eltorcal

Thank you, sirs. That was just the perfect amount of handholding I needed. Sure, I'll update my profile with the new gear and specs before returning with (hopefully more interesting) questions. I didn't include external drive size previously because I knew it wouldn't be pertinent to the kinds of questions I would likely be posting here. But yes, I should've included that info when starting this thread. Thanks again! ET

Thanks, Triplets... You're right - those adapter cables are stupidly expensive, but these larger docks/hubs seem to have, primarily, a bunch of USB ports that I won't likely ever need, and for that reason I'm not sure it's the right option for me at $300. I guess I could just get one USB (2 or 3) to thunderbolt cable and transfer files off the old drives that way. Then I'll be done with those drives, and won't need firewire cables at all. Really, all I'm trying to do is move my old files to a new home, and start fresh with a new drive. Most of my previous questions can be jettisoned, but I'm still wondering if a thunderbolt 3 external drive (like Samsung X5 ?) would be recommended, or if the combination of the new MacBook and a decent 7200 rpm USB 3 drive (https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/ME3QH7T1.0/ ) will be solid enough? I'm leaning toward the latter, unless anyone's found that to be inadequate.

Hi, I've recently purchased a new (2019 TB3) MacBook Pro, as well as Logic X. My member profile remains as before, so anyone can see the gear/setup I was using previously. I've been away from home recording for some time, but will have some unexpected free time. My hope is to finish some projects I started in Logic 9, and those audio and session files are on the 10-year-old OWC (Mercury Elite FW800/USB 2.0) drives. Generally, my projects consist of live tracking (guitar and various instruments). No MIDI, very little in the way of samples. Not a ton of plugins running, though I will likely be exploring all of these more ambitiously in future projects. As of this posting, I'm looking at the UA Apollo Twin MkII Duo as my choice of new interface. As expected, I've become quite confused trying to visualize and complete the new setup. Should I use a Thunderbolt 3 SSD drive for audio and session files? Or would a new OWC (Mercury Elite Pro - https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/ME3QH7T1.0/ ) drive be adequate? Or is the new MacBook so badass that I can just run everything on the native drive (and keep a decent external drive for backups) ?? Lastly (and this is embarrassing), will I be able to connect any old and new external drive(s), using, as needed, the various adapters (FW800, USB2, USB3, USB-C, etc etc), into my (four) TB3 MacBook ports and be able to transfer or "migrate" old files through the laptop and straight to new drive(s) on the fly? Of course, I will learn the answer when I try to cross that bridge. It won't hurt my feelings if no one replies, but any advice/insight would be appreciated. I'm obviously not up to speed on the tech side of things. Thanks in advance for any help, and wishing all members safe passage. ET

Thank you, that worked! I did see your previous instructions about this, but assumed my problem(s) would be a lot harder to deal with, just because it's me. Thanks again, kind sir!

Yes, 9.1.8

I'm having the same problem with Logic 9, except I'm running El Capitan, not Sierra. I'm not seeing seeing an option to disable iCloud Drive under Finder > Preferences in this OS. Logic 9 opens normally, recognizes (and acts like I can save to) a folder in my external audio drive, but when I try to navigate to an existing project to resume work, it quits immediately. I'm hoping I can get this setup working again in the short term so I can finish a specific project before making the move to LPX. Any advice on troubleshooting would be much appreciated. I'll continue browsing the forum for ideas, but haven't found the right thread yet if there is one. Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi - This is not an exciting topic, but I hope someone may have a comment or two. I've been on an unplanned hiatus from recording, but am needing to revisit and finish some projects from last year. Unfortunately, my wife updated my laptop OS from 10.6.8 to 10.11.6 recently, and Logic 9 "unexpectedly closes" when I try to open an existing project, or save. Not a big surprise, and I have caught up on some of the threads about the various initial headaches, which are old news for most of you I assume. Anyway, I see no better practical option than to get LPX (like, tonight), but I am nervous about my existing projects making the transition. Meaning, mainly, the integrity of the actual session files. Some of these projects, while not "big" file-wise, do have some (drum) tracks that are flexed and heavily comped. Can I be optimistic about picking up where I left off, notwithstanding getting up to speed on the new GUI, features, etc? Of course, I will copy these project folders, assets, etc redundantly to another external drive before I do anything, but just looking for some anecdotes, insights, advice... And if anyone thinks I should leave el capitan and update to sierra, please say so. But I'll look into that topic next. Thanks in advance!!!!

