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

maharaj wrote:
in my case since i'm only running Logic 8.0.2 perhaps i don't qualify for the questionnaire?

Anyone running L8 or L9 can fill out the questionnaire. BTW, it's an informal questionnaire... I don't work for this company. I don't even get this problem! But I thought it would be helpful to gather information for those who do.

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

Under what conditions has the noise occured?
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:
MacBook Pro 2.6GB 17"
2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4 GB RAM

OS X 10.5.8

Logic 8.0.2

Frequency
ABOUT TWENTY!!!

Audio Interface
MOTU 828 FW400l

Hard Drives
1. Hitachi HTS723232L9SA62:
Capacity: 298.09 GB (INTERNAL, BOOT/SYSTEM DRIVE) serial-ATA journaling on
2. LACIE FW800 external, 250 GB journaling on
3. LACIE FW800 external, 300 GB journaling off - 2. and 3. FW800 daisy-chained


Add'l Info and Observations
INTERMITTENTLY - after recording, windback to beginning of take, playback - WHITE NOISE BLAST
save and close song; alert comes up "Audio file with invalid header data found!" file name (the one that was just recorded).
options -- repair or cancel. select "repair" - open song - playback - the white noise is gone, the take is intact.

Ok, thanks. I've been recording vocals all night (and for a long time) and I don't get the problem on my MacPro, touch wood! I have had it on my MacBook with a dodgy beta plugin, I whipped the cans of quick, so maybe it's a plugin problem? I don't know, just interested. Cheers.

I don't know if it's related or not, but I had my first blast of white noise last night while auditioning sounds in Play's "Goliath" plugin.

So, technically, Logic wasn't in play or record mode... But it sure was a shocking wall of full volume white noise, and I've never experienced that before in all my years with Logic.

I mention it coz I was quickly going through sampled sound instruments, one after the other, and I think the white noise was a reaction to the hard drive working so hard trying to load one batch of samples after the other. So maybe disk activity, firewire bus issues, or virtual-memory use of VI's is a key component here?

Just a thought.


Sure would be nice to know the Apple folks were hard at work on this one. It's an excruciating and potentially physically dangerous bug. I've said it before, but if Final Cut Pro can stop and warn you the instant a single frame has been dropped, you'd think Logic could have some kind of method for spotting errors in the audio output...

T

Oh gawd, and I have Goliath coming this week...

Based on my own experience (from working really fast in ScreenFlow, getting noise blasts, and all the while getting the feeling that I didn't give the system enough time to kind of "settle" between repeated takes), and, from what I'm reading here, I think it has something to do with "bad" or "slow" disk access. Or maybe it's that plus something to do with the buffers. New theory: because of slow or otherwise messed-up disk access, the buffer doesn't get filled fast enough (or at all) but the 'system' (CoreAudio?) doesn't realize this and outputs audio anyway because it thinks it has to. And when it doesn't have an actual waveform to output, it excretes some random garbage: NOISE.

Hey, I dunno... just taking a stab here.

This happened to me often on an PT LE system using an MBOX. Usually it was because the USB device couldn't keep up with all the stuff I was trying to make it do. Data lag or some such.

FSSSSSSTTTT!

White noise blast.

yeah when i was visiting New Zealand a Digidesign techy kindly installed Mbox 2 and Mbox Pro onto my Mac, to allow me to use my friend's mbox for some recordings.

i now suspect (tho' i'm using any Mbox any longer) that these 'extensions' are causing the white noise bugs in logic.

it was during that period that i first noticed the white noise phenonmenon.

now just trying to nut out how to get those mbox drivers OUT of the OS!

iSchwartz wrote:

Based on my own experience (from working really fast in ScreenFlow, getting noise blasts, and all the while getting the feeling that I didn't give the system enough time to kind of "settle" between repeated takes), and, from what I'm reading here, I think it has something to do with "bad" or "slow" disk access. Or maybe it's that plus something to do with the buffers. New theory: because of slow or otherwise messed-up disk access, the buffer doesn't get filled fast enough (or at all) but the 'system' (CoreAudio?) doesn't realize this and outputs audio anyway because it thinks it has to. And when it doesn't have an actual waveform to output, it excretes some random garbage: NOISE.

