Processes for 20s before it starts to record? [SOLVED]

hi, I've recently purchased a new MacBook Pro 2.53Ghz 4Gb RAM last week from apple store running OS X 10.6.1 and recently bought logic studio. I had Logic 7 and decided to upgrade. I am running Logic 9.0.2.

 

I'm having an issue where I record-enable a track, and then push record, but every single time, it takes 20 seconds before record actually starts. It will just stall for 20s and beachball on me, and then just starts away. I've used Logic for the past 4 years and never experienced this problem before and don't know where to start or what it could be. It does this regardless of what interface/hard drive I'm using, or even if I don't use neither. I watched activity monitor during this debacle, and as MBP was beachball'ing me (almost like rickrolled) the activity monitor read that Logic was not responding. Then record would kick in 20s later, and everything was okay.

 

So I disabled all AU plugins through the manager but no change. I've changed anything and everything that I could see if it would affect it, but nothing. I tried recording in garageband (5.1) but no problems there. Not sure if that even matters.

 

Any suggestions what I should do next? I haven't tried re-installing Logic yet, due to the few hours of installing but I would if I have to. I thought there may be something I'm missing....or maybe just a re-install of Logic OR snow leopard would do the trick.

 

Just thought I'd ask before I go to anger management lol.

thanks in advance!

I have experienced a similar problem with logic pro 8 running the same macbook pro you have. Mine would only stall when i was recording onto an external drive. Internal drive works fine.

Make sure whatever hard drive you record to is formatted to Mac OS X Extended. You can format your drive (beware that formatting means erasing, so make backups!) using /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.

And turn off journaling on all your drives. You can do this after the fact in Disk Utility by holding down the Option key while you select the File menu, and this makes Disable Journaling visible in the File menu.

And turn off journaling on all your drives. You can do this after the fact in Disk Utility by holding down the Option key while you select the File menu, and this makes Disable Journaling visible in the File menu.

 

I would recommend turning journaling on for the system drive. Although you may want to keep it off for your media drive, leaving it on will not create a delay when recording.

What does journaling mean and how does it relate to working in Logic?

The drive i'm recording to is Mac OS Extended Journaled but I may just go ahead and reformat and clean-install everything and hope that works. Maybe just maybe something doesn't like it right now and needs some format love. I mean I've spent a few hours trying to figure it out, I could have reformatted and reinstalled everything already. Im gonna try that in a couple of days when I'm back home as Im leaving for a few days today. Thanks guys. I'll post my findings and see what happens!

Thanks, let us know!

I actually don't think it is journaling. I had a problem with Spotlight. Try disabling spotlight for all logic involved drives...

fyi I have read that Apple 'broke' Spotlight in 10.61 and I, for one, am inclined to believe them....

fyi I have read that Apple 'broke' Spotlight in 10.61 and I, for one, am inclined to believe them....

 

hmm, I have had zero issues with Spotlight (or recording) since upgrading, but as part of upgrading, I did rebuild the Spotlight Index using Onyx.

Whoa I'm interested. What's oynx?

forget it I looked it up. Maybe this is a fix for this?

Do you have energy saver pref for allow hard disk sleep turned on?

Onyx doesn't fix anything Logic related. It's just a bunch of Unix maintenance scripts and some other candy.

Onxy is a program that provides a GUI to some Unix Maintenance scripts that work.

Logic runs on Unix..... ergo......

 

If you are interested in keeping a clean organized system and having tools to help with basic first response trouble shooting, then Onxy, its' instructions, and the subjects it points to is and option. I recommend the study.

 

Try Version Tracker or MacUpdate if you feel that it might be useful to you.

All Onyx does is what Mac OS X does itself at night. If you leave your computer on at night, you don't need Onyx. Even if your computer is off at night, you most probably don't need Onyx. In fact I recommend you don't use it until you really KNOW that your problems are tied to that specific issue - which is definitely not the case here.

Ok so i just got home and haven't reinstalled Snow Leopard or Logic yet, and thought I'd try what broza2broza said to disable spotlight which takes 10 seconds to try versus hours of installation. My reason for trying it was that last week on several occasions, I had been using Logic for a few hours and then tried searching for something in spotlight... but it was reindexing, and an hour later it was still reindexing. Even though I had used spotlight earlier that day outside of Logic with no issues, this was telling me that there was something wierd happening between Logic and Spotlight.

 

So I went ahead and disabled spotlight in terminal with "sudo mdutil -a -i off" and now Logic is working normally (for now). hooray!

 

BUT is it a bad thing to disable spotlight? I don't use it that often (that I'm aware of) but it sure did just fix an issue/problem/bug. Or at least put a band aid on it.

 

What does spotlight do anyway beside search faster? is it crucial to enable it?I am curious to hear what you guys think.

 

Thanks alot once again for all of your help!

I for one do not think that spotlight is a problem.

I also apologize for potentially bumping this thread off subject.

I forgot to mention that when I had this 20 second delay problem when I first upgraded to 9, I disabled Spotlight that took care of it, and it's been disabled for months now. Could also be that I have 8 large SATA drives connected, and that it was always indexing at least one of them at any given moment.

Yeah i can confirm that. I haven't bothered to reinstall anything and have been using logic 9 with spotlight off and nothings going wrong at all since i posted. I was using my other macbook pro with snow leopard and logic 9 today and it stalled on me so I turned off spotlight and perfect!

Awesome tip. thanks alot guys! great work around.....

Great to hear. Thanks for reporting back that it worked for you.

For folks turning off Spotlight, be aware that Logic does rely on Spotlight in some minor ways. For example, searching in Logic's Browser relies on Spotlight. Apple mentions that here.

 

Also, I think Logic uses Spotlight to find samples that can't be found in their normal locations. This shouldn't be an issue unless you've messed around and moved Logic's samples out of their normal places.

 

A related tip: if you use Spotlight yourself to find certain kinds of Logic files (like samples), Spotlight won't find them. That's because Spotlight thinks they are System files that you don't want to see. But you can tell Spotlight that you actually do want to see System files. A nice explanation for how to do that can be found here.

 

Also, getting by without Spotlight is much easier if you have a good search program. Two excellent ones are EasyFind and Find Any File.

 

In the past I disliked Spotlight intensely so I used those instead. Lately though I find Spotlight has improved greatly, and I've gotten better at using it cleverly. Nothing else is quite as fast, although it still has some annoying attributes.