logic 8? out of memory

[jzilla]

just posted this on apple's logic forum but i thought i'd also try here:

hi
i'm using logic 8 on a dual 2 gig power pc g5 with 4 gigs of ram. there's about 20 gigs of empty space left on the system drive and 10 gigs left on the projects drive.

i'm getting a message that says 'out of memory! couldn't insert or delete data.' i've definitely done more intensive sessions than this one. i've saved as a new session and deleted the undo list. any suggestions?

many thanks!

[jzilla]

update. i deleted my markers and things seem ok now. not a great solution since i need those markers. anyone encounter this? is it a bug?
thanks
-j

[Orren]

I've never encountered that, but you can always reorganize Logic's internal memory. If you bring forward the Project Information window (Options > Project Information) you will see a button in the bottom left corner named "Reorganize Memory." This will optimize the amount of memory that your song requires, and may take care of this issue.

Orren

[jzilla]

thanks. i'll try that if it happens again. (knocking wood...)
-j

[street]

I've had the same problem. Running a G5 with dual core and 6.5 gigs of Ram.
I'll try your suggestion Orren, thanks.

Logic 8 seems to also have a bug on some machines re. core overloads. There's days where I have 4 tracks running with a 3 reverb plug-ins and a couple Eq plug-ins, and the CPU meter is off the chart and I start getting clicks and pops.
I'll stop and restart the system and the same set of tracks will run without problem or core overload.
No one seems to have an answer as to why Logic 8 seems to max out the CPU, with a song edit that would have been easily handled by Logic 7 on the same computer.

This issue is being discussed almost daily in some form on the Logic Forum.
http://www.logicprohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=16909&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

As it is I find most of my mixes are maxing out the CPU by the time I get to finishing them for bounce.
Last mix I was working on had 10 tracks, 4 audio, 6 midi, and about 35 plugins.
CPU usage is off the chart when playing back.
I used to run Mackie Tracktion as my DAW and the same mix would be showing CPU usage at about 40%.

[LSchefman]

Wow - from time to time I flirt with the idea of switching from DP to logic, and so far I'm very glad I haven't. I keep reading stuff like this all the time.

DP simply works, at least for me and my pretty comprehensive suite of plugins.

I'm shocked an Apple product isn't working with its own stuff.

I've always followed the lesson of "wait for the bugs to be worked out" on software and products you have to depend on.

[Orren]

Wow - from time to time I flirt with the idea of switching from DP to logic, and so far I'm very glad I haven't. I keep reading stuff like this all the time.

It's all a matter of personal experience, and where you're looking. I'm a co-moderator of the Logic User Group, a 23,000+ yahoo group devoted to Logic. We've probably picked up closing in on 500+ users since Logic 8 was released from Digital Performer, all of whom bitched that DP 4 and DP 5 was so riddled with bugs as to be unusable.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/logic-users/msearch?query=digital+AND+performer+AND+bugs&submit=Search&charset=UTF-8

That's not to say I believe it, BTW—I used DP for a year and it was stable for me, one of my collaborators is a fully DP'd up guy, and he never experiences massive problems either. But that's just how it goes. DP is stable for you, Logic is stable for me, and even though they both "just work" for us, there will be droves of others who use both apps and will have many problems.

Orren

[retro]

Is there is an issue in Logic 8 not being able to assign output from the sample editor?

As an aside DP5 is and has been very stable for me...Logic interests me though...

[LSchefman]

>>DP is stable for you, Logic is stable for me, and even though they both "just work" for us, there will be droves of others who use both apps and will have many problems.<<

True, true.

And I've decided that I might just buy Logic for two reasons: first, so that I can get more "juice" by networking my laptop and my desktop via fast ethernet; second, because it just looks so freaking cool.

So tell me, do you have to use those little icons of instruments when you set up a template?

And can you put tracks into folders so you don't have to scroll around the interface to find tracks? My DP template includes 20 soft instruments (none DP instruments which sound iffy at best), which are all grouped into folders like "hybrid synths," "analog style synths," "samplers," etc. Then each synth has its own folder for how many MIDI tracks I need for each instrument.

I have folders for my "live" tracks, and folders for my "aux" tracks, etc.

When I'm done with a track, instead of scrolling all over the place to find the track I need to work on, only that track is "open." Keeps my screen very organized, and I can handle large projects quite quickly.

Can Logic do anything like this? I am hoping it can. Actually, I think I'll head over to the Apple site to see if I can download a manual for it.