Hey, I dunno... just taking a stab here.

This theory is a fairly solid one IS, based on all that has been written here... except, on some occasions, Logic shows me a viable waveform, but plays white noise instead. Even after I let Logic "settle down", the waveform that appears to look normal plays back white noise... while other times, Logic displays a big "brick", in place of a waveform, indicating an obvious damaged recording.

So Logic Studio 9 arrived on Friday and I decided to go for it. I installed it and started using it. I had a problem with some of the installation discs being recognized in the drive for a little while but it eventually installed. I've only recorded a few new audio tracks with it but so far it's ok. I'm still cautious and keeping the levels down just in case. When I have anyone in the room recording I may use DP until I know it's totally safe. I'm keeping an eye on how the audio files look but from what I've read here it looks like this can happen even if the wave is not showing a clipping wall of white noise. I've already had the "memory warning" lots of times after importing LP8 tracks from projects at another studio but after relaunching that goes away.

As far as the audio drive, all projects are either on an external firewire400 or esata. I don't use the internal drive but I know for a fact that it is a 7200 because that is what was ordered with the MBP.

I am really diggin Logic (coming from DP) so I hope the blast doesn't occur in my setup. I'll let you know if anything happens.

I don't think plugins are the problem as I've had this happen with NO plugs installed (while tracking a band). Disk access problems look to be a possibility. It should be mentioned that although we are talking about "blast of white noise", there may be two different issues.

1. White noise that happens after you have recorded without a problem, then on playback, the waveform shows fine but you are greeted with the dreaded noise. If you save, quit Logic and reload, you will get an "invalid header" warning. If you choose fix, the file should play back correctly.

2. You are recording and then get the noise. No need to play back the file, you had the noise while tracking.

I have never tried quitting Logic after #2 above to see if the header problem shows up, because you know the take is unusable, you are still in shock, plus you have to talk the musicians off of the ceiling.

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

Under what conditions has the noise occured?
• Always at the conclusion of recording, right after I hit stop. Always preceded by the disk too slow error message.

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)?
• Yes


Computer -- complete specs of your Mac, including:
• Model: MacPro
• Processor: 2x Quad Core, 2.8 GHz
• RAM: 2MB

OS
• 10.6.2 (MacOS, Snow Leopard)

Logic
• Logic 9.02 (currently), but I have experienced this same issue under 8.0.2 in the past

Frequency
• It's happened to me dozens of times but frequency is intermediate and unpredicatble

Audio Interface
• Metric Halo/Mobile IO 2882+DSP 2d (I have two identical models, linked together.)
• connection type: FireWire 400


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: unknown (will update this info ASAP)
• Type: internal
• Interface (FW400, FW800, eSATA, SATA, etc.) not sure
• Is this your system drive? No
• Journaling: On
• if using a FW or eSATA drive, is the drive daisy-chained to any other devices? If so, describe the chain... N/A, I always record onto the internal drive(s)

So I started using Logic Pro 9 for the first time this last weekend and I got the white noise already, but luckily I didn't have to hear it because I saw it first. Tonight, a guitarist was having a hard time getting some particular guitar parts performed good enough. Had retake the same track multiple times, which is totally ok in general. On about the 6th or 7th take of one part I got a "disk too slow" error and I looked at the track and I could see a solid wall of noise in the audio that lasted for about 4-5 seconds. I knew exactly what it was so I deleted it. A solid wall of white noise is very obvious to spot and I didn't need to listen to it.

Maybe it can be caused by multiple circumstances, but for sure when you are recording and you get the "disk too slow" message, you will probably see the white noise blast in the audio. At least there was a warning and I could see it in the audio... but this is so inexcusable for this to be happening. I hope this is fixed soon or my days with Logic will be probably be short.

