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fluffy Author

Level 1

69 points

Logic 9's UI extremely laggy - any fixes?

I've been a pretty happy Logic user since 2004, but lately version 9 has been really cheezing me off. It seems that whenever I'm playing my current project, the user interface becomes completely unresponsive to key commands and mouse clicks, which will be delayed for many seconds, or ignored entirely.

This is a fresh install of Logic Pro 9.1.4, 32-bit, on one of the new Mac minis (dual 2.7GHz i7, 4GB RAM, stock 500GB hard drive), with a PreSonus FireStudio Project. However, this was also happening on my previous system, a 2008 15" unibody MacBook Pro. It was happening a little bit on Snow Leopard but it's gotten much worse under Lion. My MacBook had aftermarket RAM (8GB) and an aftermarket SSD, but everything in the Mini is stock.

It's happening even if I only have one or two tracks, although it seems to be worse if I have any of the various metering plugins running and open, or ChanEQ with the analyzer turned on. I wonder if maybe those plugins aren't handling UI updates correctly, or something.

Just to be clear, I have absolutely no third-party AudioUnits installed, and it's neither a CPU nor an I/O issue (both gauges are pretty much empty, and Activity Monitor shows Logic as taking about 10% of one CPU), and yet it takes anywhere from 3-10 seconds for a simple mouse click to go through.

This is getting EXTREMELY frustrating, especially since the lag seems to always happen at the worst moments (i.e. I'm trying to turn down the volume on a track which suddenly got really loud, and the lack of responsiveness means my ears get blasted and I have to take a break for them to recover before I can start mixing again).

Has anyone else been experiencing this and found a workaround? Is anyone at Apple even paying attention to these issues? I feel like it's the same problem that was being discussed in this thread, which was never resolved: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2396951

Message was edited by: robert113

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7), 2.7GHz i7, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD

Posted on Jul 30, 2011 7:31 PM

516 replies

May 18, 2012 5:20 PM in response to Thomas Colontonio

Also just upgraded toa Crucial M4 SSD today and this has made the problem DISSAPEAR! WOW these things are fast!

May 18, 2012 5:27 PM in response to Thomas Colontonio

Interesting - since I am using a MacBook Air with the SSD, maybe that's why I don't see these problems?

May 18, 2012 5:30 PM in response to Boyd Ostroff

Whats your processor on your MB pro? I have an i7 newer one and never have those problems either. I swear it destroys my Dual processore 3.07 GHZ Mac Pro in my studio

fluffy Author

Level 1

69 points

May 18, 2012 5:31 PM in response to Boyd Ostroff

It doesn't seem like a disk I/O issue, although it could be a contributing factor. Maybe there's something with integrated chipsets where the disk blocks the video system in some weird way.

I did have this problem on my previous system (PowerMac unibody, the original C2D rev from late 2008) which had an aftermarket SSD in it, but that aftermarket SSD was having other I/O issues with OSX itself so it's hard to tell.

Jun 20, 2012 4:55 AM in response to fluffy

It's definitly a gpu issue. Some months ago, I changed the system prefs to use the better graphics chip (

NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 256 MB) everytime in my Macbook Pro, and now I realized this problem after some longer Logic sessions. So I tried to use the internal gpu (Intel HD Graphics 288 MB) and logics ui isn't laggy anymore... very strange...

However it seems to be an 10.7.4 problem, for the actual build of 10.7.5 the developers got the instruction to have an eye on the graphics efficiency and network stablity... I hope the update will be soon available...

Jun 20, 2012 10:09 AM in response to fluffy

Ealier on this thread I had said that the problem was resolved after swapping out my video card. I hate to say that it's not actually entirely fixed. Using a stronger video card absolutely reduces the problem, but doesn't completely get rid of it.

It seems like it's the Channel EQ's analyzer when placed on a secondary display. I use other third party EQ plug-ins like FabFilter's Pro-Q ...it's analyzer doesn't seem to cause the problem.

hypnotik

Level 1

0 points

Jun 20, 2012 12:24 PM in response to Darren Burgos

yeah Darren the problem is still here!

I've also spent more than 500 dollars to reslove this, no luck.

http://www.logicprohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=78028

please read the whole thread on logicprohelp i've posted many videos to show the problem.

