Logic Pro-X issue (?) when using more than 8 Processing Threads

There have been several reports that Logic Pro X doesn't play well with more cores than 8...... with certain hardware. Hopefully this issue will be fixed in a future update to Logic or OS X. For now manually setting it to 8 seems to limits these odd issues....

Note: If you are using certain 3rd party plugins (Kontakt, Zebra/DarkZebra and Diva to name but a few) you can set them to use all your available cores which seems to work with Logic despite the 8 core setting for Logic itself.

Arionas wrote:

Thanks a lot Art Of Sound for your helpful response.

I've tried with different sound cards (also with Mac's onboard) and everywhere the same. I don't thing the problem is related with the sound card.

Yes. The issue isn't related to the sound card.. but simply how Logic handles/works with multiple cores and for whatever reason, if there are more than 8 available, it starts having an issue with latency.... if it is allowed to utilize them all.. Luckily the ability to limit it's usage of cores to 8 seems to eliminate the problem but I too, hope the issue is fixed sooner rather than later.

The issue was supposed to be partially addressed/fixed in 10.0.7 as per it's release notes..

Logic now supports up to 24 processing threads on computers with 12 cores.

But that wasn't overly successful it seems ....................

*By the way, I've listened some of your music tracks at soundcloud (Facing green album).

Congratulations for your music my friend.

Thank you, both for your kind comments... and for taking the time to listen too. Much appreciated my friend...

Cheers..

Nigel

Hi, You're problem is the nearest thing to mine that I can find in these message boards. I wondered if you also had these issues with logic x.

1. graphics of all plug-ins (native or third party) meter half a beat early on all audio tracks. (just put a compressor on snare drum to check this)

2. record ready switch on each audio track when pressed stops this strange early look, but also stops the meter reading playback even though you are playing back and you're hearing it. (my guess is that the meter is switching to read Input and you haven't hit the record master ((star key)) yet)

3. i.p. switch on each audio track does not switch meter to input. It carries on reading playback.

4. If you hit a mute button you're simply too late. You hear the next kick drum or whatever, then it mutes.

5. the faders in the mix page are also working at a very strange time. I.e what you think you pushed up you missed. You're too late, and if you yank a fader down to "off" suddenly the sound (rather like the late mute) disappears later than you think you were attempting).

All this is putting me in the hospital. Logic x "kind of" runs and you can "sort of" use it. But it's got a mass of issues.

I'm also using a macpro 4.1. As far as I can tell reading on line...This computer is supposed to be ideal for this application.

oh by the way I've reinstalled the os and logic x several times.

For what its worth,

I cannot recreate any of the issues you are reporting here.... with LPX10.1.1 and 10.10.3

They all sound like they are latency related problems.. so maybe it's something misconfigured in your system or it's a hardware configuration/driver problem... but it's hard to say exactly as again, i cannot recreate these issues on any of my LPX testbed rigs here... Everything works very snappily here... on my 2011 iMac, 2015 5K iMac and 2015 Mac Pro...

Greg,

Did you do as the original poster suggested, reduce the number of processing threads so Logic is not using any "virtual" CPU cores, only the hardware CPU cores.

Thanks for your reply. I can't try changing the amount of threads at the moment. The computer is at Apple being investigated. Apple helpline guy didn't make the suggestion to alter the amount of threads after weeks of back and forth on the phone and emails. So far the logic x expert at Apple suggests he can't see a problem. If that's the case, Logic x is unusable. I know that's nonsense. I've seen it running fine on friends' computers.

I was just hoping to find someone else who'd seen the same issues.

hi, thanks for your reply and thanks for checking to see if you had any of these issues. This is a second hand computer bought from a reputable mac refurb shop to do this job, and I simply have an OS and Logic installed with nothing else right now. I was just hoping to find someone else with the same issues, since Apple are saying they can't see a problem. (should have gone to spec savers then) lol. Once again much appreciate you checking.

You're welcome..

and as Pancenter said, with Macs with more than 8 Cores... reducing the number of cores in Logic's prefs to 8 or less, seems to fix the issue that some people had....

