Very Blocky Waveforms

Hi,

 

I'm enjoying Logic X, but compared to 9, the waveforms when zoomed in are REALLY blocky (and they don't seem to update to something with better resolution), especially in the comping view. See attached image.

 

 

Is this a known issue? Makes it almost impossible to do accurate comping / edits.

 

Thanks!

This was a problem with take comping waveforms in LP9, I thought it had been resolved in LPX... is this an LP9 project opened in LPX by any chance? Do you have the same problem if you start the recordings in LPX?

Having the same problem. New Logic X project, on ALL waves, not only comps.

Terrible!

Very strange!

Try opening the demo project and see if it's the same thing there.

Weird, the problem does not occur in the demo song!

Hmmm....

What kind of file are you using: format (PCM wav, aiff, caf? mp3? m4a?), sample rate, bit depth? How was the audio file produced: was it recorded in Logic? Imported from another DAW, another software?

 

And finally what happens if you:

1) Bounce that audio region in place?

OR

2) Place that audio file in a new empty project on a new audio track, default channel strip with default settings, no plug-ins. Set the output of that audio channel strip to a bus. Create a new audio track with that bus set as the input, record-enable it and press record to re-record a new audio file in Logic.

It's CAF format, 48kHz. All files were created in Logic Pro X.

When I bounce, the same happens, blocky waves.

 

When I open the project content (Show package content) and drag the caf files to a new empty project, the wave is fine!!

Ah so it seems to be a project file issue! Very interesting, that should help the developers figuring it out. I'll move this to the bug section.

Thanks!

Having the same problem. New Logic X project, on ALL waves, not only comps.

Terrible!

 

I've had this problem too. Not often but once it's there it's stuck that way untill you reopen the project.

Bump - july 2014

Having exact same problem. Annoying indeed! Tried suggested steps earlier in thread. Does anyone have any news 'bout this bug

 

-------------------

Logic X - latest

MB pro 17" i7

OS Mavericks - latest

Hi and welcome to Logic Pro Help.

 

Did you try importing your old project into a new fresh Logic Pro X project?

Hi.

 

I found this old thread for a very current (and new for me) problem. I've tried all of the fixes outlined above. I also tried the fix mentioned there:

 

 

No luck. 

 

Is there a fix out there? Starting a new project and will be doing a lot of audio editing.

 

My waveforms look like this:

 

I read this old post now and I don't think anyone had mentioned it originally, but it seems to be confirmed in your case gnapier: I'm wondering whether this could be caused by the "waveform zooming" feature of Logic. In your own case, try clicking on the blue waveform button on the top right of your picture, to turn that button off. Maybe the true audio signal on your tracks was recorded pretty cold (low) and the waveform's amplitude is simply magnified with this zoom, which could cause this blocky appearance...

I read this old post now and I don't think anyone had mentioned it originally, but it seems to be confirmed in your case gnapier: I'm wondering whether this could be caused by the "waveform zooming" feature of Logic. In your own case, try clicking on the blue waveform button on the top right of your picture, to turn that button off. Maybe the true audio signal on your tracks was recorded pretty cold (low) and the waveform's amplitude is simply magnified with this zoom, which could cause this blocky appearance...

Thank you Arnaud. You were spot on! As a test, I normalized a file and voila! the blockiness was gone. Very odd that it was recorded so low in the first place as my meters were sufficiently "hot" during recording.

In any case, thanks!

Good to hear You're most welcome!

Honestly I still think logic has one of the worst waveform displays of all the daws. Pro Tools or even Ableton have much better ones and I really don't get why they haven't done anything about it yet, should be a relatively easy thing to change right? Anybody got any opinion on this?

Since you're asking for opinions, I haven't lost any sleep over Logic's waveform display. However, I do have lost sleep over Logic's inability to place the same or different video files multiple times in the timeline which would make creating versions and cutdowns so much easier.

