Freezing is pretty poorly implemented, as far as really helping you make the most of your hard drive(s). It needs to do some of the following: 1) Once a track is frozen, Logic should analyze that frozen audio, and break it into regions, only playing back the frozen regions that have detected audio signal in them. All of this done behind the scenes, the user being left blissfully unaware. Come on, Apple, this is well overdue. 2) Intelligent hard drive distribution of frozen audio. How many there among us watch our song hard drive crap out as it becomes overwhelmed with playback of frozen stereo audio files? I distribute my song audio across two additional drives, leaving the song drive to play back only frozen files and, still, it eventually craps out. Wouldn't it be great if Logic would distribute the frozen audio among other drives in your system as it deems necessary, so that your song hard drive would not be overwhelmed by lots of frozen stereo files. David

On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 19:48:33 -0000, Noble Gowing wrote > Freezing is pretty poorly implemented, as far as really helping you > make the most of your hard drive(s). I see a slight misconception in your wishlist: Freezing isn't meant at all to help your hard drives. It's meant to help your CPU. It's obvious that a frozen track will always require more disc access than an unfrozen track, since the point of freezing is to read all data (in 32 bit float) from disc rather than calculate it. Therefore if you freeze all your tracks, your harddisk is bound to "crap out". You should only freeze tracks that have a lot of CPU-heavy plugins. > 1) Once a track is frozen, Logic should analyze that frozen audio, > and break it into regions, only playing back the frozen regions that > have detected audio signal in them. All of this done behind the > scenes, the user being left blissfully unaware. Come on, Apple, > this is well overdue. This would mean either only skipping digital silence (which is a pretty rare occurance, especially if there's a reverb somewhere in the track), or determining some sort of threshold, which would mean that freezing would influence the result, however slight. The latter is not an option I'd say, and the first could work but I doubt it would make much difference. > distribute my song audio across two additional drives, leaving the > song drive to play back only frozen files and, still, it eventually > craps out. You say 'still' as if that's a contradiction, but as I said, freezing increases disk load by it's very nature and there's no way it's ever going to reduce it. :) Disk distribution is a way to help your disks, but that doesn't really have anything to do with freezing. This distribution is best done by the user (as you are doing now), and if you want to freeze tracks because your *CPU* is in trouble, the wisest distribution is to let both disks play some frozen tracks. But you are right in that all frozen tracks are always played from the same disk because you can't choose (individually) where they'll end up. > Wouldn't it be great if Logic would distribute the > frozen audio among other drives in your system as it deems necessary, > so that your song hard drive would not be overwhelmed by lots of > frozen stereo files. I guess that would be nice, though I'd rather specify the distribution myself. Maybe a destination path per track could be useful for that. Still, if your system gets in trouble and you've frozen all your tracks, it's time to try and UNfreeze a few and see whether that helps. :) Maurits.

On Thu, 1 Feb 2007 09:39:06 +0100 "Maurits van de Kamp" <maurits@bassment.nu> wrote: > On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 19:48:33 -0000, Noble Gowing wrote > > Freezing is pretty poorly implemented, as far as really helping you > > make the most of your hard drive(s). > > I see a slight misconception in your wishlist: Freezing isn't meant at all to > help your hard drives. It's meant to help your CPU. It's obvious that a frozen > track will always require more disc access than an unfrozen track, since the > point of freezing is to read all data (in 32 bit float) from disc rather than > calculate it. Therefore if you freeze all your tracks, your harddisk is bound > to "crap out". You should only freeze tracks that have a lot of CPU-heavy plugins. To reduce disk load, it would be nice to freeze folders, where all the folder's tracks are frozen into one file. Of course, then you wouldn't be able to mute those tracks independently without rebuilding the freeze file. But it still could be pretty useful for rather completed sub-arrangements, while editing other parts of the song. But then, you can always bounce a couple of tracks manually into a common audio file, and then mute the tracks to reduce CPU and disk load. Christian

--- In logic-users@yahoogroups.com, ChristianH <chris@...> wrote: > > To reduce disk load, it would be nice to freeze folders, where all the > folder's tracks are frozen into one file. > Of course, then you wouldn't be able to mute those tracks independently > without rebuilding the freeze file. But it still could be pretty useful > for rather completed sub-arrangements, while editing other parts of the > song. There are a few other reasons I can think of why this would not be a good idea. 1) it assumes you're using a single pair of I/O, because if you ever change your I/O config, Logic would have to refreeze -- a very time-consuming process. 2) Every time you tell Logic to freeze a track, Logic would have to remix all frozen tracks again into that single frozen audio file. Freezing would take a looooooong time. =-0 But I'm all for brainstorming! David

