new mac and new problems...
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Stupid American Pig Stupid American Pig https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=4753 - KVRAF
- 7065 posts since 25 Nov, 2002 from not sure
I was working yesterday on my macbook pro retina 2.66 in the latest logic update/el capitan and I noticed some cpu spikes while scrolling, but nothing that affected playback or performance. I would suspect its a graphics/drawing issue that is causing the spikes. Are the spikes causing glitches/audible? The latest iMacs have a shit ton (technical term) of pixels to draw with the 5k monitors. I would not worry about it if its just a case of the CPU meter jumping on occasion. If it is impeding your ability to make music then I would start digging, but if its just bandwidth anxiety then its not a real problem.
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 121 posts since 14 Dec, 2011
you can imagine what my projects may look like if the mini was not able to handle them properly (quite a powerful machine, really). they are often quite dense... the spikes themselves do not worry me, however, on some projects scrolling does cause audible artefacts which I can't standStupid American Pig wrote: I noticed some cpu spikes while scrolling, but nothing that affected playback or performance. I would suspect its a graphics/drawing issue that is causing the spikes. Are the spikes causing glitches/audible? The latest iMacs have a shit ton (technical term) of pixels to draw with the 5k monitors. I would not worry about it if its just a case of the CPU meter jumping on occasion. If it is impeding your ability to make music then I would start digging, but if its just bandwidth anxiety then its not a real problem.
interesting thing: there is a possibility in OS X to open an app in low resolution. i did this with logic, and... well, it is MUCH better. still can see some movement of the thread meter, but hardly visible, really.
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 121 posts since 14 Dec, 2011
finally i got an official apple statement through the support line...
the CPU spikes that are observed in Logic X on the last core while the main window is being scrolled during playback or the "scroll in play function" is enabled do not mean any malfunction... they are expected on the retina macs... due to much larger amount of graphics data to be calculated. in fact they can be observed to some extent on non retina macs, but hardly visible.
damn you, apple. another "feature" not "bug".
of course I can always switch to low resolution...
the CPU spikes that are observed in Logic X on the last core while the main window is being scrolled during playback or the "scroll in play function" is enabled do not mean any malfunction... they are expected on the retina macs... due to much larger amount of graphics data to be calculated. in fact they can be observed to some extent on non retina macs, but hardly visible.
damn you, apple. another "feature" not "bug".
of course I can always switch to low resolution...
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- Banned
- 22457 posts since 5 Sep, 2001
well actually ultimately it shouldn't matter, cause Apple specifically only loads plugins on all threads bar 1, to save it for gfx overhead etc..
Now about the audio artefacts.. i bet i can fix that for you..
make sure there is no instrument track selected or track record armed, as that will be the one popping and clicking when you scroll. Logic has selected instrument tracks or record arms tracks on low buffer live mode. and a 64 buffer AND the small process buffer.. well... you are pushing the machine to it's limits. Small will still work fine (it's what I used as i also have a virus TI) for *playback*.
I've never heard a single audio pop out of logic for 20 YEARS even when all cores are maxed out, during playback.But i HAVE heard pops when cores are loading up and a track is armed.. like any daw... It has a very precise overload detection engine on playback.. so precise that logic will not compromise the integrity of the audio in any way, and will display an overload message before it allows even a single pop. The only way you would be getting artefacts is on a "live" channel. But you don't NEED to manually scroll when you are recording, so really, ultimately for usage it should be fine.. it seems this is more of a mild annoyance rather than a showstopper.
Now about the audio artefacts.. i bet i can fix that for you..
make sure there is no instrument track selected or track record armed, as that will be the one popping and clicking when you scroll. Logic has selected instrument tracks or record arms tracks on low buffer live mode. and a 64 buffer AND the small process buffer.. well... you are pushing the machine to it's limits. Small will still work fine (it's what I used as i also have a virus TI) for *playback*.
I've never heard a single audio pop out of logic for 20 YEARS even when all cores are maxed out, during playback.But i HAVE heard pops when cores are loading up and a track is armed.. like any daw... It has a very precise overload detection engine on playback.. so precise that logic will not compromise the integrity of the audio in any way, and will display an overload message before it allows even a single pop. The only way you would be getting artefacts is on a "live" channel. But you don't NEED to manually scroll when you are recording, so really, ultimately for usage it should be fine.. it seems this is more of a mild annoyance rather than a showstopper.
