Slow since upgrading to BigSur

[eileengogan]

iMac 21.5 2017

2.3 DC i5

16gig Ram

Logic Pro 10.7.2

Apogee Duet

Since upgrading to BigSur recording has become so slow and constant error messaging. Currently my projects have only 4 tracks approx. I mixed and recorded

an album on this Machine with up to 50 tracks per session when I was on Catalina, no problems.

Since the upgrade I started to record onto an external hard drive which helped for recording but if I layer up tracks for mixing it stops again.

Should I reinstall Catalina??

Thanks in advance.

Eileen

[fisherking]

try recording something to the internal drive; any difference?

try resetting the nvram & the smc, might help. 

run disk first aid, make sure all is well (run it on your internal and external drives)...

make sure 3rd-party plugins are all up-to-date.

just some ideas to start with...

Edited September 22, 2022 by fisherking

[eileengogan]

Thanks for getting back to me, I was recording straight to the internal drive and read somewhere that error messages and cpu consumption might be eased by recording onto an external drive, I have run the disk aids as well. 
The computer takes so long to even start up since the upgrade I’m beginning to wonder weather my NOT expandable 16gig ram can truly take BigSur,

 

[des99]

How long has it been since you upgraded your OS? It's common to take many hours while spotlight indexers scan your system, sucking up resources until they are done.

It might be worth opening Activity Monitor (in your /Applications/Utilities folder) and seeing whether you have an mdworker or other similar processes consuming CPU.

Edited September 22, 2022 by des99

[fisherking]

44 minutes ago, eileengogan said:

Thanks for getting back to me, I was recording straight to the internal drive and read somewhere that error messages and cpu consumption might be eased by recording onto an external drive, I have run the disk aids as well. 
The computer takes so long to even start up since the upgrade I’m beginning to wonder weather my NOT expandable 16gig ram can truly take BigSur,

have you tried resetting nvram & the smc? (google for your mac's specific instructions)...

[analogika]

Make sure that all third-party software — plug-ins, device drivers, (interface, printer, etc.) are explicitly compatible with Big Sur. Update as needed. 

[FLH3]

1 hour ago, eileengogan said:

The computer takes so long to even start up since the upgrade I’m beginning to wonder weather my NOT expandable 16gig ram can truly take BigSur,

My wife's laptop 2018 MB 16gig run Monterey without problem and it ran Big Sur without problems as well.

For sure she doesn't do CPU and RAM intensiv things like we do with music but everything works fine, the machine boot up at the same pace.

Your problem is maybe somewhere else.

I put a coin in the machine: Did you try to re-index Spotlight?

Edited September 22, 2022 by FLH3

[eileengogan]

3 hours ago, des99 said:

How long has it been since you upgraded your OS? It's common to take many hours while spotlight indexers scan your system, sucking up resources until they are done.

It might be worth opening Activity Monitor (in your /Applications/Utilities folder) and seeing whether you have an mdworker or other similar processes consuming CPU.

Hi opened the Am as you suggested, everything looks fine except when I open logic and play a session I get disk too slow, logic comes in as using 70% but before that idle is in the 80's, I don't really understand if I'm reading this correctly, but my gut is saying to reinstall Catalina and don't use the internet on the iMac I record with?? The jump in deterioration of performance of Logic is huge with BigSur, thanks for replying,

E

[des99]

Ok, so probably not a Spotlight indexing issue then, which is good.

Open your Logic performance meters in Logic, and see what they are telling you. Is it the disk meter that's overloaded, or the CPU meter?

[JakobP]

Is your system drive an SSD or a spinning disk ? What OS did you upgrade from ? 

[Atlas007]

How much free space is there left on your internal (and external) drive? Detailed information would be useful (i.e. internal drive: total capacity = nGB; free space = nGB / same thing for the external one).

[eileengogan]

On 9/22/2022 at 8:23 PM, des99 said:

Ok, so probably not a Spotlight indexing issue then, which is good.

Open your Logic performance meters in Logic, and see what they are telling you. Is it the disk meter that's overloaded, or the CPU meter?

Hi sorry for delay getting back to you here is what's happening just when I play back

[fisherking]

resetting the nvram and the smc did not help? 

[eileengogan]

On 9/23/2022 at 9:32 PM, JakobP said:

Is your system drive an SSD or a spinning disk ? What OS did you upgrade from ? 

Hi it's a sata disc and I upgraded from High Sierra, 

[eileengogan]

On 9/23/2022 at 10:51 PM, Atlas007 said:

How much free space is there left on your internal (and external) drive? Detailed information would be useful (i.e. internal drive: total capacity = nGB; free space = nGB / same thing for the external one).

