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?
• 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?

Any chabce it's related to which sample rate one's working at - I work at 44.1 and have never had this . . (as listed above)

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...

Hi, iS:

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

Yes - I printed it out, and stared at it. There doesn't seem any discernible pattern; it's puzzling, as I thought it was a LP9 and/or 10.6 issue, but apparently not. Because the sample size is small, maybe as additionally posts are tallied, something will emerge, and maybe the percentage of 8.0.2 instances will shrink, but who knows?

I'm wondering if this is related to other reports of loud pops? Here are a couple of examples. Could this be the same problem, but a less severe version?

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10622739&#10622739
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2251601&tstart=0

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?

Actually, I don't really care about bugs in any software these days unless it is shutting me down non-stop and I can't work. I am completely used to the never ending onslaught of bugs and just deal with it when they come up. We know no software is ever perfect. But for me this particular situation is not about a possible unfixed bug. It is about my ears and brain being blasted with the white noise I've been reading about here. If there's a chance this could be a new random unexpected audio nightmare, I'd rather not deal with it at all, especially if it is the physical health of my ears I'd have to worry about. Honestly I'd rather start using LP9. Like I said, I dig the newer work flow of Logic. It's been a long time since I last tried out Logic and the newer versions are very cool. That's why I just bought it and I was excited to start transferring projects over but now I'm not as excited. I'm not sure what to do about it yet but I'm swaying back to DP because of this. I'm debating whether or not I should send the unopened LP9 box back.

Why fix it if it's not broken? I don't want to risk breaking what I ultimately don't need to fix.

intermission, the point of this thread is that the white noise problem is more far more prevalent in Logic 9 than Logic 8. So whey you say, "honestly I'd rather start using LP9" you're (potentially) increasing your risk of running into this white noise blast problem, yes?

If you're happy with Logic 8, why not stick with it? I would suggest asking yourself one question: "is there anything about Logic 9 that makes me think it will aid my creativity, or provide a more streamlined workflow than Logic 8?"

Anyway, if you do want to "take a chance" and load up Logic 9 you can always leave Logic 8 on your system and go back to it if necessary. And monetarily, you're taking a $200 risk by opening the box (assuming from your post you have Logic 8 and paid the upgrade price).

The first time this happens to you, I guarantee you'll sing a much different tune. I put up with A LOT of bugs on a daily basis but this one's a showstopper.

ok maybe this is a slightly different take on the same problem - no one else seems to have had THESE conditions.

1. recording. stop
2. wind back. play. BZZZZZZZZZZZZ WHITE NOISE
3. save. close song (command optionW)
4. reopen song. alert pops up: Audio file with invalid header data found!
File name: Audio 2#54 aif.
Path: / blah blah

options: REPAIR or CANCEL

5. press 'repair'

6. the song reopens and the section i just recorded is present withOUT the white noise. intact.

7. THIS HAS HAPPENED TO ME APPROX. 11 (ELEVEN) TIMES IN THE LAST TWO DAYS!

H-E-L-P HELP!!!