Got a new Mac - Same Problem - About to give up

[RoyFan]

My hardware profile , the iMac features are in my signature.

 

I went to the Mac store and the swapped out my computer as I'm under my warrantee.

And with the new unit - I still get audio playback problems with SMALL PROJECTS. 30 audio tracks - 4 midi tracks at most. I get the distorted/slowed/corrupt playback along with a message about "Problems Syncing Audio - Midi - Sample Rate Error" -

 

This happens at all sample rates - with ALL size projects.

 

MY ONLY last option before going to Pro Tools - or an earlier version of Logic - is possibly to get a Solid State Drive. Which is an extra 700.

 

The reason I SERIOUSLY HESITATE to do this - is from my interaction with ALL of you in the last months- you've all said I believe that with my specs - running a 30 tracks project of mostly audio tracks should NOT in any way create this error. even with a 1 TB Sata drive yes??

 

Unless I'm totally misunderstanding and NONE of you here has ever, or would ever advise running Logic Pro X on a 1 TB Internal Sata Drive? GarageB seems to work fine on it - And btw I run most of my projects off of a 3 TB external thunderbolt and have the same problems with those

 

are there LOADS of you out here running Logic Pro X with a drive and specs like me having NO problems?

 

I would hate to go to Pro Tools because I like the Logic stock sounds.

[logic8mine]

And, this happens when using no audio interface? You've effectively eliminated the iMac from the equation so, the issue isn't there.DId you do a fresh install of Logic / the OS? I'm sure you have followed this: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204466

[RoyFan]

thanks yea I've seen that many times. I've done most of the stuff on that list. The most important, I would think is trying different sample rates right?

 

and yes it happens mostly when the interface is plugged in, freezing all my tracks usually fixes this but not always. And it's not a real solution.

 

did you have to experiment with your settings to avoid this problem? have you ever had it? is your HDD a solid state?

do you tend to think the problem (even with smaller projects) is actually related to ram size of hard drive type?

[noisenet]

Hi Roy - I'm not familiar with what I assume you've previously posted, I've only seen this thread.

With any recent iMac running an i7 I wouldn't think you'd run into playback issues but I'd like to ask a few questions...

 

First, what drive are you playing back Logic projects from? External drive or your internal iMac system drive? Is it a 7200RPM drive or a 5400? Your comment says it's a 1TB SATA drive, leading me to believe it's the standard 1TB Fusion drive - is this correct? I may be wrong but I seem to recall reading that those are a 5400 RPM drive. For any kind of DAW project you want to be running off of at least a 7200RPM drive. Additionally, it's always a good move to record to and playback from a drive other than your system drive - in your case an external drive - make sure it's a 7200RPM or SSD (I generally see people recommend regular HDD's for the audio drive and not SSDs). Apps frequently require information from the system drive (where the app lives) to perform certain functions - Logic has to read those from the system drive to operate. If it's also playing back audio data from that drive you can start to see where a bottleneck might occur. Running your audio from an external drive alleviates this.

 

Second question - what is your I/O Buffer size? It's in Preferences > Audio. If it's not already, try setting it to 512 or 1024 samples.

 

Third - are you running a lot of Virtual Instrument software or other resource intensive plugins?

 

In closing, with that processor and amount of RAM your machine should scream through your projects without even breaking a sweat. I'm on a 2011 Mac Mini with a 2.0GHz i7, 12GB Ram and 2x 500GB 7200 RPM Hard Drives and I'm running projects bigger than that with resource hogging Amp Sims and Drum plugin software, not to mention some other resource hungry plugins. If my buffer is set to 1024 I'm usually ok, no problems. Your machine should absolutely smoke mine. I hope you/we find the solution to your problem cause I'm considering pretty much your exact same machine (with SSD) for later this year, finances willing. I'd hate to learn it's not adequate LOL!

[blinkofani]

How can you be on Mavericks on a 5K iMac? And why are you using 10.1.1? Are you sure of those specs?

 

Blink

[RoyFan]

Hi Roy - I'm not familiar with what I assume you've previously posted, I've only seen this thread.

