Is it my Mac or Logic X or something else?

Applepicker,

There are many possible causes for the issue you are seeing... but mainly they tend to be workflow/plugin/method related in one way or another...

In other words it's how you are doing things and what you are using, ( 3rd party plugins such as certain Waves's ones are notorious for causing such problems especially if they are not legal versions I might add... but the legal versions can and do also cause such issues too) that usually is found to be the root cause of such issues.. and therefore it's hard for any 3rd party to pinpoint the exact cause.

What I would suggest is that you post up a screenshot of your entire mixer for a project that is displaying this issue plus a screenshot of OS X's Activity Monitor (viewing the CPU % tab) when you are having this issue and then post them up here so we can take a look and see if anything obvious stands out...

Hi,

I found this from another thread and it cured my mix which overloaded on silence... Try saving your project as a Package rather than a Folder (annoyingly you lose your bounces folder but hey).

Now if only I could stop Logic have a **** fit flying out sync whenever I edit midi notes whilst it's playing. Does anyone else have this too?

See if the Package helps sir!

B

Ben Collier wrote:

Hi,

I found this from another thread and it cured my mix which overloaded on silence...

B

Overload on silence?

Yup, played the track from the end where no regions/audio are present and it still tripped up/spiked on a 12-core 2012 Mac Pro with 24gigs of ram. On the one hand it handles lots of audio better and does sound cleaner than LP9, but on the other it does these stupid stupid things!

Art of Sound,

CLA vox seems to be the culprit, or one of them, but it is only causing problems with new sessions. Can't figure out why. None of my old sessions, where I use dozens of instances of CLA vox, midi, etc and every other plugin, had zero cpu spikes. Everything was cool. I've tried time machining back to before I had problems, doing everything I could think of, reinstalling everything, etc. Can't seem to fix it. Thanks in advance for the help!

Ok attached here are 3 photos. Buffer is set to 512. If I set it to 1024 then it can get by without stalling completely, but there are so many artifacts its impossible to mix, and of course its impossible to record at that buffer size. The first pic is of a very small session. Only using 5 separate instances of CLA vox and as you can see, the final cpu is spiked. If I were to add one more CLA, it wouldn't play at all.

This second photo is a medium sized session, a newer one. It can't even run unless I jack up the buffer to 1024 and it still sounds terrible. There are 15 instances of CLA vox.

Ok this last photo is of a session that must have about 70 tracks, tons of plugins, and maybe 20 instances of CLA. as you can see, the cpu workload is evenly spread, and I've had no problems. It runs smooth at even 128 buffer. This is one of these older sessions. By older, I mean like 3 weeks.

Sorry ApplePicker, but due to the continuing bug in the forum software, I cannot see any of your screenshots....

They really need to get this annoying forum display bug fixed for sure!

The Art Of Sound wrote:

Sorry ApplePicker, but due to the continuing bug in the forum software, I cannot see any of your screenshots....

They really need to get this annoying forum display bug fixed for sure!

Yep, same here, I can see the small version in the post, clicking on one looks like something is loading but never displays.

I just wanted to follow up: since the original post and since disabling WiFi (about two months ago), I have had no spikes in the CPU when idle. Whether it's an issue of hardware or WiFi-dependent software (i.e. Adobe's Creative Cloud), I'm not sure.

If the OP is still following this thread, have you found a fix based on any of the fellow members' suggestions (or solutions elsewhere)?

Yes this is definitely something to do with the Internet connection! I took your advice about wifi and turned it off and attempted to use just an ethernet cord. That is what really allowed me to see instantaneous changes as plugged and unplugged the cord. Now to be fair, I am running a stacked patch with over 10 instruments but I can get it turn perfectly with very little CPU usage if I unplug the ethernet cable and quit Mail. It seems that anything that touches the network aspect of the OS while logic is open triggers the spikes. After each plug or unplug I press play to clear or initiate the spike and it's conclusive that it is directly related to the network aspect of the OS.

If someone happens to update to Yosemite and finds that this scenario has been corrected in that OS please let me know. It would be the one reason for me to update to it as I have just finished buying all of the updates to all of my audio and video plugin suites for Mavericks.

I had a similar situation. Have you checked for any errors in OS X's Console application? It might prompt some insight into the problem.

My situation was with a MacBook Pro i5 and it had both CPU and HD spikes. Turns out the old advice about using a secondary/work disk for Logic's project/folders solved the problem completely. My interface uses Firewire, so the secondary disk is USB2. Interestingly a fast SanDisk SD card was unreliable - it would change from read-write to read-only on-the-fly for no obvious reason.

Wow! I wish I read this post two months ago... I've been having the exact CPU overload issues with my 27" mid 2010 iMac 3.2GHz i3 with 16 GB Ram. While running Logic X (Yosemite) I was getting random overload messages accompanied by crappy audio that sounded like it was running through a slicer. Did anything and everything to resolve the problem with no success. Started shutting down everything but Logic X to see if that would free up the CPU and just for the heck of it I disabled my wifi connection and it instantly cleared up! I'm glad it was a simple and "no cost" solution to this problem however it has been extremely frustrating recording for the past few months.

Ciao

I got a brand new 27" Mac 3.2 GHZ i5 with 24 GB in November 2014. Logic Pro X worked flawlessly until a few weeks ago. Granted the project I am working on is maxing out the computer's CPU. I'm running over 60 tracks with Slate Digital Virtual Console on almost every strip, two instances of BFD3, four tracks of fairly busy EXS 24 VI, stacked Waves CLA and Comp compressors on a dozen tracks and while all of this was understandably causing core spikes on startup and when the virtual instrument tracks kick in the problem would go away by increasing the buffer to 1024.

Where I lost my mind, however, is with bounces. Everything would bounce fine except for random cymbal hits on BFD3. I did ALL the troubleshooting for both Logic Pro X and BFD3 to no avail. I mean, the bounce would sometimes be full of unwanted cymbal chokes or even worse, just one cymbal would choke with the rest of the bounce pristine. Before reading this I thought what could possibly be going on in the background that would interfere and just at that moment a Facebook notification popped up in notification center even though safari wasn't running. I was also getting email notifications even though Mail wasn't running. I turned off the Wifi and bingo! Problem (seems to be) solved!

Just to confim I played the project back starting with Wifi off and when I turned it on during playback the CPU meter went crazy.

So there you go. Turn off your wifi. Keep in touch with the world while you work with your tablet or smartphone.