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

Have you experienced blasts of white noise while using Logic to record or play back audio?
• No

After recording audio, has the waveform overview ever looked normal but playback resulted in white noise?
• No

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 :

*Intel Mac Pro 2007 Quad 3GHz*
*6GB RAM*

OS
• 10.5.8

Logic
8.0.2

Audio Interface
• *MOTU 896 HD, SSL Alpha Link, Mytek*
• *FireWire, ADAT*
•
Hard Drives

• *SeaGate SATA II*
• *Type: internal*

• Is this your system drive? No

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

Yes

Under what conditions has the noise occurred?

Recording

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

MacPro
2.8 GHz 8 core
8 GB RAM
10.5.8

Logic 9.0.2

Frequency
how many times have you experienced this problem?

8

Audio Interface
Apogee AD 16X
PCIe -> FW Apogee X-firewire cards

Hard Drives
Internal WD Velociraptor 150GB 60% free space

• Is this your system drive?

No

• Journaling:

Off

Add'l Info and Observations

Never had issues with Logic 8. I note very high disk spikes even when recording a single track. Changing the buffer setting to 128 or 256 mitigates this condition somewhat but it had been rock solid at 32 for over a year until upgrading to 9 last week.

Just had three instances of white noise bursts on offline bounced mixes, in L8.0.2, OSX.5.8, MacPro.
First time it's ever happened to me, in over ten years of working in Logic.
Most recent change is installation of Izotope Alloy, but have no idea if it's related.
These were drum tracks for a paying client, album project, so it was embarrassing.
Guess I'll have to go back to bouncing in real time, and listen all the way through to the bounce, even though I had listened to the track many times and it was fine prior to the bounce.

I've tallied up all of the info posted so far. I don't see a pattern, but maybe some of you will. My suspicion, however, is that somehow it's related to specific plugins. This may make no sense at all, especially in light of what some people have reported but I thought I'd throw it out there all the same. Anyway, [here's a link|http://www.score2picture.com/noise/wnrev1.pdf.zip] to a PDF version of the Excel worksheet I entered all this data into. It's consolidated down to one page, so you may have to increase the magnification to view it once it opens in Preview or whatever...

If your name appears more than once it's because you listed more than one computer. Please post back with any corrections/additions.

Please beware in the future...
With all the complaints I've posted about Logic,
one of the things I love about it beyond all else is that
it has a sinister bite (if you need it).
You must tame the beast, my friend...she will scream if the knobbies
are in screaming position...hrrrr lol.

(feature request: please never take away the ability to make Logic scream like a wild coconut).

This problem has recently started plaguing me as well. I am using the built in audio, Logic Pro 9 and it seems to have started since I upgraded to Snow Leopard.

I get the white noise when i press play and sometimes no sound at all! I am only using apple instruments and audio strips, the levels are ok as well.

My head hurts and my shoes keep falling off!

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

Under what conditions has the noise occured?
b) playback only

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)?
• Yes

Computer -- complete specs of your Mac, including:
• type (iMac8,1 24" (new Jun 09)
• Intel Core Duo 3.06
• 4gb Ram

OS
• Snow Leopard 10.6.2

Logic
• Logic Pro 9.0.2

Frequency
• Many

Audio Interface
• "built-in audio" if you don't have a separate interface (this one)

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, 640gb
• Type: internal
• Is this your system drive? Yes
• Journaling: On/Off (default?)

Add'l Info and Observations
Bouncing Midi to Audio also results in White noise or no sound at all. My head hurts, my shoes fell off!

Cool, thanks for adding your info and I'll add it to the database. Meanwhile, find yourself a nice pair of moccasins. No laces, easier to put back on... 🙂

Meanwhile, has anyone checked out the PDF I posted above and, if so, do you see any kind of pattern from that info?

I'll throw my latest theory on the pile too: if the amount of free space on the recording drive decreases past a certain critical point, or, the degree of fragmentation gets really high, the seek speed of the read/write head takes a hit, and when it does, BLAMMO!

Like I said, it's just a theory...

Perhaps - and I know this might be tricky - the survey should be expanded to see if users own and use certain "suspect" plugins, like Waves, NI, or IK multimedia? (I'd include UAD cards, but I think the problem were confined to UAD owners, that would have been clearly obvious by this point).

I use all those, for what it's worth, and haven't had any white noise bursts.. yet.

I do get the "loud pop - then silence" every now and again. But I've had that on occasion since the days of L7, I think. My sense was always that it was caused by certain plugins, and seemed to happen most frequently with Waves or IK plugs (like Ampeg SVX).

Lastly, I wonder if there's any slim hope that some day, in the face of persistent and very serious audio problems like this, that Apple will reconsider providing real customer support, or at least a tiny bit of communication with their customers.

No, I didn't think so either....

Message was edited by: timkertoy

I was experiencing the loud pop / click then silence scenario. It turned out to be the disk streaming settings in Omnisphere. Wonder if the whole issue has something to do with disk access. Hope Apple can sort it out.

Cheers.

timkertoy wrote:
Lastly, I wonder if there's any slim hope that some day, in the face of persistent and very serious audio problems like this, that Apple will reconsider providing real customer support, or at least a tiny bit of communication with their customers.

If nothing else, it would be, er, "nice" if someone from the ivory tower would have one of their underlings post here and say either, "Hey guys, you're wasting your time. Nice effort trying to track this down but the cause of the problem is not what you think..." Or, "Please keep up this effort as we need user's input input to help track down the problem, which is of great concern to us as well".

But please, don't get me started.
😉

I just ordered Logic Pro 9 and it's due to arrive on Friday. I've never heard of this white noise blast and have never experienced it. I only found out about it when I found this and some other threads today. I've been using DP for many years but decided after much thought to move over to LP9 mainly because I had a chance to use LP8 in a studio on a project and I really liked the work flow. I've heard a lot about LP9 after that and thought it would be a worth while switch. But... If I don't hear very soon that this noise blast problem has been resolved or acknowledged and they are working on it, on Friday when LP9 gets here I will send LP9 right back. If it's only a DAW work flow preference I will gladly stay with DP7 if LP9 has this kind of serious problem. I've used DP every day for years and never experienced or heard of anything like this.

This is a situation I do not even want to experience at this point. I wonder if it's a bad idea to base my decision off of this but I feel it's better safe than sorry.

Fat chance Apple will ever do anything about this since it's been reported with Logic 8. They would rather spend their time denying rather than fixing issues with the program. They should simply remove the word "Pro" from it since it basically comes with no valid support at all. Many long time users are beginning to look elsewhere, myself included. Such a shame, really.

oh it's the same old same old, does this record never tire of sticking?

"Apple s#ck" "Apple won't help" " It's not pro"

Blah blah blah...honestly, if I sat and wrote a report every time a piece of software I use on a daily basis backfired then I wouldn't have time to do any real work.

let's go back to cassette based 4 track shall we?