First, what drive are you playing back Logic projects from? External drive or your internal iMac system drive? Is it a 7200RPM drive or a 5400? Your comment says it's a 1TB SATA drive, leading me to believe it's the standard 1TB Fusion drive - is this correct? I may be wrong but I seem to recall reading that those are a 5400 RPM drive.

 

Second question - what is your I/O Buffer size? It's in Preferences > Audio. If it's not already, try setting it to 512 or 1024 samples.

 

Third - are you running a lot of Virtual Instrument software or other resource intensive plugins?

 

Hey - thanks for all the info. First off, I'm gonna change my signature in a sec. There's 2 things that are off.

It's actually 16 GBs of RAM. Yes the internal HDD is a 1 TB Sata Fusion. And the processor is actually a 3.2 GHZ i5.

 

Now to your questions - Yes I run my projects of an external drive which I'm pretty sure is is 7200 RPM.

Setting my buffer size fo 512 often, not always, solves the problem for playback. But then I believe I still get the problem when I'm recording. Do you find there's an ideal buffer size for recording that works for you without any of those problems? And if there is, does that buffer size not cause any considerable latency?

 

The problem is worse with bigger projects that have lots of vsts software instruments. mostly drums, and keyboards, logic sounds, and arturia stuff, no crazy piano or classical instruments. But I get it also with 30 tracks where most are audio.

 

What I'm still not sure of - Is the playback message box we're all talking about something that is related system resources?

or can 1 experience this with even the best resources?

 

does 1 have to tweak and find the best io buffer size for each interface for and find an ideal one for recording certain instruments?

is this a standard inherent problem to ALL daws?

[bigwayne56]

Sounds like a driver issue to me. I see lots of people that run USB interfaces that have issues like you speak of, and if they try a different interface, even the internal sound card in your mac, it seems to help or solve the issue. I have another friend with your interface and he had similar issues. I have a Metric Halo ULN/2 for nearly ten years. Ive never had any issues with any DAW on my macs. Tons of macs, tons or hours of recording time and not a single issue. I believe the better the interface driver development, the lesser the overall issues.

 

I would try switching to the internal sound card first and see what happens with your projects. Also maybe try downloading another DAW, Reaper, Studio One Demo, and run the demo projects. If they work OK, then you know it's a Logic issue, and we can go from there.

 

Wayne

[logic8mine]

thanks yea I've seen that many times. I've done most of the stuff on that list. The most important, I would think is trying different sample rates right?

 

and yes it happens mostly when the interface is plugged in, freezing all my tracks usually fixes this but not always. And it's not a real solution.

 

did you have to experiment with your settings to avoid this problem? have you ever had it? is your HDD a solid state?

do you tend to think the problem (even with smaller projects) is actually related to ram size of hard drive type?

But you didnt answer about fresh install. If the problem is in a corrupted Logic X file or OS X file, you just imported into the new iMac. Also, the Audio Interface driver is up to date then? My issues were all related to my YSFW Driver. I had to keep uninstalling and reinstalling before it went away. When the issue arose again, I had to do a fresh install of the OS and all software- the issue went away.

[SonicDrift]

Hi,

 

Its not because of the drive - the fusion drive?

 

I'm sure I read of people having a very similar issues with audio DAW (on their imacs) due to the way the fusion drive switched when reading/writing?

 

This may have been resolved on the later imac models, i cant say for sure.

 

But may be worth getting on the google machine and researching it a bit?

 

Cheers

[logic8mine]

Now to your questions - Yes I run my projects of an external drive which I'm pretty sure is is 7200 RPM.

You just reminded me of my last bout with sync errors. My projects were also playing from an external drive: switched from USB to Firewire and all of my issues were resolved.

[RoyFan]

"But you didnt answer about fresh install. If the problem is in a corrupted Logic X file or OS X file, you just imported into the new iMac. Also, the Audio Interface driver is up to date then? My issues were all related to my YSFW Driver. I had to keep uninstalling and reinstalling before it went away. When the issue arose again, I had to do a fresh install of the OS and all software- the issue went away."

