"Too Many Real Instruments"

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"Too Many Real Instruments"

I am posting this in the '09 topic, but my question really dates back to Garageband '08. I rely on Garageband often, and I'm a big fan of it. However, it contains a serious problem which I need fixed.

I create a new project, drop a single iTunes song into it, and begin to edit. Almost every time, randomly while playing the song the "Part of the project was not played. This project has too many real instrument tracks to be played in real-time" warning message appears. I only have 1 track! Worse still, my audio driver lets out a terrible "HONK" which startles me and blasts through the entire house. After that, My sound output faintly exists until I open up Audio MIDI Setup and change a random setting on my output.

I am quite tired of this predicament. Is there anyway to fix this (without money)?

iMac Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme/2.8GHz 24", Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Dec 28, 2009 10:46 AM

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Answer 1

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isteveus

Level 5

4,334 points

Dec 28, 2009 11:47 AM in response to Rosstex16

After a lot of edits that your sure about try doing a save. This will sometimes free up temp files and smooth thing out.

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Answer 2

Rosstex16 Author

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Dec 28, 2009 12:24 PM in response to isteveus

Well, it worked for about 15 seconds, before the "HONK" blared again. I have deleted the com.apple.garageband folder as well as com.apple.garageband.plist, but this didn't help either.

These errors have been intermittent for half a year, every few projects an error. But all of a sudden they are happening every 10 seconds in every project. The editing I do is simple. I take a song designed to loop (but not a perfect loop), and split-c/p the song to make it loop.

Garageband is starting to annoy me, and I may switch to Fission if I have to. What could the problem be?

Note: I do boot into a 64 bit kernel, but even on 32 bit the problem still occured.

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Answer 3

isteveus

Level 5

4,334 points

Dec 28, 2009 12:51 PM in response to Rosstex16

I've only had this happen a few times and that was when working with 15 or more tracks. Don't know where to look, do you have other audio apps running?

How much free hard drive space do you have?

Have you tried using garageband in a different user account?

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Answer 4

Rosstex16 Author

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Dec 28, 2009 1:10 PM in response to isteveus

Haha, I hate it when a problems comes down to being my fault!

The problem was disk space. My Garageband folder had 118 projects and a whopping 21 GB! I saved a new project somewhere else, and it worked fine.

Thanks for your help!

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Answer 5

Dec 28, 2009 3:03 PM in response to Rosstex16

That can't have been the reason - GB doesn't care in which folder you save a project (if it's on the same disk), and it even cares less how big that folder is, as long as your whole disk doesn't run out of space.

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Answer 6

Rosstex16 Author

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Dec 28, 2009 5:29 PM in response to Rosstex16

Changing the save location only worked for a temporary time.

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Answer 7

Dec 29, 2009 3:11 PM in response to Rosstex16

I was experiencing a similar problem, and I just got off the phone with applecare and went through all their steps.
I'll try my best to recount them here. But before I do, let it be said that the tech fellow, once he heard what I was doing, exclaimed that my core problem was that I needed to be creating new projects, and not re-using the same project (ex. "My Song 2") over and over.
What I've been doing is backing up a pile of mini-discs that have live concerts on them. A couple of hours of audio each one, and I've been recording them into Garageband. After I divide the concert up into songs and export them to itunes, I've been deleting the track in Garageband and then importing the next concert (repeat x 10 concerts).
About 7-8 concerts in I started getting that popping sound when the sound would cut out (made the sound of depressing the safety-seal bubble on the metal lid of a jam jar). At first, quitting Garageband and opening it again would work. On the 10th concert, when the sound cut out the sound for the whole computer would stop working (itunes, volume buttons on my keyboard, everything).

So the tech fellow said the lesson is this: create new projects. Don't be shy about it. No need to re-use and recycle in cyberspace.

Now - my applecare steps:
- First we went: Macintosh HD, Library, then dragged "Caches" to the trash
- then went to Finder, Go, Utilities, Disk Utility, Macintosh HD, Repair Disk Permissions (that took some time)
- then restarted the computer

All seems to be well now.

Good luck

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Answer 8

Dec 29, 2009 8:55 PM in response to M. Cupcake

scratch all that... it's still happening!

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Answer 9

Dec 29, 2009 10:37 PM in response to Rosstex16

Rosstex16 wrote:
Well, it worked for about 15 seconds, before the "HONK" blared again. I have deleted the com.apple.garageband folder as well as com.apple.garageband.plist, but this didn't help either.

This sounds like a known bug that affects both GB and Logic (which share the same sound engine), although it usually doesn't happen that often.

People think it's related to disk performance. Therefore, if you are recording to an internal drive spinning at 5400 RPM that is also running your system, you are more likely to encounter it. Recording to an external drive or at least not the drive that is also running your system, and preferably one that is spinning at 7200 RPM should help.

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Answer 10

Rosstex16 Author

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Dec 30, 2009 12:48 PM in response to MattiMattMatt

Hmm. My internal HD seems to have a rotation rate of 7200. I also have a 7200 external Lacie d2 Quadra, but writing to it did not solve the problem.

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Answer 11

WarriorAnt

Level 4

2,752 points

Dec 30, 2009 4:41 PM in response to Rosstex16

Have you tried reinstalling GB?

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