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Very menacing issue with playback and meters in Logic Pro X


JohnnyJohnnyJohnny

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Hey everyone. I am having a seriously crazy issue that I’m hoping someone on here can help me with.

 

A few days ago I was in Logic and i was just listening to a mix I was working on when all of a sudden I hear this very loud click or POP come from my monitors and playback completely stops and then the meters on both my UAD Apollo’s pinned, maxed out completely in the red until I quit Logic and then the meters stopped. Scared me half to death. I literally thought the Apollo was going to explode. Another unusual thing is when the meters were maxed out there was no sound though coming from my monitors (just the previous loud pop) but I did have my headphone’s level turned down all the way so maybe there was some kinda sound coming through there that represented the viciousness of my meters.

 

So anyway... this has happened a few times now over the last few days where now I’m afraid to even open Logic. The last time it happened I’m pretty sure it smoked the left channel of my vintage preamps in which I use the I/O plugin on my mixbus for.

 

To say I’m bummed out would be a MASSIVE understatement. No idea if I can fix my expensive vintage preamp. No idea what other damage this psychotic issue has done to my other gear, and meanwhile I’ve got deadlines for mixes due all week.

 

Does anyone have ANY idea what this could possibly be? I have googled the issue the best I can and the only thing I found that was relatable was a few mentions of this “White Noise of Death” some people have reported but it was many years ago and none of the incidents got resolved in the threads. So I figured it was suitable to start a posting on this here.

 

Any insight will be VERY, very appreciated.

I am d e s p e r a t e. ☹️

 

(Btw.. my system details are in my signature, but is that enough info or should I post more?)

 

 

JohnnyJohnnyJohnny,

 

This has happened to me, and I agree it is very unnerving; however I have no UA hardware or software installed.

 

Do you happen to have RolandCloud plugins installed?

 

 

Best regards,

Fred

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Hey sergemeister, what do you mean exactly by enough volume on your boot drive? I’m intrigued

 

 

Apologies for not responding sooner to this thread. Since the consensus seems to be this is not a Logic issue, providing more detail on the circumstances than I did in my previous reply probably won’t help. And it’s been bad news/bad news experiences for some time now. I spend a month getting Logic to run, keep running, or closing properly (High Sierra, Logic 10.4.6). I have a suspicion that the advice frequently give on this forum to maintain enough boot volume available drive space is critical. I’ve been very reluctant to upgrade past my current OS/Logic versions having achieved some stability using low track counts with virtual instruments, but clients and project compatibility may force the issue. I was hoping to put upgrading off until the M1 generation settles in (my iMac is six years old).

by

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Should we all report that issue at the same time, what y'all think? Would that draw the attention of the developers behind Logic?

 

A brickwall limiter / compressor kinda thing on Master Output that throws the signal back to 0db whenever it exceeds would be dope. Instead of letting the signal go thru but in a distorted form.

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Should we all report that issue at the same time, what y'all think? Would that draw the attention of the developers behind Logic?

It would probably rub them the wrong way more than draw their attention. They are aware of the issue. The best way to voice your opinion is to share your feedback with them using the official channel: https://www.apple.com/feedback/logic-pro.html

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  • 1 month later...
  • 6 months later...
Hello! I’ve been having this issue for years now. I always had a fear of blowing my speakers. I had Eve Sc204s and I think they have some sort of surge protection in them that caused them to survived but just two months ago I upgraded to Amphion One15s. These are the most amazing ang beautiful speakers i’ve ever bought and noticed that these crazy overload speaker blowing spikes sounded louder and destructive on my Amphions. Truely, just yesterday this happened and blew my a tweeter of one of my Amphions. This is just so unacceptable. It is crazy because I cannot just switch DAWs. I’ve tried and it just ruins the creative process. This should’ve been resolved a long time ago!! Now my workflow is crippled, waiting for a replacement and worried this would happen again!!
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  • 1 month later...

Heres what is causing it for me, incase this is helpful for troubleshooting

 

1. Spitfire raven bush moon glades (uses spitfire sample player): While playing a slow ostinato, very low cpu, buffer size doesn't matter. It will happen after a random number of loops but not more than 15 cycles through

 

2. Fracture sounds Box Factory. It would happen upon playing the library at random times but always happened after about 30 seconds of playing the library. The dev got back to me and said it was an issue with Kontakt and they updated the library with a fix.

 

No limiter i've tried on the master bus has caught it fast enough. There is always a few milliseconds that squeaks through.

