Logic Pro Problem

If so, could you do me a favour - create a new project, set buffer to 256 (and other normal settings), and create just one software instrument track. Choose "Steinway Grand Piano Hall", and play it. What's your CPU usage like?

Pardon me for jumping in the middle of this, but I decided to try out what you asked above. I have a MBP 2.33 with 2GB RAM and a 5400 speed drive. I've set the buffer to 256, Process Buffer Range 'Medium'. I'm using 8.0.1 and 10.4.11.



I've created one software instrument track and loaded in 'Steinway Piano Hall' from the Channel Strip Setting menu, which includeds an eq and a Space Designer. If I start banging around pretty hard and fast I can get one Audio meter to go to about 30%. I recorded a few bars of banging around, and when I play it back it registers about 10-15% on one core. I've created a second track of the same instrument, and I can record on the second track while it plays the first track, and it pushes that core to about 50%.



I've also done what you described in the your first post of this thread. I loaded up the Electronic Template, and recorded 4 bars of nonsense on tracks 1, 5, 6, 10, and 13, and added another track with Steinway Piano Hall. So that's 6 tracks: 1 Ultrabeat, 4 EXS24, 1 ESM, and all the effects that come along with these settings. When I playback my 4 bars I'm getting about 10% on one core and about 40-50% on the other core.



So I hope this helps! Good Luck.

Well, i tried it on my Mini and i get around 50% usage on the CPU meter, which you be ok compared to a more powerful MBP like the other forum member. Do you open both Logic and MainStage at the same time? Also, don't forget to check Activity Monitor in "All Operations" and not "My Operations"

OK, this might not be as bad as you think. Bear with me a sec while I describe what I'm doing. I have a test project I created when I first got LP8 that contains 18 automated Space Designers and 4 Sculptures. It pushes the cpu pretty hard, but it will play the project through. On my meter I'm getting 1 core in the red and the other core at about 75%. I also have a utility in my toolbar that is called Cee Pee You, that measures the strain of your whole system on each core in percentages, and it says around 75% to 85% for each core. ( http://www.unsanity.com/ceepeeyou)





_HERE'S THE IMPORTANT PART_: when I look in the Activity Monitor CPU percentage, it says between 145 and 160 percent! This, of course, is what you'd get if you added up the percentages (75-85) of EACH CORE. I think it registers each core usage as a scale from 1 to 100%, and therefore if you have 2 cores the meter will go to 200% before you've maxed out your CPU power. So when looking at the Activity Monitor, and it says 98%, it saying 98 out of a scale of 200, which would be about 50% usage.



TRY THIS: Get the last Logic Install disk out, and copy some of the demo projects to your hard drive. Open those up, unfreeze all the tracks, and see how they play. They probably will drop out the first time you play them, which is a common problem with logic over all different systems so don't be alarmed, but once you get past the first 'core overload' message, play it again, and they should play fine. Some of them are pretty hefty and will push both cores a lot, but all should play on your system. See what kind of load they put on your system, and pay attention to your meters and to the Activity Meter. Most importantly, even if they drive them into the red, if it continues playing with no dropouts, you're OK.





Hope this helps!

The obvious difference between you and Zuelito. (Leopard)

I'm using 10.4.11, have 10.5.1 installed on a firewire drive for
testing and I can confirm that Leopard is less efficient than Tiger, at
least on the older PPC machines.

Still, it seems like you should be getting better performance than you are.

On the older machines it helps to disable Journaling, Dashboard and Spotlight, makes a noticable difference.


pancenter-

I am pretty new with Logic, and that is why I ended up here in this forum. I am running Pro Tools LE on 10.5.1 and Pro Tools HD on 10.4.9. When I first ran Leopard, I upgraded from the 10.4.10 version. Pro Tools LE worked fine. On the next computer I did a clean Leopard install, and Pro Tools LE did not run fine (for the record;it is not officially supported higher than 10.4.9). HERE's THE THING: Apple did something to the 10.5 audio engine/ programing (I don't know exact) that works fine in 10.4.9 and doesn't change when upgrading, but fails when clean installing Leopard. Try to install 10.4.11 and see if it runs fine, and then perform an upgrade to 10.5 - a lot of work...

Can't speak to Mainstage, as I haven't really tried it out. But I do think Pancenter is right in his observation, Logic runs better on Tiger, which is what I'm using, than it does on Leopard. I feel hopeful that future updates to Leopard and Logic will smooth out these issues.

I just didn't think playing one instrument (the piano) would take up over a quarter of my whole CPU power though (both cores)!

Your instinct on this is right, but remember that just because 1 is taking up 25% of your CPU doesn't mean that 2 will take up 50%, and 4 will take up 100%. It is more likely that 4 will take up 45% and 10 may take up 65%. (I'm sort of pulling those numbers out of my a*s but you get my point 🙂 ) Try it out. I think it's more important to see how many you can work with before you really max out your system, than it is to try to judge the overall power of your system by just one instrument.

Hmmm. Bummer about your problems with Mainstage. Sounds like Logic's doing OK if you can play all the Demo's though.



By the way, you do have the latest update for Mainstage, right? I think they're up to 1.0.2 now.

I have been having the same problem for weeks, took it to local music shop to show them, and it worked fine. Took it in to apple store and it worked fine. Went home doesn't work! Now I think I have figured out, TURN OFF AIRPORT WIRELESS CONNECTION. It seems to of cured the problem in my case. But I'm sure after I post this it will stop working again.