 

Yes I did use time machine to transfer the older files to this new computer

HOWEVER - I had multiple remote sessions with Apple and Focusrite and all the audio/midi config/definition/setup files are A OK

The problem happens with MULTIPLE interfaces by different companies - Focusrite doesn't have a driver for my Mac OS version,

rather it uses Mac's built in Core Audio

 

Someone also mentioned switching to firewire - My external is Thunderbolt so I would think no problem there right? plus I do get it on the few projects I run from the HDD itself, tho I run most on the external - so I think that's eliminated

 

Someone else mentioned Googling - I have extensively and will keep doing it but no solution there unfortunately

 

My question to all of you - Is it safe to assume that if I get superior RAM, Solid State HDD (even 3 TB maybe) that when I have a setup like that - LESS tweaking with buffer size parameters is needed to avoid this sync error? I..e - the superior hardware in and of itself helps this ?

 

Does anyone out there still get this problem from time to time? To me it seems like a combination of being Logic Pro X along with other factors - i.e if it was a different daw with my hardware no tweaking of buffer size would be needed -

 

I PRAY someone at Logic customer care knows how to fix this.

[logic8mine]

OK you still have the issue and are willing to move to another DAW without ever following all the steps of troubleshooting. Two different iMacs same issue same install of OS and software. Call Logic X support. At the end of the process, they'll recommend a fresh install if the problem persists, as yours has.

[fisherking]

this, "Problems Syncing Audio - Midi - Sample Rate Error" suggests an issue with a specific plugin. i used to get this a lot (with arturia's spark2). try an all-audio project; same problem? what 3rd party plugins do you use? and do you start with a custom template?

[redgreenblue]

I'm running MUCH larger projects with a lot more plug-ins that what you state on a 4 year old iMac and not having the kind of problems you are having. I agree with a previous response that it sounds like a USB issue. Is the Focusrite on a hub or direct on to the computer? Can you borrow a FireWire or Thunderbolt interface from someone? Have you tested with NO other usb devices present? One wonky device on the chain can cause all sorts of havoc.

 

Also, are there any legacy drivers kicking around on your system? Korg in particular have some crap crap crappy usb drivers.

 

I can get that issue on my mac but it is usually when I am running a serious amount of plug-ins, more than you are describing.

 

And you can record with the buffer at 512, especially if you are monitoring directly from the Focusrite.

[RoyFan]

"I'm running MUCH larger projects with a"

 

Thanks I appreciate your info A LOT. but what if you need the USB devices that are plugged in? And can't afford to plug them out?

 

Anyway - I called Logic - I'll keep you all informed!

[fisherking]

"I'm running MUCH larger projects with a"

 

Thanks I appreciate your info A LOT. but what if you need the USB devices that are plugged in? And can't afford to plug them out?

 

Anyway - I called Logic - I'll keep you all informed!

 

 

definitely worth exploring that, running your projects with NO usb devices (at least, running thru the built-in audio), with your interface unplugged). will at least help you troubleshoot the issue. again, what 3rd party plugins are you using?

 

if i can work on a 13" i7, you should be able to crush it on your imac.

[RoyFan]

"finitely worth exploring that, running your projects with NO usb devices (at least, running thru the built-in audio), with your interface unplugged). will at least help you troubleshoot the issue. again, what 3rd party plugins are you using?"

 

i'm using Arturia, Native Instruments (battery, massive, fm 8, kontakt but nothing fancy with contact), Korg , The PPG by Waldorf,

but I had the problem the first day with the Mac before any of those were even installed.

 

For now, it's behaving so I'll have to wait until I get the problem again. and then call Logic and do a remote session.

 

I just really don't think there should such a deep and varied and crazy trouble shooting list to simply get a project with 30 tracks to play.

Very scary. Even it works then it doesn't a couple of days later.

 

Only reason I'm still here is the good sounds that come with Logic.

[logic8mine]

I just really don't think there should such a deep and varied and crazy trouble shooting list to simply get a project with 30 tracks to play.

