White Noise Overload

I have a problem regarding Logic 8 and 9 where I cant seem to find the answer to on the forums hopefully someone might have experienced the same issue and know how to fix it. The problem has occurred around 7 times and is starting to scare myself and my ears. While running playback in Logic 8 (and now 9) all of a sudden a channel “hangs up” or stalls, hits max volume level in my DAW channel and fills the speakers with white noise as loud as my speakers can go. I then restart logic and everything is back to normal. I have diagnosed the problem every which way and have determined it must be related to the overload problem possibly disk or bug related as a couple of times it has been accompanied by the disk overload error and sometimes it has happened just out of nowhere. I have switched soundcards, wires, etc and have still run into the same problem. I have setup everything correctly as instructed and am running the latest versions on all of my equipment. I was wondering if anyone had experience a similar issue and or had any ideas on how to fix it. It has become very worrisome to myself because the sound is full blast loud of white noise and makes me jump and freak out (its quite loud on my Mackie HR824s). Any idea on the root of the problem? I can provide more info if needed and here is the list of my equipment.

 

Mac Pro 8 Core

Leopard

Logic 9 (happened on logic 8 as well)

Toneport UX2 Soundcard

Mackie 824

Balanced cables

 

Thanks a lot for the help!

 

Best

 

 

 

Matt

Supposedly fixed in 9.1

run the software update, it will update logic to 9.1 and see if that helps.

Unfortunately NOT fixed in 9.1. This nasty little bug can be very dangerous.

Follow this link - at the end of this thread there's another link to apple support - until now Apple seems not to respond to this problem:

http://www.logicprohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=52684&highlight=

Just for the record I have searched all the posts on this but there seems to be no answer regarding the cause of really BAD WHITE NOISE at DANGEROUSLY HIGH VOULME.

 

Last night I glued two non-contiguous audio regions to create new audio file then WHITE NOISE BLAM

 

AND I MEAN OFF THE SCALE - just one second of this and it has distorted the coils on my very expensive Quested speakers before I could kill the audio out - I am glad I had MAIN OUT at negative 10db and no phones on - it was seriously painful.

 

Does anybody have ANY insight into this issue?

 

Cheers

For me it is gone - didn't have this problem for months anymore and thought it was fixed by an update. Now I become nervous ....

yep

 

This SHOULD BE A MAJOR CONCERN for all users - all my software is up to date.

 

Something went VERY WRONG with LOGIC last night. This is not just a program bug which we can all live with - eg some piece of program is not quite right such as midi note sticks or something.

 

This has CONSEQUENCES FOR OUR PHYSICAL HEALTH! My ears are still ringing a day later. This is a BIG ISSUE for all professional musician.

 

I mean AUDIO WHITE NOISE OUTPUT RIGHT OFF THE SCALE IN VOLUME. JUST NOT ACCEPTABLE.

 

I have put an old analogue limiter on my studio line outs to stop this ever happening again while I rethink my studio software Program.

 

Still very unhappy.

 

Cheers

Did you contact Apple?

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2144002&tstart=0&start=0

 

Check out what's said near the end of that thread.

Hi Guys

 

I assume Ski you ment Apples coments on page 18 of other thread:

 

Thanks for your recent feedback though we're sorry to hear you're experiencing a problem. Are you using version 9.1.1? The form says you are using 9.0.2 - perhaps that was an error?

 

I assure you we take this issue quite seriously and have spent the better part of the last year investigating it. It has been essentially impossible to reproduce and the nature of it suggest that it is not specifically a Logic issue. We did however take steps in 9.1.1 however to at least block the audio output in the event that conditions arise that suggest it might occur. In that scenario, there would be a loss of audio altogether rather than an audible burst of noise. It will be disappointing if you have in fact experienced this noise burst while using 9.1.1. In any case, we would be very interested in learning as much as we can about your system as it may help us to understand this issue better.

 

I look forward to your reply.

 

Well it's obviously not fixed for 9.1.1 - there was no limiting the blast I got.

