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

Ben,

You mentioned in your post, that the noise-blast problem of STP2 would still be present in STP3, can you confirm this? I'm asking this because someone in the STP forum claimed that it is actually fixed in STP3.

In STP2, this problem is related to mono audio files. If you preview any effect or operation (like noise removal) with a mono file, the actual review signal appears in the left channel, and the right channel blasts your ears and/or speakers. In this case, STP's meters do register this, and report insane figures like 650 dBs or so. The blast is not exactly white noise; it's more like a douzen of overdriven, overcompressed fuzz guitars driven through every possible distortion effect on the planet (which can, under right circumstances, sound quite nice, but not with these sound levels...)

HeiLei

I haven't heard the problem yet in STP3, heard it a bunch in 2.

Unfortunately, as I expected, the 9.0.1 update does nothing to fix my noise problems with UAD Eq plugins - still deafening noise every time I try to adjust any parameters on the plugins. Have to mute output, make the change, then unmute to check it, mute again to make changes, unmute...

I´ve had that horrible noise quite a few times in STP 2. Was kind of hoping it was gone in 3. Stunning to hear, literally, that it now can happen in Logic 9. So far I haven´t heard it myself but I will certainly be careful...

They´ve ported quite a few good bits from Soundtrack to Logic. This one should have been left out.

/J

So we really haven't been able to narrow down what might be causing this, have we?

I got very little of this in Logic 8, but enough to know it existed. I have worked in Logic 9 for a good month now with no real problems, until this week.

Almost constantly now, everyday, I get the deafening white noise, with a "disk to slow error message". My audio drive is a Hitachi Ultrastar 7200 RPM, 500 gig drive, and I have had no problems recording multiple tracks to it, or running mixes with 90 plus tracks in it for the past year or so.

Now I'm getting white noise recording 4 tracks of drums to a click track and a scratch vocal/guitar...

This could be the deal breaker for me.

I´ve had that horrible noise quite a few times in STP 2. Was kind of hoping it was gone in 3. Stunning to hear, literally, that it now can happen in Logic 9. So far I haven´t heard it myself but I will certainly be careful...

They´ve ported quite a few good bits from Soundtrack to Logic. This one should have been left out.

/J

I had just made the move from Pro Tools HD and this noise blasted my clients ears during a session today, so embarrassing! Never again....I'm going back to Pro Tools. It really stinks because I like Logic a lot and want it to work but I cannot operate a professional studio with something like that happening.

When exactly is this occuring? Just playback of audio tracks in the arrange page?
I'm on LP 9.0, using a Digi 002r & so far have never had this problem, since 9.0 was installed

I'm not on Snow Leopard yet

Jim Frazier wrote:
Almost constantly now, everyday, I get the deafening white noise, with a "disk to slow error message". My audio drive is a Hitachi Ultrastar 7200 RPM, 500 gig drive, and I have had no problems recording multiple tracks to it, or running mixes with 90 plus tracks in it for the past year or so.

I was just trying out some of the 'fixes' in 9.0.2, so I booted into my 10.6 + 9.0.2 drive. As usual, the 8.0.2 project was too 'heavy' for .v. 9 to run, but I noticed that I had some guitar tracks with quite serious processing, so I decided to freeze them. After the freezing operation was complete, I started playback, noticed the playhead was quite 'jerky' and I got a 'disk too slow' message (BTW, a 10,000 rpm VelociRaptor!) and a blast of noise that almost took my effing monitors off their stands, much louder than I would expect from the monitor level I had set.

I've sifted through the posts here to see if it's only with 10.6 that this is happening with changes in Core Audio handling, or if it's only to do with Logic 9. The specs of people posting seem inconsistent so it's difficult to tell, so anyone experiencing this please confirm exactly which version and system you're using.

This could be the deal breaker for me.

As I'm already sticking with 8.0.2 anyway for real work, I'm not going to be at risk. But this is really serious, IMO.

John,

I'm still on OS 10.5.8. This white noise was occurring in Logic 9.01.

I just updated to 9.02, but am out of town until next week, so won't be able to see if anything has changed in this latest update. I'm not holding my breath though...