Unfortunately, that's the nature of the beast. Even with a dedicated music computer there is an extensive list. Most people that I know locally are multitasking with their macs: using them for word processing, video editing, keynotes, whatever. One of my plug-ins conflicted with Final Cut X. Even now, Native Instruments FM8 causes an error in Final Cut X anytime I open it. It just hasn't caused an issue with Logic yet.

 

But, other than isolating and/or removing each plug-in, piece of software, etc. and going down the list- one by one- you may never get to the root cause. There is a conflict somewhere apparently. Now, the question is where? Hope you get it worked out

[fisherking]

"finitely worth exploring that, running your projects with NO usb devices (at least, running thru the built-in audio), with your interface unplugged). will at least help you troubleshoot the issue. again, what 3rd party plugins are you using?"

 

i'm using Arturia, Native Instruments (battery, massive, fm 8, kontakt but nothing fancy with contact), Korg , The PPG by Waldorf,

but I had the problem the first day with the Mac before any of those were even installed.

 

For now, it's behaving so I'll have to wait until I get the problem again. and then call Logic and do a remote session.

 

I just really don't think there should such a deep and varied and crazy trouble shooting list to simply get a project with 30 tracks to play.

Very scary. Even it works then it doesn't a couple of days later.

 

Only reason I'm still here is the good sounds that come with Logic.

 

but that's it; you're right, there shouldn't be a problem playing 30 tracks, so something IS wrong. hope you sort it out (lots of great suggestions in this thread)...

[RoyFan]

"Unfortunately, that's the nature of the beast. "

 

I appreciate your support. And trust me I have no preference between Apple and PC - but I think when you pay 3000 dollars , especially for a company that's as lauded as apple - i'm not sure if such an open ended search (i've tried everything here) for a problem like this is the work of great software. Just isn't. The Logic support guy told me this happens ALL the time.

 

Unless I'm not aware of something and this happens all the time with pro tools, but I don't it does.

 

Again I'm really not a mad or pc guy, but I find it a bit ironic that some Mac users make a religion of pointing out PC shortcomings when

situations like mine are happening on a 3000 dollar machine and software. wth NO tangible solution the than "Go my son down that hill and yee shall find"

[fisherking]

"Unfortunately, that's the nature of the beast. "

 

I appreciate your support. And trust me I have no preference between Apple and PC - but I think when you pay 3000 dollars , especially for a company that's as lauded as apple - i'm not sure if such an open ended search (i've tried everything here) for a problem like this is the work of great software. Just isn't. The Logic support guy told me this happens ALL the time.

 

Unless I'm not aware of something and this happens all the time with pro tools, but I don't it does.

 

Again I'm really not a mad or pc guy, but I find it a bit ironic that some Mac users make a religion of pointing out PC shortcomings when

situations like mine are happening on a 3000 dollar machine and software. wth NO tangible solution the than "Go my son down that hill and yee shall find"

 

this thread is full of constructive ideas. the problem is specific, and should be investigated. not sure what you're going on about, but it's like your ignoring the advice, so you can complain. so, easy enough to sell the mac, buy a pc, get protools or something. otherwise, try things suggested here, and get to apple support...

[RoyFan]

I'm sorry first off if you took it as complaining. I've had this for 4 months now and have checked out every solution.

Would you agree that 4 months is a good healthy amount of searching and troubleshooting? btw have done pretty much everything suggested here.

 

I was pointing out that it's a bit ironic that some mac users have an almost cult like hate of pc - and it strikes me as ironic when

their own stuff doesn't work - and the answer is - "here, try all these.... doesn't work? hmmm that's weird"

 

and that the same computer running GB works ok.