Also if that doesn't fix it.. when you get your Mac back.... please post up a screenshot of the Logic Preferences/Audio/Devices tab screen.... so we can check everything is correctly configured for you...

Cheers..

Nigel

gregoryfromhighwycombe wrote:

Thanks for your reply. I can't try changing the amount of threads at the moment. The computer is at Apple being investigated. Apple helpline guy didn't make the suggestion to alter the amount of threads after weeks of back and forth on the phone and emails.

No offense to Apple's support but information on the user boards is usually much more performance oriented and up to date as you have people using the application and hardware on a daily basis. When you get your computer back select the number of processing threads (set to 8) In Logic's preferences/audio and see if there isn't a vast improvement. This setting won't affect the computer or any other applications.

Hi everyone. Re my MacPro 5.1 8 core and the terrible timing of the GUI. It took ages to get to the bottom of this. I made a presumption that the i,p and record ready switch was all part of the same problem. In fact that is just a bizarre bit of programming that we all have to live with. The issue with the unusable GUI timing was in the end fixed by changing the number of threads to 4. Even 8 was still not quite right, just a lot closer. It seems that Apple hasn't made the Automatic settings work on most MacPros. Installing this software on a slightly later 6 core MacPro actually works. The Automatic setting changes by itself to 6 in the number of threads field. This problem has taken a year to resolve and I've had the computer rebuilt on a new mother board and then had the computer replaced, as I was told I was the only person in the world with this problem. I'm not best pleased about this. I have tried installing logic x on 3 other MacPros of different specs apart from the very recent 6 core and it didn't work properly on any of them without altering the number of threads.

I can stop going out of my mind now.

regards Gregg Jackman.

Hi Greg,

so, it seems, there is no real solution to this problem.

I just bought a 2012 12-core Mac Pro and have the same problem. Reducing the number of threads reduces the plugin latency but even with 2 threads it needs longer than using Logic Pro 9 or another DAW or using my older 4-Core Mac Pro 2009 with Logic Pro X 10.2.

The biggest problem is: I can not imagine how I could ever work with that.

Guido

Hi Guido,

It seems strangely random on mac pros. My friend has a 6 core mid 2012 and it works fine on that. My 8 core mid 2010 was so bad I was led to believe there was something wrong with my computer by Apple support. They said they'd never seen it behave this way before, when I sent a video in to them. The shop rebuilt the computer and finally replaced it, to no avail. And it turned out to be that this software just doesn't run well on the professional machines that you'll find in most professional studios. I've witnessed it working fine on mac laptops and an I-mac. It's rubbish on mac pros. I'm coming to the conclusion that this program looks brilliant on the face of it, but does seem to be full of problems when you drill down. I have a list of moans that wouldn't be very helpful to post here, since this thread is really about amount of processing threads to fix the GUI timing problem.

Gregg Jackman.

It's pretty obvious that Apple's not marketing to the professional element anymore. The latest operating systems are top heavy and Logic's graphics sub-systems aren't keeping up with the operating system's graphic routines so it takes a lot of to run Logic on large hi-res monitor. I have limited experience with Yosemite and El Capitan but they both require considerable more CPU to run than the older systems. Also, Apple is releasing a new operating system almost every year and giving it away... people install it, their machine runs terribly, oops.... time to buy new hardware $$$. it's difficult for and old Application like Logic (25-30 years?) to keep adapting to the recent operating systems, Apple is trying to bring OSX and iOS under one development program and Logic is not as quick to adapt. Although from what I've seen of Logic-x there are some nice new features, but I don't really need any of them.

I still run Logic 9 on a 2010 Mac pro with Snow Leopard, it's a brilliant combination that never causes problems

Thanks for the answers.

It's bad, but luckily I can give back the 5,1 12-core Mac 2012 and I still have my 4,1 4-core Mac 2009.

I've been working with Logic since it was Notator SL by C-Lab in 1990 and I'm not in the business so there is no need to switch to ProTools.

Maybe with some luck Apple will fix the problem some day and who knows, maybe I can get a 12-core Mac for 1000 € less by then.

Guido