Spinning ball after every action - Any suggestion or fix?

[Maestro777]

I am working a project where the performance is severely degraded. Scrolling up or down in the Project window OR right or left within the track mixer exhibits a stuttered movement as opposed to a smooth scroll. The only way I can quickly navigate from 1 channel to another is to click on the track I want to get to within the project window to take me directly to the track.

I have frozen a good many tracks in effort of resolving the performance issue but nothing appears to be working. In the attached video although not visible, is a spinning ball displayed after every action. Which in this case is simply lowering the automation volume of several tracks. Nothing CPU intensive.

Every pause seen in the video is time I have to wait before performing the next simple action.

I've moved this project several times to different devices and it is now running on a RAID configuration so I know there isn't a Disk I/O issue here.

A few other observations is after having already frozen the tracks when I open the project again it again freezes the same tracks again. (I don't think that should be happening) Also after I save, close the project and quit Logic I get a crash screen. But the reported source of the crash isn't consistent. Sometimes it's different logic components and sometimes a plugin. But I've seen this same behavior in other projects even after having removed the plugin reported in the crash.

Sounds like logic needs to be removed and re-installed as a potential fix?

Are there any other things I should consider before the reinstall route?

Reformating my entire system to fix a Logic problem isn't an option for me.

[Mania]

Definitely not normal. Try the usual troubleshooting things suggested here many times. I would try:

• move/copy the project to internal drive and see if there is improvement. (Just to make sure it is not a disk issue) 
• create a new user account (OS) see if’s the same
• boot Logic without third party plugins (please google that I don’t know how fro m top of my head) see if it improves
• Other Logic projects behave the same? Trash Logic’s preferences. Reboot computer. 
• backup your copy of Logic (search this forum) and re download Logic. All plugins and downloaded sounds will stay on your computer)

[Maestro777]

Ok, thanks for the advice. I'll try those things first and see if I can get any resolve. Already have tried a few of your suggestions and so far no luck. Will give the other suggestions a shot.

[Mania]

5 minutes ago, Maestro777 said:

Ok, thanks for the advice. I'll try those things first and see if I can get any resolve. Already have tried a few of your suggestions and so far no luck. Will give the other suggestions a shot.

Also: do you have enough free space on the internal drive? Ideally 20% free? The OS and Logic needs space to operate. 

[fisherking]

as mania asked above: does this happen with other projects? the answer to that will tell you a lot about the issue. if it's happening with other projects as well... it could be an internal drive issue, (ie where logic resides). run the hardware test.

meanwhile, what mac are you on? what OS? and what version of logic?

[Maestro777]

Definitely more than 20% available space on the drive Logic is installed on and yes I've seen this issue happen with other projects as well. The degree of degraded performance varying and since I have many projects admittedly I haven't checked every other project that I have but for the problem to occur across all the ones I've been working with was enough for me to consider posting the question.

Logic 10.6.3 - iMac Pro (2017) - 256GB RAM - 3.2GHz  8-Core Processor - Catalina 10.15.7

This is a very high performing system and I've never had any issues pushing it to the upper limits. Always has run very smoothly until recently.

The hardware test is a good suggestion and I'd considered it already. I just wanted to feel out others suggestions and inputs before proceeding down that path b/c I would do deep extensive test which could take hours to complete.

Thanks

Oh, forgot to add that I'm getting a lot of this error more than anything else. Which also kind of leads me to think it "may" be an issue with the Logic installation. I could be wrong.

