Logic can't find the audio files from my project that are on my hard drive?

[Sarpe Studios]

A few days ago, when I opened Logic Pro X, I got the "Locate your audio files" which was weird because I have used it for a few years and never had this problem. When I checked the Audio Browser I could see that all the files on the "path" had a no entry sign on it meaning that Logic doesn't have the permission to get files from my hard drive... I don't know how to fix that... I have read so many forums and I can't find exactly this kind of problem...

Please help :((

[triplets]

Is that a Time Machine external HD?

[Sarpe Studios]

14 hours ago, triplets said:

Is that a Time Machine external HD?

Yes it is but I have used it as a regular hard drive. (maybe it is not a good idea...) 

I think I know why this has happened. I was told that it would be smart of me to put all the files on an additional hard drive and when I did it I didn't copy it in the other hard drive but I dragged it in. From that moment Logic couldn't find the audio files...

[David Nahmani]

46 minutes ago, Sarpe Studios said:

I think I know why this has happened. I was told that it would be smart of me to put all the files on an additional hard drive and when I did it I didn't copy it in the other hard drive but I dragged it in. From that moment Logic couldn't find the audio files...

That's odd, just dragging files from one drive to another should make a copy, not move the files: the originals should still be accessible by Logic Pro? 

In any case, if you have the files on the other drives then you can bring them back in where they were supposed to be to have Logic Pro find them again?

[Sarpe Studios]

2 minutes ago, David Nahmani said:

That's odd, just dragging files from one drive to another should make a copy, not move the files: the originals should still be accessible by Logic Pro? 

In any case, if you have the files on the other drives then you can bring them back in where they were supposed to be to have Logic Pro find them again?

Exactly my thought - but it doesn't so that's why I'm so confused  I don't know what to do...

[David Nahmani]

Just now, Sarpe Studios said:

but it doesn't so that's why I'm so confused  I don't know what to do...

Open the project in Logic Pro, press F to open the Project File Browser, then you should see a little orange exclamation mark next to each file name Logic cannot find. Click the exclamation mark to direct Logic to that file's new location. 

[Sarpe Studios]

I did that and it works but the thing is that I have 6 projects that have this problem with more than 500 tracks altogether. It is a never ending work to do and therefore I was wondering if there would be a way for Logic to access the audio files again. To get the permission to access my hard drive

[David Nahmani]

Just now, Sarpe Studios said:

I was wondering if there would be a way for Logic to access the audio files again. To get the permission to access my hard drive

The thing is, it's not that Logic doesn't have the permission to access the file, it's that Logic no longer knows where the flies are located so you have to help Logic find the files. 

When you open the Logic Pro project and it gives you an alert asking where the files are, have you tried clicking the "Search" button? Or the "Locate" button? 

[Rooktown]

Bumping an old thread because I'm having this exact issue. It happened when I upgraded to Monterey.

All of my audio files are exactly where they should be, but when I open the file, it says it can't locate them. Using the "Locate" option, I can reconnect all of them (from where Logic should be finding them!) and resave the file, after which everything is fine again. But with dozens of projects and thousands of .aif files to reconnect, there has to be a way to correct this without going through each project by hand.

Any solutions to this yet?

[David Nahmani]

1 hour ago, Rooktown said:

there has to be a way to correct this without going through each project by hand.

There isn't, unfortunately. 

[LukeN]

I am also having this issue after my computer auto updated to Monterey. Have there been any workarounds discovered?

Everything works just as it should with projects on the internal hard drive, but if you access anything from an external drive it will not find any files, despite it looking in the correct folder for them.

Worse yet, I spent two hours yesterday manually 'locating' each file for a song and although it now opens and plays just fine, if I add a new track it won't even playback the song, let alone allow me to record. When I hit the play button, a screen comes up that says "The File couldn't be saved because you don't have permission. To view or change permissions, select the item in finder and choose File > Get Info." I tried this and it claims that I do indeed have permission to read and write the file in question.

[Alan Shields]

I was just considering updating to Monterey. Think I'll leave it for another while as this is the kind of headache I don't need. 

Thanks for the heads up,

Alan.

[rawmusic]

On 8/5/2022 at 9:04 AM, David Nahmani said:

There isn't, unfortunately. 

How about now, David? You know, it is always reassuring to see your name pop up in any discussion!

This Monterey issue...It's getting embarrassing even more than frustrating now... even changing how I work - i.e. trying to mix in the same session as recording to save having to go back and reattach files next time I open the song file... hoping that clients get their vocals down in less takes to save having to find even more files next time... agh! Bring back working Logic!

 

[olavsu1]

Can there be a worse idea than to use the backup disk for something other than just backup?

The backup process  delete old backups.

To avoid such problems, use an external disk that is not for backup at the same time.

 

[David Nahmani]

44 minutes ago, rawmusic said:

How about now, David? You know, it is always reassuring to see your name pop up in any discussion!

