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Unable to Open Logic Pro X Projects Without Crashing


hwatt

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Hello,

 

Since updating my OS to 10.15.6, I am unable to open a lot of my projects without Logic crashing entirely. It usually says it's due to a specific plugin (see attached photos). I've literally never had any issues with some of these plugins, like the SPL Transient Designer, this is the first time this particular plugin has flagged up as causing an issue. I've had the "Logic Pro X quit unexpectedly while using the WaveShell3-AU plug-in" message a few times. Other times it has crashed with no explanation. It's incredibly frustrating. I can open up Logic fine, I can even open up a new project via my chosen template.

 

It's strange because the "SPL" message I received today was for one of the projects that up until now has opened for me, and so I've been working on that for the last few days, and today it decided it doesn't like the SPL Transient Designer anymore.

 

Please help!

 

Mac Mini (Late 2012)

macOS Catalina 10.15.6

Logic Pro X - 10.15.1

1961648891_Screenshot2020-09-06at14_09_02.png.72ced4b1b2728fbf5b047f313deaa6c9.png

1797199331_Screenshot2020-09-01at11_09_10.png.f11baf167a776e1a2d195dcec277b66a.png

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If you go to the Plug-In Manager (Logic Pro X -> Preferences -> Plug-In Manager), select one (or more) of the plugins that are crashing, and tell Logic to "Reset and Rescan Selection", do the Audio Units pass validation?

 

Hey,

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

So, I moved all my AU components to my desktop, and I've slowly been adding them back in to their logic folder. I don't really understand what's going on but the project that for some reason doesn't like SPL Transient Designer anymore, now works, so long as the SPL TD component file remains on my desktop (so that plugin is out of use for now). The problem seemed to be fixed, and I was able to open other projects successfully, however, I've tried opening up a recent project I made and it crashes but doesn't give an explanation, it simply states "Logic Pro X quit unexpectedly"...it's so frustrating. I have no idea why this particular project is crashing. Any suggestions on what it may be?

 

Cheers

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Logic quitting unexpectedly is usually related to 3rd party stuff.

So the project that's crashing now can be either corrupt or a plugin is to blame.

Logic might not tell you every time what is creating the crash.

 

Ahh right ok. Luckily the project in question is still in its early stages of development. I'll remove the components of each 3rd party plugin and add them back in a few at a time. Cheers!

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There's also starting Logic in "safe mode" as a diagnostic help.

 

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203231

 

Usually if a program is crashing, it's possible to figure out what the issue is by going through the crash dump... but I'm a programmer, so reading that stuff is what I do, but it looks mostly like gibberish to normal people.

 

It is possible that one of the misbehaving plugins caused Logic to get into a bad state internally without actually crashing, and then some garbage got saved into a project file that is causing problems when you reload it. If you can quickly re-create the project without too much pain, that might be the path of least resistence?

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hwatt, thanks for starting this thread. I've been having the same issue.

And it's been getting worse over time.

Basically, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the crashes. It's always a different plugin on different projects.

It tends to happen when a project gets more robust, but I literally have some plugin crash Logic every single time I open it up.

Yesterday it was Tokyo Dawn Records' VOS Slick EQ. Today, it's SonarWorks' Reference 4 plug-in.

Last week, it was Devious Machine's Duck plug-in one day, and then Creative Intent's Tantrum plug-in. And then it was iZotope's Neutron 3. And then it was Voxengo's SPAN.

I'm literally deleting the audio units cache and then getting Logic to re-scan the plug-ins at least once a week, or sometimes even twice or three times a week. It's been consistently the same since I first downloaded the Logic demo. It keeps changing up, and once I rescan the plug-ins, everything works fine for a day or two, and then some other plugin decides to also cause issues.

At first, I attributed this to some issue being caused by Logic being in demo mode, but then, of course, I realized this kind of reasoning is probably nonsense.

I was doing screenshots of the crashes at first, to keep track of all the plugins causing an issue, but then I realized the screenshots were growing and I had no solutions. I even contacted Creative Intent's main programmer about the Tantrum plugin issue (someone who I knew I would be able to reach in person), and he walked me through saving a crash report to send to him, and since then, he's been looking into it but hasn't figured out a solution to why Logic is constantly crashing on me due to his plugin.

 

It's very weird, and the time remaining for the Logic demo is just under two weeks. Of course, I'm planning on purchasing the program finally, but I'm worried about this incredibly annoying issue continuing ad infinitum.

