Logic + 3rd party plugs = pop/click nightmare. How does the rest of the world do it?
There must be thousands of Logic users around the world and I am sure a lot of them are using 3rd party plugins. Does everyone experience this pop/click before an audio region. Sometimes I'll get it as soon as I open a file before even pressing play. This is such an annoying and embarassing thing when clients are listening. I know there is a workaround in automating mutes, etc... But when I have a ton of different tracks with audio regions starting at different times those workarounds became a royal pain in the ass. I am curious how the rest of the world does it or is everyone in the same boat.
There must be thousands of Logic users around the world and I am sure a lot of them are using 3rd party plugins. Does everyone experience this pop/click before an audio region. Sometimes I'll get it as soon as I open a file before even pressing play. This is such an annoying and embarassing thing when clients are listening. I know there is a workaround in automating mutes, etc... But when I have a ton of different tracks with audio regions starting at different times those workarounds became a royal pain in the ass. I am curious how the rest of the world does it or is everyone in the same boat.
Are you talking about audio regions here? If so, I'm going to mention the obvious and assume that the regions aren't starting in the middle of a waveform (ie not on silence or the zero crossing)? You certainly shouldn't be seeing this problem. Could you tell us the specs of your setup? Cpu, version, interface, etc?
The only thing that's worked for me is to place a blank (silent) audio region at the beginning of each track and then automating a mute, or ramp-up when the audio of the offending tracks begin. It's a total pain. Curious to hear how everyone else deals with it.
I have this problem with Duende SSL plugins all the time. Have to check it out with 9.1.1. Or did you mean the 10.6.3 update?
I'm running a Mac Pro 8 core that I purchased in Jan. 2009. I have Duende and did the latest logic update. Problem is still there. How is it possible that Apple has not fixed this problem by now. I never had this problem with Sonar so the can't say it's the manufacturer's of the plugins fault. Just please fix this Apple!!! And all of a sudden I started getting periodic hault's on playback and recording saying Disk too slow and Logic is crashing now almost once a day. Wtf is up with this now! Is it becuase I recently removed my old 2 gigs of ram and installed 8 gigs of ram? I'm almost ready to sell my whole apple and symphony setup and go back to pc where I never had a single crash ever. The only reason I came to Mac was because I couldn't get Duende and UAD to get along in the PC but now I am starting to regret it.
Well funny thing happened last night. Everything started turning to sh*t. Logic was crashing more. Then all of a sudden I started getting no sound on certain tracks. After a minute I figure out that the tracks that had duende had stopped having sound and when I bypassed the duende channel strips the track started having sound again. Then I get an error saying Duende Invalid firmware or something like that. Then I get a hard crash that forced me to reboot. However the computer could not reboot. Every time I powered off and on I kept getting a message saying I had to reboot. I was in the middle of a serious project with a deadline by last night (well I didnt make that deadline cuz of all the problems). Then I tried unplugging my external drives and thank God I was able to start the computer. So I tried downloading and installing the latest Duende software and firmware. I've been testing it this morning and so far it sounds like my "pops/clicks at the beginning of audio regions" problem is GONE!!! Also Logic has not crashed this morning so for the past couple of hours its looking good so far!
Take some downtime at some point and test it without Duende...it's entirely possible that Duende's Logic support differs in quality & coding from their Sonar support somewhere. Or, perhaps there's a power issue or something else afoot too? I get oddities from my studio gear by having too much gear in here and connected together, even though I've taken pains to separate and make all cabling perpendicular, have plenty of power conditioning and proper star distribution on a shared outlet that I hand installed to this room (25amp) etc...
I get the pops and clicks at the beginning of audio regions from virsyn's vtape too. However I don't think I get it from my Universal audio plugins from what I've tested.
I have this problem with Duende SSL plugins all the time. Have to check it out with 9.1.1. Or did you mean the 10.6.3 update?
I dont have duende, i only had the problem with psp stuff and t-racks. In the research i did this latest offering of logic is not the first time this problem has popped up. I read that other people have had the same type of problem with different daws too. So i came down to it being a shared problem by the plugin developers and the daw developers.
