[I am not checking the forum that often, so if you have any ideas suggestion, maybe you could at least send a copy by e-mail to studio@painofsalvation.com as well?] Hi, I am getting sick and tired of both Logic and Mac. I am on my fifth Mac by now (a G5 dual 2 GHz Powermac - the first top model of G5, see specs at bottom) and I have had constant troubles on all of them running all versions of Logic between 4.5 and 7.2.1. Perephiral equipment has changed too so that shouldn't be the issue. The big problem is that Mac is not *supposed* to crash, so there is a big silence about the whole thing from Apple's direction, and to a certain extent, between Mac users as well. Every time I make a new album I feel I have to start from scratch, re-install everything, updating everything etc. Likewise this time, so all is freshly installed. I also paid for the almost non-existant update to 7.1 (hey, if the product is not all well, why shouldn't the users pay...) about two weeks before the 7.2 upgrade came, so I bought that one too. Now, since they still haven't addressed half of the problems, I guess my wallet can look forward to lots of small and annoying Logic updates that, to be honest, they should pay us users for ("sorry that the last update still had major issues, here is the update and 10 dollars, it was our fault")... Ah, what the heck, here goes... I am one of many, as it seems, who have big problems with the "Out of memory" dialogue. It happens all the time. ALL the time. Logic also crashes about 10-15 times a day, especially with certain songs. Sometimes it runs smoothly for a few hours, but more often than not it doesn't. Even when it runs smoothly, the smooth is also quite a bit tinted with slow. Then, one of two things usually happens, with or without dialogue. 1. Either the spinning ball shows up, and never goes away. The rest of the computer works without problems, all drives are usually accessible (with the odd one time exception of one drive running very slow as if being written to) and Finder is happy. Logic is the one unhappy program in my computer, and I have tried leaving it on for more than 24 hours to see if whatever it's doing can be resolved. One time it went back to normal after 3-4 hours but that was a one time occasion. After a typical memory dialogue, the spinning ball always shows up for about half a minute up to two minutes, and at those times I am very worried about a crash. The problem with this scenario, where Logic freezes rather than crashes, is that no (crashed) file is made, and all work is lost. It is very annoying to see your whole song in its full glory on the screen, with just that tiny spinning ball in front of it, telling you that, sooner or later, you have to give up and pull the plug yourself. It's like being a parent with a kid in coma (I am aware of the big emotional difference, so please do not get upset over the parable). 2. Or Logic crashes - quickly and without pain - creating a (crashed) file. My folders are full of files with numerous (crashed) in the file names, silent witnesses of the lability of Logic. The problems are escalating too. Now, I get the memory dialogue after one single action. I have seen others having similar problems during recording. In my case, it usually happens when adjusting region lengths. Now, reorganizing the memory helps for a little while, and at that point, very often, if finds unused blocks, even though I just saved. Normally, these can be deleted, and so far, I have noticed no problems from this. Now, however, I have this one song that is causing major trouble. When reorganizing, it tells me of an unused block. When I try to choose delete, Logic freezes, with the impressive spinning ball flagging for a lost race. I hate this. I have noticed some strange things that might be related to this. 1. It often happens in a song where I, at one point or other, have split files into many regions with short crossfades inbetween. This has been done like this - I have demo recordings that I import and adjust the tempo in Logic to. Then I cut the regions (8 files) at every 8th for instance, and put a 10 ms crossfade between every region. Now, when I alter the tempo in another tempo set, all regions will move accordingly, more or less making the original files into apple loops, if you get my point. The weird thing is, the problems stay, even if I remove all the regions and the crossfades AND empty trash/delete undo list or whatever. I have even re-saved the file as a project on another drive and the problems continue. 2. I have a large drive (400 Gb S-ATA II) on a SATA card (it was one of those drives that G5 had problems with). I use this as an Audio drive, containing my Logic projects, audio files (belonging to those projects) and samples. On top of this I have one 160 Gb drive containing Akoustik Piano and BFD (+ expansions). The System drive is a 120 Gb drive. The latter has Journaling enabled, while both previous have not. I have seen some mentionings of cluster sizes...? Anyway, I noticed (I think) that Logic runs much slower now with these drives installed than it did previously. My previous setup had the System running on an external LaCie 250 Gb Firewire drive. I stopped doing that mainly since Mac seems to be handling firewire pretty randomly - lost communication etc seems to be everyday happenings in the world of Apple...? At least with my Powercore FW that I ended up selling since Logic lost contact with it as soon as things got hairy, and