 

Has anyone else had this same plugin crash issue to such an extent? And if anyone has any other solutions, other than deleting the AU cache and rescanning plug-ins, I'd be very grateful for any troubleshooting tips.

 

Sorry to jump in on your thread, hwatt, but hopefully we can find some kind of solution for both of us (and I assume many more in the same boat).

Many thanks in advance!

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I hopped on the forum just now to check on this specifically. Same problem - Logic periodically crashes on start-up and cites a specific plugin, but there doesn't seem to be any consistency in which plugin causes the crash. It's all third party stuff, but could be Plugin Alliance, or Izotope, or Fabfilter once I think. Sometimes I am able to open a different project in Logic successfully that doesn't have the plugin, and then open my desired project later.
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Same here. Not on every project though. Just random.

Open up a song, first sonar works crashes, second time voxengo span etc and goes on like that. Only solution for me is to open up a new project and maybe add one of the crashing plugins and then open the one I want to work on. All my plugins are the latest versions. I use latest Mojave.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Glad to hear I'm not the only one with this issue. The madness continues, each time some different third party plugin.

 

Sometimes I am able to open a different project in Logic successfully that doesn't have the plugin, and then open my desired project later.

 

Yes, this used to work for me. I would open a different project that I knew wasn't causing any issues, then open the project that was crashing through "Open Recent" in the Logic menu. Now, even that workaround causes a crash.

 

It even got to the point where the only way I could open up the crashing project was by not closing the initial "safe" project. So, I essentially had two different projects open at one time. Once the crashing project opened, I would finally close the safe project.

 

One thing you might try is to open and play whatever demo song came with your version of Logic. Those songs use only Logic's built-in instruments and plugins. At least that way you can see if Logic is able to run using its own stuff.

 

Yes, if I open a simple template, then Logic doesn't crash. It doesn't seem to have any issues with native plugins/instruments. So, Logic seems to work at least at its bare minimum.

 

But there's no method to this madness. Today, Spitfire Audio's LABS plugin is the one causing the crash. Just out of the blue. Otherwise, it was working fine for the past few months. Today, I had to pull it out of the Components folder. On top of it all, recently, Logic doesn't even tell me what has been causing the crash. The last few weeks, I see the project crash, and no dialogue box shows up to inform me of the crash, or to send the information to Apple, etc. Just a crash, and no information whatsoever.

I have two days left of the trial period of Logic, and it's enough for me to second guess my impending purchase. It's starting to drive me a little crazy. :shock:

 

If anyone at any point finds some magical solution, other than to clear the audio units cache folder (which I'm now already doing once or twice a week), then please, I'm all ears! :D and thank you!

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Wow, I've opened up a can of worms here...I had no idea this was happening to other people. It is a very frustrating issue, and one that doesn't seem to have any remedy.

 

So far I've located 4-5 plug-ins & 1 Instrument that my 'Logic X' no longer accepts (but only on certain projects).

 

In response to the aforementioned - I also remember doing the trick of opening a project that you know works, and then opening a cursed project. But like @amnestic, this also stopped working for me and would end up crashing Logic entirely.

 

What's strange is I can open up a new project and use these "problematic" plug-ins (such as the Mini V). As @amnestic mentioned earlier the crashing seems to begin at a significant stage of development in the project. I honestly have no clue what's going on, but I'm currently in the process of contacting the plugin developers and hoping their technicians can locate the problem.

 

I noticed today that I do not have an Audio Units Cache folder anywhere on my Mac. Does anybody know why this may be?

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Unfortunately this did not fix anything relating to the topic of this thread.

 

Yup, you and me both, @hwatt.

I wonder if there would be some kind of solution in collecting the crash reports and finding someone who understands the code to tell us what is going on?

 

I’m not sure what to do. I definitely prefer Logic and I feel attached to it as a DAW, but as this trial is ending, I wonder if it’s worth to start working with a different DAW.

 

I can foresee this issue becoming unbearable if I was working on a larger release of several tracks, and never knowing at what point my projects will start to crash on me incessantly.

 

I know that for some people the solution is easy: “don’t use third party plugins” but that wouldn’t be a solution for me unfortunately. :(

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The only people that know, or can change, the code of third-party plugins is the third-party developer involved. You should contact them for support.

 

Yes, but I meant the crash reports that the Mac provides when a project crashes, which I think give you a more global look at what’s happening with Logic vis-à-vis the plugins. Maybe to see if there’s a particular pattern between all the various plugins that are causing the crash.

