drygruo Posted December 14, 2010 Share Posted December 14, 2010 System overload, plugins crossed out, low memory, disk too slow, random shutdowns of Logic... I'm getting these on a new Macbook Pro 2.54GHz, 4G memory. Thing is, I'm working with songs that have 40+ tracks. Are these errors standard behavior on a session with that many audio/instrument tracks, or is there a problem? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted December 14, 2010 Share Posted December 14, 2010 Obviously that's not normal. What do the HD and CPU meters in your Transport bar read when you have those problems? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eriksimon Posted December 14, 2010 Share Posted December 14, 2010 "Plugins crossed out" to me means that coreaudio is disabled... so re-enable it. All the other problems point to overuse. Try (green-)freezing audio tracks with heavy inserts, or (blue-)freeze SI tracks with CPU-hogging instruments. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drygruo Posted December 15, 2010 Author Share Posted December 15, 2010 David, I will check next time it happens. Erik, core audio is enabled when this happens, because I am editing or listening to audio and then it crashes. This doesn't happen more often than a couple times every hour of high use, but that is still two times too many. Crossed out plugins occur as well, only some of them are crossed out. How can I cut down on overuse? This system should be able to handle what I'm doing. In addition to reporting the CPU and HD useage, is this should something I should approach Apple with as it may be related to an issue with my Mac? I purchased it refurbished a few months ago and I need it to perform properly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ski Posted December 15, 2010 Share Posted December 15, 2010 This happens to me occasionally as a result of memory issues (i.e., running out of memory). This system should be able to handle what I'm doing. Maybe it's not. Four gigs of memory ain't a lot. Now... you haven't indicated what version of Logic you're running. To that effect, please read our Forum Guidelinesbefore posting, especially item #5. Back to your problem... are you using tons of plugins? Lots of sample-based instruments? The only way to get a real feel for whether or not your computer can handle this or not is to provide a much more detailed description of what your tracks are (predominantly MIDI? Audio? Mixture of both?) and insight into your plugin use. Also... are you trying to run projects off of your internal hard drive? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drygruo Posted December 15, 2010 Author Share Posted December 15, 2010 Thank you, Ski. Please see signature for technical information The tracks are a mixture of MIDI and audio, with the MIDI featuring the predominant presence. As I said, I'm utilizing over 40 tracks of content. I'm not utilizing what I consider an excessive amount of plugins, although they are not scarce. Maybe an average of two on perhaps half the tracks, and an average of four or five on half the tracks. A very general statement. Yes, I am running projects off the internal harddrive. Should I be drawing on the external drive? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ski Posted December 15, 2010 Share Posted December 15, 2010 Cool, thanks for adding your system into to your sig. Before I answer, one other question... how much free space do you have on your internal hard drive? (Post back with the drive capacity and actual free space left). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drygruo Posted December 15, 2010 Author Share Posted December 15, 2010 499.63 capacity 268.19 available. I know, I know, I gotta get that music collection off A related possible clue; I also use Traktor DJ software, and rarely, but once in a while, the music makes a grinding sound, like something interrupted it. This is also utilizing music located on the internal hard drive. Thank you for your correspondence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ski Posted December 15, 2010 Share Posted December 15, 2010 LOL -- nah, leave your music where it is. That is, your non-Logic music... OK, you have plenty of hard drive space (more on that in a minute). Your 4G's of RAM are both the minimum and maximum you can run Logic at in 32-bit mode and expect to have lots of plugins and stuff (more on that in a minute too). Without being right there in the room to watch your system, er, um, fail my feeling is that you're running out of RAM and Logic is crying "uncle!" You didn't mention whether or not you're using any sample-based instruments, but if you are, they might be exacerbating the problem (in theory). About your system drive for a sec... When you run Logic projects off of your system drive, you're superly™ taxing your system. This is because the hard drive is used as virtual RAM for the OS itself. So with you reading audio files and samples data off your hard drive + asking the system to access that same drive, performance can suffer. Anyway, my thoughts were that maybe you didn't have enough free drive space to make this all happen. Guess not. Anyway, that's just a bit of general advice. Logic's real-world RAM limit (in 32-bit mode) is around 3 gigabytes. And things can start to get very funky once you approach that limit. RAM gets filled up with all kinds of stuff, like samples (or sample headers), audio track headers, and general Logic information/data. So my feeling is that you're system isn't fully quitting when you reach the limit, but it's getting close. And when it does, CoreAudio starts to go south. Solutions?!? Going to suggest that you try running other projects with similarish™ track count and plugin count and see if they suffer in the same way. If so, then I think my theory is correct. Meanwhile, you should definitely be running your projects off of an external FW or eSATA drive for best performance. There are several threads here on LPH where we've discussed the optimum system, which (in a nutshell) includes separate project drives and sample drives, all unpartitioned. Internal drives if possible. If not, external drives. FW or (better) eSATA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eriksimon Posted December 15, 2010 Share Posted December 15, 2010 How about... ...updating Logic to 9.0.2 or 9.1.3? 