Logic Pro 8 and Mountain Lion

Hi budeades,

I know this has been more than 5 years, so I'm not really responding this for you, but rather to document for anyone else interested in the future:

I am still running Logic Express 8.0.2 on macOS Sierra 10.12.6 on a mid-2010 MacBook Pro. I know this makes me a ridiculous holdout, but hey, it's still serviceable, if you're willing to put up with some bugs and quirks. Here's what I've noticed:

- The biggest issue I run into is that any area in the Arrange window behind the transport after you play back becomes black pixels. It's as though the transport "paints" a black field in its wake. This was an issue in El Capitan as well. It may have cropped up in an earlier OS than that, I'm not sure. There is no negative audio effect to this, it just impedes workflow significantly and is annoying. When you scroll past the affected area and back, the image issue disappears. There are a few other similar visual glitches, in which portions of regions are displayed twice, etc. Similarly, scrolling past and back clears these issues.

- When bouncing, the checkmarks within the checkboxes are displayed upside down! They still work, they just look funny. This one strikes me as the strangest glitch.

- A pitch shift in Time & Pitch Machine can be prelistened correctly, but when you hit "Process and Paste," even though it shows a progress indicator saying "Samples Processed," it does nothing to the region selected in the Sample Editor. Tempo changes in Time & Pitch Machine, however, work correctly (unlike the users above report in Logic Pro 8 on Mountain Lion).

- Crossfades cannot be visually edited: using the crossfade cursor will change the visual length of the crossfade in the Arrange window, but will not change it aurally. You can, however, successfully make changes to the length and curves of crossfades by changing the numbers in the region inspector fields in the top left corner of the screen.

- I do run into system overloads, disk too slow messages, and errors re: audio engine processing speed. These, however, seem as common as similar mixing situations in the same version of Logic on an older machine I still use running OS X Snow Leopard, and almost never crash the program outright.

I doubt there are many people left running this combination of software and OS, but for anyone looking for what problems they might run into and what workarounds I have found, hopefully this has been helpful. I realize it sounds like a completely unworkable system, but I still use it successfully for professional recording and mixing work. I am, however, unusually tolerant of glitches and unusually stubborn about keeping old hardware running without paying for new software. As to the "if it ain't broke" line of thought, I've paradoxically had to upgrade this system's OS in order to use other audio software which won't run on older versions of OS X, and the tradeoff has been workable enough for me to live with it.

All my best to everyone — perhaps no one will ever read this, but maybe it will help some other holdout out there!

OK so I run LP 9.8.1 on 10.8.5 as I did with LP 8 & 7. This has been the most stable setup ever.

The advantage you had with Snow Leopard is that it had an app, called Rosetta that enabled users to run some older apps. The thing that I did was to install Rosetta from the Snow Leopard DVD into Lion and later Mountain Lion to allow me to continue using older app like FCP and the older and best version of iMovie 6HD.

Staying with ML also let me use the M Audio drivers for LP 7, 8 & 9, no longer available for OS 10.9 on.

Some have said that installing Rosetta on 10.7 and 10.8 causes issues, this is not true as I have been using ML from the day it was made available and running LP 7, 8 and 9.1.8 in 64 Bit mode with no crashes or issues what so ever.

It has been my bread and butter for many years as a professional Audio Engineer.

On my Hard Drive I have it partitioned with 10.11.6 and 10.8.5, so I have the advantage of running old and new apps, to suit the OS I need.

I see so many people winging about OS's they don't like or wanting to go back a version or two.

Anyone with a Mac should have enough partitions to install various OS's and they should have downloaded every OS made available and installed it on a bootable USB stick.

For **** sake don't rant on about the cost of extra storage or cost of new OS's or RAM. They are cheap at twice the price. You have a Macintosh Computer, unless you did"t know it it is the next best thing to God.

Long live Macs and their apps.

Logic 8 is a 32 bit application. Can machines running Mountain Lion boot in 32bit mode? I don't know but something at the back of my mind (maybe I read it somewhere) is saying that Mountain Lion will only boot in 64 bit mode, so you may be stuck there already.

One thing that baffles me ever so slightly is that you say 'if it's not broke, don't fix it', but you updated to a brand new OS anyway. Now maybe your machine isn't a dedicated music machine and that's the reason. I'm not making a judgement here at all. It's just I'm still on Logic 8 myself on an 8 core Mac Pro running 10.5.8. It's a dedicated music machine and it's still on 10.5.8 because it ain't broke and don't need fixing, not Logic or OS wise.

Hope the 64 bit thing helps you and if it turns out that Mountain Lion is 64bit only then you may need to use a backup of your whole system to get going again in Logic 8 or take the plunge to 9 depending on how badly you want to keep Mountain Lion.