Process:               Logic Pro X [727]
Path:                  /Applications/Logic Pro X.app/Contents/MacOS/Logic Pro X
Identifier:            com.apple.logic10
Version:               10.6.3 (5458)
Build Info:            MALogic-5458000000000000~3 (10U159)
App Item ID:           634148309
App External ID:       841990097
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        ??? [1]
Responsible:           Logic Pro X [727]
User ID:               501

PlugIn Path:             /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/bx_XL V2.component/Contents/MacOS/bx_XL V2
PlugIn Identifier:       com.plugin-alliance.plugins.au.BXXLV2
PlugIn Version:          2.15 (2.15)

Date/Time:             2022-05-12 18:38:51.858 -0400
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.15.7 (19H1715)
Report Version:        12
Bridge OS Version:     6.2 (19P744)
Anonymous UUID:        2B4C3E39-75D3-7B11-4548-D2BD67AFA93C

Time Awake Since Boot: 6600 seconds

System Integrity Protection: disabled

Crashed Thread:        22  ProcessThread13

Exception Type:        EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes:       KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Signal:    Segmentation fault: 11
Termination Reason:    Namespace SIGNAL, Code 0xb
Terminating Process:   exc handler [727]

VM Regions Near 0:
--> 
    __TEXT                 000000010f6ad000-0000000111809000 [ 33.4M] r-x/r-x SM=COW  /Applications/Logic Pro X.app/Contents/MacOS/Logic Pro X

Application Specific Information:
Dublin | 6b34edbe1e2428234532a9a90f0dda622834cd344de3e01f645f6cf5be04bce1 | c226c3f729b55e358699a7f7b18f27a9803c1159 | 2021-07-07_15:09:24
 
Performing @selector(terminate:) from sender CLgMenuItem 0x60001e0fe6f0

Thread 0:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0   libsystem_kernel.dylib            0x00007fff6ee61298 mach_absolute_time + 28
1   com.apple.CoreServices.CarbonCore    0x00007fff364ae087 TickCount + 9
2   com.apple.music.apps.MAAudioEngine    0x0000000114adab2b MDPlug::Remove(MDPlug**) + 475
3   com.apple.music.apps.MAAudioEngine    0x0000000114a7f916 MDStream::RemovePlug(CPlugIn*) + 118
4   com.apple.logic10                 0x000000010fa102f4 0x10f6ad000 + 3551988
5   com.apple.logic10                 0x000000010f84e7c8 0x10f6ad000 + 1710024
6   com.apple.logic10                 0x000000010f84d0f2 0x10f6ad000 + 1704178
7   com.apple.logic10                 0x000000010f84c28a 0x10f6ad000 + 1700490
8   com.apple.logic10                 0x000000010f84a034 0x10f6ad000 + 1691700
9   com.apple.logic10                 0x000000010f8e860a 0x10f6ad000 + 2340362
10  com.apple.logic10                 0x000000010f8f18c7 0x10f6ad000 + 2377927
11  com.apple.logic10                 0x000000010ff169a2 0x10f6ad000 + 8821154
12  com.apple.logic10                 0x000000010fb3eb85 0x10f6ad000 + 4791173
13  com.apple.logic10                 0x00000001102dd4ac 0x10f6ad000 + 12780716
14  com.apple.CoreFoundation          0x00007fff350ae14f __CFNOTIFICATIONCENTER_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_AN_OBSERVER__ + 12
 

[ozinga]

That log shows the Plugin Alliance BX-XL plugin as the problem. Maybe needs an update.

[Maestro777]

11 hours ago, ozinga said:

That log shows the Plugin Alliance BX-XL plugin as the problem. Maybe needs an update.

Good catch! I totally overlooked that line. One reoccuring behavior I've note before getting to the severe performance problem  is that every time I open or close a project in Logic I get a crash window.

The really weird thing about it is the crash log will also generate after a successful save, close of the project and subsequent exit from Logic. Sometimes I'll open a Project and will get a crash log window immediately but the project itself will still open in the background. When what I'd expect after a crash window is that the Project won't open at all. I am usually pretty good at catching when there's a plugin contributing to the problem but I obviously missed this one. Very strange stuff though.

Next time a crash is generated I'll look more closely to see if any plugin is culprit.

Thanks

Edited May 13, 2022 by Maestro777

[Mania]

Yes, try to disable the bad plugins, start a new Logic project with no third party plugins se how it behaves. Your problem  most likely is a third party plugin. Even if they work well, sometimes you update Logic itself and suddenly there is a problem with some of them. This is why studios are very cautious with updates. They stick to a working setup and only update if really necessary.