[Orren]

Is there is an issue in Logic 8 not being able to assign output from the sample editor?

Not at all. The method just changed, so it took some people by surprise.

It used to be that two of the three windows that played audio (Audio Bin and Sample Editor) had a little pop-up menu to select the output for the sample editor. For the Loop Browser, however, the output was hard-wired to Outputs 1-2 and you couldn't change it. And if that wasn't enough of a patchwork quilt, any change to the output you made was not saved with your song so you needed to re-assign any changes.

Now, things are much better. There is a dedicated "prelisten" track that the Sample Editor, Audio Bin, and Loop Browser use. If you want to change it's output, simply go to its channel strip and select a different output. And it saves with your song. Simple, intuitive, and it just works. But I can understand why users looking for the old pop-up window might have thought that something was removed. They should just read the manual.

As an aside DP5 is and has been very stable for me...Logic interests me though...

FWIW, I'm an extremely dedicated Logic user, but I just bought an M-Audio transit and Pro Tools LE 7.4, because I want to use Elastic Audio as basically an "external audio file editor" for Logic. So I definitely think there's a place in the world for owning multiple DAWs.

Orren

[Orren]

And I've decided that I might just buy Logic for two reasons: first, so that I can get more "juice" by networking my laptop and my desktop via fast ethernet; second, because it just looks so freaking cool.

Sounds like good reasons to me!

So tell me, do you have to use those little icons of instruments when you set up a template?

You can turn off the icons if you don't like the look of them, if that's what you mean. The Arrange window has a "view" menu, where you choose what elements you want on it, and you can turn off the icons there.

And can you put tracks into folders so you don't have to scroll around the interface to find tracks?

Sure. Logic has folder tracks. You can pack anything you want into them, any kind of track, etc.

When I'm done with a track, instead of scrolling all over the place to find the track I need to work on, only that track is "open." Keeps my screen very organized, and I can handle large projects quite quickly.

You can do that, and more. In Logic, Folders can open onto their completely unique Arrange window, Mixer, etc. or use the main one. This lends itself to lots of different sorts of organizations. You can have a "main Arrange" with lots of folders, and simply arrow between them only opening the one you need. You can have two linked Arranges open, so that as you scroll on one Arrange, the second automatically shows you the contents of that folder. Etc.

The one thing you can't do with Logic's folders is have them "unroll" their contents onto the main Arrange along with the contents of other folders, the way that you can click on disclosure triangles in the Finder and have all your sub-folders open in the same Explorer pane. Of course, it sounds like you don't want to do that, since the whole point is to not have them all open at once, but to use them to reduce clutter (which they can do just as in DP).

Actually, I think I'll head over to the Apple site to see if I can download a manual for it.

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/Logic_Pro_8_User_Manual.pdf

All the manuals are available from:
http://www.apple.com/support/logicpro/
There are many! :)

Orren

[LSchefman]

I did spend some time reading through the manual, actually I found it before I got to the thread, but thanks for offering the link here.

I like to read through manuals before deciding to buy a product like a DAW or a complicated piece of hardware, to see if I'll dig its workflow, and to get a sense of its depth.

Working with Logic 7 was a bit clunky for me. Maybe that was more about me than the product, after working with Performer and Digital Performer for 20 years, and becoming extremely familiar with it.

But 20 years with a DAW is precisely what is bugging me! I have looked at that interface (and yes, it has evolved, but it has been variations on a theme) every day for 20 years! One simply needs something new to stare at all day after 20 years (in some cases spouses may be the exception, but let's not go there).

[street]

FWIW I wouldn't disregard Logic because of some overload issues.
I've found that playing through a mix a few times can even out the CPU load, so maybe Logic is trying to "figure out" loads for most efficiency.
Many people have commented that they'll get a CPU spike when they first play a mix but it will settle down on subsequent plays.

Logic is a beautifully intuitive program and for the price seems a down right steal.
So far I can't say that Logic has limited my capacity to record what I like, although the CPU spikes can be unnerving.
But then I don't record 36 track orchestral mixes, someone else may be able to shed some light on their experiences with very large track intensive mixes.

[Orren]

I did spend some time reading through the manual, actually I found it before I got to the thread, but thanks for offering the link here. I like to read through manuals before deciding to buy a product like a DAW or a complicated piece of hardware, to see if I'll dig its workflow, and to get a sense of its depth.

