Hi, I'm relatively new to logic, and have been recently using logic express with a macbook (2.16GHz, 1 gb ram, 5400 rpm hd). Everything seems relatively stable, except one thing I noticed was that when I press play, the Disk I/O meter on the System Performance menu will randomly sometimes immediately hit 100% in the red area, and quickly go back down to normal. After this initial spike, the meters are all relatively low, as my projects are usually only a few tracks (5-10) with minimal plugins and the only softsynth being used is Reason. I'm not even sure if this is a problem, the only tangible thing I notice is there is a click/glitch sound whenvever I hit play or stop, but maybe that's normal? Anyways just wondering if that sudden spike in the disk meter is normal, or if it's something that should be addressed. I was also wondering, since I'm streaming audio from the same hard disk as my OS, are there any background services in OSX I should disable (ie. the Dashboard stuff) to maximize performace? as I said Logic hasn't really crashed on me yet while using this internal 5400 rpm hd, but any suggestions would be appreciated to maximize performance. Thanks js

On terça-feira 04/09/2007, at 21:28, j smith wrote: > Message posted by j smith <jsmith8674@gmail.com>: > I'm relatively new to logic, and have been recently using logic > express with a macbook (2.16GHz, 1 gb ram, 5400 rpm hd). Everything seems > relatively stable, except one thing I noticed was that when I press play, the > Disk I/O meter on the System Performance menu will randomly sometimes > immediately hit > 100% in the red area, and quickly go back down to normal. After > this initial > spike, the meters are all relatively low... > .... I was also wondering, since I'm streaming audio from the same hard disk as my > OS, are there any background services in OSX I should disable (ie. the > Dashboard stuff) to maximize performace? as I said Logic hasn't really > crashed on me yet while using this internal 5400 rpm hd, but any suggestions > would be appreciated to maximize performance. I think the spike is normal. But there are spikes and spikes... ;) But you definitely need a firewire Hard Drive to record your projects. Forget about disabling dashboard. The most important thing is to use a second HD to record and, of course, play your sessions. Also, on System Preferences, disable the checkbox "Put hard disk(s) to sleep..." and put the slider "Put the computer to sleep when is inactive..." on "Never" position. Good luck

Thanks for the response. I actually made sure I disable the hard disk sleeping and computer sleeping options. I do understand an ext firewire drive will be optimal, but it's just that I know a lot of ppl who have told me they have been able to run a similar setup with their macbook, and been able to work with a fair number of tracks with the internal hard drive. These spikes are occuring even with a 1 track project, no plugins. One thing I noticed, is that when I go to activity monitor, I notice the Disk I/O in Disk Activity usually spikes all the way upwards sometimes, even when my computer is idle, does this happen with you in OSX? and is it normal. This could be related to the logic express behaviour, because if spike happens normally in osx, then why not in logic...

> One thing I noticed, is that when I go to activity monitor, I > notice the Disk I/O in Disk Activity usually spikes all the way > upwards sometimes, even when my computer is idle, does this happen > with you in OSX? and is it normal. This could be related to the > logic express behaviour, because if spike happens normally in osx, > then why not in logic... Don't think too much of "spikes". Both CPU and disk load can be 100% whenever the system just wants to get something done rightaway (like preloading buffers when playing a song in Logic, or just loading a program or writing out a batch of data). The whole idea of "partial" load only makes sense in certain situations like when playing a song in realtime where data is needed at a slower rate than what the hardware can deliver. Consequently, a 100% load is only a bad thing when you want other things done in the same microsecond. And in the case of disk load, it's not even a problem if the "spike" lasts short enough because the harddisk actions are done with a little bit of time to spare and can take a tiny delay. Maurits.