Logic Pro System Overload on previously happy projects.

[peterlemer]

When starting an existing project (on the bench for over 2 years), I'm now getting a System Overload warning on first playback.
Press start, there's a pause, a click, and up comes the alert.
Start again, and all plays smoothly.

I attach the alert, and also the prefs

I've also quat all open applications.

Activity Monitor shows no sudden peaks.

Any ideas?

pete

PS: PREVIOUSLY, not PRECIOUSLY!

 

[Markdvc]

I experienced this on a single project, always in exactly the same position and only on playing the project for the first time. I OK the system overload warning, start playback again, and everything runs smoothly. This is on my current Mac Studio Ultra, at least 6 times faster than the Mac Pro 5.1 it replaced, and on which the particular project was started. I suspect the presence of some plugins that, for want of a better description, want to be "woken gently" may be behind this little inconvenience...

kind regards

Mark

p.s. I edited the title of this thread from precious to previous. Gollum may not like that

 

[peterlemer]

I experienced this on a single project, always in exactly the same position and only on playing the project for the first time. I OK the system overload warning, start playback again, and everything runs smoothly. This is on my current Mac Studio Ultra, at least 6 times faster than the Mac Pro 5.1 it replaced, and on which the particular project was started. I suspect the presence of some plugins that, for want of a better description, want to be "woken gently" may be behind this little inconvenience...

kind regards

Mark

p.s. I edited the title of this thread from precious to previous. Gollum may not like that

That sounds very likely, given all the variables.
So here are the plugins present on this project, I wonder if you use similar?:
Software Instruments:
Pianoteq x 2
SWAM Sax
Omnisphere ( v1)
Trillian

EF Plugins:
TestOsc
Logic Chorus x 2
SpaceDesigner x 2
Logic Chan EQ x 2
Ozone 8 Maximiser

It's a barely populated tracklist, so best I can do is take out all plugins and add one at a time

pete

 

[Markdvc]

Of the Audio Units you listed, I have Omnisphere, Trillian and various generations of Ozone. None of these were involved in the problem project I mentioned. As you say, a process of elimination would probably be the best way to uncover the culprit.

kind regards

Mark

 

[peterlemer]

Of the Audio Units you listed, I have Omnisphere, Trillian and various generations of Ozone. None of these were involved in the problem project I mentioned. As you say, a process of elimination would probably be the best way to uncover the culprit.

kind regards

Mark

I've made a copy of the project, removed all the plugins, it played back fine.
then, I replaced the plugins one by one and tested as I went, and all played fine, right until I had replaced all.... and all played fine.
So I conclude, for now, that there was nothing wrong with the plugins, and the glitch had to be a corrupt Project file.
So I'll proceed using the copied file.

thanks for your feedback

pete

 

[Markdvc]

Interesting Pete, thanks for posting. Must give that a try with my glitching project!

kind regards

Mark

 

[peterlemer]

Let me know how it goes, Mark

 

[sonnykeyes]

I always get this on projects when Logic has been idle long enough for my external drives to spin down to sleep. With most of my sound Library on an external, it’s no surprise, and as you say, once the overload has been dismissed it plays fine.

 

[peterlemer]

Techtool is telling me that it cannot rebuild Volume on the sample partition of my THB drive.
This tells me to start lookiung for another drive :-(

Meanwheil I've tried copying the Samples to a different drive, Carbon Copy cloner is telling me that some files are corrupt, so I've working to replace them in my samples drive.

Meanwhile Disk Utility tells me:

Running First Aid on “SAMPLES THB” (disk9s1)

Checking file system and repairing if necessary and if possible.
Volume was successfully unmounted.
Performing fsck_apfs -y -x /dev/rdisk9s1
Checking the container superblock.
Checking the checkpoint with transaction ID 15834.
Checking the space manager.
Checking the space manager free queue trees.
Checking the object map.
Checking volume /dev/rdisk9s1.
Checking the APFS volume superblock.
The volume SAMPLES THB was formatted by diskmanagementd (1677.120.9) and last modified by apfs_kext (2142.120.7).
Checking the object map.
Checking the snapshot metadata tree.
Checking the snapshot metadata.
Checking snapshot 1 of 2 (com.bombich.ccc.A8514371-4282-466D-AE14-6BE699A17D6F.2021-06-27-000527)
warning: inode (id 248415): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: snapshot fsroot / file key rolling / doc-id tree corruptions are not repaired; they'll go away once the snapshot is deleted
Checking snapshot 2 of 2 (com.bombich.ccc.818FA75A-CB39-466B-AB21-0A6154E33F3C.2023-07-11-155356)
warning: inode (id 248415): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
Checking the fsroot tree.
warning: inode (id 248415): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
Checking the extent ref tree.
Verifying volume object map space.
The volume /dev/rdisk9s1 was found to be corrupt and needs to be repaired.
Verifying allocated space.
error: (oid 0x71da) sm_ip: dev_read_finish(29146, 1): Input/output error
Space Verification failed.
The volume /dev/rdisk9s1 could not be verified completely.
File system check exit code is 8.
Restoring the original state found as mounted.
File system verify or repair failed. : (-69845)