I don`t have this problem since using RME interfaces, except if the driver goes south which is extremely rare. In those situations I had experienced white noise recordings; altough, as said, really rare (one or two times in years).
I remember that Logic 4 and 5 in PC used to do this or something similar (recording white noise at the end of the file) but more often, with some soundcards known for their badly written drivers (Aadvark Aark10 and Lexicon Core32 in my own experience). The problem didn`t happenned all the time, it was random, but once it started the only cure was a reboot.
As I said, the only times I experienced something similar it was clearly a problem with the soundcard/OS communications. a reboot solves it.
Maybe you can try with a different soundcard in the same system to see if it still happens. Most sufferers have Apogee and/or UAD hardware. I´m not seing other brands in the profiles except the original poster´s Tascam.

I am using MOTU drivers and have had this problem starting with Logic 8. I have not had it happen in over a month (now using 9.02 with 10.6.1). That does not mean it won't happen, just that I've been lucky for a few weeks.

FWIW...

I've never had this problem recording in Logic. Never. Regardless of version (L7, L8, L9) or interface (built-in audio, MOTU 2408/PCIe-424, or RME FF800).

HOWEVER...

Recently I've been working on some video tutorials, capturing realtime screenshots (including live audio) with a little app called ScreenFlow. It's similar to SnapzPro. Recording audio in this software will sometimes produce the unbelievably deafening, 0dBFS brick wall of noise. _It is truly deafening_. And let me stress that if you've never experienced this for yourself, you will -- truly -- have no idea of how bad it is.

Troubleshooting: well, I can't be of much help, other than to describe my setup and situation... When this occurs I usually have ScreenFlow and Logic running simultaneously, though not always. I have Logic's stereo output and a live Mic being mixed together in RME's TotalMix software. The SPDIF output of my FF800 goes into a SPDIF-->Optical Converter with an optical cable feeding the signal into the optical input of the Mac. Finally ScreenFlow is set up to record "built-in audio 2" (the optical input). Yes, I know, it's convoluted, but it's the only way I can get ScreenFlow to record stereo audio. Don't ask...

So that's the setup. Running ScreenFlow? Occasional deafening noise blasts. Running Logic? Never a problem.

Most of the time I can see the 0dBFS brick wall of noise coming at me in advance, provided I give ScreenFlow enough time to draw the waveform overview. But there have been a few occasions where I've been working at lightspeed and not looked at the waveform before I hit play... BLAMMO, I've gotten nailed.

So is it a Logic problem? A CoreAudio problem? A FW-specific problem? Hard to say.

BTW, and FWIW, this used to happen with Logic 4 and Logic 7 once in a while (my audio interface being exclusively the PCI card-based MOTU system). The problem was _very specifically limited_ to the recording of WAV files. Now even though that's a bit of ancient history, sometimes behaviors of older systems make their way into newer ones. So...

Could it have something to do with WAV files?

Need to find the cause of this, though I wish I could do more than add my tale of woe to the pile.

iSchwartz wrote:
FWIW...

I've never had this problem recording in Logic. Never. Regardless of version (L7, L8, L9) or interface (built-in audio, MOTU 2408/PCIe-424, or RME FF800).

So is it a Logic problem? A CoreAudio problem? A FW-specific problem? Hard to >say.

I've only had it one time and thought it was Logic/OSX related, it seemed OSX was busy doing something else and Logic started to behave in a manner that precludes the "Audio/MIDI sync error" notification. It was also one of the few times I was using a Firewire interface, normally I use the old RME PCI card which has been solid for years. Hmmmm... could definitely be Firewire related since that's what most everyone is using now.

pancenter-

BTW, and FWIW, this used to happen with Logic 4 and Logic 7 once in a while (my audio interface being exclusively the PCI card-based MOTU system). The problem was _very specifically limited_ to the recording of WAV files. Now even though that's a bit of ancient history, sometimes behaviors of older systems make their way into newer ones. So...

Could it have something to do with WAV files?

I think that's probably a separate issue, Logic would either write or read the WAV file incorrectly and scramble the file header (big endian/little endian) byte order. This still happens when Logic imports an OMF with 24-bit WAV files, it tries to read them as AIF and ""blast"".

I don't know if this is the same problem but I installed a Digidesign Mbox today and when I had hooked it up and clicked 'apply changes' in core audio prefs, I got a loud blast of white noise.
It was gone on reboot.