Garageband Performance Issues With New Macbook?, Newbie needs some help optimizing garageband Options

[nebdrof]

Hey all! Got a new mac user here with some questions about the CPU hog that is 'Garageband'. Either I've selected some memory heavy track options, recorded something improperly, or have other unknown system issues that I could use some help sorting out.

Hardware: New Macbook with 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 2GB Memory (1067 Mhz DDR3) with about half of the hard drive filled with pictures/music etc. 121G of 256G

Software: Gb that came installed on the machine and no other plugins/add ons.

Recording: 6 track/2:00 min song, 2 mic tracks (guitar,vocal), 3 Gb instrument tracks (bass and 2 keys), and 1 Drumbeat loop from the Gb loops (effected drumkit 08) all relatively light on effects

Issue: "Part of Project was not played" - Too many real instrument tracks to be played in real time. To optimize performance...blah blah blah. I've followed most of their optimizing tips to no avail. I've uploaded a screenprint of garageband, the warning and current CPU usage monitor which does not seem to be maxed...

Question: Anything else I should be doing to make this thing work? Is there another program that is not as resource intensive that has similar functionality. I do have Adobe Soundbooth as part of the Adobe Production Premium package but use that mainly for video/photo editing.

Thanks in advance for everyone's help!

Attached File(s)

 Screen_shot_2011_01_13_at_11.23.04_AM.png ( 347.79K ) Number of downloads: 11
 Screen_shot_2011_01_13_at_11.23.04_AM.png ( 347.79K ) Number of downloads: 5

 

[nebdrof]

All great suggestions, thanks.

Houstonmusic, I maxed my buffer but it still seems to randomly quit with that warning. Are there certain drum loops that require more processing power than others? I've removed nearly all of my effects from the tracks themselves.

Deaconblue (nice name, I'm from Alabama), stupid question: booting from system dvd... how do you do it? should it have come with my mac?

Thanks again!

[deaconblue]

All great suggestions, thanks.

...

Deaconblue (nice name, I'm from Alabama), stupid question: booting from system dvd... how do you do it? should it have come with my mac?

Thanks again!

cheers, nebdrof!

Yeah, you should have gotten either a computer specific disc (grey with white lettering and, I believe, Software Install or Software Restore printed on the left side) with your iMac or a Mac OS X DVD (black with a purple nebula on the face of the disc for 10.5.x or white with a snow leopard on the disc for 10.6.x).

To boot from the system or OS disc, put it in your optical drive and choose one of the following:

1) Go to the Apple in the top left corner of the screen
2) Select "System Preferences"
3) Click on the "Start Up Disk" preference pane
4) Select the DVD icon in the list
5) Click on "Restart"
6) Click on "OK"
7) Once booted, you should see a "Utilities" menu at the top of the screen
8) Click on this and select "Disk Utility"
9) Once opened, click on your Hard Drive in the left window pane
10) Click on "First Aid"
11) Click on "Repair"
12) Also, click on "Repair Permissions" once the disk repairs have been completed
13) Quit Disk Utility
14) Quit the installer (you will be prompted to quit and restart)

or:
1) Restart your iMac
2) Hold down the "Option" key
3) The unit should boot to a grey screen with icons of your available hard drives and DVD
4) click on the DVD icon and the unit will boot to the DVD
5) follow the rest of instructions from the method above starting at #7

Post back with your results. Hopefully this will get you solved and creating more music.

peace.

Attached File(s)

 Screen_shot_2011_01_17_at_6.57.59_AM.png ( 159.28K ) Number of downloads: 1

 

[kayj_prod]

There seems to be a bit of confusion here over the soundcard and what it is doing. Adding an external interface (audio I/O) will not help. The interface is merely a front end for getting audio in and out of the computer. Regardless of the interface, the computer processor is doing all of the processing. Now, on a PC things could be different depending on the software and how it is set-up. The processor speed is the only thing that will dictate how many processes you can run. On my quad core MacPro, I expect to be able to run more tracks and processes than on any of my other machines.

The only exceptions to this would be a ProTools MIX or HD system where the processing is done on PCI/e cards installed with the ProTools system. Of course, with ProTools LE or M-Powered, again, regardless of the interface, the hard work is being done by the computer processor. The other exceptions are the rare firewire/USB systems which offload some effects processing to the external device. (I forget the names now.)