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 121 posts since 14 Dec, 2011
thaks for the hint... in fact i didnt even think of record disabling the enabled track(s)... and, yes, i do not really need that while mixing... it takes a bit more time and needs some getting used to but i will give it a try.
as for the audio engine overload message... when i started with logic my machine was not too powerful. i used to get the message way too often to work seamlessly. so i switched it off and knew that some pops might occur. on every other machine i had i restored the system from a backup, to have exactly same config, plugins etc.
quite possible that the settings in my logic are not optimised, buffer - yes, i got virus too
any suggestions concerning preference settings to squeeze even more juice out of the system are welcome
as for the audio engine overload message... when i started with logic my machine was not too powerful. i used to get the message way too often to work seamlessly. so i switched it off and knew that some pops might occur. on every other machine i had i restored the system from a backup, to have exactly same config, plugins etc.
quite possible that the settings in my logic are not optimised, buffer - yes, i got virus too
any suggestions concerning preference settings to squeeze even more juice out of the system are welcome
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- Banned
- 22457 posts since 5 Sep, 2001
there's nothing really in logic you can do to get better performance.. basically, only what i explained about live vs playback buffered tracks, and you can also play with the new setting in 10.2 to control whether live tracks are spread across multiple cores or only playback cores.. It's in the audio preferences section. Just use what works better for you. Often, people will leave it on live and playback setting when recording, and when doing the final mix, switch it to playback only. You may not have even realised as that's a new, recent addition. Before 10.2, it was always only in "playback" mode under the hood. All live processes were stacked to one core.
Is your motu thunderbolt? if so a 64 buffer should be fine, but i always seemed to settle on 128 as it just seems the best compromise on every daw, especially with USB. 128 should DEFINITELY give you less clicks on live enabled tracks.
As far as el capitan itself, there really isn't much you can do to optimise IT for logic. It just comes as it is out of the box.. i disabled a bunch of stuff i didn't need using Onyx (freeware), and it made no difference to actual plugin counts. But it did stop the annoyances like notification centre being obnoxious out of the blue every day.
Over at the PT forum, apparently sierra is amazing.. people are saying super snappy, good performance. Logic will be updated to work on it very fast, being an apple app. What I would do, is wait for say 10.12.2 and then install it. Just put up with el crapitan for a few more months basically!
Is your motu thunderbolt? if so a 64 buffer should be fine, but i always seemed to settle on 128 as it just seems the best compromise on every daw, especially with USB. 128 should DEFINITELY give you less clicks on live enabled tracks.
As far as el capitan itself, there really isn't much you can do to optimise IT for logic. It just comes as it is out of the box.. i disabled a bunch of stuff i didn't need using Onyx (freeware), and it made no difference to actual plugin counts. But it did stop the annoyances like notification centre being obnoxious out of the blue every day.
Over at the PT forum, apparently sierra is amazing.. people are saying super snappy, good performance. Logic will be updated to work on it very fast, being an apple app. What I would do, is wait for say 10.12.2 and then install it. Just put up with el crapitan for a few more months basically!
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 121 posts since 14 Dec, 2011
the MOTU (Ultralite) is firewire, though connected to the mac via the thunderbolt.
as far as the OS goes I have disabled all the unneeded trimmings like notification center, animations and so on. the only thing i must have left was the dashboard, to use istat pro. this however does not affect performance. nothing starts up automatically as startup items, no daemons. not even flash installed
i am always allergic to os upgrades, i mean, logic will most probably be ready for the sierra from day one, i just wonder how ready the third party plugins will be. don't quite understand this rush to upgrade the os every year. regular updates worked just fine. and for compatibility reasons it's just frustrating. so i won't move to sierra until i am really sure it works fine. this computer is intended to be my workhorse for home studio. a single core performance is visibly better than the mac pro i also use (due to higher clock frq).
thank you for the hints, looks like it's time to change the old habits a bit
as far as the OS goes I have disabled all the unneeded trimmings like notification center, animations and so on. the only thing i must have left was the dashboard, to use istat pro. this however does not affect performance. nothing starts up automatically as startup items, no daemons. not even flash installed
i am always allergic to os upgrades, i mean, logic will most probably be ready for the sierra from day one, i just wonder how ready the third party plugins will be. don't quite understand this rush to upgrade the os every year. regular updates worked just fine. and for compatibility reasons it's just frustrating. so i won't move to sierra until i am really sure it works fine. this computer is intended to be my workhorse for home studio. a single core performance is visibly better than the mac pro i also use (due to higher clock frq).
thank you for the hints, looks like it's time to change the old habits a bit
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- KVRian
- 705 posts since 23 Jun, 2004
That's what scares me...people said that initially about Yosemite, then El Capitan —how much faster and peppy it was comparatively, even on older machines, with less beachballs—and I eventually upgraded both times thinking that would be so. Not so much.TheoM wrote: Over at the PT forum, apparently sierra is amazing.. people are saying super snappy, good performance. Logic will be updated to work on it very fast, being an apple app. What I would do, is wait for say 10.12.2 and then install it. Just put up with el crapitan for a few more months basically!
