Best Practices around Boot and Shutdown?

[goldfish21]

Getting lots of error messages.

Anyone know of a best order of operations to boot and prepare to record using Logic, Mac and UAD Apollo? Same for shutdown?

[David Nahmani]

5 hours ago, goldfish21 said:

Getting lots of error messages.

Which ones? What do they say exactly?

5 hours ago, goldfish21 said:

Anyone know of a best order of operations to boot and prepare to record using Logic, Mac and UAD Apollo? Same for shutdown?

The rule #1 I've always followed at any studio is power amp (or powered speaker monitors) last on power up, first on shutdown. You don't want any of the current spikes that could be triggered by powering gear up or down to ever be affecting your speakers. 

Other than that there's no rule really, but I would generally turn on the audio interface before I boot up and turn it off after I shut down, when the interface isn't powered by the Mac itself. 

[Atlas007]

17 hours ago, David Nahmani said:

Other than that there's no rule really, but I would generally turn on the audio interface before I boot up and turn it off after I shut down, when the interface isn't powered by the Mac itself. 

I would do the same with MIDI controllers and interfaces. That way Logic would be aware of those gears upfront, which would also prevent it from creating a new controller in the MIDI Control Surface Setup window (which could occur when turning on a MIDI controller while Logic is already booted). Although (I would believe) that disabling Auto-Detect in that window could also prevent same.

[Holger Lagerfeldt]

Another rule of thumb is to leave everything on, except tubes.

You might save a bit in electricity by turning things off and on every day, but most electronics are more likely to die on you when being turned on.

I've done the math and it's cheaper for me to leave most things on than having to repair or replace, even just one unit.

[Atlas007]

16 hours ago, Holger Lagerfeldt said:

most electronics are more likely to die on you when being turned on

How so?

[des99]

Mostly, thermal stress when cool/powered-off components heat up with power, and then again cool down when the power goes away, and some other related factors. Power-up and power-down are generally somewhat more stressful on components than continual operation is.

[Holger Lagerfeldt]

Completely anecdotal, but I had two amplifiers that have been running nearly non-stop for 7 and 24 years, respectively.

That's more than 200,000 hours of non-stop power for the oldest (Marantz) amp.

When the energy "crisis" and electricity prices in Europe hit an all-time high in 2022 my yearly electricity bill was aiming for a wallet draining $20,000.

That made me turn off all the gear, including the amplifiers, after work and then back on in the morning.

Both amp died shortly after I began turning them off and on every day. One was a costly $7,500 Classé amp, and the other the Marantz.

I've now replaced both with even better, but less power hungry Audiophonics HPA-S400ET amps, which I leave on 24/7 like the rest of my gear (except tubes).