Also be sure to double check the bounce locators in the bounce dialog box. I have run into truncated bounces before because the locators were in positions that didn't correlate to what I wanted bounced. Thanks for the tip! I'll be sure to check this next time. In each instance (of a truncated bounce), I believe the audio simply ended a few seconds too soon, and in one case there was a very long (20 second?) amount of silence at the beginning of the mp3 file.

Thanks to you both for replying. Sorry, I should have avoided referring to "tracks" in this case. I loaded in two long audio files, representing the sides A and B of a cassette album. Then I simply used the scissors tool to cut the files into shorter regions which represent the different audio tracks. These regions could be referred to as "songs," although most of them are, in fact, groups of songs, since this particular cassette is a compilation of EPs. Anyway.... I dragged all of the regions quite far to the right, then grabbed one at a time and dragged it to 1.1.1.1. After the first region was bounced, then I dragged it far away, then grabbed the next one, and so on. The first time I bounced these regions to mp3, with bad results, I set the locators to the beginning and end of the region (i.e. song) I was bouncing. Later I found that some of the mp3s were truncated. The second time, I did not set locators at all, but simply clicked on the region I was bouncing, thereby highlighting it, which seemed to work equally well (though with the same mixed results). And so, I just repeated this process until all the regions had been bounced. I'll give it another shot, using locators again, and adding a second or two at both ends. Thanks lagerfeldt for the upgrade tip. I assumed that I would get automatic updates, but I see that I am one upgrade behind, so I'll look into that. If this is indeed a bug..... wow, seriously? Thanks again, ET

Hi - I have been having an odd problem while bouncing files to mp3, and I'm hoping someone won't mind providing some advice or a solution. Basically i have two long audio files ripped from an old cassette (so, Side A and Side B), which I have divided into separate tracks in Logic. Then I am bouncing these tracks to a folder on my desktop, so that I can zip and send the whole thing (hopefully in time for xmas). In the dialog box, I have "create audio tail" OFF. Some of the tracks play back in both iTunes and Quick Time Player perfectly, but others have twenty-seconds of silence at the beginning, and end abruptly before the song(s) end. I have dragged these truncated mp3 files back into Logic, just to see what they look like. And they look fine. I know this is therefore not necessarily a Logic problem, but I would love to know why this is happening, in case it occurs again during a more important project. Just to be clear, the (only) problem is that some of the mp3 bounces do not begin and end at the correct time, while others do. Has anyone experienced this? Sorry this isn't a more interesting issue. I'm sure I'll be back with something else in the new year. Thanks in advance and happy holidays, ET

OK, i figured it out. I didn't understand where I was dragging samples to. I was trying to drag them to the drum voice, where you see "sample X", not to the actual sample window in Ultrabeat. Hopefully, the fun now begins... Thanks again for your help with this one!

Thanks wip, but it did not work for me. I have loaded "drag and drop samples" in Ultrabeat, but I am unable to drag anything to the sample slots. I have tried to drag samples directly from the Loops browser, I have exported these Loops to a folder, and I have added them to the Bin, but in each instance, the sample will not load. When I drag one to a sample slot, it simply floats back whence it came, and the "kit" remains empty. I keep looking for a setting on the interface that I should enable or disable, but I can't figure out what the problem is. If you have any thoughts or ideas, please let me know.