a restart of Logic was necessary. I don't have time for that sort of crap. Anyway, one idea that has crossed my mind was to partition the 400 Gb drive into three partitions. A friend told me that it should work better since Logic doesn't have to calculate the whole drive into RAM or whatever, but people on this list have said quite the opposite. Any ideas? I have solved the problem two times. The solution looks like this. You delete EVERYTHING in the song file that causes problems, except for the channels and plugins etc. In other word, you delete all regions and MIDI events, and all tempos and markers etc (apple+A). Then you save the document as something else, open the old problematic file and copy/paste (apple+A) everything. You have now pasted back all the problems. You would think. But now it's all fast and nice again. At least for a few sessions, when the problems keep sneeking back into the song again. Sure, I could do this like once a week for every song and every album I'm working on - if I thought it would be reasonable to expect from a rather expensive application and an even more expensive computer. But it is NOT reasonable. I'm sick of this. My history with Apple: I switched from PC some years back, because I wanted a full SCSI chain system, personalized memory usage/dedication, IBM processors, a WHOLE product rather than a variety of small ones in combination, and the uncrashability all Mac users had been bragging about. First I had a G4 running OS 9, before I changed to OS X. That's when the problems began. Crashes came every now and then, but when looking in the (again, rather expensive) OS X Bible, it said OS X couldn't crash. This hubris runs through the Mac society like VD. I guess that's why Logic doesn't even come with a decent Trouble Shooting section, same as Apple in general. I bought a new computer. The G5 I have was faulty from the factory. It crashed every day. Of course, I couldn't return it. Sure, it was a faulty product that cost me like 3.500 EUR but, see, they treated the computer as a combination of small products - like a PC. So, they exchanged the parts one by one. For every part I had to drive my computer to a city 70 km from my own city and wait for a week. The telephone support was a hoot. One time I waited in line for almost 4 hours before someone answered and said all technicians had gone home so he couldn't answer my questions. Anyway, after one of the processors were changed, the computer began to work like a clock. This was one of the last parts that were changed, after memory, main card, fans, drives etc. But now, the clock is broken again, so it seems. I am sick of trouble shooting, scanning forums, calling support lines and what have you. It's an expensive machine and it should just f**king work! Who would tolerate this from any other industry? Seriously? A new car that grinds to a halt several times a day? Oh, if we pay for the motor update it MIGHT fix the problem. Do you use any third part products in your car such as, say, CDs, extra lights, battery chargers...? Then we cannot help. My computer is supposed to be a tool for my creativity, doing one thing: computing. That, as it seems, is the one thing it fails to do in a reliable enough way. I doubt that anyone had the energy to read all the way to this point. That's OK. I mean, I really welcome any good ideas, or tips regarding partitioning etc. But I think I can see some of the regulars coming in: Update... Repair permissions... Turn off journaling on audio drives... Zero the drives... Reinstall... Delete the prefs... Bad memory... Disk Warrior/Tech Tool... Avoid using other applications... (seriously...) Etc, etc, etc... But honestly, are we supposed to do all of the above whenever Logic or OS X causes problems? Then I, for one, wouldn't be doing anything else. I am not supposed to act computer engineer, that's why I left the Windows ship to start with! I have had my fair share of anti-static gloves, tiny screw drivers, prompt commands and updates. I wanted something else. Now Mac is turning into PC and OS into Windows. Admittedly fancier looking, but still... Automatic memory handling, bling bling desktop and animations, IDE, OS interface running through other code languages, Intel, security updates, integrated multimedia applications... Seriously, do you recognize this at all? Me, I would trade processor speed for stability any day of the week. Any day. I thought I did. Thanks, Daniel PS: sorry for the somewhat childish anger and sarcasm, but you know what, it actually helped a little bit just writing this... Computer: Apple G5 dual 2 GHz 3 Gb RAM 120 Gb drive (System) 160 Gb drive (BFD + Akoustic Piano samples) 400 Gb drive [SATA II through recommended SATA card] (Audio and Logic files) (the third drive is placed instead of the internal DVD-RW drive since this silly computer doesn't have space for more than two drives...) UAD-1 Related software: OS X 10.4.7 (Combo update) Logic Pro 7.2.1 Waves Diamond bundle UAD-1 Ultra Pak bundle WaveArt plugs (Temperature Monitor) (Line 6 Edit) (Line 6 Monkey) (Liquid Control) (UAD-1 Meter) (Logiconizer) (Tech Tool 4) (DiskTracker 2.3.2) Related peripherals: Focusrite Liquid Channel Line 6 PODxt Pro (all bundles) External LaCie dual layer DVD+-RW MOTU 896 (newest drivers) with Focusrite OctoPre through ADAT interface (lightpipe) Emagic AMT-8 Logitech Elite keyboard Microsoft Wireless Intellimouse Explorer 2 (Most of the above has changed through the years though...)