Logic Pro - 2 years on and some questions!

[GarethWilliams]

Hi all,

 

I'm coming up for my 2 year Logic Pro/Apple Mac conversion from Cubase on a PC and I'm just at the point of ditching Windows altogether for eveything, having decided that even my office admin work is better served with the white apple!

 

So, having said good riddance to Mr Gates' pile of broken glass, I am coming to you all with some little irritations that I have never really got sorted and I reckon it's time I did something about.

 

1) Is it possible to turn off the automatic "Select all Regions" that occurs when selecting a track in the Arrange window? I often delete the entire contents of a track when meaning to delete just one region and have to go back and undo.

 

2) In question 1, am I using the term region correctly or am I referring to Events? What is the difference between events and regions?

 

3) Since upgrading to Logic 7.2 the ability to double click the Memory display in the transport bar to reset the memory has gone. Where is it? Can I still do it?

 

4) I get drop outs when recording. In the middle of a take it will just drop the record out and continue playing. I've tried adjusting disk buffers and stuff but it doesn';t seem to make any difference. There seems to be plenty of record time left in the record window when this happens.

 

That's it for now - just trying to sort out these little niggles that continue to blight an otherwise idyllic Mac/Logic combo.

 

Still beats the ass off Windows and PC's mind.....!!!

[David Nahmani]

1) Kind of, but you have to use a workaround, and lose your cycle capability: if you have a cycle enabled, only the regions within that cycle will be selected. If you set both locators to 1 1 1 1 and turn on the cycle mode, no regions will be selected when switching tracks.

 

You can also protect your tracks: View > Track Protect Buttons.

 

2) Regions can be considered events, as you can edit or quantize them in the Event list. So can Folders. But usually, when talking about events you are talking about individual MIDI notes or MIDI CC events inside a MIDI Region.

 

3) Options > Song Information.

 

4) Odd behavior. Are you doing anything with Logic when that happens? Try not touching anything in Logic as it records and see if the behavior changes. Otherwise try switching your driver to built-in Audio Audio > Audio Hardware and Drivers. And you can also try resetting your preference file: ~/Library/Preferences/Logic/com.apple.logic.pro

[GarethWilliams]

I first noticed it happening when I was recording long continuous audio into the machine - I do some simple chop up stuff for some people and usually they give me a MD with the original material on. I'd stick the MD on play, Logic on record and go get a cup of tea as it's all recorded in real time. I'd come back five minutes later to find that Logic had stopped recording. I realised this had something to do with the 'Record Remain' bar in the record window. Incidentally how do I adjust this (the record remain time)?

 

It may be that the above is just a problem in itself and this next bit is a separate issue but it's similar and more than just an irritation.

 

I had two ladies in doing backing vocals for some click tracks I was doing for their show and several times during the session, with record engaged and successfully laying down audio, Logic would glitch momentarily, drop record and finish the region it was creating as if I'd pressed stop, but continue to play.

 

I hadn't pressed stop. And I hadn't touched anything else either. There wasn;'t any punch in/out set up and it seemed to happen randomly. One thing I didn't do was to time the intervals btween these drop outs to see if they were happening at regular intervals of total record time.

 

As you can imagine it was quite frustrating as the girls ahd to keep stopping in the middle of good takes and resinging the previous line that I'd missed.

 

I'm sure it's just a setting of some sort that I've got set wrong. Is it possibly a RAM problem? I haven't got loads of it (1.5GB).

 

I was runnning a lot of Instruments at the time - would that cause it perhaps?

[David Nahmani]

Adjust your record time in Audio > Set Audio Record Path.

[David Nahmani]

I was runnning a lot of Instruments at the time - would that cause it perhaps?

 

That could be the problem, if you overload your CPU. Monitor with Audio > System Performance.

[GarethWilliams]

That could be the problem, if you overload your CPU. Monitor with Audio > System Performance.

 

I had that running at the time and I didn't notice it go up to the top but I guess it could have momentarily. I must admit that I can't remember having this problem before so it could just have been that - I had a lot of brass parts running.

[David Nahmani]

A single CPU spike is all you need. Sometimes you don't even see it in the monitor. Logic should give you an alert when you overload. Check your preferences to make sure you get the alert. (Logic Pro > Preferences > Audio > General)

[GarethWilliams]

Cool. Thanks David.

 

What a great resource this forum board is - the usual agressive, arrogant and elitist posting is just nowhere to be seen.

 

Amazing!

 

[David Nahmani]

That's how we like it! We all started by asking questions at some point. Thanks for the kind words.

[shivermetimbers]

 

4) I get drop outs when recording. In the middle of a take it will just drop the record out and continue playing. I've tried adjusting disk buffers and stuff but it doesn';t seem to make any difference. There seems to be plenty of record time left in the record window when this happens.

 

I have notice this drop out oddity happening to me at various times. It is almost as if the entire program cycles itself after a few hours and this would not even be in a recording situation. It would occur in a monitoring mode where just a simple piano sound would be used while practicing. No CPU overload or use of plug-ins. in fact, it would also occur in a similar situation using one audio track for guitar.

 

I would be in that 'zone' playing along and all of the sudden 'Drop out' happens and then Logic continues on. It isn't that much of a big deal until it happens during a recording.

 

I cannot imagine that LOGIC would time itself out and/or reset itself. It may be due to a background funtion like a screensaver trying to kick in. I don't know because it isn't frequnt enough to sit and analyze.

[GarethWilliams]

Here's a weird thing now - the problem with the dropouts......it's now happening to me again but this project has 2 audio tracks playing and I'm recording a vocal. That's it - nothing else.

 

I also noticed today that every now and then Logic 'jumps' during playback. Basically, it's playing the two tracks of audio and it'll jump back a bar and continue witha blip of silence when it does it.

 

To be honest I'm thinking of reformatting the iMac G5 as a pure studio machine now that I have the laptop so it'll have nothing but Logic on it but I'd be interested to know what this problem is even before I do it, if nothing else just to get to know Logic better.

 

Any ideas?