Thanks wip - I will try this next time! eltorcal

Hi - I have been trying to learn my way around Ultrabeat, and have a couple questions that I hope someone can answer. First, I should say that I am not using a MIDI keyboard. I want to work my way through a song a couple bars at a time with the step sequencer, in order to make some little tweaks and hopefully simulate a drum kit being played somewhat organically. Before asking for help here, I read a lot of old posts, watched a couple videos, and have consulted The Book, but am still running into the same wall. I do not want to create a hybrid Ultrabeat kit, per se. I want to load "studio tight kit" and then replace the cymbals and maybe half of the other preset drum voices with some different samples. For example, I would prefer to use some of the cymbal samples from the Loop library - not from a different Ultrabeat kit. So I loaded a few of the cymbals, etc. into a project and then exported them (as .wav) to a new desktop folder created for this purpose. But when i try to "import" any of these (or any .wav files) from the Ultrabeat window, the files appear shaded, if you know what I mean, so I cannot select any of them. Someone wrote that there is a "drop-down arrow" that allows you to import a new sample, but I simply do not see that. I can't figure out how to put any of these .wav samples on the clipboard that Ultrabeat references, either. It would be ideal if I could actually delete the unwanted drum voices and then fill out the "kit" with samples or, better yet, just start with an empty template and build it from scratch. Is any of this possible? I am going to return to the forum and look for any threads I may have missed, but if anyone has any advice in the meantime, I would sure appreciate it! Thanks in advance, eltorcal Logic 9.1.7 Mac OS 10.6.8 2.66 GHz i7 OWC drives Focusrite Saffire Pro 40

Great, it worked! I thought i had option-clicked the solo button(s) in Mixer area, but apparently not. I have an unrelated problem, but can't articulate it at the moment. Will post soon if I can't figure it out. Thanks so much! ET

I wish there were, buy there are definitely no solo'd tracks. No tracks are hidden right now either. Reading your reply reminded me that I deleted a couple tracks earlier which may have been solo'd when i deleted them, but I'm not sure. I brought them back into the project from the Audio Bin just to see if this would have any effect, but of course they do not come back solo'd. The mute button remains blinking, and I re-deleted the files from the project. I thought this might have been a result of stressing the hardware (though the project is neither huge nor CPU-intensive), so I closed and re-opened the project, quit Logic, let things rest, etc. But no luck so far. Is there anything else I can try? Thanks, ET

Hi - I have a project in which the Mute button (in both the Inspector and the Mixer areas) is blinking, and apparently stuck. There are no tracks which are currently muted, though I was using the Mute tool extensively before this happened. The only way to hear any tracks is to solo them. I have tried about everything I can think of (in other words, clicking all over the place), since this has to be some form of user error. Unfortunately, the situation persists, and the Help menu was not helpful in this case. So here I am, asking someone to please tell me what I have done and what to do about it. Thanks in advance, ET

Thanks redlogic - That works out a lot better, yes! I think i misunderstood jtees, sorry about that. For the other songs I'm working on, at some point, I think I'd like to try to dump in the (same) drum takes at slower tape speed (we recorded to tape), then shorten them to match the tempo of the "normal speed" tracks, using Flex mode in this way. Maybe it will fatten up the drums and sound good, if there's no transient weirdness. I will keep using "slicing" Flex mode, unless anyone thinks otherwise. If you have any other comments or tips that might help, or have experienced any pitfalls doing stuff like this that can be avoided, please let me know. If not, I'll just go for it. I'm hoping that as long as I line up the beginning of the waveforms exactly, then drag and adjust the end(s) of the slow version to match the faster one, it should work out okay. Thanks again! ET

Hi jtees - Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Actually, dragging the lower-right corner only seems to "change track length," by sort of tucking the material away as I drag to the left ("hiding" some notes, I guess). I figured out that what I needed to do was: first, set two Flex markers across all the tracks in the region, one at the beginning and one at the end of the section I wanted to essentially compress, and grab one (any) of the Flex markers (the orange tab displayed on each track header), and drag the Flex marker, rather than dragging the corner. I had used the scissors tool to cut out the region, and was later able to drag and overlap the section(s) that follow the shortened bits, and it worked out nicely. I did choose the "slicing" Flex mode, per your instructions, and it does sound really good - no wonky artifacts! Maybe someone else will find this info useful; that's why I decided to reply in detail, not to tell you something you probably already know how to do yourself. Thanks again! ET