 

I have taken steps with outboard gear to make sure tis never gets to the speakers again.

 

Also, I have logged a bug report with apple.

 

Cheers

That same comment was posted in the thread I linked to, unless since then that thread's been modified by the moderator of that forum. But anyway, glad you saw that thread. Edited September 1, 2010 by ski

Sorry

 

Some spelling errors causing confusion

 

It is a quote from Page 18 of the thread you linked to.

 

Cheers

It's absolutely unconscionable that Apple hasn't communicated about this problem publicly, and that we (Logic users at large who've experienced this problem) have to find out via an "end-user" (i.e., Apple customer/consumer) via a forum that they're even aware of the problem.

 

Personally I don't believe that they have been testing this out for as long as they say they have, and I also find it impossible to believe that they can't reproduce it. In that email response they (supposedly) figured out a way to prevent the sound from reaching our ears, though clearly that's hit or miss (or is it always "miss"? Not enough data to assess, really). But what's further totally off the mark is that they didn't acknowledge this in the release notes for 9.1.1. I'd LOVE to see a report from someone saying that "I was recording a part and for some reason I didn't hear any audio playback, only to discover that the waveform appeared to be a brick wall of white noise in the waveform display."

 

Anyway, after seeing your post here, Frances, I bumped that thread. I think it should stay at the top of the Apple/Logic forum so that the world can see that some 18 pages and over 40,000 views that such a serious problem still exists without official acknowledgement or fix. Shame on them.

 

Rant over, back to making music.

Yep

 

I agree!

 

APPLE needs to take this one seriously.

 

Most of the buggy stuff you work around to get on with the business of making music- but this WHITE NOISE blast MUST be fixed if LP is to retain credibility as a professional tool.

 

Back to composing....

Hm - I had another white-noise issue last week. I got used now to looking at the wave form in the audio region. If I see something looking like white noise I delete the whole thing immediately and record again without listening before (I can afford this as most of the time I record Midi to Audio). I'm aware this is not a professional solution ...

 

EDIT: of course I'm running the latest versions of MacOS and Logic ...

mclight,

 

The next time this happens (although I hope it doesn't), would you mind taking a screenshot of the waveform and posting it?

I'll do that. But there's not much to see. It's just that the waveform suddenly hits both bottom and top a 100% of the audio region and this happens only at the end of the recording (but still in a part that should have been recording).

 

The frustrating thing is that I cannot force this mistake. And as long as you cannot force a mistake one hasn't understood it's causes yet ...

I get this from time to time. It was there in Logic 7 and now in 9.1.1. It happens for me when doing a Punch on the Fly.

 

I believe it has something to do with the waveform overview not being drawn correctly. I had a project once where I closed the song after one of these incidents and the "white noise" waveform was not saved with the song..... but it was still in the audio folder. So I dragged it back into the session and lo and behold, the waveform gets redrawn and the white noise is gone. I may have managed this trick one other time. I think I just immediately quit the song and then did the re-import thing again. Simply deleting it right after recording won't work it because then you are erasing it from the hard drive - no way to get it back at this point.

 

It happened the just the other day but I didn't want to interrupt the flow of the session to see if I could save the new recording. I suppose if the take had been more excellent I might have tried. Next time, on my own time.

 

Hmmm.... this make me wonder if asking Logic to re-draw the waveform might do the trick.... there is a way isn't there?

Aha - never heard of that "redrawn issue" as being a possible cause. If it worked for you that's fine. But IMHO this shouldn't happen at all.

 

I'm aware that I erase everything by deleting - but I thought about it as an recording issue (and in that case I WANT to erase it for sure in order not to kill my speakers or hurt my ears) and not as a waveform-displaying-issue. I mean, how weired can Logic become?!?

i don,t use any third party plug in at all have all the lastest updates and have had this happen at least three times in the past six months .i chalked it up as something i may have done but now i,m wondering if there is more to it now.the more people that say this has happend maybe apple will address this issue. just my two cents.