 

Not hating, not cirticing, simply seeing the irony. And yes I must admit, over the past years I have seen and felt lots of hatred, and mostly a lot of sarcasm from some Mac users when mentioning I use pcs as well. It's very scary. When people make it into a religion or cult, and start to call Windows "win doze" - that's all I was - I'm a sensitive , intelligent person and the mac cult scares me a lot, especially the part when they seem to say "oh go ahead and try these 24 solutions" when it's a Mac with a problem, and when 1 thing goes wrong on pC "let's burn it to the stake"

 

Maybe that' not you personally - but a lot of people these days

[RoyFan]

and just wanted to mention I did go to Apple support and they said that this problem gets reported to them a Looooot.

 

So it's not something esoteric. Also was a bit scared that they said that hopefully we can "figure it out" and make my situation "workable"

[fisherking]

and just wanted to mention I did go to Apple support and they said that this problem gets reported to them a Looooot.

 

So it's not something esoteric. Also was a bit scared that they said that hopefully we can "figure it out" and make my situation "workable"

 

not esoteric, but also...not universal.

 

whoever you spoke to at apple was useless; try again. every problem has a possible solution, including yours. how many people on this forum use logic regularly? do their actual work in logic?

 

we get the work done, and so should you, so...if there's a problem, get it sorted out. that's all i'm saying.

[rAC]

Ok so let's try and reduce the areas for investigation and locate the problem. You mentioned other devices on USB what are they? Are they on the same bus? Does the problem occur when they are not connected?

You indicated that it occurred with other interfaces - which ones were they and what connections did they have (T'bolt, FW, USB)?

Others have suggested a fresh install - you have talked about restoring/transferring from time machine, have you actually done a fresh install?

[mpmusicny]

Is you external drive formatted correctly? (I assume the internal is, as that came with the IMac) - Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and partition map should be GUID

[angelonyc]

For me, Logic has been plagued with the 'sample rate error'.. for years.. I've gotten it on/off for several years, thru a few different Macs.. Just got it the other day on a 2015 6 core Mac Pro, 64 gig memory, 1TB SSD, and a Thunderbolt, OWC 4 bay Thunderbay, which I run KONTAKT, and Samlpletank, Superior Drums. I record project onto SSD.. then eventually move project off when song project is finished..

 

I'm not sure if the 'sample rate error' is a generic term used for any of a number of errors.. Sometimes it goes away by itself.. I have a ton of 3rd party virtual instrument plug-ins.. Might be related to one of them.. I've noticed even now when I get up towards 25 or so live virtual instruments, Logic starts getting weird.. Even though I have a significant amount of free memory available.. When I'm clear on the arrangement of my song.. I turn virtual instruments into audio.. Then save virtual instrument as a Channel strip, so I can go back and exactly duplicate the patch later, if changes need to be made.. Perhaps you might try temporarily try removing components out of folder.. Just make a Xcompanant folder and move them there. If problem still persists, it's not componants.. it can be a situation with a certain virtual plug-in, I've noticed that..

 

My whole point with getting a MacPro, cause I wanted to keep every virtual instrument track, live. so I could make instantainous changes, if the song was going to go in a different direction.. Imagine my disappointment when I spent over twice as much as you did, and still have some of the same issues I had on my trusty 2008 Mac Pro,which finally died an indignant death going up in smoke one day, after I had left in on for hours..

 

While I like my Mac pro, especially the SSD, I am less than overjoyed with it.. I was one of the 2% that got one with a faulty Thunderbolt lane.. It took 2 1/2 months for Apple to replace it and buy and replace my OWC Thunderbolt RAID system, to fix what was becoming an increasingly bigger problem.. Which they first denied.. I think all the small Apple I CRAP devices is their bread and butter now.. So they are more concerned with that.. Although I think they care about the iMacs too.. I've noticed in most stores the Mac Pros on display have been cut down to two.. And when I call Apple, I have to tell the representatives at least 3 times I have a 'MacPro' and not a 'MacBookPro'.. They talk to me like I must be kind of crazy to have bought that dinosaur. I've even had a Apple phone representative who didn't seem to know that Logic Pro was their software.. She had t ask me twice, then obviously look in her 'cheat book' before reading the pre-written response..

 

Yes, when you start to get weird problems. Recovery mode, and a fresh OSX has saved me several times..