Hi it's a 1TB with 605 gigs free

[des99]

9 minutes ago, eileengogan said:

Hi sorry for delay getting back to you here is what's happening just when I play back

No problem - but I can't see Logic's performance meters in your screenshot...

Also, with Activity Monitor, you have it currently sorted to show the processes that are using zero cpu at the top, so that won't tell you what's using CPU (you'll need to click the sort arrow to it shows the highest consuming CPU processes at the top of the list.)

Edited September 25, 2022 by des99

[eileengogan]

1 minute ago, des99 said:

No problem - but I can't see Logic's performance meters in your screenshot...

I opened the activity monitor is that correct?

 

[des99]

4 minutes ago, eileengogan said:

I opened the activity monitor is that correct?

Activity Monitor is an app in Utilities that shows what your Mac is doing.

Logic's performance meters are a tool in Logic to show you what *Logic* is doing. They look like this:-

Edited September 25, 2022 by des99

[eileengogan]

3 minutes ago, eileengogan said:

I opened the activity monitor is that correct?

The CPU and HD on the Custom menu, the CPU is nearly max, is that what you're looking for?

[eileengogan]

1 minute ago, des99 said:

Activity Monitor is an app in Utilities that shows what your Mac is doing.

Logic's performance meters are a tool in Logic to show you what *Logic* is doing. they look like this:-

Thank you! The drive IO is nearly hitting 100%

[des99]

Just now, eileengogan said:

Thank you! The drive IO is nearly hitting 100%

Ok great - so this tells you that the problem is that the data can't be read from the drive fast enough for playback. If the CPU is also max - you said that both are hitting 100% if I understood both of your posts, then the project is requiring more than your computer can handle in realtime.

For the drive I/O, this can happen if you are using too many audio tracks (or frozen instrument tracks), very high sample rates, or your disk is slow, or on a slow interface (or in some cases, if you are running out of memory).

Are you saying you're seeing 100% disk I/O on a project *with just four audio tracks*? Literally, *just* that? Does this also happen on a new, empty, non-template project?

What drive and connection are you recording too, and does the behaviour change if you use your system drive, versus the external drive?

For the CPU, if you are maxing your CPU then plugins and other processing are asking more of your computer than it can handle. You can try increasing the buffer size, but the bottom line is, if this is only a project with four tracks, and you are maxing both your CPU and drive, then that is crazy and something seems very wrong, unless you are using some very heavy plugins and high sample rates perhaps.

I'd suggest to start with a fresh, non-template project, and some 44K audio files, no plugins, and see how many tracks you can play back.

[eileengogan]

9 minutes ago, des99 said:

Ok great - so this tells you that the problem is that the data can't be read from the drive fast enough for playback. If the CPU is also max - you said that both are hitting 100% if I understood both of your posts, then the project is requiring more than your computer can handle in realtime.

For the drive I/O, this can happen if you are using too many audio tracks (or frozen instrument tracks), very high sample rates, or your disk is slow, or on a slow interface (or in some cases, if you are running out of memory).

Are you saying you're seeing 100% disk I/O on a project *with just four audio tracks*? Literally, *just* that? Does this also happen on a new, empty, non-template project?

What drive and connection are you recording too, and does the behaviour change if you use your system drive, versus the external drive?

For the CPU, if you are maxing your CPU then plugins and other processing are asking more of your computer than it can handle. You can try increasing the buffer size, but the bottom line is, if this is only a project with four tracks, and you are maxing both your CPU and drive, then that is crazy and something seems very wrong, unless you are using some very heavy plugins and high sample rates perhaps.

I'd suggest to start with a fresh, non-template project, and some 44K audio files, no plugins, and see how many tracks you can play back.

 

9 minutes ago, des99 said:

Ok great - so this tells you that the problem is that the data can't be read from the drive fast enough for playback. If the CPU is also max - you said that both are hitting 100% if I understood both of your posts, then the project is requiring more than your computer can handle in realtime.

For the drive I/O, this can happen if you are using too many audio tracks (or frozen instrument tracks), very high sample rates, or your disk is slow, or on a slow interface (or in some cases, if you are running out of memory).

Are you saying you're seeing 100% disk I/O on a project *with just four audio tracks*? Literally, *just* that? Does this also happen on a new, empty, non-template project?

What drive and connection are you recording too, and does the behaviour change if you use your system drive, versus the external drive?

For the CPU, if you are maxing your CPU then plugins and other processing are asking more of your computer than it can handle. You can try increasing the buffer size, but the bottom line is, if this is only a project with four tracks, and you are maxing both your CPU and drive, then that is crazy and something seems very wrong, unless you are using some very heavy plugins and high sample rates perhaps.

