Tutorial Details
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Time: 10 minutes
- Requirements: Logic Pro
Everybody hates the System Overload panel that can pop up at any given time in Logic Pro. What’s worse is when as your deciphering the subtle tones of your mix and it starts to stutter. Both these problems can be put down to the CPU and sometimes the HD.
Firstly What are CPU and HD?
The CPU and HD indicators can be found at the bottom of your Logic Pro window. CPU stands for Central Processing Unit, the bar indicates processor speed which is just as it sounds, the speed at which the sounds, plugins and synthesizers are processed.
The HD bar represents your Hard Disk and the amount of temporary space on it. If this ever gets too high simply make more space on your computer.
Freezing Tracks to Save Processor Power
A very easy way to save processing power is to freeze individual tracks. To do this simply right click on your track, now you can either click freeze, or go to configure track header (as displayed in the image below) and select freeze. This will show the freeze icon on all your tracks.
Freezing your tracks does exactly what it says. It means you can’t make changes to your track and it is essentially frozen. This is very effective at times, but can also create problems when you want to make minor adjustments.
It does increase the speed of Logic’s processor by a very large amount. It means the MIDI track turns into pure audio temporarily and Logic doesn’t have to process each plugin and automation live.
Reducing Undo Steps
Freezing tracks may not work for everyone, depending on what stage of making your song you’re at, and depending on your style. But do not worry there are other ways of controlling and making the most out of your processor.
Logic automatically gives you a huge number of undo steps as a standard. This takes up a very large amount of processing power. Now if your one of those producers who is constantly undoing rather than saving efficiently, this may not be the best solution.
Go to Preferences>General>Editing and you will see an option to reduce the number of undo steps (as you can see in the image below). As a factory setting it’s at 30 which is far more than a normal producer needs. Ten is absolutely fine for me, but if you’re worried 15 will also make a huge difference.
Increasing the Buffer Size
Logic Pro as a standard has a very low input/output buffer size. A huge way to free up processor power is to increase it to its maximum size this should be 1024.
To do this simply go to your Preferences>Audio>Devices>CoreAudio the image below shows the path. The only reason you wouldn’t want to do this, is if you experience delay with an external MIDI device. If this happens, simply turn it down (lowest should be 128).
I hope this quick tip has helped, please leave any comments you might have below, I would love to answer any questions.
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By Greg Frey
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Another well known tip you can add to your article is to use cpu-intensive effects (such as conv. reverbs etc…) on an send bus rather than on the channel itself. Logic handles it differently and will take more advantage of our multi-core processors ;)
It can seem basic to a lot of people, but a lot of producers don’t know this, thought it may be useful ;)
Does increasing the I/O Buffer size also increase the latency when recording live audio tracks to midi tracks?
I discovered increasing the buffer size as a way to get back some processing power in Logic Studio 8 running on my G5, but I have always set this number back to a lower setting when recording live guitar, for example, because I thought it was affecting latency and leading to some timing issues with my grooves at playback.
Further to the freezing tracks tip, if you still want the ability to change the settings of your inserts after freezing, you can select to freeze the “source only” from a drop down menu above the info panel on each individual track. Very handy if you’re perfectly happy with the MIDI track but not so sure about the distortion you’ve put on it.
I suppose it’s also important to mention that, if you are increase the buffer size, your latency also increases. There’s a reason it doesn’t just stay at 1024 samples, because it creates a lot of latency, and if you are recording MIDI instruments live, it can really kill you.
You want to be able to use the smallest buffer that you can, without having your tracks stutter or freeze.
So if you can get away with 256 samples, do it! Some peoples files get so big eventually though, that 1024 is the only way it will render. That’s when you start having to freeze things and bounce your tracks (Of course making the old tracks inactive, but not deleting them in case you want to adjust their parameters later and re-bounce).
Then you can bring those samples back down again!
These are great tips. I knew about the freeze tracks but I didn’t realize the undo steps were taking up so much processing power.
I’m installing Logic 9 on a new MacBook as I’m writing this coincidentally.
Also, if you use Space Designer a lot you can halve the sample rate of the reverb so it takes up less processing power. It’s not noticeable in many applications, but just listen and decide for yourself.
FYI, this tut incorrectly states that the HD bar indicates the amount of hard drive space you have remaining. It actually refers to the read/write buffer (in other words, can Logic read and/or write to your hard drive fast enough for the recording/playback). This is why many people use separate hard disks for the operating system/DAW and the audio data — so the OS & DAW can be running off one, while the audio reading/writing happens in parallel on a different disk.
Another tip is to rebalance the load on your cores.
You can read about that here:
http://www.logicblog.info/logic-pro-blog/2010/12/4/tips-for-balancing-multi-core-performance.html
Cheers!
Dear Sir:
Thanks for your article!!!! :):):) . These steps really “cool down” my cpu loading immediately . I am still curious about why logic 9 didn’t taking care multiple core structure. I thought it should take care the balancing job automatically. :(
The article and comments were a lot of help, thanks. I was wondering if anyone has any tips for what hardware upgrades can improve your logic performance? Does installing a better internal/external audiocard help? I’m assuming that improving RAM and the processor will help. Any tips?
Thanks again
Freezing tracks = amazing. thanks so much! you saved my butt.
I have tried everything above , but unfortunately nothing happens. I still get the messages and high CPU levels . I tried the virtual memory of the exs24 to lower cpu. Also by selecting an empty track while playing back my song. I tried to route through buses.I bought an external firewire hd.Increased buffer size , froze tracks etc, but for me nothing works. Can anyone help me?
Great tips!! Thanks so much