Logic Pro On and Off Button

[michaelrasbury]

I have a rather large Orchestral Template.  All of my instruments are currently successfully turned off with the on/off track buttons.  There are over 500 of them! I have categories of instruments setup to their own DCA's and each family of instruments is bussed to a submaster/aux.  I have about ten submaster tracks.  I have them turned off as well, yet the plugins on those tracks stay lit up an on, even if I option click the off button. There's nothing I can do to get those tracks to turn off.  I leave the template with all tracks off so it loads quickly and I can then choose which instruments I want to use for a composition.  For now, I get to watch the plugins on those submaster tracks that won't turn off each time I load.  Any ideas why these tracks won't turn off?

[David Nahmani]

Because they're Aux channel strips.

To understand why it works that way, you have to understand the history of the On/Off button. The On/Off button was originally really a track mute button, which basically allowed you to mute all the regions on the track so that no signal would be routed through the channel strip and you could save CPU and Disk resources. 

The saving of CPU resources saving was done automatically as when no audio signal is routed through plug-ins, the plug-ins are not working, and therefore not using any CPU resources. However the plug-ins were still loaded into RAM. 

Next came the option to Option-click the On/Off button to unload the plug-in from RAM, but that works only if one single track is assigned to one single channel strip. If you have multiple tracks assigned to the same channel strip, and at least one of the tracks remains on, then Option-clicking the On/Off of one of the tracks does not unload the plug-ins. 

With Aux channel strips, the audio comes from a bus, and Logic does not have the capacity to look upstream to see what may be sending to that bus, so it does not turn off the plug-ins. 

There's an exception though, when using summing track stacks: then you can Option-click the On/Off button on the main track and that will turn off all subtracks and unload the plug-ins on the main track as well. Perhaps you could consider using summing track stacks in your template instead of VCA and manual bussing? 

With heavy templates, an alternative is to create a new empty project and use File > Import > Logic Project... then choose your heavy template so that you can see all its tracks in the All Fies browser, then import only the tracks that are needed for the current project. 

[michaelrasbury]

Thank you for this very detailed response. I appreciate the time you took to craft it. I do understand all of this and these particular auxiliary tracks are in a summing stack. When I turn off the button on the stack with option-click, some tracks turn off and a couple stay on despite having the off button in the off position. It seems like a bug. The instruments that are bussed to this summing stack of auxiliaries are in summing stack groups and then organized into a summing folder. All these instrument group folders also have auxiliaries/summing folders inside of them and all those turn off fine. Then I’m using a sends on these summing folders to reach the reverb on the tracks in question. It’s this particular summing folder that is acting weird for some reason.

to clarify, all of my woodwinds are in one folder stack. Inside of that stack is a summing folder of flutes, summing folder of oboes, etc. On each of these instrument family summing folders I use a send to reach one of a series of auxiliary tracks inside of their own summing folder. When I option click that folder, some of the auxiliary tracks actually turn off and two or three of them stay on for some reason. It’s not the end of the world because these plug-ins load quickly but I was hoping to leave the entire template in the off position. Maybe this is because there are only auxiliary tracks in this particular summing folder and it’s an oddity that some of them happen to turn off when I option click? Maybe it’s because the ones that actually turn off can be seen as actually having nothing sent to them and the ones that remain on are receiving some sort of live input somewhere down the line I missed?

 

 

Edited September 12, 2023 by michaelrasbury

[David Nahmani]

On 9/12/2023 at 12:29 PM, michaelrasbury said:

It’s this particular summing folder that is acting weird for some reason.

I can't tell what you're calling a summing folder? Logic has two distinct types of track stacks:

1. Summing track stacks.
2. Folder track stacks.

On 9/12/2023 at 12:29 PM, michaelrasbury said:

Maybe it’s because the ones that actually turn off can be seen as actually having nothing sent to them and the ones that remain on are receiving some sort of live input somewhere down the line I missed?

Hard to tell without seeing your Mixer. Do you want to share a template file along with instructions on how to reproduce one of these issues, so we tackle one at a time? 

[michaelrasbury]

Thanks, David and sorry for the confusion.  Any time I said summing folder I meant "summing track stack" which acts like an aux with other tracks assigned to it. When I used folder I was referring to "folder track stack" which acts like a DCA. I will attach two images and if that isn't useful, I'll post the logic project which is about 500MB. In "image 1" you'll see the entire project showing all the folder track stacks with the "Harp and Keys" folder track stack expanded as an example of the structure of all the other folder track stacks. Each of the categories of instruments inside of the instrument folder track stacks are in summing track stacks by family (ie. flutes, oboes, clarinets) in a similar fashion to what you see in the expanded "Harp and Keys" folder track stack. I further expanded the harp summing track stack so you can see what I'm talking about.  Everything in all of these folder track stacks successfully turn completely off. I have also expanded the "Submaster" summing track stack which has three summing track stacks within.  Most all the tracks inside of "Submaster" successfully turn off except the ones in the "Reverb" summing track stack and three AUX tracks inside of the "Sections" summing track stack.  You'll see a mixer view of this in "image 2." All of the auxiliary tracks inside of the "Sections" summing track stack have been set up in the same way with each respective section of instruments inside of the folder tracks stacks seen in image 1 routed to them, but you'll see the plugins on brass, percussion, and string ensemble stay on despite option-clicking on them individually and/or on the entire "Submaster" summing track stack.  

[David Nahmani]

On 9/14/2023 at 3:01 PM, michaelrasbury said:

I will attach two images and if that isn't useful, I'll post the logic project which is about 500MB.

Yes definitely if you can make the project available (you can use WeTransfer or Google drive for example) and give the steps to reproduce (with track numbers to make it easy for anyone to reproduce) then one of us can give it a try? 

[michaelrasbury]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Us7Ynst8LDl83e-ZJsnEcxrW-rlf-4hh/view?usp=sharing

Use the link to download a zipped file of the Orchestral Template.  Open the summing track stack called ">SUBMASTER<" and the "Sections" one inside of that. You'll see the plugins in the on stage on the Brass, Percussion, and String Ensemble AUX, while the others in that stack successfully being in the off stage.

[David Nahmani]

I tried to find a pattern in the Brass, Percussion, and String Ensemble that would differ from the other subtracks in that stack but couldn't find one unfortunately. 😞 

[michaelrasbury]

That’s really weird. When I open this project, I see the particular plug-ins on those tracks and the ones in the reverb subfolder load before the file opens. Then when I look at where I directed you, those particular tracks are grayed out but those plug-ins are highlighted like they are on. Same is true for the plug-ins on the auxiliary’s in the reverb sub folder on my side! You should be able to see what I’m talking about in the screenshots I provided above.

Edited September 19, 2023 by michaelrasbury