My machine is just below the minimum for Sierra so I'll have to make El Cap work. I thought of rolling back but is just too much to re-do. IMO they owed that much to El Cap to make it work well instead of passing it off to the next OS.
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- Banned
- 22457 posts since 5 Sep, 2001
well i do know that it's even been confirmed by pro tools expert website that sierra has fixed the graphics issues. I trust the people i speak to at the duc, and i think it's obvious apple decided not to incorporate the fix in el crapitan so people would upgrade. But yes, you are right, i have seen talk before of a great OS and initial "things are ok" and then it's a nightmare.
I did not touch el capitan till v 10.11.4, in other words months after release, and I will not touch sierra any time soon. I have hardware galore that will need drivers for it for a start, and yosemite works great here.
Basically on my imac i run yosemite, with the non retina 27" screen, and PT runs fantastic. I was only suggesting it to the OP cause he CAN'T install yosemite on a brand new imac, as apple block it from the EFI (even though i believe yosemite would have all the required drivers for the current imac hardware, but definitely not the next update of it).
All I am saying is that el capitan is a very bad os for audio, mainly because of a major graphics bug that causes freezing and lots of display lag, that affects multiple daws(not all), and somehow the problem has magically vanished in sierra current pre release builds. Heck, thousands of posters around the web confrim the safari freeze issue, total mac lockup.. It's all related.. el crap has a very fundamental flaw in basic graphics handling.
Anyway, the OP could try it this way: go buy a dirt cheap usb3 HDD, smallest size possible therefore cheapest, just to install a sierra test partition, why not? It will probably cost him 50 bucks and be well worth it IMO. I'll look at sierra on the very final release before it's successor, however this time i will do strong research of it running with my daw of choice. That is where i failed in el crapitan on my macbook, which i still plan to roll back to yos.. once all my drivers were compatible with el crap, and i waited 4 point releases, and read overall that it worked with all plugins now, i just presumed it would be ok. I won't make that mistake again.
I did not touch el capitan till v 10.11.4, in other words months after release, and I will not touch sierra any time soon. I have hardware galore that will need drivers for it for a start, and yosemite works great here.
Basically on my imac i run yosemite, with the non retina 27" screen, and PT runs fantastic. I was only suggesting it to the OP cause he CAN'T install yosemite on a brand new imac, as apple block it from the EFI (even though i believe yosemite would have all the required drivers for the current imac hardware, but definitely not the next update of it).
All I am saying is that el capitan is a very bad os for audio, mainly because of a major graphics bug that causes freezing and lots of display lag, that affects multiple daws(not all), and somehow the problem has magically vanished in sierra current pre release builds. Heck, thousands of posters around the web confrim the safari freeze issue, total mac lockup.. It's all related.. el crap has a very fundamental flaw in basic graphics handling.
Anyway, the OP could try it this way: go buy a dirt cheap usb3 HDD, smallest size possible therefore cheapest, just to install a sierra test partition, why not? It will probably cost him 50 bucks and be well worth it IMO. I'll look at sierra on the very final release before it's successor, however this time i will do strong research of it running with my daw of choice. That is where i failed in el crapitan on my macbook, which i still plan to roll back to yos.. once all my drivers were compatible with el crap, and i waited 4 point releases, and read overall that it worked with all plugins now, i just presumed it would be ok. I won't make that mistake again.
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- KVRAF
- 6113 posts since 7 Jan, 2005 from Corporate States of America
What I don't understand is why the GPU isn't doing the processing here...
- dysamoria.com
my music @ SoundCloud
my music @ SoundCloud
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- KVRAF
- 2275 posts since 4 Dec, 2011 from Brasília, Brazil
Some macs has two GPUs, one for 'normal' work and other for hard work.
But sometimes the system doesn't make the best decisions about what is hard work.
This app is helping me: https://gfx.io/
But sometimes the system doesn't make the best decisions about what is hard work.
This app is helping me: https://gfx.io/
My soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/waltercruz
