Level 1

5 points

clipping sound on new iMac when Logix X is running

I just got the new iMac that was released two weeks ago yesterday. All I did was set it up with Logic X, Main Stage, and Aperture all from the app store. nothing else was put on it. I opened up logic just to check it out and see how much faster the performance would be. I just wanted to give it a quick test and played some apple loops I immideatly noticed it was making a clipping sound randomly. The meters were not peaking everything was in the green and if you turned down the gain the clipping just got quiteter. I called apple support thinking it was a hardware issue. They had me do some trouble shooting like playing the same loops through quicktime and the clipping persisted. they also had me play a youtube video to see if I could hear the clipping. It wasn't as noticible but it was there. Apple decided that it would be a good idea to reformat the computer tomorrow and start over. Sounded fine to me seeing how I didn't have much installed yet. I did a little more trouble shooting on my own after I got off the phone with apple. First I made a copy of three apple loops and put them on my desktop then restarted the computer. Then after a fresh restart and nothing running I opened one of the apple loops off the desktop with quicktime player and it sounded great no clipping. Same with You Tube. I then opened Logic Pro X. Did nothing with it but minimize it. I then went back to quick time player and tried to play the loop again. This time the clipping was back. Same with You Tube.

My conclusion for some reason when logic is running the audio makes a random clipping sound no matter what audio program you play the audio through. (Clipping sound comes out of the internal speakers as well as headphones)

All of my software is up to date.

I am running:

27" iMac

3.5GHz Intel Core i7

16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

If anybody has experienced this same problem or has any recomendations they would be greatly appreciated.

I am going to reformat in the morning and try and start again.

I will post my results

Thank you,

Aaron

iMac (27-inch, Late 2013), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Oct 8, 2013 11:22 PM

998 replies

Deadphish42 Author

Level 1

5 points

Nov 17, 2013 11:09 AM in response to timman6127

Sorry guys. I feel dumb. I should have read further.

poinggo

Level 1

0 points

Nov 17, 2013 12:28 PM in response to Deadphish42

Another validation coming up.

iMac 27 with FD. Apogee ONE USB. All kinds of problems as described before.

Booted from external drive with Mavericks.

Absolutely NO problems at all. All clean with Logic, recording guitars and guitars and more guitars.

Again... It looks like Apogee is in the clear and fingers point strongly at fusion drive management.

Wound

Level 1

0 points

Nov 17, 2013 12:32 PM in response to poinggo

Poinggo,

How do you boot from external?

I suppose you get mavericks on there somehow?

What's involved?

Where can I look to know how to do thus cleanly and correctly?

Nov 17, 2013 12:48 PM in response to poinggo

Thanks poinggo for the report..

Much appreciated.... and glad to hear the workaround is doing the trick for you until such time as a fix is forthcoming....

Cheers!

poinggo

Level 1

0 points

Nov 17, 2013 1:04 PM in response to Wound

Hi Wound,

1st you should have downloaded Mavericks from the app store. If you did, you should have Install OSX Mavericks under /Applications.

2nd connect an external USB or FW disk to your mac and format it with disk utility as Mac OS Extended Journaled

3rd run "Install OSX Mavericks". Choose the external drive as destination

wait, wait wait, reboot, wait, reboot etc... and you should be done.

Whenever you want to switch boot back to the internal disk just choose startup disk under system prefs.

Cheers

Wound

Level 1

0 points

Nov 17, 2013 1:07 PM in response to poinggo

Thanks man..

Sounds straight forward...for a change haha.

So I can leave everything on internal like logic etc.?

poinggo

Level 1

0 points

Nov 17, 2013 1:09 PM in response to Wound

Wound wrote:

So I can leave everything on internal like logic etc.?

I guess so. For my test, I copied Logic to the external drive.

Nov 17, 2013 1:18 PM in response to Wound

Wound,

You should reinstall everything you need that you had on your internal.. onto your external.. so your internal FD drive is not used.... The theory being your FD will not then push/flood data onto the bus which is the route cause of the issue I believe.

You could also copy everything from the internal to the external rather than reinstall... but, there are some possible problems in doing that, that reinstalling from scratch can and does avoid.. The choice is yours....

Personally I'd go the reinstall route myself... and only install what you really need. but again,the choice is yours...

Wound

Level 1

0 points

Nov 17, 2013 1:24 PM in response to The Art Of Sound

Cool, thx.

So I will try this.

Can I leave the internal as is so that when (if) the comes I can go back to fusion heaven?

Wound

Level 1

0 points

Nov 17, 2013 1:25 PM in response to Wound

"When (if)The fix comes" that should read.

Deadphish42 Author

Level 1

5 points

Nov 17, 2013 1:34 PM in response to poinggo

Hi Poinggo,

I too would like to set up my late 2013 FD iMac to boot and run from a external drive. Is there a article or thread you could point me to on how to set this up.

Is there a hard drive of choice you use?

Are you using a 7200 RPM or SSD?

Is your boot drive hooked up TB or USB 3?

My new plan is to wait for a fix but I would like my warranty to start when that fix comes so I was planning in setting up the new computer to boot and run off of a external then Apple gives me two weeks to send the old one back so they can remove the hold they have on my credit card at the same time that I do that I will be setting up a return for the new computer if no fix has been released yet. It takes about a month for that process to go through all the way each time from beginning to end but each time I do it my warranty gets reset. And I'm assuming if I had a external drive set up with mavericks and all my software and libraries on it I should be able to just boot from that each time I change computers. That's my assumption anyway. I'm hoping I won't have to do it more than one or two more times we should be into 2014 by then.

Ok guys tear it up its only a assumption I'd like to hear I'm wrong before I waste time trying.

Thanks again if you can point me to a article or thread on everything I would have to do to set this up it would be greatly appreciated,

DeadPhish

Nov 17, 2013 1:36 PM in response to Wound

Yes.. You can leave the FD alone... and test with booting from the Ext HD. So far all but one person have reported no further issues after using the workaround.. and as yet, I'm not sure why the one person who continued to have issues, has them but I suspect something is causing their problems..

So give it a try.. You don't have anything to lose but some time 🙂

Wound

Level 1

0 points

Nov 17, 2013 1:41 PM in response to The Art Of Sound

That's good news,

When booting up do we need to log in to the new drive as a different user etc?

That would be quite handy if so...I could keep an all audio HDD and the fusion side for games when I'm not feeling productive :)

poinggo

Level 1

0 points

Nov 17, 2013 1:43 PM in response to Deadphish42

Deadphish42 wrote:

I too would like to set up my late 2013 FD iMac to boot and run from a external drive. Is there a article or thread you could point me to on how to set this up.

I don't really know but I left a few pointers a couple of posts up. It's really quite simple if you have downloaded Mavericks to your current drive. If you haven't do it from the App Store (it's free) and follow those steps.

Is there a hard drive of choice you use?

Are you using a 7200 RPM or SSD?

Is your boot drive hooked up TB or USB 3?

My purpose was testing so I grabbed the 1st external disk I had around me. It was a slowish toshiba USB3.

For a longer lasting setup I would go either for a USB 3 or Thunderbolt with a 7200 RPM disk (non green). I personally like Seagate's Barracuda series.

Anyway, I will use the external disk only when I have to do some recordings. That's why I will keep it as simple as possible. Logic + Loops + a few other pieces of software I use for audio. For the most part I'll be using my regular FD. Swapping boot from one to the other is so easy that I guess I can live with this until Apple comes up with a fix.

Wound

Level 1

0 points

Nov 17, 2013 1:45 PM in response to poinggo

Where is the boot swap option?

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clipping sound on new iMac when Logix X is running