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How to stop Logic downloading Essential Sounds


emilyw

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Hey guys, a popular question but no straight forward answer, that I can find: I have deleted the Essential Sounds (don't use them, don't want them/ including Loops) and every time I open Logic it is still prompting AND downloading them. I want this to stop. Any way to stop this doing so?

 

(Every time I start up it continues to download the essential sounds, I press 'Download Later' and it gives me a Finish Download or Continue option in which I press Continue but I don't want to even do this.)

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Well, the "Essential" bit is an indicator that they are required, and I've found no way of stopping this prompt other than just letting the 400MB or so download and forgetting about it...

 

It is annoying, especially if you you have your content on an external drive, and often need to run Logic to do something quickly without the drive attached, and Logic prompts to redownload content and trash my content aliases to the external drive in the process.

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Yes. So is there truly no way of not downloading it and not having that pop up come up? Surely that can't be so.... ?

Technically there's several things you can do.

 

#1 - Before starting Logic, simply disconnect your network. Logic still works with out a network connection. Logic won't alert you if it can't "phone home".

#2 - Add to the hosts file an entry for audioconentdownload.apple.com with an IP address of 127.0.0.1 this is the same domain name that GarageBand uses as well. Little know fact, while a DNS resolves IP address from names, the hosts file is still active so any entries you add to it is used first before the DNS. Again, Logic won't be able to connect so no prompt happens.

hosts.thumb.png.bb977abea7bf74dd11fd5f379160b18e.png

 

#3 Get a program like Little Snitch. When any program tries to "phone home", you can create rules to allow or deny that.

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Have you tried this? I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter on the status of your network connection, if that essetential content isn't available locally, Logic will prompt you to download it when you run Logic - it's just that if you say "Ok, go get it..." then the download will (obviously) fail.

 

The availability of a network connection does not determine whether Logic displays this prompt or not, I'm pretty sure you'll find...

 

Edit: Just tried it, and yes, with no network connection, Logic just prompts "The essential content download has failed, continue | retry" and if you "continue", it leaves the essential content dialog on screen as Logic loads. So you still get annoying prompts regardless.

 

As far as I've tried, I've found no way to influence this behaviour. Instead, I had to develop some scripts to switch between "local" (non-audio drive use), where I point Logic towards a laptop-copy of the essential content, and "audio drive" use, where I point Logic to my audio drive, to avoid Logic either prompting to download essential content it can't find, and/or wiping out my aliases to the said content.

 

It's a behaviour that was introduced somewhere around 10.1-10.3 (can't remember when exactly) and it's annoying, as I often start Logic without my audio drive present, and for years this used to be seamless and not a problem, but now I have to implement special handling to do it quietly.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi there,

 

I have the same question, but not only about Essential sounds all my music is on an external drive, where I also moved my Logic library. Then I deleted all the sound files I don't need (many loops, Garageband sounds, and many others)..

 

But Logic keeps on starting to download them each time I launch it, and I don't want to stop my connection to provent this.

So I read the above messages and modified my hosts file as suggested by ValliSoftware, but Logic keeps downloading anyway.

 

Any idea ? Thanks in advance

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for a brief period, apple (by mistake??) allowed us to delete the loop library, and that was great. but now, 'essential' does seem to mean essential. i would just ignore what you don't use (that's what i do)...

 

it's like the 1.37G of desktop pictures in the system (none of which i want); can't delete them, so i ignore them.

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It is annoying, especially if you you have your content on an external drive, and often need to run Logic to do something quickly without the drive attached, and Logic prompts to redownload content and trash my content aliases to the external drive in the process.

Leave the Essential content on your system disk and then you won't get the annoying alert if your external drive isn't connected.

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Leave the Essential content on your system disk and then you won't get the annoying alert if your external drive isn't connected.

 

If it were only that simple!

 

Let's take just one of the pieces of content - Apple Loops. The system location for these is /Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/

Currently, that loop content is on my external drive, so "Apple" is an alias (actually symlink) to the external loops.

 

If I let Logic download the essential content, that Apple alias gets overwritten with a real "Apple" folder, and the essential loop content is copied there.

Now Logic will work locally with that essential loop content, but the link to the external content is now broken.

If I then reconnect my audio drive, all my external loop content is inaccessible, unless I manually restore that alias and restart Logic.

 

If I figure out a way of keeping both the local and external content visible to Logic, there will now be duplicate loop content which means individual packs/categories show up multiple times in the loop browser, which is ugly and annoying. Even if you remove the local essential loops from the external drive, you still get duped packs.