I had the problem come up when i installed logic 9 and snow leopard at the same time. I just kept searching for updates on all products and now i dont have the problem.
The only thing that's worked for me is to place a blank (silent) audio region at the beginning of each track and then automating a mute, or ramp-up when the audio of the offending tracks begin. It's a total pain. Curious to hear how everyone else deals with it.
Yeah, this is the work around. No need to do the automation though, if you press play and stop a few times before playing properly it'll get over it (only necessarily to do the stop/play juggle when you really don't want the click, on mixdown or whatever..)
I think it happens because the Plugins don't empty their buffers. It happens after playing over an audio region but stopping playing before the Audio Unit processes all its data, then it continues processing the net time it is kicked into gear. Obviously Apple should fix this issue, but its been around forever. ( I don't have the latest version of everything so I don't know if it is fixed)
So what you do is you put a silent audio region at the beginning of each track (copy and paste) and then press stop and play over it until the buffer is empty, then play as normal. PITA but it works
There must be thousands of Logic users around the world and I am sure a lot of them are using 3rd party plugins. Does everyone experience this pop/click before an audio region. Sometimes I'll get it as soon as I open a file before even pressing play. This is such an annoying and embarassing thing when clients are listening. I know there is a workaround in automating mutes, etc... But when I have a ton of different tracks with audio regions starting at different times those workarounds became a royal pain in the ass. I am curious how the rest of the world does it or is everyone in the same boat.
It's annoying as hell.. I find that sometimes the regions' instantiation "click" is audible and sometimes not..
This seems to have become more frequent with either Snow Leopard, or with one of the recent Logic updates.
At first, I assumed it was my NI plugs, but it still occurs even after muting them and just soloing a vocal track (with no third party plugs). Every time I stop playback, I get a click, followed by a another click a few seconds later. When I hit play, I get another pop.
I don't remember this happening in Leopard, but I can't quite figure out where it started. Unfortunately, I have already overwritten my pre-snow leopard backups because I had assumed that the clicking was just the usual issues with NI plugs and ignored them, so now I'm stuck with it.
It doesn't seem to affect tracks after I bounce them, so it's definitely something up with plugs, but it affects native logic plugs as well.
I upgraded to 9.1.1 but I'm still getting clicks/pops. But it does seem like its less often now. Not 100% sure if it is from duende or vtape though or both. Have to do more testing. UAD-2 doesn't seem to cause it.
I get this exact same problem with virtually all third-party plug-ins. So much so that I'm no longer blaming any of them specifically after today. Stillwell, DDMF, IK Multimedia all cause problems for me with the pops. 9.1.1 and osx 10.5.8 here.
I'm running a Mac Pro 8 core that I purchased in Jan. 2009. I have Duende and did the latest logic update. Problem is still there. How is it possible that Apple has not fixed this problem by now. I never had this problem with Sonar so the can't say it's the manufacturer's of the plugins fault. Just please fix this Apple!!! And all of a sudden I started getting periodic hault's on playback and recording saying Disk too slow and Logic is crashing now almost once a day. Wtf is up with this now! Is it becuase I recently removed my old 2 gigs of ram and installed 8 gigs of ram? I'm almost ready to sell my whole apple and symphony setup and go back to pc where I never had a single crash ever. The only reason I came to Mac was because I couldn't get Duende and UAD to get along in the PC but now I am starting to regret it.
That sounds like a bloody nightmare mate, the crashes sound like on the face of it a third party plugin related problem, have you gone through your third party plugs to single out which one is causing the crashes on your system at any point any disabling what ones play havoc?
Also, you mention UAD, are you still using UAD? I have some strange stuff going on with my UAD plugs from time to time which a good friend of mine also encounters strange things happening on his system with UAD plugs, like plugins not showing up.
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I did not have any of those problems myself, but I suffer others like the never ending notes on multitimbral instruments... and it seems to me that Logic is still not a mature product.
I came from a pc cubase background and the combo was very stable. Of course it crashed once in a while but did not have such ridiculous problems... at least IME.
I did not have any of those problems myself, but I suffer others like the never ending notes on multitimbral instruments... and it seems to me that Logic is still not a mature product.
