BBBlack Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 I'm working on a project right now that has about 115 tracks. CPU is being strained to the point where system overloads are very frequent and beyond the point of a simple "minor inconvenience." Quality work is just about impossible. Too much left brain. And plain ol' frustration. The project I was working on prior to this one had 200 tracks, and while it did have its share of overloads, it didn't hinder my work. The only difference between the two projects that comes to mind is the higher number of edits (which results in a number of separate regions, albeit small ones) in certain tracks on the smaller project. So, do more regions create a bigger load on the CPU? Or HD? My harddrives aren't struggling at all, so if this is the case, then I guess it's back to the drawing board. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 More edits definitely take more RAM space and slow down Logic. Not sure exactly about CPU impact but my guess would be that yes, somehow it requires more CPU since there's more data in RAM to handle. When a project really slows down, I like to look under Options > Project Information to see what's going on. If you have too many regions, try consolidating them, or freezing the tracks. Another thing that can help a lot in those cases is to reduce the number of steps in the undo history in Logic's preferences. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BBBlack Posted December 13, 2011 Author Share Posted December 13, 2011 More edits definitely take more RAM space and slow down Logic. Not sure exactly about CPU impact but my guess would be that yes, somehow it requires more CPU since there's more data in RAM to handle. When a project really slows down, I like to look under Options > Project Information to see what's going on. If you have too many regions, try consolidating them, or freezing the tracks. Another thing that can help a lot in those cases is to reduce the number of steps in the undo history in Logic's preferences. Thanks, David. When I merge a handful of small regions, will that get rid of them all and put a single one in their place? What exactly should I be looking for in the 'Project Information' window? I will compare it to my other project. I also see the 'Reorganize Memory' button. Is this something I could experiment with? And I haven't heard anything before about reducing the number of undo steps, so that's definitely something I'll try out! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BBBlack Posted December 13, 2011 Author Share Posted December 13, 2011 I just found out that the smaller project has almost exactly as many audio regions as the bigger one. This is bizarre. I also attempted to merge a series of regions, and saw in the 'Project Information' window that the audio region count increased by one, meaning the original audio files weren't deleted. If these files aren't in the arrange window, will they still task the CPU/RAM? I am going to move everything (in arrange) to a brand new project, and see if that helps things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rev. Juda Sleaze Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 I also attempted to merge a series of regions, and saw in the 'Project Information' window that the audio region count increased by one, meaning the original audio files weren't deleted. If these files aren't in the arrange window, will they still task the CPU/RAM? No. There is one extra region because you created a new audio file when you merged the regions. If you want to get rid of unused audio files, you can select and delete them in the audio bin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Jackson Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 I also attempted to merge a series of regions, and saw in the 'Project Information' window that the audio region count increased by one, meaning the original audio files weren't deleted. What happens when you clean up the Bin? Open the Bin and select: Edit>Select Unused and then Edit>Delete (or press the Delete key) will get rid of the unused regions from the Bin but the Audio files will remain on the HD. Not sure if this will make a difference on the CPU though (my thought is no) but just thought I'd mention it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BBBlack Posted December 13, 2011 Author Share Posted December 13, 2011 Thanks for the replies. I just imported everything from the project into a new, fresh project, and the audio region count dropped from 577 to 120. I'll work in this for a while and see if the amount of overloads decrease. Still, I have no idea whether this has any effect on CPU. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rev. Juda Sleaze Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 I'm pretty sure only regions in the arrange will affect RAM/CPU. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BBBlack Posted December 13, 2011 Author Share Posted December 13, 2011 You're right. No difference. This is frustrating, but even more so is the realization that my computer may simply not be fast enough for these intensive projects, and there is nothing really that I can do to make work possible. I'm on a Macbook Pro 2.66GHz i7 with 8GB of RAM. Does this sound to you guys like a machine capable of intensive projects, even with the occasional overload? Or is a Mac Pro really the only option at this point? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CCTMusic Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 Hi If you have finished recording, have you increased the Buffer Size (Preferences:Audio:Devices to the maximum? CCT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BBBlack Posted December 13, 2011 Author Share Posted December 13, 2011 ^ Yes, I've done this. I have done pretty much everything everyone has ever suggested and nothing seems to help, even a tiny bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 Well 120 regions really isn't a lot, so your machine should be perfectly able to handle them. 115 tracks, however, is a lot. Depending on how you use tracks, it could make sense that a 200 track project plays fine while a 115 track project chokes your system. Can you post a screenshot of your project information, and maybe one of your Arrange area? Also what 3rd party plug-ins, if any, are you using? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BBBlack Posted December 14, 2011 Author Share Posted December 14, 2011 That makes sense. I guess on this 115 track project, I've simply used more plugins, or used them in a different way or something similar. I use a fairly large number of plugins, both 3rd party and Logic's. I also use quite a bit of automation. In some cases, multiple parameters on four or five plugins are automating at the same time. Mainly used are Soundtoys, Sonnox, SPL and Softube. Some Lexicon reverbs, but I keep the amount of those under control, because of how much CPU they use. There are a few others, such as FabFilter and Waves, but not many at all. The only plugin I've used on the 115 track project and not on the 200 track one is the Relab LX480, which I just recently got. I tried bypassing all instances of this plugin, but it did nothing to help performance. I will get those screenshots tomorrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Mayfield Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 That makes sense. I guess on this 115 track project, I've simply used more plugins, or used them in a different way or something similar. I use a fairly large number of plugins, both 3rd party and Logic's. I also use quite a bit of automation. In some cases, multiple parameters on four or five plugins are automating at the same time. Mainly used are Soundtoys, Sonnox, SPL and Softube. Some Lexicon reverbs, but I keep the amount of those under control, because of how much CPU they use. There are a few others, such as FabFilter and Waves, but not many at all. The only plugin I've used on the 115 track project and not on the 200 track one is the Relab LX480, which I just recently got. I tried bypassing all instances of this plugin, but it did nothing to help performance. I will get those screenshots tomorrow. Depending on where you are in the workflow, and the way you're going about the project, you may be able to temporarily bounce down a (large) number of your tracks to a single stereo mix, mute the originals, and then continue working with the remaining tracks. This obviously wouldn't work for all situations (subtle mix tweaks, for example, would become inconvenient to do) but it might be worth a try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eriksimon Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 BB, have you tried Freezing your Instrument tracks? http://documentation.apple.com/en/logicpro/usermanual/index.html#chapter=9%26section=16%26tasks=true Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BBBlack Posted December 14, 2011 Author Share Posted December 14, 2011 On this 115 track project, I haven't tried freezing more than just a couple tracks at a time, usually the ones I suspect to be giving me problems. But, in previous projects I've frozen half, or even all the tracks and haven't noticed much of a difference at all. I will certainly try freezing more of them. I should also mention that my music is quite dense, and most of the time there are around 10 tracks playing simultaneously. This, and most songs are in the 15-20 minute range in length. I guess I'm just asking for trouble... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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