Logic Pro X - Disk is too slow or System Overload. (-10010)

Hi David,

While what I am about to say, may seem obvious if you have done any research yourself into this issue..... but,

The problem is most likely nothing to do with LPX itself but likely what you are doing, using or how things are setup or what else is running, on your Mac..

If it was LPX itself then I, for example, couldn't easily run a 35 track (mixed SI and Audio) project without issue on a 2011 2.0Ghz i7 MMS with 16GB Ram and built in twin 1TB 7200 HDs and a Motu Ultralite Mk2, which is much less powerful than your system,...

So, what might be the cause of such errors?

There are so many possibilities but I'd look at the following as a starter...

What processes are running in the background of your Mac?

Are you using the latest version of your Plugins/Drivers for your Audio Interface etc... and are they fully 10.8.4 compliant?

Is Play up to date and configured correctly? (EW Play is notoriously poor, performance wise under certain circumstances)

Have you got Time Machine running?

Are you using FX plugins and have you used Aux buses with them

Have you read the following notes from Apple relating to these issues?

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3834

These notes relate to LP9 but are equally applicable to LPX

Finally for the time being.. Does the error happen when you press play or does it happen at a specific point in a project? If it is at the beginning of a project move all the regions so the first one starts on Bar 2 This will give LPX a little extra time to process things before it needs to generate audio. If it's at a certain point in a project, what is happening at that point? Is there a sudden heavy load coming into play?

>>>Disk is too slow or System Overload. (-10010)<<<

Translation: Something didn't get to where it was supposed to be on time. A data byte (or more) was lost and/or did not make it to the output stream.

The I/O buffer being set to 512 can (in some cases) produce poor performance, depends on the drivers. I would use 256 and a large process buffer.

Are you using Space Designer Reverbs?

DHousden wrote:

Hi Pancenter, I was under the impression that a larger buffer size increases performance but introduces latency. As I'm not experiencing any latency but am experiencing frequent errors I thought I'd put it up to 512 to see if that changed anything, but it didn't. I was still getting the errors with a lower buffer size though.

As I mentioned earlier I'm not using Space Designer or any other plug-ins. It's quite bizarre. Going to have another bash today and see if it's magically resolved itself over night.

Cheers

David,

You're correct but it does depend on the drivers for the audio hardware, occasionally a smaller buffer is more efficient.. but it doesn't look like that's the case.

Your situation seems more than odd.. expecially considering the machine you're running.

The Focusrite is plugged directly into a USB port correct, not a hub? What other active USB devices (besides keyboard mouse) do you have plugged in? Also what sample rate are you using?

For a test I'd switch to built-in-audio just to see if the same or similar behavior exists.

Use a 256 buffer.

24-bit 44.1 should be easy.

I bought a Scarlett USB interface this past spring and had similar issues with it, especially in Pro Tools. I was on a project deadline, and returned it and went back to my FW Duet (ver 1) and everything worked in both Logic and Pro Tools.

I really liked the interface and "check up" on driver development occationally. They have since updated the drivers since I owned mine, so it's too bad folks are still having issues. Not everyone is, and many have them are working just fine, but the guys at Guitar Center said a fair amount of them come back.

Not sure if this helps, but I have a similar system, and had some of the same issues.

Just as a quick followup....

After doing a little research online it seems the Scarlett is one of those USB2 devices that has issues with how Apple changed their implementation of USB when they released Macs with USB3 interfaces and put this updated implementation into Lion and later Mountain Lion... and that this is probably why some people have major issues like the OP is reporting and why other's do not. It depends on the hardware/OS X version combination as to if this issue rears it's ugly head.

Oddly enough some Win 8 users are also reporting similar issues with the Scarlett for much the same reason.

The March 2013 Scarlett OS X drivers are intended to 'alleviate' this issue but Focusrite have stated it is only to 'alleviate' in some instances and not completely fix the problem for everyone who has it,.,..

However, the good news is that Focusrite have released some beta drivers (v1.7b2 and later b3) which seem to work better for some people than the last official release...

Mac Only.

General stability/logging improvements:

- Improved audio stream syncing

- Fixed bug which results in occasional inaccurate timestamps

- Improves sample rate switching

- 18i20 stream formats now switch automatically

- Fixes Forte streaming at 176.4/192kHz

You can find them here..

http://beta.focusrite.com

Note: These beta drivers again seem to only alleviate the issues for some people and not all but it has got to be worth giving them a try I would think...

Thanks for the update. I experienced the sample rate switching probelm on both OSX and WIn7. I was working on a project for TV and the Scarlett had problems switching from 44.1 to 48.

Hi

DHousden wrote:

I just downloaded Play v4.0.12 which was only released a few weeks ago so I have the most recent version of it.

Does it work OKwhen you are NOT using Play 4?

CCT