Jun 20, 2012 12:26 PM in response to Darren Burgos

I also said that installing a SSD helped but now it hasent. Its a simple case of the logic EQ analyzer. If I have them turned off I have NO problems. Apple needs to fix this ASAP!

hypnotik

Level 1

0 points

Jun 20, 2012 2:52 PM in response to Thomas Colontonio

It is more than only channel eq analyzer many third party plugins use the same kind of ressource than channel eq uses.

clean install of lion : nothing installed even not my apogee audio drivers! using core audio default settings

4 channel EQ with analyzer on high in an empty project with 8 TRACKS using only stock channel strips and my 2009 Mac pro dual cpu with 16gb is on his knees, acting like crap as an old windows pc!

Same problem! So......now what else ? You can add many SSDs, graphics card, ram, cpu's you want, you will have the same problem because there is a problem with performance / graphics allocation or whatever, it's hardcoded! Pure software thing!

Please guys, join http://www.logicprohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=78028&start=100

It is a real problem which exists since Lion came out 1 year ago........and nothing has changed.

Apple please, please, please dooooooo somethinnnnnnnng i'm crying now!

Jun 21, 2012 7:18 AM in response to hypnotik

Is there a list of plugins that have the issue?

fluffy Author

Level 1

69 points

Jun 21, 2012 7:50 AM in response to Mike Connelly

I've only come across it in the ChanEQ/PhaseEQ/etc. plugins with the analyzer turned on. Something about how the analyzer does its screen updates also messes up OSX Lion's UI eventing, or something. I wonder if they're doing the screen updates by shoving a repaint event into the window's event queue but generating them faster than the app can service them.

Pancenter

Level 6

14,692 points

Jun 21, 2012 9:17 AM in response to fluffy

fluffy wrote:

I've only come across it in the ChanEQ/PhaseEQ/etc. plugins with the analyzer turned on. Something about how the analyzer does its screen updates also messes up OSX Lion's UI eventing, or something.

The high CPU use of the channel EQ analyzer has been around for a long time (it's even mentioned in the Logic documentation) however the effects it causes vary with different operating systems and different versions of Logic. As OSX added graphic layers (eye candy) the analyzer CPU use seems to be causing more problems,

OSX/Logic have to support more hardware variations than at any other time in Apple's history, there's a greater chance for performance issues on some combinations. Hopefully ML can correct some of the performance problems.

fluffy Author

Level 1

69 points

Jun 21, 2012 9:20 AM in response to Pancenter

Except that it uses barely any CPU on a modern computer. Look at your CPU usage meter when ChanEQ's analyzer is turned on. The problem isn't that it makes the system slow, the problem is that it introduces a huge amount of input latency, which makes it feel slow, but that's a very different thing than actually being slow.

Pancenter

Level 6

14,692 points

Jun 21, 2012 9:44 AM in response to fluffy

fluffy wrote:

Except that it uses barely any CPU on a modern computer. Look at your CPU usage meter when ChanEQ's analyzer is turned on.

I suggest opening Activity monitor and see what kind of CPU use you see with a couple of channel EQ's/Analyzers running in High resolution mode with their windows open. Now try it with 4 CEQ's in analyzer high resolution mode, with their windows open. The realtime graphic updating is the cause.

fluffy Author

Level 1

69 points

Jun 21, 2012 10:19 AM in response to Pancenter

That's exactly what I did to come to that conclusion.

Look, I'm only a musician as a hobby. My day job is as a software engineer. I have in particular specialized in writing high-performance GUI software, and I know some of the common pitfalls that can come up in these situations. I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to say that I know exactly what's going on in here, but given my experience and diagnosing the particular problem, it seems to me like it's an issue of non-input events (such as window repaints) taking priority over input events, and input events not being serviced until the non-input events complete. If the CPU were being pegged, there would be other symptoms, such as audio stuttering and other applications running slowly. In this case, it is just that input to the UI is being delayed by multiple seconds, and the common situation is that a rapidly-updating plugin display is visible, usually on a second screen.

Of course I don't have any special insight into the Logic code, but I have years of experience in this area and can at least speculate about what might be going on.

Logic 9's UI extremely laggy - any fixes?