My ears are ringing from blast of white noise from Logic 9

I listened to the noise mp3. That's not the blast of white noise this topic is referring to, you would know the blast because you would have to yank the headphones off or run turn the volume down... it's that loud.

Your sample sound like plain ol' digital distortion, like a preamp over-loading an A/D converter.

You say the sound is recorded on all tracks simultaneously? I suppose it could be a firewire problem. Does the ZEDr16 use drivers or is it system compliant?

pancenter-

Thanks so much for your response!!
The Zed R16 is a firewire a/d built in mixer
It does have its own driver.
It seems weird sometime a whole minuet will
go by before the next occurrence of noise.
It is not a level issue since it occurs on all tracts.
Could a firewire problem be intermittent like that?

One thing to look into is if your mixer software (if there is any) has an input level. On my firewire audio i can bring it down from zero so you and start there if no mixer software then look in the sound panel of preferences and afjust the i\o. Very important to also check if your mixer has a master gain on the input or, depending how you use it, the output and make it low as possible without effecting the mix.

It is a weird noise but i think it is due to clipping or some type of overloading. too high a signal somewhere, so try to equalize all the i\o's.

Actually messing between a firewire interface (SafireLE) and a USB interface and the firewire still glitches with guitar input. no problem with the USB interface but i think it is due to the software i am using because FW plays back recorded music great. Not helping much just adding some information.

radman wrote:
Thanks so much for your response!!
The Zed R16 is a firewire a/d built in mixer
It does have its own driver.
It seems weird sometime a whole minuet will
go by before the next occurrence of noise.
It is not a level issue since it occurs on all tracts.
Could a firewire problem be intermittent like that?

Since it happens on all tracks... it almost has to be the Firewire
connection/communication. Since it uses a custom driver I would be in immediate contact with them to see how many others have reported the problem, if they're like other companies, they keep a database of computer hardware combinations and possible problems. Are there older drivers you can try, are new ones planned soon?

pancenter-

This is a very serious problem and I hope Apple will address it in the next update. Yesterday it happened unexpectedly four times to me during a session with a number of musicians on headphones. Luckily their monitoring levels were low. Mine were not, however. As much as I like Logic, I will be driven to jump over to another DAW if this is not fixed.

I think it is not wise to insert or move an active plugin while a DAW is playing.
I cannot provide any digital insights as to why you shouldn't do this, it just feels like something that might be unhealthy.
It may be somewhat analog to this: you don't plug in an unconnected cable to an amplifier - you know to plug in the guitar (or whatever instrument) first. Switching plugins while playing feels like replugging an electrical instrument while playing live - you only do that when the signal is turned to -∞, and it is only turned to -∞ when there is no part to play...

Eriksimon wrote:
I think it is not wise to insert or move an active plugin while a DAW is playing.
I cannot provide any digital insights as to why you shouldn't do this, it just feels like something that might be unhealthy.
It may be somewhat analog to this: you don't plug in an unconnected cable to an amplifier - you know to plug in the guitar (or whatever instrument) first. Switching plugins while playing feels like replugging an electrical instrument while playing live - you only do that when the signal is turned to -∞, and it is only turned to -∞ when there is no part to play...

The last update has now come through APPLE SOFTWARE UPDATE

http://www.macrumors.com/2010/03/02/apple-releases-prokit-5-1-for-leopard/

This ProKit Update fixes issues with user interface software resources that are shared by Apple's professional applications.

The issues addressed include:
- Corrected an issue with improper scrolling behavior.
- Resolved memory leaks for improved performance.
- Addressed layout of interface elements in certain application alert windows.

The update is recommended for all users of Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Aperture, Final Cut Express, Soundtrack, Logic Pro and Logic Express.