You're welcome! And definitely, I love manuals. I say that self-servingly, of course, as I write some manuals as well. ;)

Working with Logic 7 was a bit clunky for me. Maybe that was more about me than the product, after working with Performer and Digital Performer for 20 years, and becoming extremely familiar with it.

Oh don't worry, it's not just you. :) In truth Logic began in the early 90s as a sequencer that only an engineer or hardcore German MIDI-head could find completely intuitive. I jumped on the Goode Shippe Logic at version 4.6 from DP 3.5 and it was a mess. Logic 7 was a significant simplification from version 4.6, but Logic 8 is the first version that really begins to adopt a truly "Apple" level of intuitiveness. And it's still not 100% where it needs to be UI-wise, but Logic 8 was a real revolution in workflow.

BTW, I got the competitive upgrades from Cubase VST for both DP and Logic 2.5 at the same time around 2000. I started with Logic...but decided it was too confusing and ass backwards and went with DP instead. So trust me, I know the feeling of finding Logic obscure!

Orren

[Orren]

FWIW I wouldn't disregard Logic because of some overload issues. I've found that playing through a mix a few times can even out the CPU load, so maybe Logic is trying to "figure out" loads for most efficiency.

In fact, that is exactly what is happening. Logic attempts to optimize it's threading "on the fly" to maximize CPU/core usage. Unfortunately, this very often means that on the initial run-throughs, Logic is trying to do too much under the hood to keep up in realtime, so it throws up an overload message. But once this initial optimization is complete, it is set up for whatever else you may do. This is why it's very common that even on the most beefy Macs, your song will overload the first few times. It sucks, and if you have clients, its a bit embarrassing, but the payoff is a level of CPU optimization few other applications can touch.

But the good news is that with every update of both the OS and Logic, the initial optimization gets smarter and smarter, so this is definitely something that is constantly being improved.

Orren

[street]

You can turn off the icons if you don't like the look of them, if that's what you mean. The Arrange window has a "view" menu, where you choose what elements you want on it, and you can turn off the icons there.

I couldn't remove them this way. Don't show up in the view window.

Right click on icon and go to "configure track header" then deselect "track icons", seems to do it.

[LSchefman]

>>This is why it's very common that even on the most beefy Macs, your song will overload the first few times. It sucks, and if you have clients, its a bit embarrassing, but the payoff is a level of CPU optimization few other applications can touch.<<

Ohhh, THOSE notifications...yeah, we sometimes get them in DP with lots of tracks and soft synths and other plugins too the first time through, while the CPU is figuring out WTF to do with all the processing going on.

On the fun side, I'm getting one of the old Otari refrigerator sized two tracks soon, traded my new partners for one for my old video machine.

So I'll be mixing from a Neve summing mixer to...analog. Ahhhh. I can feel the love and almost smell the tape now.

I'm trying to buy their Otari MTR 100 24 track with dolby SR, but so far they don't like the song I'm offering... ;)

Now what would I do with this old thing now that I've gone from a big analog mixer to a summing mixer?

Not a whole hell of a lot esp. since I lost my tech (death, sadly) but it sure will look killer in my room methinks.

[MichaelK]

Now what would I do with this old thing now that I've gone from a big analog mixer to a summing mixer?

Get a big piece of glass to fit the top, make it level and you'd have a lovely coffee table.

[retro]

Not at all. The method just changed, so it took some people by surprise.

It used to be that two of the three windows that played audio (Audio Bin and Sample Editor) had a little pop-up menu to select the output for the sample editor. For the Loop Browser, however, the output was hard-wired to Outputs 1-2 and you couldn't change it. And if that wasn't enough of a patchwork quilt, any change to the output you made was not saved with your song so you needed to re-assign any changes.

Now, things are much better. There is a dedicated "prelisten" track that the Sample Editor, Audio Bin, and Loop Browser use. If you want to change it's output, simply go to its channel strip and select a different output. And it saves with your song. Simple, intuitive, and it just works. But I can understand why users looking for the old pop-up window might have thought that something was removed. They should just read the manual.



FWIW, I'm an extremely dedicated Logic user, but I just bought an M-Audio transit and Pro Tools LE 7.4, because I want to use Elastic Audio as basically an "external audio file editor" for Logic. So I definitely think there's a place in the world for owning multiple DAWs.

Orren

Thanks Orren

I lost internet due to the 2nd fire here in Malibu so wasn't able to respond earlier.

Logic Studio is on the gift list this year...