Hello everyone,

My question to all you tech wizards:
My computer G5 dual is being used really heavily for graphic design, communication of all sorts and... well, of course music.

I am encountering often many problems when I start Logic. Often configurations seem to be not remembered correctly, audio or midi has to be re-configured - almost every single time when I want to start any work in Logic. This is frustrating and time consuming. These things occur randomly and can never be tracked down or repeated for proper troubleshooting. (I am running numerous hardware synths, as well as plugins and a Kontakt2 in addition to Logic., I also use an Emagic mt4 midi-interface and a Presonus Firebox)

My plan is to get a new Mac Pro in a few months to move all the music production over to a seperate machine.
But in the interim, to reduce some of the problems or at least stabilize the work environment I thought it might be advantagous to make a seperate user for the music production. This way the machine could be booted without all the fonts and extra drivers etc. which are needed for graphics applications.


So my questions are:

Does it makes sense (and to what extent and why) to maybe use an extra harddrive to put the music apps on? maybe even a complete additional system installation on an extra drive?
Does separating out the music apps to a different user account on the computer help at all - will it be beneficial in attempt to gain stability for Logic etc., free system memory or even speed up certain things?
If this is advisable, how do I get a third internal harddrive into my G5 dual (i already use an external for sample libraries)?

What is your advice, how would you solve this?

There should be no reason the graphic app should interfere with Logic (now… seing is believing…) have you some prefpanel gizmos or some apps running 24/7 in background which may cause mayhem?

Now, a separate account will do if it not the graphic apps themselves (they are here for all users if you have installed them as admin. No you can't move apps to another drive while using the original drive for system, it's just not this way OS X works (you can but it's rocket science and to much of DIY to bother about) but having another system on the other drive with only the audio stuff installed is ok.

Try the separate user first, now, is it's still fishy, there's something wrong in your system. Unused apps in OS X are unused, even when launched, save if they do nasty dirty things on their own (like some pro services in Adobe CS to name them, buggy nasty crap, can't remember their name, but it's the update system and the jobs version management).

It's probably one of your 3rd party plugins. I've never experienced the problems you say you have.

I use my Macs for everything video, web design, graphics, DVD authoring, CD/DVD duplication, and audio.
That type of conflict cannot occor on a Mac.

Make sure you repair your permissions with the disk utility, if permissions are wrong or damaged Logic will not be able to access preferences.

gdoubleyou... where can I see examples of you Web Designs? Thanks... Yeah, I know it's not the Topic.

Opps! "Your" Web Designs.

Yep, forgot this, it's current, buggy/badly made plug-ins can be a pain in the…

You'll be spanked

Ok, a separate user account still makes sense...?

What exactly are all the things that can be made user specific?
e.g. I know, I can move all my fonts into the user specific fonts folder and they should not show up in the new user's account.

What else is user specific or can be made user specific in order to streamline the music user account?
Any kind of drivers?

Oh, yes, I don't use Adobe's Version Cue. I don't like things that do some ghosty things in the background.


I don't know if my problem comes from any 3rd party plugins. What I am using is Kontakt2, EastWest Symphonic Choirs, Orchestra Gold and StormDrums, impOSCAR, Korg Digital Legacy and Motu Ethno. Does anybody know, if any of those are known to not live peacuful together...?

Nothing fancy, both need updating

my business site http://www.studiog-fx.com

an artist I produced last year http://www.larrygreenmusic.com

From OS X on, no, but to cure/track some issues, sure it can help.

A better use is to have 2 normal users, one for everyday jobs, the other to test things.

Almost everything.

As an Admin, you install stuff for every user
As a simple user you install only for you (with an admin pw though.

All the prefpanels settings are user defined
Most App seetings too (save the apps which have their preferences in the root library folder.

To me more general, when you have something in your user library and not in the root or system one, it'll be user specific.

Good, at least it's not this s…t.

The best things to try are:
- launch and work with you audio software but after taking ALL plug-ins from their relevant library folder. If it's all right, and nothing fishy, you'll have to track the bad boy.
- if it goes to nothing, try a new user account, if it's the same, it's being esoteric, we'll see from that point what can be done.

There's 95% of chance it's a plug-in problem, maybe 2% it's account related.

Also, download OnyX and clear all the caches with it and repair permissions. At least we'll know it's not something stupid in this direction.

so, if i understand this right then, it does not matter that i have about 300 installed fonts as long as i am running logic only which does not access these fonts and therefore the fonts are dormant and do not interfere into the system resources?

i just remember this from 5, 10, 15 years ago that you always tried to keep your system as lean as possible.

btw. i am using fonts here only as an example. you can think of all kinds of different things in the system instead...


it is just that i am looking for ways to prevent further problems in my system, trying to figure out what is wrong at the moment is probably nearly impossible, especially just through a forum because what is happening is random, i cannot repeat it, or logically narrow it down.

so, what i am doing for now is trying to get my system as clean as possible. a couple of days ago i used idefrag, which proved to be a good thing - i learned that even a mac osx system denefits from occasional defragmenting.

clearing caches etc with onyx will be the next thing i will try out. thanks for this hint.

there might be a slight issue with my presonus firebox maybe. a couple of times i had no audio and i was wondering what was going on. then i simply launched the firebox mixer and closed it again and suddenly audio was back (this is just one of the weird things i had happen).
but again, i cannot say when it is happening, i cannot repeat it on command - with such vague facts even the support team of presonus would not be able to get much of a clue.

my emagic mt4 midi interface sometimes has to be unplugged and plugged back in to work properly...

Thanks gdoubleyou... Awards for Design even.... Very impressive. Will contact.