Have you experienced blasts of white noise while using Logic to record or play back audio?
• Yes

Under what conditions has the noise occured?
c) both

After recording audio, has the waveform overview ever looked normal but playback resulted in white noise?
• Yes

After recording audio, has the waveform overview ever appeared like a thick solid white bar that filled the entire waveform display (peak-to-peak waveform level)?
• No

Computer -- complete specs of your Mac, including:
• 2.4 Ghz "Santa Rosa" MBP w/ 4 GB ram

OS
• version # 10.5.8 , as of today 10.6.2

Logic
• 8.02

Frequency
• Quite often, more so on 10.6.2

Audio Interface
• Presonus Inspire 1394
• connection type FW
• Tested "built-in audio" as well.same issue

Hard Drives -- list each audio drive which you've used in the course of production and from which audio recording or playback has resulted in a white noise blast. Leave this part blank if you don't experience the white noise problem.
• Make/model, capacity
• Type: internal -FUJITSU MHW2160BHPL
• Interface (FW400, FW800, eSATA, SATA, etc.) SATA
• Is this your system drive? Yes
• Journaling: On, system Drive only
• if using a FW or eSATA drive, is the drive daisy-chained to any other devices? If so, describe the chain...

Using OWC FW case with WD HD(ide) 80 GB 8 mb cache.Also tested Lacie 1394 Disk drive 160 GB.

Add'l Info and Observations:

Have tried Presonus on seperate FW express card w/ HD on internal bus and vice versa.Remove all plugins and tried to no avail.

At this time, it is not clear what can cause this. Maybe there are multiple reasons.
But recording on an internal boot drive on a macbook with SMS activated in a loud environment like a rehearsal room, it may happen when the disk spins down and Logic has no place to write to.
I simply would give it a try.
Also I would strongly suggest to use an external drive, 128 buffer and deactivate as much plugins as possible or use any other monitoring instead of software monitoring if it's not working.

You might want to read through the whole thread. Many people are experiencing this on desktop systems and most are using dedicated audio drives. Deactivating plugins, changing buffer size and disabling software monitoring also doesn't stop the issue from happening. What IS known at this point is that this issue is indeed something Apple needs to address.

After several weeks of noise-free work and foolishly lulled into believing that this problem may have mysteriously gone away, I got blasted this morning.

Booted in to my 10.6.2/9.1.1 drive. Added 17 audio files from another project. Added a couple of compressor plugs, played the song through once. All fine.

Second pass resulted in "Disk Too Slow' immediately followed by "The Blast" when I hit play again. No 3rd. party plug-ins, no freeze files, no software instruments. Started from a empty project.

Maybe 10.6.3, which supposedly has substantial core audio changes, will be a fix. My fingers are crossed.

Nope. Upgraded to 10.6.3 with 9.1.1 on a quad Macpro only three ⚠ tracks playing, no plugins, recording one onto a dedicated SATA drive. 1/2 hour into the session I got several "blast of white noise" files in a row. This *****......

Well, here I am just putting my hand up on this thread with the rest of you poor sods.. There I was thinking that the blast of white noise bug was limited to certain systems or caused by certain plug ins or whatnot. But I just had my first one while doing a vocal tracking session. Hooray. No ear damage though, because the minute I saw that big nasty looking block of audio at the end of a take, I knew exactly what it was (with the accompanying sense of dread), turned down my cans just to check that it really was what I thought it was.. and deleted it.

This is, indeed, not good. I don't do much heavy tracking, but I feel for you guys that do. Hope it gets addressed very soon.

If this issue is caused from a slow disk, I'd suggest you do the following;

Get a free copy of Xbench 1.3 and check your performance of your system. The things I suggest to look for is;

- disk tests, check all of your disks, especially the one your streaming your music to. Also make sure you have more than 10% of free disk space on each of these disks, especially your boot drive, as this is were the swap space is kept.

if your disk(s) become slow for any reason this might/could/maybe cause your issue. Especially any external disks; USB/Firewire drives. Remember the slowest USB device slows all the USB devices to the slowest device on the USB buss. Dont attach a drive to a slow keyboard; ie 1.0 USB, to any usb drives, especially music drives for recording music. If you must use USB drives, make sure the drive is the only device on that USB port.


- Also check your console logs for timestamps when your white blast occurs to see if the system logs any error during that time.

- Last but not least, I always have the activity monitor running checking my system cpu's and the level of them, anything over 50% for more than 5-10 secs should be looked into.


Good luck,

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