 

I've noticed over the years, some Logic users have a lot of problems and others relatively very few.. Of course we all got different apps on our computers. I recently caught malware, which turned my computer into a mindless slave, spewing out spam, (I was completely unaware).. Some one was able to spoof Time warner and send me to an extremely realistic website, along with a phone number to call, which sounded just like Timewarner. They tricked me into using a free trial of 'Clamx antivirus'.

 

This was Clamx software (which is a great company).. These A-holes had injected some malware code into the program..

 

Internet browsing to extremely slow and Logic really slowed down.. Of course looking at the Activity Monitor showing scads of meaningless processes running (and you can't just randomly start force quitting some of them.. Logic was idling at 130% while doing nothing..

 

After calling Timewarner directly and contacting Clamx, I figured out the scam..

 

It is possible to get Logic to behave well up to 95% of the time. I've gone thru periods (over different Logic versions, of it running perfectly for weeks at a time, to it being so buggy. I have to re-install it, and OSX.

 

Not familiar with Focusrite, but I would assume, it has it's own 'live input' mode. in which case you wouldn't need 'software monitoring' on.

 

OK.. enough ranting on Apple.. I have friends with Apples and PC's and who claim Apple is the lessor of the two evils.. Of course this is subjective.. There are probably just as many people who love PC's.. When you start to go to different forums, you'll always find people having incredible with any DAW and machine it is used on..

 

The truly purists, use their Mac only for Logic, with no extra programs. but a lot of use can't afford to do this. I have Little Snitch on my Mac.. and It is shocking how many apps, and virtual instruments want to make outside connections via internet.. (I block as many as possible)..

 

Oh and Spotlight can be an issue.. If it decides to start indexing your drives.. Logic will sometimes get real sluggish, which I think triggers the "Sample Rate Error".. Again i think that is a catch all error message, that is displayed, when Mac is getting cranky..\

[noisenet]

Sorry for the delay in replying, i guess I didn't have this topic subscribed so I just saw this response...

 

A little additional info that might shed some light - I am a guitarist so the bulk of my tracks are guitar LOL! I record using two mics, each taking up their own track, along with a guitar directly into the interface for later re-amping if the engineer would like, then summed into a track stack - so each guitar track is actually 3 separate tracks. I like to do a lot with guitar so sometimes there can be 16-20 tracks (remember, each track is actually 3 tracks) of guitar on a project (I usually quad-take heavy rhythm guitar parts, lots of harmony, individual lead tracks, etc). Usually my bass tracks are running an amp sim, my drumms are always Steven Slate drums, which eats some resources, then my mixdowns are pretty plugin heavy - Waves NLS on each track and Master bus (I really dig that plug), assorted EQ's, compressors, other stuff.

 

 

For a buffer, I am generally able to record with the buffer set at 64 samples. Usually when I record I've already got drums treated (plugins on the individual drum channels, on Drum bus, etc because I like to track with the big drum sound) and can still get away with 64. As I get into the higher track count I sometimes have to bump it to 128 samples, but not all that often.

 

When I mix I bump the buffer up to 1024 samples (highest setting) because at that point latency doesn't really matter & I want to avoid any glitches, etc.

 

Another thing I've found is that it's helpful to play through a project, jumping through to individual parts of the song where new tracks come in. For some reason if I have an intensive project going on playback will stop when a track approaches it's first region (when said region is somewhere after the beginning of the song - a guitar solo, for instance) and give the dreaded 'Logic can't process in time' or whatever error. So playing through, hitting all these spots helps greatly to avoid this.

 

As for whether this happens on higher end systems, I've seen folks posting about that same error message on high end Pac Pros as well as lower end machines. Obviously though it's more common on lower end machines, like mine LOL!!!

 

Part of your problem might be that you're using an i5 processor. While certainly fast, it lacks a feature of the i7 & that's hyperthreading - which basically means each core can effectively perform two tasks atone time - so while a particular i7 processor might be a 4 core, software that's written to be hyperthreading-aware will actually 'see' 8 cores. Logic does this. So, your processor being the i5 might be part of your problem.

