Serious lag in LP9/X in Yosemite

For the last couple of weeks 10.10 has been working perfectly on both my 2012 Mac Pro & 2011 MacBook Pro (both running with M4 SSD's as boot drives), however in the last week I started to notice that both Logic 9 & X were suffering from some serious input lag issues where by Logic will lock up when playing back, making editing a real pain.


Ie - you play a small section of a vocal to work on timing and it'll lock up and either play the half-beat cycle loop repeatedly or carry on playing if cycle isn't engaged. What's worse is that these lock ups appear to be getting longer and longer before it springs back to life, manically catching up with the commands I've been pressing when it left orbit.


Weirdly enough whilst it was in lunar orbit I opened up iCal to update some stuff and when I went to quit (cmd Q) Logic suddenly bounced up and down asking if I wanted to save and iCal remained open, implying that these lock ups are system wide not just within Logic and it hadn't noticed iCal was the app in focus despite me adding dates into it. When I open the activity monitor, nothing is kicking up a fuss or hogging loads of CPU.


Any ideas? Also is there an easy way of reverting to 10.9 from a bootable backup short of having to reinstall everything? I'm guessing the Migration Assistant won't see the backup as it's a newer OS...


B

Mac Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2), 512GB Mac SSD, 3TB, 512 & 1TB HDs

Posted on Nov 7, 2014 8:41 AM

Reply
39 replies

Nov 18, 2014 10:24 AM in response to The Art Of Sound

Interesting - so I just booted up my second internal OS X drive which I stupidly backed up with 10.10 thinking I could migrate back to a 10.9.5 backup, and miraculously the lag issues seem to have gone (I've only been running of this drive for an hour or so) despite most of the memory being used up to index the drive. This drive is not a Crucial SSD but an Apple 640GB HDD from an older Mac Pro.


Maybe this is to do with this KEXTING thing after all? Naughty Apple trying to break things...

Nov 28, 2014 6:32 AM in response to The Art Of Sound

I've noticed some other weird things as Yosemite starts to fall apart and wondered if anyone else was having problems.


- Yosemite seems to have killed the ability to have the Project Templates folder aliased to DropBox to share across two systems.

- Yosemite seems to have given Logic 9 a memory blank where any I/O Labels you had in place for years revert back to labels used in Logic 8 (?!), even with the Logic preferences being trashed

- Yosemite seems to have forgotten to save key commands.


I'd be interested to know what issues the Pro film guys have been having, and whether the new 2013 Mac Pro would work under Mavericks?

Nov 30, 2014 12:18 PM in response to test12

Test21,


This is why it is recommended that Users not upgrade to Yosemite.... or any major update to OS X right away.


It always seems to happen.. A major update to OS X breaks something with Logic.... or with external device drivers ... or whatever else...


Advice before upgrading to Yosemite


Unfortunately at the moment.. and it may well be some time yet before real fixes are available.. it is recommended that users roll back to the previous OS X / Logic Combo whenever possible.. using their backups... and stick with that combo until such time as these issues are properly resolved and fixes fully tested.

Dec 6, 2014 6:25 PM in response to The Art Of Sound

i am a rather new user of apple's computers i have a retina MBP 2013. something i learned before is if your daw is working properly on a system never update till the later versions of the next os. the gripe is that on my retina laptop logic X graphic UI is laggy as (fill in the blanks). it is already clear that logic x performs better on some 2009 macbook pros. i was hoping for yosemite to fix this issue but it seems it hasn't succeeded yet. looking forward for it to happen though

Dec 22, 2014 10:13 AM in response to Ben Collier

Same problem here in two of the recording studio's in the building.


Since we have been forced to upgrade to Mavericks/ Yosemite (NI doesn't support earlier systems), Logic9 has two interesting problems:

• An input lag. Press a control, mixer, any plug in and it can take up to around 38 seconds to respond. Obviously impossible to work with. Sometimes we get a few minutes where it's okay but can only work for around 20 mins at a time. We usually work 12 hour days so that's piled up.

• Completely white/ Blank screens and crash. Most of our logic sessions now have (crashed)(crashed)(crashed)(crashed)(crashed) tagged on to them.


The last few years in audio production with apple have been incredibly frustrating. They're moving too fast and making too many money-wasting mistakes for us small media businesses to keep up with.


User uploaded fileUser uploaded file

Dec 22, 2014 10:39 AM in response to www.andybird.net

1) Input Lag - I have never had this problem at all with LP9 and any OS X until Yosemite... so for example my current testbed Mac with 10.9.4 and LP9.1.8 works fine with no lag at all... On my testbed Mac that has Yosemite installed with LP9/.1.8 is just plain unstable so i can't tell if I have input lag or not!


I suspect the lag with LP9 and earlier OS X versions.. as has been widely discussed here and elsewhere.. is actually related to different hardware and software incompatibilities and configurations... and the different working methods used...


2) Crashes - LP9.1.8 and Mavericks 10.9.4 is completely stable here and has been so for a long time. I haven't upgraded to 10.9.5 because of the known issues with certain older plugins and issues regarding sandboxing I believe... but I do know of some people who claim stability under 10.9.5 too....


A copy of an example of the full crash log, if you could post one up here, might point to a possible cause or causes... Again, I have found certain hardware configurations such as Macs with Retina displays or Hybrid HDs, seem much more susceptible to such issues than others... but more often it's simply a faulty upgrade/update at some point.. that has led to such instability and crashes... much akin to the infamous Prokit update problem from the Leopard to SL update days... that took 2 years to properly identify and fix!