Thank you! However unfortunately things are still the same. 

This issue should normally not occur. What happens is that when you save a Logic project file, it saves addresses for your audio files, which are saved individually, independently from the project file. Upon opening your project file, it uses these addresses to locate the audio file and read them. If it does not find the files at these addresses, you get that error message. 

To help with troubleshooting, open the Logic project without locating the audio files and see what address it's listing for one of audio files that has the orange exclamation mark, and compare it with the actual location of that audio file on your disk, to try to understand what happened and why the two are different? 

[olavsu1]

I searched and found that there is no similar place in the Logic settings:

Some DAW packages allow you to save a project in two ways.

1. the library files are only as links.
2. the library files are also copied to the project.

The latter is especially good when you need to deliver a project to a friend. But the friend's libraries may not have these files, which you have.

 

[David Nahmani]

11 minutes ago, olavsu1 said:

Some DAW packages allow you to save a project in two ways.

1. the library files are only as links.
2. the library files are also copied to the project.

Same in Logic Pro where, when you save a project, you can choose to organize your project as a folder or as a package that includes all media files (including audio files):

[Jordi Torres]

The popup about Logic not being able to locate audio files can also definitely happen when the user does not have read/write permissions on those files, and that seems to be the case for the OP (because the files where on a Time Machine drive), but it looks to be the case for others as well.

 

I haven't had this issue in Monterey either with my internal or external drives (in the picture above I manually set the permissions like that just to prove my point).

For those having this issue on external drives that you use for projects and regular storage (not Time Machine backups), the first thing I would check is whether the "Ignore ownership on this volume" is checked when you select the drive in the Finder and Ctrl-click > Get Info. If it isn't checked, make sure you open the little padlock and check that option:

Also select the option "Apply to enclosed items..." so that the permissions are applied recursively to all files and folders in that drive:

 

For those having file permissions-related issues on specific folders wherever they may be, I would suggest you check the permissions by doing Get info on the problematic project folder and run a couple of commands in your Terminal (Applications/Utilities/) as needed to:

1. Make sure your user is the owner of those folders (and any other files and folders within) 
2. Make sure the file permissions are properly set

 

So, for example, if you had a project folder on your desktop called "Test" and you saw your user is not the owner (as seen in the first picture in this post, where "system" is the owner), you would run the following command:

sudo chown -R $(id -un) ~/Desktop/Test

Please keep in mind that to add a path to the Terminal you can simply drag and drop from the Finder to the Terminal window, so there's no need to actually type he path. Also, the use of sudo (which allows you to run commands as a superuser or admin) will require you enter your admin password (which you won't see as you type it) and press Enter.

 

Next, in case file permissions are not properly set (i.e. your user or "everyone" is set to "No Access"), you can run this command to take care of it (again here "~/Desktop/Test" is just an example, so make sure to enter the actual path to an affected project folder, or to the folder that contains mutltiple affected project folders):

sudo chmod -R 755 ~/Desktop/Test

In the end you would end up with a folders (and all other files and folders within) that would look like this in the Get Info window, which matches what we have in project files and folders saved to our ~/Music/Logic folder:

 

On 8/5/2022 at 8:38 AM, Rooktown said:

But with dozens of projects and thousands of .aif files to reconnect, there has to be a way to correct this without going through each project by hand.

The advantage of doing this with the commands above, is that they are recursive (the "-R" flag), so you could run these commands on the folder that contains all your projects.

 

Hope that helps,

J.

 

[scampi10]

If folks are still having this issue:

I updated my Mac to Ventura and updated Logic to the most up to date version today and was greeted with none of my audio files on my hard drive being linked to the projects. I ran into a similar issue with the video editing software DaVinci Resolve. It seems to be an issue with how Ventura gives apps permission. 

My work around was going to:

system settings>privacy/security>full disc access

Here I gave both Logic and DaVinci full disc access and the issue went away.

Is this the best work around or did anyone else find a solution aside from locating thousands of audio files 1 at a time?

 

[rafesco]

On 1/18/2023 at 8:59 PM, scampi10 said:

If folks are still having this issue:

I updated my Mac to Ventura and updated Logic to the most up to date version today and was greeted with none of my audio files on my hard drive being linked to the projects. I ran into a similar issue with the video editing software DaVinci Resolve. It seems to be an issue with how Ventura gives apps permission. 

My work around was going to:

system settings>privacy/security>full disc access

Here I gave both Logic and DaVinci full disc access and the issue went away.

Is this the best work around or did anyone else find a solution aside from locating thousands of audio files 1 at a time?

Thanks so much man! This was driving me crazy. Happened to me after I updated to Monterey too. I was starting to think I'd have to manually find each file for every project I worked on my career, which is obviously impossible.

Curiously enough though, I managed to open the projects if I copied them from my external drive to my Mac's internal drive, which clearly showed that something was wrong when opening from the external storage only.

The Full Disk Access solution made it for me.
 

Thanks!!