I came from a pc cubase background and the combo was very stable. Of course it crashed once in a while but did not have such ridiculous problems... at least IME.
I used to be on Sonar on PC and never had a single crash after a year of constant use until I started using UAD with Duende which would not work with Sonar at the same time at all. Thats when I tried switching to Mac and Logic. Well it works but is still a major PITA having to do mute automation to every track and every project.
I did not have any of those problems myself, but I suffer others like the never ending notes on multitimbral instruments... and it seems to me that Logic is still not a mature product.
I came from a pc cubase background and the combo was very stable. Of course it crashed once in a while but did not have such ridiculous problems... at least IME.
I'm working with Cubase. All my hardware works fine in it and all 3rd party plugin.
I was thinking of trying a MAC for a change, you think it's a bad idea. It sounds if Logic has serious bugs ( also in other topics )
I have a Mac Pro Quad 2007 with 6 gigs Apple Ram (OS x 10.6.2) and a TC Konnekt 48 with none problem mentioned here.
If I do have problems is due to the not 100% stable TC Konnekt drivers and at times a conflict with the TC Konnekt plugs and my PowerCore Plugs. Other than that it's a super system. The TC drivers used to be worse but they are getting a lot better.
Plugs include; Spectrasonics, DUY, SoundToys, Waves, db-audioware and others.
Yes, there is a problem with 3. party plugins, for me specially with T-Racks.
I guess it's an issue of Logic which is the other side of the coin. Logic doesn't spend a power of computer, when track of a plugin does not have anything to play at the time (good), so for 3. party plugs when it's about start to process, it makes click or pop, or anything like this(bad). for Apple it has to be not a big deal to make something like "soft start" or something in that fashion to avoid it, but since many years nothing is done for it. I use mute automation for tracks, which have those plugs, this is the only thing can be done for the problem.
cheers
yep. it's a nightmare. this is my solution (my song template):
for audio tracks:
a bar with nothing in it, then a 1 bar audio file of silence (that will cure any buffer "leftovers" - eg: reverb/ delay tails. eg: on ALL IK t-racks/ Amplitube stuff....but also on others too). they will splurge out JUST BEFORE the start of the empty bar. if you are using LONG delays you will then need to leave a few bars before your tracks starts for them to die away
also......for midi tracks
a 1 bar region containing a single (quiet!) midi note on all audio instrument tracks (to clear out any instrument tails/ clicks at start of parts - once they have clicked this ONCE at the start, they will not click again).
automating mutes doesn't really work if the bit of "buffer-clearing" audio that splurges out just before the start of the audio file is a LONG delay, as it will overlap the start of the audio AFTER the mute comes off (as the buffer-clearing takes place so near to the start of the part)
the audio problem only happens if you STOP playback DURING an audio part with one of these problematic plugins on it, BEFORE the effect has had time to die away. you will also notice that the meters in the plugin (eg: amplitube) stay pinned up (ins and outs). another workaround for the audio problem is to save, then click "revert to saved", and THEN bounce. this will ensure that there are no buffers to clear.
the midi problem (the click on EXACTLY the start of the FIRST note of your track), however, cannot be solved in this way. you need the single note at the start to get the click "out of the way"
it's all a bit shite really, but at least it doesn't crash ALL the time/ refuse to open projects like Cubase did (for me at any rate)
yep. it's a nightmare. this is my solution (my song template):
for audio tracks:
a bar with nothing in it, then a 1 bar audio file of silence (that will cure any buffer "leftovers" - eg: reverb/ delay tails. eg: on ALL IK t-racks/ Amplitube stuff....but also on others too). they will splurge out JUST BEFORE the start of the empty bar. if you are using LONG delays you will then need to leave a few bars before your tracks starts for them to die away
also......for midi tracks
a 1 bar region containing a single (quiet!) midi note on all audio instrument tracks (to clear out any instrument tails/ clicks at start of parts - once they have clicked this ONCE at the start, they will not click again).