Note: Personally i am still using LP9.1.5 and 10.6.8 for my main studio rig as that has proven itself to be the most stable and efficient combination at this time.. and while you are right, that NI officially requires later versions of OS X these days, there are workarounds you can use to enable the latest versions of Kontakt for example to run under Snow Leopard... Often the issue is not about the plugins themselves running under SL.. but the installers not installing under older OS X versions so the use of Pacifist to manually install, is one such workaround I have used myself


Of course that doesn't resolve the issue of modern hardware not being supported by SL... which then rules out using such hardware/OS X combos... but again, there is a wealth of info out there.. regarding unofficial workarounds that can elevate such problems.... mainly from sites/forums that support non apple hardware computers....

Dec 22, 2014 10:43 AM in response to www.andybird.net

Over the past week I've had three calls from local users whom I used to do support for, these aren't pro studios, mainly individuals with personal studios who've been at it quite some time. Those who've stuck with Logic 9 are having major problems on Mavericks and found Yosemite unusable. Logic-X does better than L9 on Mavericks and Yosemite but suffers significant performance issues, slow graphics, reduced track count, general instability.


It was a relief to Not be able to help or try and troubleshoot their systems, not because I didn't want to but because I've stuck with a working Snow Leopard/L9 combination. I generally attribute the L9-Mavericks instability to 3rd party plugins but it's difficult to tell. No one wanted to do a clean install of Mavericks which may have helped the performance issues.


It's pretty obvious that continued OS development and Apple's urgency in getting OSX and iOS under a single development platform is causing major problems with pro apps. Users who've purchased new machines that only run Yosemite or newer may never have the stability and performance of L9 running on and older computer/OSX version.

Dec 22, 2014 1:45 PM in response to Pancenter

I have a similar job! Schools and private institutions with Logic/Mac setups (since "Micrologic"… anyone else remember that? Recording Midi Sysex xxxx's into Logic from W30's and Wavestations…?).


Anyway:

Art of Sound had some good points, specially about the Retina/Hybrid thing. And prokit! That was a big fail for us and stuffed up the motion graphics/video production pipeline for a while there. Another reason to keep an old mac around. I still have a Snow Leopard studio backup drive for Logic, which is stable as a tank.

PARTIAL SOLUTION

Blergh, Going through each plug in one by one and figuring out which are lagging the most.

Some certainly were not helping the problem, some logic sessions simply won't load any longer in Yosemite, but an update of most of the plug in's did bring the problem back to a workable state with fewer crashes. They're mainly kernel panics btw so no crash logs.


Thanks people. This has been a good wad of answers:)



---------

As a side note, workarounds are great for us oldies but most musicians young and old will simply switch off and give up if the tech requires anything more complex than what serves their needs at that time. Specially if it's uncreative.

We generally try to ramp up their experience without introducing complexity: guaranteed that if a traditional folk musician (for instance) has to learn something as uncreative as "which version works with what version and why the screen keeps swiping and notifying them of stocks…", they will give up immediately, just watch the eyes glaze over and the hand reach for a guitar and a tape machine…

Dec 22, 2014 3:19 PM in response to www.andybird.net

www.andybird.net wrote:


I have a similar job! Schools and private institutions with Logic/Mac setups (since "Micrologic"… anyone else remember that? Recording Midi Sysex xxxx's into Logic from W30's and Wavestations…?).


As a side note, workarounds are great for us oldies but most musicians young and old will simply switch off and give up if the tech requires anything more complex than what serves their needs at that time. Specially if it's uncreative.

We generally try to ramp up their experience without introducing complexity: guaranteed that if a traditional folk musician (for instance) has to learn something as uncreative as "which version works with what version and why the screen keeps swiping and notifying them of stocks…", they will give up immediately, just watch the eyes glaze over and the hand reach for a guitar and a tape machine…


Actually, I do remember recording sysex, from many modules, as I remember, the W30 could actually save samples via MIDI, it took quite some time, much longer than the current attention span of most adults. I go way back to DX-7 programming using a Commodore 64, and what could be the very first version of what became Logic Scoretrack by C-Lab. (written by Gerhard Lengeling).


You're right about ramping up experience without introducing too much complexity, but really, as a part time educator... anything can be creative if it's approached correctly and connections are made. (but I know what you mean) Good luck, keep us informed. My main disappointment these days and it's directly related to what you just posted. People would rather be shown something than reading and trying to figure it out on their own. There's been users in this forum that have searched for days on youtube posting "please help me" over and over rather than take a few minutes to search the manual or Logic's help file.

It's a different type of learning that's happening and can appreciate that it's in the service of being creative. Personally, I'd rather see the blend of the two.

Mar 9, 2015 4:06 PM in response to The Art Of Sound

POSSIBLE £35 solution.


Hey all. I can't guarantee this will work for everyone but after months of lag and serious interface problems running Logic 9 in Mav and Yosemite, I went for a last resort and bought an Nvidia GT610 (£28-35 Amazon).


So far, after a late night hour, testing with the stuff that normally slows it down (8IO/Kontakt NI/Absynth) things are running far smoother and with 3G in the sample server. I will update if I bump into problems but so far the interface is behaving like it used to pre-Mavericks and Yosemite.


It's looking like good news and perhaps another few albums working on this old 2009 Quad 2.6ghz (16Gb DDR3) stinky old, nasty old Mac tower!

yep…

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Serious lag in LP9/X in Yosemite

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.