 

At this point you're either thinking "Oh, I didn't realise it behaved like that..." or you're thinking "Well, what if you... etc etc?" Trust me, I've tried. I've tried so many things I've forgotten what they were. If you can think of a way for Logic to behave like it used to that I might have missed, I'm all ears... I've just about explored every possibility I can think of and I've found no way to seamlessly manage this without various problems (and there are several gotchas that I haven't gone into - for example, if you don't have external aliases, then any new library downloads will go to the local disk, rather than my external library content, so I have to manually spot that and copy that stuff over) - hence my script solution that flips the configuration between local content and external content so Logic will behave as expected with and without the drive connected.

 

And this is just with the loop content - there are other types of essential content that are affected too.

 

Like I say - if you have a streamlined demonstrably working config that enables this without the above frustrations or problems, do let me know, because I've not found it.

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Great, thanks. I have posted about this before, but no-one then had any working solutions either.

 

How it should (imo) work (and is how it *used* to work in the before times):

 

- With my external drive connected, see the full library of external content on the external (samples, intruments, loops, impulses etc) as expected

 

- Any additional library content downloads should go to the external full library

 

- The local essential content should not interfere or be duplicated with the library content on the external.

 

(Ideally I don't want the local content there at all because for example 500MB of EDM loops are in no way "essential" to running Logic, they are just what Apple deem to be a valid "starter kit" so new users can instantly see some loops). Same with things like the drum kits - I understand that if that content isn't there locally I can't use those features in this configuration but that is not an actual problem - when I want to use the content in my external library, I mount that drive accordingly. I often use Logic in a non-library drive situation (eg, on a laptop out remotely, or if I just want to run Logic to check something for a forum post, or for many other reasons.)

 

- When you run Logic without the external connected, Logic should just run, and those external library contents items should just be not available. Logic should not complain.

 

- Logic should not alter or kill any aliases or pointers to the external content such that running Logic without the external drive connected breaks any configuration

 

- Attempting to download any content without the library drive should not alter or kill any aliases or pointers to the external content such that running Logic without the external drive connected breaks any configuration

 

Basically, all I really want is for my content to be all external, and Logic to not care, complain, or break stuff if that drive isn't mounted. Like it used to.

 

It's not much to ask.. ;)

 

What I do now is that I have a script I can run at any time via Launchbar (so literally just a couple of keypresses to run), and based on whether my audio drive is mounted or not it checks the current Logic config and if necessary changes the correct folders and aliases for Logic to work and not complain - ie, if the audio drive is connected, and Logic is set to local content, it sets up the correct aliases to point to the external drive, and if it's not connected, it puts Logic into a local essential content configuration. This also means I don't get duplicated content messing things up in the loop browser etc.

 

So if I've been using Logic locally without content and want to start to use the full library, I would mount the audio drive, run my script, then launch Logic, and all the external content will be available. And if I want to go back to local only, once the drive is unmounted, I run the script to remove the aliases and restore the folders to the local essential content, so Logic doesn't complain.

 

Edit: I was going to post saying it would be nice to find a plist file or something listing the essential content (which could then be edited to remove those requirements) but I think I've just found it... doing some testing...

 

Well, /Contents/Resources/logicpro1050.plist looked promising, as it has a list of all packages for the content, together with isMandatory keys and so on, but editing this didn't seem to change any actual behaviours...

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It's working here. I can't remember how I did it, but I will look into it and report back.

 

Did you get a chance to look at this..?

 

Hi - I got hold my hand up here and say I was wrong. My memory failed me there.

 

I'm pretty sure that in the past I had the essential content on an external HD, linked symbolically. But I had forgotten that I had installed a bigger internal SSD and now the essential stuff is all on there.

 

I still have all my own loops, samples and Kontakt libraries on the external drive, but not Logic's sounds and loops.

 

Sorry to mislead you.

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No problem - thanks for getting back to me. Like I say, I have investigated this pretty thoroughly, and what I'm currently doing is the best practical solution for my needs - I haven't found anything better.

 

I do find the current behaviour annoying that requires these kinds of workarounds though. :(

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  • 1 year later...

I too was very annoyed with this app's behaviour, none of solutions worked for me so I came up with my own.