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Yes, you can often get a clue as to whether it's a third party plugin that crashed, or Logic itself, but that's about all you can take from the crash reports - and that's basically what the alert box is telling you anyway.

 

Thanks for the clarification! Very good to know.

 

Well, hopefully we'll find some kind of solution in a future update of Logic... In the meantime, my trial has ended, and I'm a bit apprehensive about purchasing a DAW with these issues that leave me at a stand-still on most projects. I guess I'll trial test another DAW as I mull it over the next few days. :|

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  • 3 weeks later...

I have exactly this problem. Been running Logic on my iMac on Mojave without issues for over a year. About a week ago I thought, I may as well upgrade to Catalina now, surely everything will be fine. Now I have exactly the same issue as is described here.

 

For example just now I tried to open the project I've been working on and it crashed. The crash screen said it was Arturia's Pigments causing the problem. I click 're-open' and again it crashes but this time it says the problem is with Spitfire Audio's Felt Piano. Next time it's the same.

 

As with other people, I can open other (simpler/smaller) projects with these same plugins in, and they don't crash.

 

Can't believe that at the moment there is apparently no solution for this. How much do I wish I had not upgraded to Catalina now?... :cry:

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Can't believe that at the moment there is apparently no solution for this. How much do I wish I had not upgraded to Catalina now?... :cry:

 

You didn't make an image of your system drive so you could easily revert if something caused problems? Especially with an OS version that's known to remove backward compatibility for old apps, 32-bit apps and more, and is quite an internal change? :shock:

 

I don't know why people like to fly without a parachute, only wonder why they didn't grab a parachute when they're already falling out of the sky..!

 

Anyway, there is a solution - you have to remove your plugins, then track down the ones that are causing you problems, and remove those while you wait for OS compatible versions, or updates, or reinstalls/replacements etc.

Edited by des99
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On top of it all, recently, Logic doesn't even tell me what has been causing the crash. The last few weeks, I see the project crash, and no dialogue box shows up to inform me of the crash, or to send the information to Apple, etc. Just a crash, and no information whatsoever.

 

I've noticed that too. At first I got crash reports each time. Now it just crashes but no dialogue box.

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It depends what's crashing - if it's third-party plugins during the validation process, then those plugins are crashing inside the validation process, which is technically outside Logic, and is not Logic crashing - so you don't get crash reports. The validation process is designed to continue if plugins crash during validation, otherwise one rogue plugin would take everything down in a lot more circumstances...

 

Basically, like a lot of things with modern software - it's more complicated in practice than most of us would like...

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You didn't make an image of your system drive so you could easily revert if something caused problems? Especially with an OS version that's known to remove backward compatibility for old apps, 32-bit apps and more, and is quite an internal change? :shock:

 

Thanks for your support. I didn't. My approach was to wait 1 year after the new OS comes out, check that all developers say their plugins are now compatible, and just upgrade. In the past when I was on Windows I used to do all that stuff, creating disk images to revert to, etc (hours and hours of work) and that was the reason I moved to Mac, to stop having to do all that stuff. Actually it's been fine for years on Mac. This is the first time I've been caught out. I thought waiting a year and checking compatibility would be enough. But I guess it's a hard lesson to learn.

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I *always* have a copy of my previous system I can revert to before upgrading. And when I do, I always spend the few few days/weeks cautious and expecting to revert as I'm expecting to discover some unforeseen incompatibility problem. It's a test drive procedure I haven't officially committed to yet, basically.

 

After some weeks, generally I'm then happy to stay on the new system if nothing bad has happened by then. I keep the backup of the old system around though, probably for some months before I decide I no longer need to go back.

 

Keeps your options open, whatever happens...

 

BTW It's not hours of work either - I run run SuperDuper and hit go - it's a one click procedure, and as I do change updates, it doesn't take too long to update my current backup with the latest filesystem changes, and then you've got a fresh up to date system backup ready to go.

 

Catalina, in particular, changes a lot of deep down stuff, and severs support for old things. This is widely known, so for sure I'd be more wary of jumping to Catalina than a previous OS change for some time...

 

Anyway - you'll need to do some plugin triaging to sort out which of your plugins are giving you problems...

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If you go to the Plug-In Manager (Logic Pro X -> Preferences -> Plug-In Manager), select one (or more) of the plugins that are crashing, and tell Logic to "Reset and Rescan Selection", do the Audio Units pass validation?