Operation failed…

 

[Omar17166]

I've been experiencing this for 2-3 years. To me this seems like Logic (or even the IOS) does not handle memory efficiently.. I think I had at one time logged a report with Apple. No response.

 

[peterlemer]

I've been experiencing this for 2-3 years. To me this seems like Logic (or even the IOS) does not handle memory efficiently.. I think I had at one time logged a report with Apple. No response.

At this point, I have enough clues that the problem is due to a corrupted Thunderbolt partition.
I'll reserve judgement until after I have purchased and installed a dedicated THB SSD drive for my samples.
Any recommendations, people?

pete

 

[Markdvc]

M2/nVme Chips have come down in price recently, you could look at a couple of those. Here I am running Samples on 3 Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB chips, that works well. I have a rather expensive solution, a Sonnett M.2 4 x4: M.2 4x4 NVMe SSD Silent PCIe Card - Sonnet which I kept after changing from a Mac Pro 5.1 to a Mac Studio. That meant a further substantial investment, an Echo III case: Echo III Desktop (Thunderbolt to PCIe Card Expansion System) - SONNETTECH

A less expensive solution could be this (I have no experience, no idea how well it works: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Express-4-Slot-NVMe-Enclosure-SoftRaid/dp/B07G5MHBW1

Another, simpler solution would be Samsung's T7, they are quite a bit faster than other external SSDs. I have a few of these, all work well.

kind regards

Mark

 

[peterlemer]

M2/nVme Chips have come down in price recently, you could look at a couple of those. Here I am running Samples on 3 Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB chips, that works well. I have a rather expensive solution, a Sonnett M.2 4 x4: M.2 4x4 NVMe SSD Silent PCIe Card - Sonnet which I kept after changing from a Mac Pro 5.1 to a Mac Studio. That meant a further substantial investment, an Echo III case: Echo III Desktop (Thunderbolt to PCIe Card Expansion System) - SONNETTECH

A less expensive solution could be this (I have no experience, no idea how well it works: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Express-4-Slot-NVMe-Enclosure-SoftRaid/dp/B07G5MHBW1

Another, simpler solution would be Samsung's T7, they are quite a bit faster than other external SSDs. I have a few of these, all work well.

kind regards

Mark

Thanks Mark, I'm looking at the Samsung as well as these:
Lacie https://tinyurl.com/2p9a9xhj

OYEN https://tinyurl.com/44nn5a8y

Sandisk/G-Drive https://tinyurl.com/25yhjtz9


...which I chose as they are Thunderbolt - do you know whether THB is better than USB-C for the purposes of sample streaming?

pete

 

[Markdvc]

Hi Pete

Sandisk: I have quite a few SD cards and USB Sticks from Sandisk, as well as a couple of SATA SSDs. All fine.
Oyen: I'm not familiar with that brand.
Lacie: I had 4 exernal LaCie storage products. All of them failed. It was a long time ago, perhaps I was unlucky, perhaps they are fine now, but given that experience, LaCie is high up on my "never again" list.

Thunderbolt 3 and 4 do offer faster data transfer than USB-C. The Sonnett/Samsung M2 system I use is TB 3 and so far has worked well. At the same time, a pretty demanding realtime function I make use of relies on USB-C: Recording 6 K RAW video from a Black Magic Pocket Cinema 6K Pro to a samsung T7 shield. Results in video files larger than 9 GB/minute, or 160 MB/sec. I have recorded around an hour at a time (Concert Video, albeit at a somewhat lowever rate in 4 K) without any dropouts or other issues.

HTH, kind regards

Mark

 

[peterlemer]

Thanks everyone for your advice.
I ended up getting 2 samsung T7, one for my samples, the other for my projects and a standard G-tech for backups
Also OWC Thunderbolt Hub.

One of my original G-Tech THB partitions has bad blocks :-( which is why I've had this trouble.
I am now in a better place, the bad drive has 3 partitions good enough to use for archive.