Logic Pro 7 & earlier Logic 5 glitches

[djstkora]

Hi everyone, I'm new to this group, although I am an experienced Logic user, used Logic since version 4. (for composing, arranging and producing music, and creating MIDI files)

I'm currently running Logic 5.5.1 on my new(ish) laptop HP Notebook PC 550 (or something like that), anyway it has 2Gs of RAM. I've noticed that Logic won't import MIDI files using the menu option, but will insert them through "drag-n-drop" function, and this, I discovered on an XLN Audio forum is a physical memory size limitation... or not? Does anyone have some clarification on this behavior of the program? Are there other functions which are affected by the amount of memory? Are there remedies, other then the one described here?

Logic is such a complex beast, I'm running it on Windows XP, and I've seen so many different error messages coming from it, although all them were handled gracefully by the program. Except that, sometimes, it will corrupt the song file when it gets stuck. But that's not a problem if you regurarly back up the project...

etc...

 

[JuanTahnahmahrah]

If you are familiar with XP, you can modify how many "applets" are running in the background. Logic works best with nothing but the essential stuff. For sure, be certain no virus protection stuff and no network drivers are running. There are a myriad of background things that get loaded by programs that "auto-update" themselves. There are instructions on how to optimize XP for ProTools that you can download from the Avid site (what's good for the goose is good for the gander...). It has some advanced ways of minimizing the operating system's way of hogging lower memory. I used 5.51 for a while, but never loaded virtual instruments. I used wordclock to sync two separate machines, with one running Logic under XP and the other running Gigastudio. It was very stable, but much harder to get set up than the current 8.0 and 9.0 versions. I finally bought some Macs just to dump the Windows version, but it was pretty capable (if you have the patience of a tortoise, anyway...).

 

[ckmusic]

Logic (Win) has a problem with addressing more than 1gb RAM. I experienced this twice before, where I upgraded laptop and desktop with more RAM. Had the same prob as you (sys refuses to import MIDI files). But it causes another prob as well: sys refuses to merge audio regions (error message something like "not enough memory to perform this op" when you know full well you've enough memory to supply all of Africa's elephants!!). Solution: In your root of your C:\ drive, look for "boot.ini" file. Open it with Notepad. Add this syntax: maxmem=1024. Save the file. Reboot. Open Logic and test both MIDI file import and adudio-regions merge. If it works, close Logic. Find the boot.ini file again and change the maxmem entry to 1536. Reboot and test again. If it does not work at 1536, go back to the 1024 number. The reason I give you these 2 different mem settings is that Logic 5 is quirky. In some pc's it will work on 1024 and not 1536. But if it can work on 1536 (1.5 gb RAM) it's best, because it allows the use of more plug-ins and internal FX.

 

[ckmusic]

Addition to above: I tried the 1536 number on my laptop... it worked. Then did it on my desktop, and it did'nt work (audio-regions merge)... it glues the 2 regions into one, but does'nt really create that 3rd audio file which the sys auto-tiles as "audio-01 and audio-02 merged". So tomorrow I will try the 1024 number on the desktop and see if that works.

Anyway, here's what your boot.ini should look like:-

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /maxmem=1536 /NoExecute=Optin

 

[grombka]

The information You provided is invaluable. There is so many things I like about Logic that despite the fact that the 5.5.1 is so old and many plug-ins won't work with it etc. I still prefer it over other daw's. "Out of memory", "Not enough memory" errors were such a pain in You know what, recently, that I was almost losing my patience with Logic altogether. Now, with your excellent advice, it looks as if I was capable of working smoothly with Logic using slightly less memory (1.5 GB instead of 2 GB). Thanks a lot!