automating mutes doesn't really work if the bit of "buffer-clearing" audio that splurges out just before the start of the audio file is a LONG delay, as it will overlap the start of the audio AFTER the mute comes off (as the buffer-clearing takes place so near to the start of the part)
the audio problem only happens if you STOP playback DURING an audio part with one of these problematic plugins on it, BEFORE the effect has had time to die away. you will also notice that the meters in the plugin (eg: amplitube) stay pinned up (ins and outs). another workaround for the audio problem is to save, then click "revert to saved", and THEN bounce. this will ensure that there are no buffers to clear.
the midi problem (the click on EXACTLY the start of the FIRST note of your track), however, cannot be solved in this way. you need the single note at the start to get the click "out of the way"
it's all a bit shite really, but at least it doesn't crash ALL the time/ refuse to open projects like Cubase did (for me at any rate)
hope this helps.
If APPLE WOULD JUST FIX THESE STUPID THINGS I WOULD FEEL I COULD CALL IT PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE:
1. Consistent Crashing
2. Pop/Clicks before Audio regions start on tracks w/ 3rd party plugins
3. Proper Solo and Mute switching for multiple tracks
Location: No longer in Pago Pago! Now in Durham, NC.
Posts: 1,155
My understanding of the situation is this: (don't flame me, I'm just the messenger)
The third-party AUs that give the problem are not emptying their buffers correctly. The methodology for doing this is written into the AU-spec. Most likely, Apple isn't going to "fix" the problem, since it's not technically their fault. At least from the their perspective.
I know at least in the past, some developers weren't really doing their homework on the AU-spec, and were more or less wrapping their VSTs, which led to somewhat unpredictable results at times. I have no idea if that's still the case or not, nor do I know if that's what would be causing the issue for some plugs. I've had a couple plugs in the past that did this, and man, it was seriously frustrating. But none of my plugs do it anymore, and thankfully, they haven't for a good long while.
I do know it's a situation where both parties are pointing their fingers at each other. Apple says developers aren't following the AU-spec, some developers say the AU-spec isn't clear or that it deals with buffers differently than every other plugin-specification.
I'm not here to defend Apple, I'm just saying this is my understanding of where things are. I could be wrong, or that could be old information. I believe the AU-spec has changed a couple times in its history, as well, so who knows where we are right now.
I do know that I had a few plugs that used to do this several years ago, and they don't do it anymore. Thankfully, for me.
I'd spend some time reporting the behavior to the 3rd-party devs, as well. I'm sure some of you are already doing that, but I just wanted to mention it.
And man, I am really, really sorry for those of you that are having this. It really, really stinks.
My understanding of the situation is this: (don't flame me, I'm just the messenger)
The third-party AUs that give the problem are not emptying their buffers correctly. The methodology for doing this is written into the AU-spec. Most likely, Apple isn't going to "fix" the problem, since it's not technically their fault. At least from the their perspective.
I know at least in the past, some developers weren't really doing their homework on the AU-spec, and were more or less wrapping their VSTs, which led to somewhat unpredictable results at times. I have no idea if that's still the case or not, nor do I know if that's what would be causing the issue for some plugs. I've had a couple plugs in the past that did this, and man, it was seriously frustrating. But none of my plugs do it anymore, and thankfully, they haven't for a good long while.
I do know it's a situation where both parties are pointing their fingers at each other. Apple says developers aren't following the AU-spec, some developers say the AU-spec isn't clear or that it deals with buffers differently than every other plugin-specification.
I'm not here to defend Apple, I'm just saying this is my understanding of where things are. I could be wrong, or that could be old information. I believe the AU-spec has changed a couple times in its history, as well, so who knows where we are right now.
I do know that I had a few plugs that used to do this several years ago, and they don't do it anymore. Thankfully, for me.
I'd spend some time reporting the behavior to the 3rd-party devs, as well. I'm sure some of you are already doing that, but I just wanted to mention it.
And man, I am really, really sorry for those of you that are having this. It really, really stinks.
If you can point to the relevant part of the AU spec (which is huge), I'll look into it here, at least. I do find it a bit disturbing that Apple's own auval (AU Validation) tool passes all of our plugins as perfectly fine...in fact, passing auval and sending the logs back to Apple is a requirement from them before you can legally use the AU logo for your product.
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