Logic Can't Process Data in Time...but My Machine Should Be Able to Handle The Load

[ew1]

Hello folks. This question has been asked before but I haven't been able the solution anywhere so I'm hoping someone here will be able to offer some useful information if I post the specific details of my situation.

 

I'm getting the "couldn't process all the data in time message"

 

 

On a bad day (which is most days) I can't get through more than 4 bars without this happening. 

 

Sometimes I'll get lucky and manage to get a few minutes of playback without any problems but this is not typical.

 

 

My machine's specs are good:

 

Mojave 10.14.2

MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018)

 

2.6 GHz Intel Core i7

32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4

 

 

Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB

2 TB SSD internal drive

 

I'm using Logic 10.4.4

 

Here are my audio settings:

 

 

• My buffer size is set to 1024 and I've tried both multithreading options

 

• The session I'm running has 124 tracks but about 40% of those are aux tracks with no audio or midi on them. Of the remaining tracks, about half are audio and half are midi. 6 of the tracks are muted as I only turn them on when I want to hear the reference tracks that are on them

 

• Each track has an average of about 4 plugins. 

 

• I'm not using any oversampling on any other plugin settings that are demanding on CPU.

 

• I've also tried disabling lots of tracks but that hasn't helped.

 

• The only thing I can think of that might be an issue is that I only have 280 GB free space on my 2TB SSD 

 

 

 

 

 

It doesn't make sense to me that my machine can't handle this session. It's not just this session, by the way. Any session that gets to a similar scale as this one also causes the same issue.

 

Can anyone help? 

 

Many thanks.

[MikeRobinson]

This doesn't have anything to do with "hard drive space," and yes, your hardware looks fairly recent.

I think that the root problem is simply that your project has 124 tracks, with "about 4 plugins" on each.

This basically means that your CPU is doing an awful lot of work. But also, that "an awful lot of" that work is purely repetitive: it's forced to do it every single time, but to produce an identical result. Those computing resources are better used elsewhere.

You probably need to start grouping ("stacking") the tracks and then freezing them. This converts the track into an "audio-file stand-in" and then mutes the source material. Now, the CPU doesn't have to do that computation again. It doesn't require any significant CPU resources to "play an audio track," but (at least for now) it sounds the same.

Now, as you move through your project – if you're "actively working on it right now," you keep it "live." But if not, use the freezer.

Of course, just as "freezing" is easy, so is "un-freezing" and "re-freezing." The process is entirely non-destructive. Logic's designers knew that this feature (like "bouncing") would be important, and they did a very good, clean job.

Edited December 20, 2023 by MikeRobinson

[JakobP]

Be aware that freezing will increase the load on the SSD. It's usually recommended to have 15-20 percent free space available for a drive to perform good...

[des99]

Your performance meters will show you your CPU and disk activity, and will help point you to where the problem - you might be overloading your disk bandwidth, or overloading a single core with heavy plugins.

But the bottom line is your computer does not have infinite resources, whether CPU or RAM, and if you're trying to run 124*4 plugins - nearly 500 plugins (!) - your computer likely doesn't have the ability to do all that processing in real time.

[ew1]

Thanks for the replies folks.

[Dr.Socrates]

I used to work a lot with freezing on my older machines. As noted by others above, freezing several tracks does challenge the SSD (as does using audio tracks, that you already use). For this reason, it might sometimes be better to bounce  multiple tracks together into a new stereo track (e.g. 20 drum tracks into one stereo track, instead of 20 freezes). It might also take less time than freezing multiple tracks. (Use this together with the On/Off trick mentioned below). 

You mention that you mute tracks. But remember that tracks will still challenge the CPU when muted (this is because if you unmute a track, it's sound will start appearing, even for example reverb tails of notes that was played before the mute – and therefore Logic will compute the muted tracks in the background). For this reason, it is advisable to use the "On/Off" toggle in the tracks header (see picture below, where I have turned all instruments tracks off), rather than the mute button, if you need to save resources. You might need to configure track header items if you do not see this toggle, by right-clicking in the tracks header area. 

Also, remember that sometimes plugins could be put on buses or on summing stacks (these are available in Logic 10.4, right?). For example, instead of using a reverb on each of several drum tracks, you could send all the drums to a bus containing one reverb plugin instance, or make a summing stack of the drums, and put the reverb on that summing stack instead of on the individual tracks. 

Edited January 5 by Dr.Socrates