Honestly I still think logic has one of the worst waveform displays of all the daws. Pro Tools or even Ableton have much better ones and I really don't get why they haven't done anything about it yet, should be a relatively easy thing to change right? Anybody got any opinion on this?

They have had the code to make beautiful waveforms for years already, however so far they have decided against adding it to Logic. Their priority is to keep a max of the computer resources needed to run a project for the audio engine. My opinion is that it is a sound decision. Pun intended. But seriously, I agree with their decision.

Honestly I still think logic has one of the worst waveform displays of all the daws. Pro Tools or even Ableton have much better ones and I really don't get why they haven't done anything about it yet, should be a relatively easy thing to change right? Anybody got any opinion on this?

They have had the code to make beautiful waveforms for years already, however so far they have decided against adding it to Logic. Their priority is to keep a max of the computer resources needed to run a project for the audio engine. My opinion is that it is a sound decision. Pun intended. But seriously, I agree with their decision.

 

Yeah dude I get it - but they can make it an option I guess. You wouldn't have to use it. It would just make editing / comping etc. way easier on the eyes and would spare me a lot of time. When I was working in Pro Tools I felt like it was much easier to (for example) match rhythm of bg's and lead vocal without even listening all the time.

Yeah dude I get it - but they can make it an option I guess. You wouldn't have to use it.

Sure they could, but based on my 20+ years being in this game I can tell that if they did, you'd get hundreds of threads like this in forums:

 

Q: Why is Logic having such a poor performance on my Mac? Screen redraws are slow, and when recording multiple tracks at the same time sometimes recording stops.

 

A: Go to Preferences > Display and set "Waveform display quality" to "low".

 

Q: Wow thanks man that worked! Awesome. Logic runs much faster now, much smoother. Why would they even consider making a choice like this? Offering an option that makes Logic run slow and recording stop? Isn't a Pro App supposed to prioritize the actual app's performance rather than shiny objects that seemed geared only to marketing the app?

 

So they have to weigh in this kind of things all the time when making decisions regarding features to implement. In the end I'm sure that with increasing resources on newer computers they'll end up implementing it anyway (perhaps in a switchable way as you suggested) but for now they can't risk to suffer all the bad publicity just because some users forgot to switch off the option while running Logic on last year's Mac.

You're probably right David which is also kind of sad xD. Anyway maybe they'll read this still. HEY LOGIC DEV TEAM MAKE BETTER WAVEFORM PLIS

#1, soooo appreciate that piece of information David about the reason why waveforms are like that, it makes a lot of sense and makes me a bit less frustrated with the Logic team.

 

#2, not to push back, but isn't the solution to that problem simply to have the default be off for such a setting? Then all of those people won't be posting about their poor Logic performance (due to waveform quality, anyway). Plus, without the option to turn on high quality waveforms, you still get a bunch of people writing on forums about how bad the waveform display is.

Hello, sorry to put this problem on the table, but i have a brand new M2 mini mac 2023 and i have this problem (very poor quality wave form) when i record a voice (does t do it on guitars)

my level imput are fine.

i didn t get the normalize thing.

can someone give an explanation what to so in the first place so i don t have a  bloquy wave form 

 

thanks 🙂

23 hours ago, Jondumusic said:

i have a brand new M2 mini mac 2023 and i have this problem (very poor quality wave form) when i record a voice (does t do it on guitars)

Are your vocals flexed? 

Nope, 

i have the same on my bass recording as well 😕

3 hours ago, David Nahmani said:

Are your vocals flexed? 

 

Can someone with a blocky waveform please pls zip and upload so we can take a look. 

In the project audio browser - if you select the audio file name ( not the region )  - the go to the audio file menu and choose refresh overview(s) - does that correct the wave form display ?

It happens when the audio is really low level and you a have to boost it with Region Gain.

The only way I know of fixing this is bouncing your tracks with just the gain change, or doing the job inside the wave editor.  Though you may have to instruct Logic to refresh the waveform overviews.  I think thats how you do it.