This may sound totally ridiculous but I would suggest:

1. Not using headphones with Logic
2. Keeping levels much lower than usual
3. Keeping your eyes on the tracks constantly
4. Visually check the previously recorded track first if you get the "disk too slow" error.

All "joking" aside, I have a feeling that this could be from a drive waking from sleep while recording. I may have up to 2 or 3 audio drives on the desktop so maybe if one of them goes to sleep and wakes up while recording it triggers the "disk too slow" warning and the white noise blast is simultaneously laid down on the track for your extreme displeasure.

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

Under what conditions has the noise occurred?
• Got the disk too slow error while recording and stopped. Visually checked the audio on the track that was recording last and saw the wall of white noise right before the recording was cut off by the error.

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)?
• Yes

Computer -- complete specs of your Mac, including:
• Model: MacBookPro
• Processor: 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (Santa Rosa)
• RAM: 4GB

OS
• 10.5.8 (MacOS, Leopard)

Logic
• 9.02

Frequency
• I started using Logic for the first time on 120509 and it happened on 120809.

Audio Interface
• MOTU 828mk3 (connected into it's own FW400 dedicated port)
• connection type: FireWire 400

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: 3 drives at the time it occurred. Not sure of the makes or models at the moment.
• Type: all external
• Interface: FW400 drives in express card ports
• Is this your system drive? No
• Journaling: Off
• if using a FW or eSATA drive, is the drive daisy-chained to any other devices? If so, describe the chain... The one drive in the FW400 chain was not the recording drive. Recording drive was in it's own port. I could try only using the eSATA with Logic but I don't think that will make a difference.

Sorry, I didn't think to take a screen shot at the moment it happened because we were working hard trying to finish up the session. Too busy at the moment to consider that I guess. I'll remember to capture it if it happens again. We still have a lot more guitar tracks to do and I'll be using the same setup of FW drives... so maybe I'll see it again soon... but hopefully not. Haaa!

I didn't contribute to this thread thus far because I have not encountered this issue. But for your investigation it would be good to also have users who do not have this issue. So here are my thoughts on it:

From your PDF, only one conclusion is yet to be falsified: PPC's do not show the BOWN problem. I have never encountered it on my G4, from LP 8.0.0 to LP 9.0.2.
Could it be that the Intel Macs are too fast for their disks? Secondly: would *defragging the project- and sampledrives* alleviate/solve the problem?

Maybe you should ad disk configuration to your query: list each disk, what they are for (system, samples, recording, backup), how big they are and how much unused space they have. Also a report on the speed of the disk (with XBench http://www.pure-mac.com/diag.html#xbench ) might add valuable info about this threeheaded hellhound...

regards, Erik.

ps
as an example, here are reports from Xbench about my recording and sampledisks:
Eriksimon's Recording Disk:

System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.8 (9L31a)
Physical RAM 1792 MB
Model PowerMac3,6
Processor PowerPC G4x2 @ 1.25 GHz
Version 7455 (Apollo) v3.2
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 256K @ 1.25 GHz
L3 Cache 1024K @ 250 MHz
Bus Frequency 167 MHz
Video Card ATY,RV250
Drive Type ST380024A ST380024A

Disk Test 33.37

Sequential 57.96

Uncached Write 53.93 33.11 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 54.96 31.09 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 60.46 17.69 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 63.55 31.94 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 23.43

Uncached Write 7.66 0.81 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 56.12 17.97 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 82.99 0.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 98.03 18.19 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Eriksimon's Samples & Loops Disk:

Drive Type Maxtor 6L080L0 Maxtor 6L080L0

Disk Test 49.90

Sequential 70.20

Uncached Write 69.81 42.86 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 84.14 47.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 48.26 14.12 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 99.51 50.01 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 38.70

Uncached Write 15.36 1.63 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 65.74 21.05 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 76.81 0.54 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 99.87 18.53 MB/sec [256K blocks]