary, since nobody replied. Here is one screen shot showing the anomaly. 5 tracks. Each track starts with two auto points for volume, value +0.0 dB. Later, where the playhead is: move all faders (three of them) to around -5.0dB. Select all tracks. Create 2 Track Automation Points For Visible Parameter The Alchemy and Audio 2 track behave as expected. The Drums Instrument track behaves erroneously. (The MIDI tracks follow in kind.) I'll report it to Apple as a bug.

Sometime recently, I believe the behavior of the "Create 2 Track Automation Points For Visible Parameter" Key command has changed for only one specific type of Software Instrument track. I've always used this command to create two auto points on a track: one point for the current automation value, one for a new value specified by a mixer fader. It lets you make a clean transition in a parameter, like this (the playhead is the point at which two automation points were created in all images) Zoomed in, the two points look like this: The left point is the old/current value; the right point is the new value as specified by the current mixer fader. This always worked the same on all types of tracks. However, now when you do this on a Software Instrument track - in a certain condition (see below) - the first of the two created points is not the "current" value; it's the new value. So instead of the clean transition to the new value, you get a gradient from the previous value - just as if you'd entered only one auto point: The two created auto points look like this (zoomed in): The odd thing is that this only happens in the following case: Software Instrument, with... Multiple MIDI tracks, and All tracks - the Instruments *and* the MIDI tracks - are selected when the "Create 2 Track Automation Points For Visible Parameter" Key command is executed. If you only select the Instrument track - and not the MIDI tracks - the behavior is as expected. (The reason I generally have the MIDI tracks selected in addition to the instrument track is that I do a "Select All Tracks" before writing two auto points to selected tracks; that's just my workflow. The Volume parameter on the MIDI tracks always follows the Volume parameter for the associated instrument.) I'm 100% sure this is fairly new behavior, certainly in the last 6 months or so. Looks like a bug to me...what do y'all think?

I think the most recent one is Kontakt 7. You just need the free player package. There is only one for Mac.

@shub22: .nki instruments are used by the Kontakt player. It's free from Native Instruments. There is an AU plugin version of Kontakt. So...download Kontakt, load it as a plugin, and point that Kontakt at your .nki instruments (and all their respective samples).

It's easy enough to try and find out. How does it feel/sound when you double the sample rate? Some/all of the "MIDI latency" might just be an internal feature of the Alesis drums. I.e. a lag between the drum hit and the MIDI event sent over USB. There is nothing you can do about that, short of buying new drums.