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Logic Pro I need help! :) Sound quality lags after recording a few tracks

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Andreas Berg

New Member
Hi
I like using Logic, but I have some difficulties that I've never been able to figure out. Once I get going on a project after recording a short guitar track and some Logic soft synths, (maybe 4-5 tracks in total) the sounds starts to lag or buzz like a bad connection on the radio. I'm running a late 2013 MacBook Pro 13" with 2,4 Ghz intel and 8 GB ram. I'm running the sounds from a thunderbolt external hard drive, but I've experienced the problem when I stored the plug-in sounds locally as well. It's starting to get quite frustrating, because I can never seem to record more than 1 min of sound before it really has problems.

I've been thinking that this is a RAM problem, but I seem to have the RAM required in the specs from Apple. Anyone experienced this before?
 
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Watch the CPU meter in the transport section. I am pretty sure your CPU cannot handle all the stuff you are using. It's going red, right? This is what we hear as crackles and dropouts.

You can increase the buffer size in global preferences. If that gives you too much latency for live recording, leave it to a reasonable value (most likely you have to live with 64-512 samples) and look what you can do with the existing tracks. Freezing may help. Or finish some tracks, bounce them to audio and disable everything in the original track.

However, live recording with a lot of big effect plugins does seldom work. You got to find a compromise. Switch off tracks you do not really need. You may also try "Low Latency Mode" which basically switches off plugins above a certain latency during recording.
 
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Thanks, Peter.

I am running on 64 samples and low latency, and I try not to use effects. In general this happens when I use a guitar track, a drum track, a bass track (soft synth), a piano and a pad. Yesterday it happened when I wanted a piano intro and I moved the other tracks 16 bars. When I started recording the software piano and nothing else, it started having problems.

I'll try finishing the tracks and bounce them.
 
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Same here, on a MacBook Pro mid 2012 with 8 GB RAM.
First ideas: 32-64 samples.
Getting serious: 128 samples.
Normal work: 256-512 samples.
Arrange/Mix: 1024 samples (my standard).

If we don't accept that:
Forget about total recall and finish tracks as a musician.
Or get a newer bigger machine and hope that Apple ads are close to truth.
 
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I'm totally happy with 256 for recording my saxophone, I am getting quite a lot of nil latency sound just from the headphones not sealing totally. Any perceivable latency after that just seems like predelay on the reverb, or playalong in a hall where the sound bounces back at you off the wall.

When recording session musicians I find that drummers and guitarist are OK with some latency, but keyboard players tend to be the finnicky ones and complain.
 
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Andreas Berg said:
It might be an issue with other hardware as well. I'm using a Novation Impulse49 for soft synths. I'm having problems there too, I think.
Click to expand...

A keyboard or MIDI interface can be too slow, or you have too much traffic, a MIDI loop or such. Or you have some Automap or Control Surface activated that can lead to glitches during performance. But if you have audio problems like crackles and dropouts, they most likely come from the softsynths you use. Sculpture, Bazille, Kontakt, the bigger the more CPU do they need. Check the CPU meter in the transport area, it should tell you when it is time to rise the buffer size.

Just to mention it: There are badly programmed or outdated instruments on the market, which may fool you. They make you think that your computer or interface are not ok, but actually it is their own program code.
 
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