--- In logic-users@yahoogroups.com, "Maurits van de Kamp" <maurits@...> wrote: > > On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 19:48:33 -0000, Noble Gowing wrote > > Freezing is pretty poorly implemented, as far as really helping you > > make the most of your hard drive(s). > > I see a slight misconception in your wishlist: Freezing isn't meant at all to > help your hard drives. It's meant to help your CPU. Of course it's meant to help your CPU. Please give me a little credit here, Mauritz. :-) Logic accomplishes this CPU boost by putting a burden on our song hard drive. (I say "song hard drive" to refer to the where you are storing the song file, because therein lies one of the problems with the way Logic goes about all of this. i.e., it puts a huge disc burden on your song drive when you freeze. Start freezing audio instrument tracks, and your song drive gets taxed, one stereo audio file at a time.) Logic's freezing is rather unintelligent. It prints-to-disc from the zero marker to either the end of your song or up until you hit Command-P. So Logic rather dumbly plays back this frozen audio from the zero marker, with no additional intelligence. That is the problem I am referring to. > It's obvious that a frozen > track will always require more disc access than an unfrozen track, since the > point of freezing is to read all data (in 32 bit float) from disc rather than > calculate it. Therefore if you freeze all your tracks, your harddisk is bound > to "crap out". You should only freeze tracks that have a lot of CPU-heavy plugins. By this, you are referring to most of my tracks. ;-) Yes, we obviously only freeze the tracks that make sense to freeze. I have to play a game of only freezing tracks that have material in them throughout the song, versus the ones that pop in and out sporadically. If Logic were to automatically strip silence the frozen tracks into regions, that would solve everything. Yes, some intellience and user input should be involved with this to take into account "digital" verse realistic silence. The latter could be based on the genre of music, and perhaps even the output levels of your mix IO's, which I won't get into. This is science, but it's very solvable without too much brainstorming. > > > 1) Once a track is frozen, Logic should analyze that frozen audio, > > and break it into regions, only playing back the frozen regions that > > have detected audio signal in them. All of this done behind the > > scenes, the user being left blissfully unaware. Come on, Apple, > > this is well overdue. > > This would mean either only skipping digital silence (which is a pretty rare > occurance, especially if there's a reverb somewhere in the track), or > determining some sort of threshold, which would mean that freezing would > influence the result, however slight. The latter is not an option I'd say, and > the first could work but I doubt it would make much difference. Digital silence is not rare. I strip silence my audio tracks, for example, so that once a reverb tail zeroes out, there's nothing but digital silence. The same goes for audio instruments where there are long stretches with no notes played. Yes, to tackle "silence-for-all-intents-and-purposes" vs. digital silence, a threshold scheme is involved. While digital silence is something robots can appreciate, humans should be able to define "realistic silence," which can vary between musical genres. > > distribute my song audio across two additional drives, leaving the > > song drive to play back only frozen files and, still, it eventually > > craps out. > > You say 'still' as if that's a contradiction, but as I said, freezing > increases disk load by it's very nature and there's no way it's ever going to > reduce it. :) I'm sorry, but you must have ignorned the "region" (later dubbed "strip silence") discussion a few paragraphs earlier. Please explain how intelligent, automatic strip silencing of frozen regions does not solve part of the problem. > Disk distribution is a way to help your disks, but that doesn't > really have anything to do with freezing. This distribution is best done by > the user (as you are doing now), and if you want to freeze tracks because your > *CPU* is in trouble, the wisest distribution is to let both disks play some > frozen tracks. But you are right in that all frozen tracks are always played > from the same disk because you can't choose (individually) where they'll end up. And your point? Currently, the only way to have more than one disk play back frozen tracks is to use a RAID scheme. > > Wouldn't it be great if Logic would distribute the > > frozen audio among other drives in your system as it deems necessary, > > so that your song hard drive would not be overwhelmed by lots of > > frozen stereo files. > > I guess that would be nice, though I'd rather specify the distribution myself. > Maybe a destination path per track could be useful for that. I hear you. :-) > > Still, if your system gets in trouble and you've frozen all your tracks, it's > time to try and UNfreeze a few and see whether that helps. :) Yes, all the time actually. I'm constantly pushing the limits of my system during mixdown. Thanks for your input, but let's discuss it further. David

> Of course it's meant to help your CPU. Please give me a little > credit here, Mauritz. :-) Ok, it's just that the way you wrote it, gave me the impression that you tried to use the freeze function to relieve your harddisk. :o) > Logic's freezing is rather unintelligent. It prints-to-disc from > the zero marker to either > the end of your song or up until you hit Command-P. So Logic > rather dumbly plays back > this frozen audio from the zero marker, with no additional > intelligence. That is the > problem I am referring to. True. But it's basically the point of freezing that it's as dumb as possible. :o) > Digital silence is not rare. I strip silence my audio tracks, for > example, so that once a > reverb tail zeroes out, there's nothing but digital silence. The > same goes for audio > instruments where there are long stretches with no notes played. Ok. Yes then I guess digital silence would be a good excuse for stopping freeze data. I just didn't think there would be any. >> frozen tracks. But you are right in that all frozen tracks are >> always played >> from the same disk because you can't choose (individually) where >> they'll end up. > > And your point? That I agreed with you on the problem of not being able to distribute freeze files. I thought that was clear? :o) > Thanks for your input, but let's discuss it further. Sure - it won't get any attention from Apple here though. :o) Maurits.

I think it would be great if it was capable of freezing instruments with multi outs like DFH or SID XL. I realize that it would take a while to freeze so many outs (16 in SID XL if you use them all) but those kind of multi sounds/samples are huge and take up a lot of RAM and often forces a buffer change. This is very inconvenient when it happens early in the recording process (and drums usually are) because it's not that great to record with a 256 buffer. During mix I would just unfreeze and use whatever buffer that works. I know that I could just bounce the output but I usually mess a bit with the individual levels which isn't really possible with that alternative.