Spinning Wheel even on low-demand project, Please Help!

Hey,

I've been getting a strange problem when I work on projects. I'll hit play and everything will be working fine, I have 8GB of ram so my processors can handle quite a load. The problem is when I pause the song, I get the spinning wheel of death. I get the spinning rainbow wheel for usually 30 sec - 1 min. What process is happening when I pause the song (this seems to happen with both audio and software instrument tracks). I was running on a 5400RPM hard drive, so a friend recommended I upgrade to a 1TB, 7200RPM drive with 64MB cache. I did, but I'm still getting the same problem. I'm running the application from the new drive but I'm still getting the same error.

I've also recently re-installed leopard 10.5. Still have the same problem. I'm not sure what else to do.

This happens even when I'm running a really simple project. My computer specs are listed in my signature block, but I should be able to run these kind of projects perfectly.

What part of the computer isn't working correctly? I've tested the RAM and it seems to be working fine. I rarely get the System Overload error that I used to when I was running on less RAM, so that leads me to believe RAM isn't the issue. What could it be?

What process occurs when you pause a song? What part of the computer is this taxing?

I'm using Logic 8 with Mac OS 10.5.

I'm about to begin a recording project and I need this system running perfectly.

Somebody help, please!

Do you have a second internal HD?

Ideally you want to be running Logic and all plugins on the system drive and your projects on another internal HD.

Do you use any 3rd party plugins?

I do have two internal drives. One of them only runs at 5400 rpms though.

So run the song file from a different drive?

I'm running the application from the new drive

So did you install Mac OS X on the new drive? The application should stay where the installer installed it, and that's on a system drive (the drive where you have Mac OS X installed).

I do have two internal drives. One of them only runs at 5400 rpms though.

How big are the drives? How much space left on each drive? Which drive has Mac OS X? Which has the Logic application? Which has your project(s)?

My best guess is that you have a drive that's not properly formatted. You can check that with Disk Utility. All your drives should be formatted for "Mac OS X Extended" or "Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)".

I actually cloned my old hard drive, so both are identical (both have the project and logic 8)

They are both 1 TB (more than 870GB free)

I checked and it is partitioned journal (extended)

I reinstalled Logic a couple of times on the old drive and it didn't seem to change anything.

Do you think it's an issue with the disk? It's weird that it does it after the playhead has stopped, it seems like this shouldn't tax the computer at all.

I appreciate your help,

Usually they're at normal levels (depending on how intense the project is). Right now I'm working on a small project so the CPU and hard drive are at pretty low levels.

I guess my question is, what is happening within Logic when you hit pause? Honestly, I think the problem is within Logic not my system, because other software seems to be running fine. I reinstalled it twice on the old drive but didn't notice any difference.

Does Logic 8 work well with Mac OS 10.5?

I guess my question is, what is happening within Logic when you hit pause? H

I'm not sure, I mean, as far as I know, not much should be happening, Logic should hold on to the playback, be ready to playback when you "release" the pause button... but it shouldn't require more CPU or Disk resources than while you're playing the project.

What happens if you press stop? I know, it's only but a workaround....

I'm just hitting spacebar, I tried clicking the stop button on the transport and I get the same thing. It's a little bit sporadic as well, it doesn't always happen and sometimes I have to wait longer than other times.

I'm not sure what else it could be...

Is there a setting I can look at within Logic that will show what might be going on?

Are there settings I could change within the CoreAudio window?

Could it be a problem with my audio card/driver?

I just tested my RAM and it seems to be fine.

Next time you get the SPOD, open up the Activity Monitor (inside the Applications/Utilities folder), double-click on the Logic entry and hit the sample. The sample might give more info about what's taking a long time in the user interface thread (GUI thread, or main thread) as that's the one triggering the spinning beach ball if it's not serviced of some reason.

Now, if there's little to no symbolic information in the sample, then it's harder to figure this out.

I have done the activity monitor sample, but I don't know computers well enough to recognize the computer jargon it gives me.

I just updated to OS 10.5.7, performance seemed to increase some, it still gives me the occasional spinning wheel though (this makes me feel like it's definitely a software issue)

I also updated to Logic 8.02

I guess I'll update to 10.5.8 although I don't see any changes to anything that would affect Logic.

Thanks for everyone's input and help!

BTW, you can see a teaser of the project I'm working on at

http://www.abandofrogues.com