 

More specifics on the session with the Spitfire sample player causing it:

 

8 bar loop @ 65 bpm playing quarter note ostinatos with the same 4 note pattern.

Around 15 cycles through plays fine. Then it starts happening once or twice every loop.

Then starts playing just fine again and eventually the noise pops happen again.

No cpu meter spikes

No Core overloads

No pausing of the playhead

No slowdowns or glitches with the playhead or logic at all. Just noise bursts as if there is a corrupted round robin sample triggering at points. (A corrupted sample doesn't seem to be the issue because it happens so randomly sometimes after 3-5 minutes of looping)

Noise in right channel of stereo track only.

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I think I may have posted some years ago related to this issue in another thread. I know the thread is old but it seems like people still experience this as a problem, and so do I. Just wanted to share how my problem occurs. I use an RME interface and regardless the versions the last years, problem has been consistent. I can't say much else than it's a matter of CPU freak out, in my case, and especially when use varispeed in heavy projects. I see this happen in projects with too many plugins/channels.

 

I get a loud pop that turns into silence. Once I saw the silly number of +700dB in Logic stereo out, but haven't seen that in a while.. it used to keep on sounding for some more seconds but nowadays it's just a few pops and then it's done until I try to play something. The problem starts in logic and lingers on in the landscape between the software and the interface. I have too little knowledge about exactly what happens, but let's say CORE audio gets into some loopy behaviour that leaves all meters on red, +23dB in my RME totalmix. Then the pop can be heard any time I move the volume knob that controls the master out to my speakers, in total mix.

 

so..

 

I have to reset CORE in logic settings to get rid of it. Only fix. Or a restart, I guess.

 

I've set a comp/limiter on the RME master output as well as my monitor headphones mix. Threshold at 0dB and maximum ratio as well as fastest attack. This helps the ears and body and speakers from total chock. 0db could easily be set lower if you are not mixing louder. Even better for your ears.

 

Btw, has anyone ever seen a block diagram for Logic and Core audio? I'm interested how the audio is packaged between audio interface and core audio. How they communicate.

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Hi there, I'm Michael. I signed up here to post on this issue. Similarly I currently have a:

 


  • • MBP 2017 15" 3.1gz
    • RME UFX (Firmware 360, Driver 3.21
    • OSX 10.14.6 Mojave
    • LogicX 10.5.1 (The last version to work with Mojave)

 

I can concur that this happens to me too. I went through a phase maybe 6 - 8 months ago with some really nasty overs with certain settings & plugins. I tried to understand why and when it happened. One plugin was the Korg Legacy Arp Odyssey, I thought it was plugin specific at first but there were others. I used Cerberus Audio Ice 9 thinking it might at least save my speakers/headphones and ear drums, but no joy as it happens outside the master channel in Logic. I started getting more irked when it occurred whilst I was using iTunes and listening to a radio stream. It was so weird...

 

As with Ctrl-Alt-Delete I added a channel limiter on the RME mixer which at least brick walled it at 0db I guess. I did do some further research which may, may not have been said already so apologies if I have.

 

The signal is like a massive DC offset, when it happens the pop is huge and the meters go off the chart as mentioned. On my RME fader you can still hear the frequency rumble after the pop. For me, unloading the plugin usually killed the signal. I then started to investigate the Audio Midi setup application found in: /Applications/Utilities/Audio MIDI Setup.app (image below).

 

At that time I had split the sound for my DAW to a separate channel in here to bus it to a separate fader in RME Totalmix. I decided to remove this and just bus it to a single channel. Since then I haven't (touch wood) had it happen again. Likewise I do believe it's CPU/software related. I also don't think it is specific to RME as I've had someone with an Apollo interface experience the same. It may be something to do with multi-core processing and separation of threads, but also maybe the cpu throttling or the T1/T2 chip?? I'm not sure but that's my best guess. Anyway, the settings below might be worth looking at for any RME (or other) owners out there.

 

1822576940_AudioMidiSetup.thumb.png.dd32d7aaa92e22579005169185090e19.png

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  • 10 months later...

I'm having the same problem. 

I've had it in the past with the Cinepiano library from Cinesamples. It would do a loud pop and leave my Logic/Audio Interface meters at full blast with no sound coming out until I restarted Logic. 

The issue with this library seems to have been solved when I went from Catalina to Big Sur, but now it appears to happen with something else. 

I'm currently mixing an album and something is causing this ocasional blast and I really need to find where the problem comes from. 

 

 

 

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