9.0.0 is not exactly the most stable L9 version around, is it...? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GStepper Posted December 16, 2010 Share Posted December 16, 2010 Is your system drive spinning at 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drygruo Posted December 19, 2010 Author Share Posted December 19, 2010 5400, GStepper. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drygruo Posted December 21, 2010 Author Share Posted December 21, 2010 By sample-based instruments you mean such as Ultrabeat, yes I am using that often. I've been running projects off of an external harddrive, but it still freezes, shuts down, and gives me the terrifying colorful pinwheel sometimes. Tough to work on a project with it shutting down here and there. For instance, I just received a "Project Could Not Be Saved" so I tried Saving As and when I clicked on Save As, it froze, and it has been on the colorful pinwheel for at least two minutes now. All for trying to save it. The CPU as it is frozen is not much; less than a quarter. And again, a few hours later, a nice guitar take is cut off of recording because it could not process all the data in time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drygruo Posted December 23, 2010 Author Share Posted December 23, 2010 Now I'm getting "Error code- 36 was returned by the Audio driver" constantly. And this is on a totally different project, with only six or eight tracks, most of them muted, with the project being run off of the external drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drygruo Posted December 27, 2010 Author Share Posted December 27, 2010 And now, a MIDI timeout, and I can't click anything without the color wheel appearing. I closed the session, and now I can't even get out of Logic without it freezing up. I seem to be having quite a lot of problems here. I paid a lot of money for this setup, and if I should call Apple to try to get this fixed, hopefully they can because I'm starting to believe the computer is messed up somehow. I can't get any work done constantly restarting Logic and the Macbook Pro. By the way, this is a completely different session with a lot less tracks. I just restarted the computer and reloaded Logic and what is the first thing that happens? MIDI timeout, color wheel, frozen. Another error message about unpacking folders. This is really absurd and almost unusable. I've restarted twice this morning and Logic won't even work now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eriksimon Posted December 27, 2010 Share Posted December 27, 2010 update Logic to 9.1.3 -sigh- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slamthecrank Posted December 27, 2010 Share Posted December 27, 2010 And now, a MIDI timeout, and I can't click anything without the color wheel appearing. I closed the session, and now I can't even get out of Logic without it freezing up. I seem to be having quite a lot of problems here. I paid a lot of money for this setup, and if I should call Apple to try to get this fixed, hopefully they can because I'm starting to believe the computer is messed up somehow. I can't get any work done constantly restarting Logic and the Macbook Pro. By the way, this is a completely different session with a lot less tracks. I just restarted the computer and reloaded Logic and what is the first thing that happens? MIDI timeout, color wheel, frozen. Another error message about unpacking folders. This is really absurd and almost unusable. I've restarted twice this morning and Logic won't even work now. OK, ok... breathe.. calm... ohmmm... First off - for what you've described as your project set-up, you're asking way too much of a 5200rpm drive - especially when it is acting as a project drive and system (RAM) drive. You are more than likely going to bottleneck that drive pretty quickly. Definitely do that search on "optimum" Logic setups using a FireWire external drive for projects etc. Second - why haven't you upgraded/updated to the current Logic 9.1.3 ?? ..Or at least something newer than 9.0.0 .?? Third, I have never heard of anyone having as many problems as you are relating - something is clearly wrong. Do you have 3rd party plugins installed? If so, what are they? Are you using them when the crash happens? Which ones specifically? Have you thought about a clean re-install of Logic? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drygruo Posted December 27, 2010 Author Share Posted December 27, 2010 I have upgraded recently to version 9.1.3. I am not using any 3rd party plugins, and while I am not using a Firewire optimum setup, I am still running projects off of a USB external hard drive. Since upgrading this morning, this particular project remains unusable because of the MIDI reset error and Logic continuing to quit unexpectedly. Regardless of using an external drive, I find it very hard to believe that a $2200 machine cannot handle ten tracks with plugins so I can edit my music while traveling. A clean reinstall of Logic would be an option, yes, however I am under pressure to finish certain important projects and I would hate to lose the time a reinstall would take, not to mention all my saved channel strip settings. As it is, I will not be able to finish this project in time because of these issues so maybe I wouldn't lose anything with a clean reinstall. ps, this MIDI issue is only happening on one song. The others are fine, as far as MIDI (they still overload and shut down all the time). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drygruo Posted December 27, 2010 Author Share Posted December 27, 2010 Update: I deleted all the automation data for the song, because I read somewhere else that could do the trick. Still a problem; getting the error message, and now certain midi instruments just won't play. I tried recording some audio in the song, and it automatically duplicated the track and recorded like ten tracks of audio without me prompting. I don't know what that means but it was terrifying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slamthecrank Posted December 28, 2010 Share Posted December 28, 2010 Alright... I just went back and read your other posts/topics and it seems that all of your questions and problems are things that are clearly answered in the manual. (such as: why does Ultrabeat keep playing when I don't want it to; trying to get polyphonic sounds out of a monophonic synth; etc.) When your questions are answered, there is no feedback from you on whether or not the problem has been solved. While that's not necessarily a problem, it makes it almost impossible to help you with anything else you're dealing with. In this OP, you are still having problems with MIDI, channel plugs crossed out, etc. etc... but you haven't answered whether any of your other issues have been resolved. In a nutshell: NO, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that your machine couldn't breeze through handling 10 tracks with plugins etc. Should be no problem at all. Something you are doing / or (very rarely) something your install of Logic is doing is causing these problems. So why not re-install and get rid of that option as a culprit. It doesn't take that long. And if you're worried about saving your existing presets/channel strips, then save them... import them back into your preset folders after your re-install. There are plenty of threads on this forum about backing up your settings. As far as the USB drive, honestly, you're probably not getting any better/faster read from a USB than your internal HD. You really need to use FireWire (plenty of discussions on this forum to explain this as well). I would honestly suggest you spend a good deal of time with the manual. It sounds like 99% of your problems are stemming from you jumping into the program and not knowing what you're doing. My other suggestion would be to get this very important and helpful resource: http://www.amazon.com/Apple-Pro-Training-Logic-Express/dp/0321636805/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drygruo Posted January 14, 2011 Author Share Posted January 14, 2011 Yes, you are correct. I have awful forum manners and I do jump into things without knowing what I am doing because I learn that way. I lose focus very quickly with manuals and have learned that doing things hands on works very well for me. In this case, however, I would have been better served to read up on this issue before posting in this manner so I appreciate your correspondence and patience very much. And putting me in my place. I've had great success, utilizing some methods I've read up on, and smiling at the computer helps too. Granted, my projects are HUGE memory eaters because of so many plugins and tracks and after reading many Apple documents and other producers' similar woes, I am now actually quite impressed at the capacity and ability of my computer to handle what I ask of it. So, recently, as in today, I'm working on this one project that is huge and ALMOST done, and I opened it and it's having some memory issues, so I opened it to get rid of some plugins and maybe freeze some tracks to keep going and guess what happened? It cannot open because of lack of memory. The exact message is, "You're screwed. What are you gonna do now?" Just kidding. It says, "There is not enough free memory to continue working with the project. Logic Pro will quit now, a copy of your project will be saved." So, I have this project saved to an external hard drive and to the internal drive, and I get the same error for opening in either location, or sometimes it will just ask me if I want to save, then Logic dies. I know I've taxed this project with so many plugins and I really really was getting ready to freeze more tracks and help it along but now I cannot even open it for that. I would certainly like to open this project to help save some memory and finish it, but I've had no luck reopening it, even after restart. Suggestions? I've really done it this time! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drygruo Posted January 20, 2011 Author Share Posted January 20, 2011 Any ideas how to retrieve this project which won't open due to lack of memory? See above post.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SONiC Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 superly™ Really? http://logicprohelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=345061#345061 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eriksimon Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 Any ideas how to retrieve this project which won't open due to lack of memory? See above post.. Open it with Logic in 64 bit mode. In fact, I had the issue with some plugins crossed out too, a few days ago. This was a project I started in 64 bit mode, and the crossing out happened when opening it in 32 bit mode. Opening it in 64 bit mode again, and all was well. Tip: make a simple duplicate of the LP app, set it to 64 bit, set/keep the original to 32 bit. Rename the 32 bit "version" Logic Pro 32 and put both in your dock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drygruo Posted January 24, 2011 Author Share Posted January 24, 2011 Thanks for the reply, Erik. It totally worked and the project opened for the first time in a while. Now to freeze some MIDI tracks... Upon further reading, it seems as though 64 bit mode will only work if you are running greater than 4gb of RAM. Can anyone agree or disagree? It seemed to have helped in this case, though. Why do you recommend making a duplicate, so that both the 32 and 64 bit versions are available quickly? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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