Newbie Experiencing Non-Reproducible Intermittent Crashes

[rickenbacker360]

In addition to the signature profile, I use UAD2 Solo Laptop DSP in my Express Card slot on MBP 2010.

 

Audio on project on Firewire 1 TB Glyph Drive; Superior Drummer Samples on separate Glyph (500 GB). Both drives on single Firewire bus, along with Mercury Pro Elite (which is always turned off, except for backups). After backups, always restart MBP. BTW, both GLyphs are virgin in January 2011 andhave almost nothing on them (very likely not fragmented... but).

 

Problem:

Crashing at irregular intervals which cannot be reproduced. Only clue is some of the crashes occur when audio material "heats up" (becomes a little more happening) near end of song. However, some crashes occur earlier in song, too.

 

Setup and Instantiations:

15 tracks, one of which is a Superior Drummer midi track (SD is using something like 2.5 MB of RAM).

 

Two instances of Melodyne on vocals To be clear, ONE instance on EACH of the two vocal tracks. At this time I've not bounced the Melodyne tracks to their separate tracks where I can then "turn off" the two vocal tracks from which Melodyne is derived.

 

Reasonable amount of plugins on a few of the tracks. No busses at this early stage of tracking.

 

What I've done, which does not fix the problem:

1. Moved from 32-bit to 64-bit environment for both Logic and SD.

2. Increased I/O Buffer from 256 to 512.

3. Have viewed Mac Activity Monitor for both RAM and CPU usage and nothing seems anywhere near limits. For example CPU never goes above about 40% and RAM on Logic never above 2 GB. (I've got 8 GB total hard RAM)

4. DSP (UAD Solo Laptop) running at about 75% usage.

5. System SSD has 95 of 250 GB available and is fairly new (Sept 1010).

 

Any ideas what is wrong and what to try?

[triplets]

Have you tried bypassing 3rd party plugins on the busy song parts to see which one could create a crash?

[rickenbacker360]

No, I've not tried since the crash occurs in random parts or the song, not just in busy parts. Plus via trial and error it could take hours and hours with no certainty that I actually discovered the offending plugin(s).

 

I will take your thoughts under advisement and may try that as a last resort. Before doing that, I'd probably insert busses, move the plugins to those aux channels, remove the Melodyne by making new tracks which record the MD tracks as standalone ones, turn off original vocal tracks (and bypass MD on those two tracks)... and more, no doubt.

 

RIght now, I doubtful that Logic is stable on my setup and I'm not happy. My MBP was top of the line in September 2010 and a mere 15 tracks seems a bit light for this crashing stuff to be happening.

 

Probably user error and I'm looking for the "you overlooked this" answer from all you gurus.

 

Thanks

[Eriksimon]

1. Could you list the 3rd party plugins you use in this project (especially Instruments)?

2. And could you post a Crash report? You can find those in the Console application, in Applications > Utilities

[rickenbacker360]

1. Could you list the 3rd party plugins you use in this project (especially Instruments)?

2. And could you post a Crash report? You can find those in the Console application, in Applications > Utilities

 

The 3rd party plugs are listed in my sig.

_ 2 instances (now 3 since yesterday) of Melodyne 1.2.1

_ I instance of Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.2.3 using a very light kit (approx 2.5 MB RAM).

_ UAD 2 Solo/Laptop plugs are the standard shipping compressor/limiters. No EQ or channel strips. Remember, these have their own DSP in the express card slot and it (the DSP) is around 75% usage.

 

All other plugs are Apple Logic Pro. There are no virtual instruments (other than SD), and no loops of any kind.

 

As for the Apple Plugins, there are two (now 3) instances of Amp Designer, no pedal board items. I've got what I'd call the usual things: Reverb Pro, Delays, etc. Nothing I'd consider huge loads. And do keep in mind that many of these are on "Bypass" as I do tracking. Seems to not matter whether bypassed or not. Still crashes.

 

I did notice yesterday that my Audio metering was showing significantly more than I reported at beginning of this post. It was approaching maximum but when I had crashes, it was NOT at anywhere near that. Perhaps the meter had not caught up, though.

 

** ATTACHMENT ** Crash log.

 

I did attach the log but don't see it after posting. Gurus please help. Newbie. Thanks.