I'd suggest to start with a fresh, non-template project, and some 44K audio files, no plugins, and see how many tracks you can play back.

Thanks so much, so this project has about 40 tracks, but 20 are muted, now on this project because there are no drums, I've been recording at 48k, my previous album which I recorded and mixed was at 44.1k this had drums and lots of bells and whistles, (metaphorically speaking) with a lot more tracks per session and I did it with the OS High Sierra, with no problems. 

Could it be the higher sample rate and not the Big Sur?

[eileengogan]

39 minutes ago, fisherking said:

resetting the nvram and the smc did not help? 

No unfortunatley not  but thank you  

[eileengogan]

1 minute ago, eileengogan said:

Thanks so much, so this project has about 40 tracks, but 20 are muted, now on this project because there are no drums, I've been recording at 48k, my previous album which I recorded and mixed was at 44.1k this had drums and lots of bells and whistles, (metaphorically speaking) with a lot more tracks per session and I did it with the OS High Sierra, with no problems. 

Could it be the higher sample rate and not the Big Sur?

What kind of machine would I need for a higher sample rate? More RAM?

[eileengogan]

5 minutes ago, eileengogan said:

Thanks so much, so this project has about 40 tracks, but 20 are muted, now on this project because there are no drums, I've been recording at 48k, my previous album which I recorded and mixed was at 44.1k this had drums and lots of bells and whistles, (metaphorically speaking) with a lot more tracks per session and I did it with the OS High Sierra, with no problems. 

Could it be the higher sample rate and not the Big Sur?

Also recording onto an external HD didn't make any difference

[fisherking]

what's the end goal? CDs are 16/44, streaming is (generally) 24/44. if you're headed to either format, recording at 24/44 would make more sense.

[des99]

1 hour ago, eileengogan said:

Thanks so much, so this project has about 40 tracks, but 20 are muted, now on this project because there are no drums, I've been recording at 48k, my previous album which I recorded and mixed was at 44.1k this had drums and lots of bells and whistles, (metaphorically speaking) with a lot more tracks per session and I did it with the OS High Sierra, with no problems. 

Could it be the higher sample rate and not the Big Sur?

It's ok, by higher sample rate, I really meant 96K or up.

Sorry I seem to have gotten confused, I thought you were saying your computer couldn't run 4 tracks for some reason, not 40+...

The bottom line is, you are asking too much from your computer. Is it the OS making a difference? *Possibly*, in that if you were right on the edge of performance of what your computer can do, and the new OS takes a little bit more work in the CPU to run, that might push it over the edge, but it's not going to be a significant difference overall.

You'll just need to use standard techniques for conserving resources, which we can go into if you need some tips. To be honest, 40-60 tracks, presumably with plugins, sounds like quite a lot for an i5.

I don't think anything's wrong as such, you're just working your computer right up to it's limit, and you'll probably need to manage that a bit. Did you check your audio buffer size?

Edited September 25, 2022 by des99

[JakobP]

3 hours ago, eileengogan said:

Hi it's a sata disc and I upgraded from High Sierra, 

I guess that means an HDD as opposed to an SSD ? I have tried two macs with spinning system drive to run Mojave without success, spinning beachball and disk overloads constantly. Since APFS is mandatory for mac OS since Mojave, and APFS is designed for SSD's in mind, I believe your problems could be caused by this fact. My two macs (a 2012 mini and the imac in my signature) now works great running the system from external SSD's. Just my two cents...

[des99]

Very good point ^^^

[eileengogan]

15 hours ago, des99 said:

It's ok, by higher sample rate, I really meant 96K or up.

Sorry I seem to have gotten confused, I thought you were saying your computer couldn't run 4 tracks for some reason, not 40+...

The bottom line is, you are asking too much from your computer. Is it the OS making a difference? *Possibly*, in that if you were right on the edge of performance of what your computer can do, and the new OS takes a little bit more work in the CPU to run, that might push it over the edge, but it's not going to be a significant difference overall.

You'll just need to use standard techniques for conserving resources, which we can go into if you need some tips. To be honest, 40-60 tracks, presumably with plugins, sounds like quite a lot for an i5.

I don't think anything's wrong as such, you're just working your computer right up to it's limit, and you'll probably need to manage that a bit. Did you check your audio buffer size?

No you were right about the four tracks, on another project I was recording just 4 tracks, @48k and it was always crashing. This current one with 40 tracks was started on High Sierra @ 48k but since I changed to BS it doesn't even play back, and the actual computer is taking way longer to start up. I will try your suggestion at starting a project @44.1k to see if that makes a difference, really appreciate you taking the time to help