 

Yes all of my AU pass validation OK. And all the manufacturers say their plugins are compatible. Since the crashing is somewhat intermittent, it is going to be quite a hard process to work out what is causing it. For example, I managed to open the project again by opening a different project first. Worked on it for a while (but did not remove any of the plugins) and now it no longer seems to be crashing on open. In this situation there doesn't seem to be an easy way to work out which one is the culprit.

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So I want to chime in just to say that I had this problem somewhere between 9 months and a year ago, on a much older OS, High Sierra, I think. Right now I can't remember exactly what I did that stopped it, but I do want to emphasize that for me at least it had zero to do with the specific plugins mentioned in the dialog - I also got various NI plugs, Waveshell sometimes - these are all pretty solid citizens and are unlikely to be the root cause, although you can sometimes, but not alwyas, get a file to open by removing them temporarily - sometimes however, Logic will just throw up a new plugin as the cause.

 

I think my solution may have been as simple as rebuilding my prefs file . . it was something like that, so humdrum that it didn't stay in my memory for long. But I can say that it wasn't the plugin specifically, and it isn't the OS.

 

Hope this helps a little. I'll try to remember more.

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So here's my best memory of the workaround that I used while I was suffering what appeared to be the same bug as this, though back on High Sierra . . I think I found that if I removed the offending plugin temporarily from the Components folder, then when next opening the new file it gives the warning dialog that the plugin could not be found, then re-save the Logic file, then quit again , then put the offending plugin back in the Components folder, then try and open the file again, there was a good chance that everything would then open normally . . till the next time. Occasionally, the same problem would then happen with another plugin, and I'd have to repeat the process. I remember thinking that what was happening was that this process was forcing the plugins to load in a different order.

 

And then at some point in the last year, it just stopped happening; it may have just been updating to Mojave and updating Logic, but my guess is it was also to do with rebuilding all my preferences, which I remember doing at some point between then and now.

 

Sorry this is so vague, but maybe it will help . .

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Anyway, there is a solution - you have to remove your plugins, then track down the ones that are causing you problems, and remove those while you wait for OS compatible versions, or updates, or reinstalls/replacements etc.

 

des99, I appreciate your efforts to help us find a solution, but you've mentioned this thought previously in this thread, to which I tried to explain that this is actually not a solution to the issue. This doesn't seem to be the run-of-the-mill specific, single plugin that is persistently causing the issue, and all it takes is to "isolate" that one or two plugins and remove them. The issue is that, technically, all the plugins are the issue. You remove one plugin that you think is suspect, and then the program crashes due to a completely different unrelated plugin. You put the previous plugin back in, and the project works again... until you close it. Then, the next time you open that project, a completely different plugin causes crashes when trying to open up the project; the same plugin that seems to work without any issues when you open a totally different project.

 

It seems the issue is something internal to Logic with regards to third party plugins in general. Something that I assume won't get fixed until the next Logic update, 10.5.2, whenever that will be. And I know that the other "solution" is to not use third party plugins at all, but for myself (and I'm sure I'm not alone in this), that is not an option at all.

 

So here's my best memory of the workaround that I used while I was suffering what appeared to be the same bug as this, though back on High Sierra . .

 

mpmusicny, thank you immensely for taking the time to write this up. Much appreciated!

 

I think I found that if I removed the offending plugin temporarily from the Components folder [...] there was a good chance that everything would then open normally . . till the next time.

 

I've done this exact thing several times, and indeed, it would work "till the next time." As you wrote, it always ended up in another plugin crashing the project later on in the process.

 

And then at some point in the last year, it just stopped happening; it may have just been updating to Mojave and updating Logic, but my guess is it was also to do with rebuilding all my preferences, which I remember doing at some point between then and now.

 

Oh wow, I wish that would be the case for me, this issue just fixing itself.

I can't check things now, since I was on a trial of Logic and didn't end up purchasing the DAW after my trial was up. I've moved on to learning a different DAW due to this issue.

But I'm checking back in to this thread to see if there's ever a surefire solution that pops up.

 

That being said, by "rebuilding preferences," did you simply do "Logic Pro X> Preferences > Reset All Preferences Except Key Commands"?

Or did you go to "~/Library/Preferences" and removed the "com.apple.logic10.plist" file?

 

Also, did you clear the AU cache? That's what I did about twice a week to try and stave off the plugin problems, and it would also be a short-term solution to this issue. But nothing seemed to fix it 100%.

 

One thing I now realized that I did not try was just reinstalling Logic. Again, I can't check this since the Logic trial has expired. But if anyone with these issues tries a reinstall and it works, let me know.

 

Thanks in advance!

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