One of my machines is an iMac 2GHz Core2 duo. It currently shows the kind of symptoms the OP mentions. Yet I have a MBP with similar specs which has no such problems running considerably more processes. I might have some bad RAM in there which I just need to find a moment to check, failing that, I will do a complete clean re-install. A major pain, but I just need to find the time to do it.

Hope this clears a few things up.

[manchoa]

There seems to be a bit of confusion here over the soundcard and what it is doing. Adding an external interface (audio I/O) will not help. The interface is merely a front end for getting audio in and out of the computer. Regardless of the interface, the computer processor is doing all of the processing. Now, on a PC things could be different depending on the software and how it is set-up. The processor speed is the only thing that will dictate how many processes you can run. On my quad core MacPro, I expect to be able to run more tracks and processes than on any of my other machines.

The only exceptions to this would be a ProTools MIX or HD system where the processing is done on PCI/e cards installed with the ProTools system. Of course, with ProTools LE or M-Powered, again, regardless of the interface, the hard work is being done by the computer processor. The other exceptions are the rare firewire/USB systems which offload some effects processing to the external device. (I forget the names now.)

One of my machines is an iMac 2GHz Core2 duo. It currently shows the kind of symptoms the OP mentions. Yet I have a MBP with similar specs which has no such problems running considerably more processes. I might have some bad RAM in there which I just need to find a moment to check, failing that, I will do a complete clean re-install. A major pain, but I just need to find the time to do it.

Hope this clears a few things up.

okay - so take a rig of, lets say 10-15 "real instruments" an try to play them back via internal soundcard of Your mac. YOu cant, can You ! Now connect a USB or Firewire interface (from one i mentioned before), and now you are running smoothly and with zero latnecy.
I think You are talkong about "soundblasters" not interfaces. Give a try and then come and say again. Sorry - I have been in computer music for almost 20 years...

There seems to be a bit of confusion here over the soundcard and what it is doing. Adding an external interface (audio I/O) will not help. The interface is merely a front end for getting audio in and out of the computer. Regardless of the interface, the computer processor is doing all of the processing. Now, on a PC things could be different depending on the software and how it is set-up. The processor speed is the only thing that will dictate how many processes you can run. On my quad core MacPro, I expect to be able to run more tracks and processes than on any of my other machines.

The only exceptions to this would be a ProTools MIX or HD system where the processing is done on PCI/e cards installed with the ProTools system. Of course, with ProTools LE or M-Powered, again, regardless of the interface, the hard work is being done by the computer processor. The other exceptions are the rare firewire/USB systems which offload some effects processing to the external device. (I forget the names now.)

One of my machines is an iMac 2GHz Core2 duo. It currently shows the kind of symptoms the OP mentions. Yet I have a MBP with similar specs which has no such problems running considerably more processes. I might have some bad RAM in there which I just need to find a moment to check, failing that, I will do a complete clean re-install. A major pain, but I just need to find the time to do it.

Hope this clears a few things up.

okay - so take a rig of, lets say 10-15 "real instruments" an try to play them back via internal soundcard of Your mac. YOu cant, can You ! Now connect a USB or Firewire interface (from one i mentioned before), and now you are running smoothly and with zero latnecy.
I think You are talkong about "soundblasters" not interfaces. Give a try and then come and say again. Sorry - I have been in computer music for almost 20 years...

I use Edirol M-16 DX USB 2.0 interface, I 'm running eleven 24bit 48KHz stereo audio tracks plus 10 real instrument tracks in real time plus FX plugins with no problem (with only 2 gig of memory on my 2.66Ghz Mac). Can I do with the built in soundcard ? NO !!! WHY - go and read my previous postings. I run Edirol FA-66 on my other mac as an audio interface and have no problems. This is the difference between a soundcard (that is, what You have described) and an audio interface.

Audio interface is a professional or semi-prefessional soundcard, that is optimized for real-time (or at least low latency) multichannel sound recording and playback. It takes the "hard work" from your Mac or PC processor to its own processor, so You are able to run more complex setups in realtime.

Go and give a try to Edirol UA-25ex for example

http://www.roland.com/products/en/UA-25EX/index.html

and you will have no problems such as You describe.