 

I used to use a Focusrite Scarlett interface, I might have had more trouble with this error when i used it, I don't recall. I got an Apogee Ensemble Thunderbolt interface several months ago & it seems I almost never get it now, with the aforementioned i/o buffer settings, even on projects where I'm recording at 96k (on these I get a mere 1.8 ms latency) - I don't know if it's possible for this to be a piece of the problem or not, there are many on this board much more wise than me who can tell ya that.

 

A troubleshooting step I see posted often on here is to unplug your interface from the system completely, then launch Logic using only the iMac's headphone jack or it's internal speakers and see if the problem still exists. Have you tried this?

 

I haven't read through the rest of the responses so if I've hit anything someone else already has please forgive...

 

Hi Roy - I'm not familiar with what I assume you've previously posted, I've only seen this thread.

First, what drive are you playing back Logic projects from? External drive or your internal iMac system drive? Is it a 7200RPM drive or a 5400? Your comment says it's a 1TB SATA drive, leading me to believe it's the standard 1TB Fusion drive - is this correct? I may be wrong but I seem to recall reading that those are a 5400 RPM drive.

 

Second question - what is your I/O Buffer size? It's in Preferences > Audio. If it's not already, try setting it to 512 or 1024 samples.

 

Third - are you running a lot of Virtual Instrument software or other resource intensive plugins?

 

Hey - thanks for all the info. First off, I'm gonna change my signature in a sec. There's 2 things that are off.

It's actually 16 GBs of RAM. Yes the internal HDD is a 1 TB Sata Fusion. And the processor is actually a 3.2 GHZ i5.

 

Now to your questions - Yes I run my projects of an external drive which I'm pretty sure is is 7200 RPM.

Setting my buffer size fo 512 often, not always, solves the problem for playback. But then I believe I still get the problem when I'm recording. Do you find there's an ideal buffer size for recording that works for you without any of those problems? And if there is, does that buffer size not cause any considerable latency?

 

The problem is worse with bigger projects that have lots of vsts software instruments. mostly drums, and keyboards, logic sounds, and arturia stuff, no crazy piano or classical instruments. But I get it also with 30 tracks where most are audio.

 

What I'm still not sure of - Is the playback message box we're all talking about something that is related system resources?

or can 1 experience this with even the best resources?

 

does 1 have to tweak and find the best io buffer size for each interface for and find an ideal one for recording certain instruments?

is this a standard inherent problem to ALL daws?

[noisenet]

A couple more thoughts:

First, it's a good idea to ALWAYS install your software, not copy it over from a backup or whatever. I know it takes a lot longer to download and install than to copy over from a drive but that's just the nature of software - always install from an actual install source (ie the Mac App Store for Logic). So, when you get some time, remove Logic from your system completely, then re-install it from the Mac App Store, re-download all the content, etc. It take a while but might help you.

 

I saw where you said you can't unplug the USB stuff because you need it - try unplugging all other USB stuff TEMPORARILY as a troubleshooting step. If the problems goes away, then try re-adding your USB devices one at a time (quitting and relaunching Logic each time) until the problem arises.

 

Also, make absolutely certain your interface is connected directly to your Mac, not through a USB hub. Never run your interface through a hub, always give it it's own Bus.

 

Double check that your external drive is 7200RPM - go into system information and get the drive's model name or number then google it to find out the specs.

 

And finally the fusion drive - I've got no personal experience with them but I'm pretty sure the speed of the drives is 5400RPM. The Fusion drives contain (usually) a small SSD, the drive's software 'intelligently' moves the most used files to the SSD for faster launching. You mention that the problem has stopped (for the moment) - perhaps the Fusion drive moved your Logic App files to the SSD portion of the drive & this accounts for the improvement? Just a guess but either way I'd 100% definitely go for the SSD option, ten times out of ten, over the Fusion drives for a recording machine. Also, are you still in the return period for this iMac? If so then you'll be MUCH better served going with the i7. It costs more but the difference is more than worth it!

[noisenet]

Another question - why are you still on OSX 10.9.5?