In fact, Logic checks only a few files from all "essentials" (17 in my case), and they are listed in /Applications/Logic Pro X.app/Contents/Resources/logicproXXXX.plist where XXXX is the version of app, in my case it was 1023. It's listed under "Packages" key, you can find it by searching for a directory name you're concerning of, such as "Ultrabeat Samples". It also has a "IsMandatory" flag. So I came up with list of files that Logic checks on startup and if any of them doesn't exist or has unusual size - it shows the annoying download window. Here is the list of files for my version of app, they're only 34 megs total size:

 

/Library/Application Support/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/01 Hip Hop/Let's Roll Beat.caf

/Library/Application Support/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/02 Electro House/Dark Clap Topper 2.caf

/Library/Application Support/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/03 Dubstep/Yeah Yeah Topper Beat.caf

/Library/Application Support/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/04 Modern RnB/Zip Line Bass 02.caf

/Library/Application Support/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/07 Chillwave/VHS Sunset Synth.caf

/Library/Application Support/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/08 Indie Disco/Wistful Disco Guitar.caf

/Library/Application Support/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/09 Disco Funk/Wah Power Guitar.caf

/Library/Application Support/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/10 Vintage Breaks/Wet Disco Break.caf

/Library/Application Support/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/11 Blues Garage/Funky Blues Guitar 02.caf

/Library/Application Support/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/Apple Loops for GarageBand/80s Dance Bass Synth 06.caf

/Library/Application Support/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/Apple Loops for GarageBand/Acoustic Slide 02.caf

/Library/Application Support/Logic/EXS Factory Samples/Drum Kit Designer Consolidated/Drum Kit Designer Claps/AP v1 Claps_consolidated.caf

/Library/Application Support/Logic/EXS Factory Samples/Drum Kit Designer Consolidated/Drum Kit Designer Kick/Stereo/SoCal Kit/SoCal Kit Kick2_consolidated.caf

/Library/Application Support/Logic/EXS Factory Samples/Drum Kit Designer Consolidated/Drum Kit Designer Shaker/AP v2 Shaker_consolidated.caf

/Library/Application Support/Logic/EXS Factory Samples/Drum Kit Designer Consolidated/Drum Kit Designer Tambourine/AP v2 Tambourine_consolidated.caf

/Library/Application Support/Logic/Ultrabeat Samples/Drum Machine Designer/After Party/Block_AfterParty.aif

/Library/Application Support/Logic/Ultrabeat Samples/Drum Machine Designer/Trap Door GB/Stomp_TrapDoor_GB.aif

 

And yes, you can completely delete folders "Drum Kit Designer Cowbell" and "Drum Kit Designer Snare" from "Drum Kit Designer Consolidated". The other directories has a file to check by Logic, except for "Apple Loops for GarageBand": it has two files.

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I too was very annoyed with this app's behaviour, none of solutions worked for me so I came up with my own.

Great! Thank you so much for sharing. However then I'm not sure exactly what you're suggesting that we should be doing. I looked up the logicpro1070.plist file and there are 33 mandatory packages. Is it a matter of simply replacing all the IsMandatory flags to false? Something like this?

 

Repalce-IsMandatory.png.3b6a0b517d554dd8ee004ab3bebe91dd.png

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I'm not sure exactly what you're suggesting that we should be doing

As far as I could see, the heavy "essential content" downloads to this particular 3 folders:

/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/

/Library/Application Support/Logic/EXS Factory Samples/

/Library/Application Support/Logic/Ultrabeat Samples/

So I suggest to remove all files from these folders except for those which marked as Mandatory in corresponding plist file. I did it manually as it didn't take too long to go into each folder, select all files and deselect one particular file and then delete.

 

As to the list of files, you can just try to use mine, maybe it didn't change eversince. But of course backup original folders before deleting anything. Or first you can look into your plist file and see if files from my list match with yours, and then decide if you want to try to remove using my list.

 

Note that overall there are too many "IsMandatory" files in the plist, I don't think you have to check them all. I just searched most heavy sized folders with app "Disk Inventory" and that's how I noticed them and started to think how to remove them.

 

Finally, if files are different for your version, you can get the list by typing in command line something like grep '/Library/Application Support/Logic/EXS Factory Samples' logicpro1070.plist and it should give you the list of files for this particular folder. But you have to know first where these heavy weighted folders are located.

 

Is it a matter of simply replacing all the IsMandatory flags to false?

I've tried and it didn't worked in my case.

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  • 1 month later...
Is it a matter of simply replacing all the IsMandatory flags to false?

I've tried and it didn't worked in my case.

 

Indeed, when I was investigating how to solve this, I found, and tried, the same thing, but it didn't do what I hoped or change the behaviour.

 

That's why the solution I arrived is the best I've found....

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