Logic 8 Is Bogging Me Down

A few weeks ago Logic 8 began to run really slowly when using certain plug-ins and I have no idea why. Certain synths such as Sculpture, Kontakt, or Akoustik Piano (by N.I.) can barely run without stopping playback or breaking up.

It did not always run so poorly. I used to run all of the aforementioned synths with no problem. Now I open up old sessions which used to run perfectly and they are constantly crashing playback with their huge CPU loads. As far as I can tell I have not switched on any features or options that would cause more drain on my computer. I'm currently running a 1.7 Ghz Powerbook G4 with a gig of RAM. My hard drive isnt especially full. I've still got another 5.5 gigs of room left on my hard drive.

I really appreciate any help you guys can give me.

Also: I've opened up the activity monitor utility on my Mac and it's currently reading as such:

(Out of 1024 mb)

Wired: 90 mb

Active: 111 mb

Inactive: 305 mb

Used: 502 mb

free:502 mb

VM Size: 4.09 gigs

page ins/outs: 20162/0

What does the inactive column mean? Isnt the same as free memory? Is it possible that my computer is somehow not utilizing or recognizing all of my available RAM?

I think Logic 8 just needs a shit ton of processing power. It generally runs much better on the intel macs. I've never been able to run Sculpture without it stopping/skipping during playback.

I'm running Logic express 7 on the exact same mac as you...and I get similar problems when using my minimoog software

Well Kontakt will eat shit up. But what I find usually slows Logic up is cluttered up directories. Although, Logic 8 organizes all your soundbanks for you, right? On my computer while I'm really getting into the flow of a track, I sometimes forget to pay attention to where all my audio files and plugins are being stored, so running the actual project gets more difficult for logic (since it has to reach all over the various drives to operate everything).

I doubt that is your problem though...

Actually...the problem is most definitely the 5.5 gigs left on your hard drive. If I'm not mistaken, you should have

about 70 gigs on that right? 5.5 is not optimal for Logic performance at all. It works for awhile, but it eventually slows down until logic becomes really horrible. It happened to me, and I was operating at 2 gigs. Everything worked fine, even heavy duty stuff like Kontakt...but eventually it all went to hell.

I then went and cleaned my computer, putting lots of stuff on an external hard drive. I consolidated all my projects sound libraries, then deleted the excess audio files all over the place my projects were referencing... I ended up with about 25 gigs free on the computer's hard drive, I reset the pram, and everything returned to optimal performance.

Conducting a major hard drive cleanup might be your answer, but then again, we probably were stuck in totally different situations. But moving your sample libraries onto another hard drive is a good idea, because it doesn't slow anything up in logic, and it leaves a lot of free space on your comp.

This probably didn't help you much, but cleaning up just might be the answer.

Also, deleting excess instrument and aux tracks, as well as muting unused channels, helps a lot to let off the cpu load.

Thanks for the thoughts. I'm definitely scraping for memory on my laptop, despite my constantly organizing and cleaning out excess files. Looks like it's time for another go.

How can I defragment my hard drive? I've been unable to find a way to do this on my computer. Or does OSX already straighten up my files in the background?

Lack of memory is a huge issue from what i can tell by your post. CPU being next in line.

Sculpture itself is a major resource hog CPU wise.

Kontakt and Acoustik Piano are both huge memory hogs. I've seen kontakt reserve anywhere from 200-400 megs of memory just idle alone.

I wouldn't go so far as to say the lack of storage space available is a major factor in your performance unless kontakt is rendering all samples from disk as opposed to in memory as well as akoustik doing the same.

My first approach would be to clear up some space or run your samples off any external drive. Second, I would look into a few tools to optimize your powerbook. Such as:

Onyx - Free OSX Optimization Tool:

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11582

But also consider what and how many devices you have connected to your laptop. USB, Firewire, DVI External Monitor, etc...