Thanks jtees - Hmmm... I don't see "slicing" as an option under the Arrange>Audio>Time Stretching drop-down menu. I can select "slicing" as the Flex mode for all tracks, sure, but now what? I mean, i still want to basically shorten the whole five-minute song... time compress it, without it sounding terrible. If I proceed as before, having turned on Flex Mode, etc, there's still no indication that the time-stretching event will use anything other than "universal" algorithm (or one of the other choices - complex, percussive or one of the Legacy algorithms, which do not include "slicing"). Does simply enabling a Flex Mode affect the time-stretching algorithm? Sorry, I'm still confused. ET

Hi - I have 8 tracks of drums recorded to tape, now dumped into Logic, and have had trouble time compressing the entire take to get the overall tempo a bit faster. It wasn't hard to set locators and get in the ballpark with the new tempo, but the result sounded pretty terrible, with all the weird artifacts. I could really hear it in the cymbals. And the tempo shift was not drastic by any means - just a few BPMs over the course of a five-minute song. We did not use a click-track, and the issue isn't sloppiness; I'd just like to make the song maybe ten seconds shorter. One compromise would be to just time compress a couple sections that need it the most, but I had the same problem there. The default seems to be the "universal" algorithm. Has anyone had better luck with another algorithm, or another method of doing this? I tried to use the Flex tool to gently shove the tracks a couple bars toward the beginning of the song, but that just seems to tuck the material away somewhere. I know the Flex tool is not meant for this, at any rate. Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance, ET p.s. Am I correct that there is no "search topic/keyword" functionality on this forum? I would have done that first. Sorry if this (time compression) question gets asked every week.

OK, the problem has gone away. I quit Logic instead of simply closing and reopening the project. I saw that "no input" was selected, with no option in the drop-down menu to select my interface. But after i restarted Logic, things went better. I was able to select and enable what I needed to. Is there an easy way to save the input preference, so that I don't have to do all this every time? Thanks, ET

Hi - Hopefully someone can help me figure this out. Seems so stupid, I hate to even post, but anyways... I'm simply trying to record a guitar track, which has been a piece of cake in the previous few weeks of trying to learn Logic, but now when I create a new track (making sure that "record enable" and "input monitoring" are on, as well as the appropriate input, "audio", etc, the "record" button does not appear on my new track header. The other default buttons (for solo, mute, and input) are there. When I right-click on the header, "record" enable is checked. When I uncheck it, the header shrinks as if something has been removed, but then when I right-click again and check it, the header is restored to previous size and the other functions remain, but no "record" button appears. I have experienced this once or twice before in my brief time as a Logic user, and in the past have simply closed the project and reopened it. That seemed to work before, but not this time. The program is happy to create new tracks galore, but I can't record on any of them. I've been checking and rechecking settings and preferences, and just staring at the thing, but I just don't see anything obvious. I read the recent post about having to set the recording path manually, etc. I've had this concurrent problem too, but it appears that my interface/input is fully recognized here, and it is definitely passing a signal. Any help would be great. This is a drag. Thanks in advance! ET

Hi Jordito - You're right; I should probably try a data transfer, if only to confirm that I am capable of doing something simple and getting it right. Then again, I did save these original CEP tracks as .wav files, so the mystery may remain unsolved. Which is fine. Actually, just capturing the audio in Logic via playback from PC wouldn't be too bad. There's just two eight-track sessions (i.e. two songs' worth of comped drum tracks) that I would like to bring into Logic, and I could probably just check levels and grab them in one pass. There is a lot of other unedited material that I will dump into Logic later, skipping CEP altogether. But that's another story... I may be back with a stupid question or two about Flex Time! Thanks again for your kind assistance! ET

Hi Jordito - Yes, I somehow just knew that I hadn't seen the last of Cool Edit! (which is actually a fine program; i am just done with PCs) This time I will just run the output via my old interface into Logic (I have eight channels on each interface), rather than copying or dragging files around. In other words, just hit the play button on the PC and the record button on the Mac. I'll keep thinking about what might have caused this problem. These were simply archived .wav files, and I had assumed/hoped that the the associated .pk and .ses files would not come into play or cause complications. Anyway, I really appreciate your help! Thanks again and best wishes, ET