Aha - never heard of that "redrawn issue" as being a possible cause. If it worked for you that's fine. But IMHO this shouldn't happen at all.

 

I'm aware that I erase everything by deleting - but I thought about it as an recording issue (and in that case I WANT to erase it for sure in order not to kill my speakers or hurt my ears) and not as a waveform-displaying-issue. I mean, how weired can Logic become?!?

 

I don't know if it's a redraw issue, it just looks like that from my corner. And I certainly don't excuse this in any event. For one thing, this could damage a client's ears when they're in headphones. I've got to the point where if I hear it I'm pretty fast with stopping the song. I always tell the client that it's this glitch that Logic does now and then.

 

Apple needs to fix this.

Ears are ringing right now!! I can't believe this still exists in Logic 10.1. Has anyone run into this yet? This is an old thread but it "sounds" like the same issue. I was just in a session I have been working on for a couple months - film score. I was just finished reorganizing the project into Summing Stacks and all was well. I noticed graphically that extra tracks in the summing stacks were appearing in the arrange window. They didn't have a ChannelStrip equivalent in the mixer. When I hit their mute button, it would mute the summing stack bus. So I kept working thinking it's some redraw bug, but even when changing screensets, they are still there. So I hid them to get them out of view.

 

Then I go to play back the project and notice one of my instruments sounds super faint all of a sudden. I open the summing stack to see what's going on or if there is some automation causing the low volume and suddenly this sudden swell of white noise comes blasting uncontrollably out of the monitors. I dashed for the master mute, but got a good blast in the ears.

 

With everything muted, I tried hitting play again to see what was the cause. I opened the channel strip which had fabfilter's ProQ2 on it and watched as the analyzer gradually (or perhaps exponentially) became saturated with signal, the channel strip clip indicator goes solid orange as does all the channel strips down-stream (group, master bus, outputs). When I tried to hit stop, the rainbow wheel of death and Logic froze requiring a force quit.

 

This is totally out of the blue. I have been working in the studio for weeks with these projects with no issue resembling this. I'm really floored at this and especially how dangerous it is to the anyone in the vicinity of the speakers.

 

Does anyone have a clue about this? or how to resolve it. This thread is 5 years old and all my searches aren't giving many current results. I'm seriously nervous this might creep up again.

 

~pm

For me this problem hasn't occurred since years. It seems to have gone as mysteriously as it developed years ago. I sincerely hope it's not back again and that your experience is a "special" case ... sorry, can't help you with this. There was no solution in the past either. But I remember a looooong thread at the Apple Logic forums discussing this issue. Perhaps you have a look at that one?

Thanks for the reply mclight! I found another thread that has some more recent notes from folks having the issue in Logic X, but alas still no clear solution or understanding of cause. One poster mentioned a sample rate conflict, but this is not the case here - everything is running in sync at 48 sample rate.

 

here is the other thread in case anyone else is interested:

viewtopic.php?t=49993

 

I've been experimenting in the project to see what is the cause. So far what I can tell is that it is related to some Imaging plugin's I had on the channel strip - namely Ozone 6 Stereo Imager (not the full suite plug, just the image module). I also had AOM Stereo Image D & Waves Center plugin's bypassed (logic power icon toggled off) as I was comparing which I liked best for the track. I had been working on the track for at least an hour and had already moved on when the strange behavior reared it's ugly head. All the plugs were bypassed except the Ozone Imager which sounded the best and I just left the others bypassed and had moved onto other edits.

 

Everything was working flawlessly - which is the weirdest part. I had just done some other edits on a different track and then was going to playback the mix to check levels when the sound blast came surging up form this channel strip.

 

From what I can tell reopening the Logic project following the crash (I have already done a full reboot, etc.) and selecting Auto-Saved and subsequently tried just going off the saved project - both now exhibit the problem.

 

When I hit play, as soon as that track's audio begins, the channel strip's level starts to increase until is overloads. (I have all my monitors & headphones off while testing all this so just going off of visual feedback at this point).