Hi sijam,

It was just a guess really but I went away and read up on Mountain Lion and it is the first OS X kernel that will only boot in 64bit mode and I found these other pointers. Please bare in mind I haven't tested any of this though:

* Mountain Lion will run 32-bit applications.

*Mountain Lion will run 32-bit applications and programs; however, it will not have a 32-bit kernel, so if a specific software package requires this (mainly kernel extensions) then it will not run. Most should not require this, and should run just fine.

If you pop into the Apple Store maybe ask about that last point because if Logic requires 32-bit kernel extensions, it's not going to work. If you find out, please post your findings here as others may find it helpful.

Virtually everyone has done this at least once (not having a full backup) so don't be too harsh on yourself. In some ways it is the best way to learn the lesson! Apple OS these days CAN change significantly under the hood and affect any 'old' app. I use the term 'old' relatively as this can sometimes mean 6 weeks!!

Glad I could help.

Hi,

you could try this trick, it works for me:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/103749164470499027198/posts/jngeSLD6awY

And just to clarify, its nothing to do with the differences of 32 and 64 bit, thats marketing BS designed to make it look like its not Apples fault, they are just trying to make you upgrade. Logic 8 is stable on ML as it has always been. OS X has always been able to simultaneously process 32bit and 64bit processes, don't let some badly informed sales rep tell you otherwise.

I am not, but if Logic 8 does not work it is not because of 32/64 bit limitations, as OS X could not haver made significant changes without also breaking Logic 9 nad a bunch of other 32bit Applications. 32bit Apps work fine in ML and always have, and 64bit bootloaders existed on nearly all Mac Pros and even the old Xserve and they ran Logic 8 fine. The restrictions are most likely in the .plist files inside the .app file, the same way they were when trying to run older versions of Java which were also 'incompatible' due to .plist only listing up to 10.7 being compatible (this was important wen testing and running old Java programs). I would tell you how to edit it so that Logic could Launch normally but I don't have a copy of Logic 8 anymore to grab the original and make edits.

As mentioned in the link you can run Logic 8 by doing the following:

1. launch Terminal

2. type (exactly, including quotes and ampersand)

If logic is not in Applications, substitute the formoer portion of the directory by dragging the Logic.app file into Terminal, then add /Contents/MacOS/Logic Pro" & to the end, make sure there a respeech marks at either end.

"/Applications/Logic Pro.app/Contents/MacOS/Logic Pro" &

3. press ENTER (and then minimize the Terminal window)

4. look (and hear) at Logic Pro Studio 8 roaring out at your favourite Lion

5. enjoy!

6. When you're finished recording/playing in Logic just quit it as usual (don't forget to save your job)

7. you can now quit Terminal too.

This will bypass the .plist files in the .app by running the binary directly

Hey,

I was reading through this because I have the same concern about running Logic Pro 8 if I upgrade to Mountain Lion (I do want to try the new OS, but it certainly isn't worth paying the huge price to upgrade to Logic 9). For what it's worth though, I have been running Logic 8 flawlessly with OSX Lion using the technique described by gen_. In fact, I just routed the command to launch from an icon on my desktop, and it has been no different than Snow Leopard. If you do end up trying this with Mountain Lion, please post about how it works out because this issue is the "make or break" for me as to whether or not to upgrade my OS..!

-KRF

I have also been running logic express 8 on LION. Moved my data to a new macbook pro and am using logic express 8 starting up without having to use terminal. I loads fine. I'm wondering if anyone else is able to run logic 8 on Lion. Would love to update to mountain lion but wonder if I will loose Logic Express 8. I'm not a power user but like additional loops and instruments that Logic provides - esp not that I have downloaded Mainstage.

Anyone else tried loading LE8 on Mountain Lion or upgraded from Lion to ML with Logic Express 8.

Honestly not able to update the app and justify the cost for casual use.

b

Hello, gen_

Does this method also work for installing Logic 8? I tried by dragging the installation file to terminal and typing the rest, but nothing happened. If you have any hints on how to do a clean install (I don't have the program file, just the installation files) I', d be very grateful!

Thanks

khattemoat

I doubt it, it's not an application, its a package (or more likely a metapackage). You're best solution to installing it is using a program called Pacifist to unpack and 'install' the disks.

http://www.charlessoft.com/

Make sure you select all the weird sounding packages and install them individually first e.g ProApps, THEN install Logic, then the libraries.

Do that, then install the 8.02 combo update from Apple's website (not system update) THEN run Logic and activate. Should install fine.

You can then use the methods above to actually run L8.