 

If I bypass the Ozone 6 Imager plug, the white noise level swell dissipates and things look normal again. When I re-engage it, the audio swell returns. So then when I try to remove the plugin all together, the wheel returns, logic freezes and I have to force quit logic. NOW for the really weird part: When I re-open the project and this time I bypass Ozone, then I try to turn on one of the other bypassed imager plugs - like the AOM Imager D and sure enough the same White noise swell comes back. Again, attempting to remove any of the plugs from the insert results in Logic freezing with the wheel of death.

 

Totally crazy behavior. As I wrote in the first post, the channel-strip and all the plugs were working fine for several hours as I worked on other tracks doing some flex edits and automation. The bug came up out of the blue when I was trying to play back the whole session in a mixer window screenset. I am attaching some images so you can see it. Again, notice the strange GUI bug of the mysterious blank tracks that started showing up in the Summing Stacks. Not sure if this is related, but they did show up all of a sudden not long before the White Noise bug hit.

 

If anyone has a clue ~ it is truly appreciated!

 

~pm

Screen capture taken while sound blast was happening (speakers off of course). ProQ2 was loaded on the first insert and you can see the audio swell in the analyzer. Also note the extra blank tracks in the Summing Stacks up in the Arrange Window.

Ugg! So sorry to hear this is still going on. I had this issue in 10.0 and gave up, then 10.1 came out. It would happen in a project with Reverb-Space on the send. When the project would load i would quickly press play and 1 out of 3 times i could get the blast. If i removed Reverb i couldn't reproduce the issue. But this time i wiped my entire OS and installed clean. So far everything is ok, but i have not tried my old project. I switched to ableton but prefer logic's mixing layout better. Knowing this issue still lingers in 10.1 has got me super scared to use Logic again. I actually wanted to believe the problem has been fixed due to the process they implemented regarding disabling plugins while playing live. You may have saved my hearing, something i need to make music with. Come on APPLE!

Just wanted to add that I recently started using Logic Pro X (I also own and use Cubase Pro 9) and have a very simple setup with the following:

 

 

That is just Kontakt, a few Logic EQs and Relab's LX480 Complete reverb.

 

I was playing the instrument on the Track Stack (3rd channel) which plays channel 4 and 5 when I suddenly got smashed with a HUGE noise burst. It was so so so bad and I'm still shaking from it.  Several seconds later, everything was back to normal again but I wouldn't dare use Logic again after this.

 

Of course, my first thought is, is it Kontakt?  Is it Relab's LX480?  When it happened, I did have a background task running which would have put a little load on my main SSD (the sample libraries are on an external SSD) but under no circumstance should the outcome be such loud noise.

 

I have encountered such issues with Cubase in the past also but they are usually related to certain plugins.  Meanwhile I have never ever seen a problem with LX480 and Kontakt like this in Cubase in the years I have used them both.

 

I'm on El Capitan with the latest Logic Pro X update installed.  I use a Focusrite Clarett 2Pre Thunderbolt audio interface.

 

Just thought I'd add my incident in case it helps anyone.  I'm so so sorry to anyone this has happened to, it's terrifying.

 

Cheers

Fotis

Oh no - that's not a come-back anybody is looking forward to. I still haven't had this issue for years and I've been working a lot with Logic. Obviously it's only less likely to happen now compared to its peak time some years ago ...

I have not had this since I stopped using usb interfaces. I guess you have to find an interface that is solid. I now use TC desktop konnekt: not one single accident over hundreds of hours. Not any related to audio anyway. I peed my pants once though.

Thanks guys.  I tried to go with a Thunderbolt interface thinking that it indeed would avoid such issues to be honest.  I've just switched back to Cubase 9 with the same instrument setup and a limiter on the master to see if I have the same problem.

 

I'm just using this setup to practice piano, so it was really a shock to have that happen half way through my practice session.  It totally threw me off and I literally had to stop for around 30 minutes to recover