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!

HI !

The problem in not YOu Mac, the problem is You Soundcard that has not enough power to render all the files. I think you try to use the internal "built in" soundcard of your Mac ? Don't. What You need is a good external soundcard. The internal one is good for playing games or listening to music only, not to render effects and multitrack audio.


Tommy

that's certainly not too much for your machine to handle, i'd guess.
before you try a third party audio interface or external hard drive, however, please make sure you've set your buffer size higher. it's in the preferences.
it's possible that your midi tracks have extraneous data, like tons of continuous controller data, (pressure or pitch bend). that can clog things up. even a huge pile of notes can be a problem. an old midi trick is to slide each midi track a tick or two left or right of the beat grid. very small increments, of course.
i also wonder if you've got a bunch of effects on top of each track. more cpu stress there.
i can report that with GB 8 on an intel dual laptop i've easily run more virtual and audio tracks than you're having trouble with here.

All good suggestions.

One more thing to check before investing in more hardware is that your hard drive is in good repair (boot from the system DVD and run disk utility to repair the drive) and confirm that you have at least 10% of your hard drive space free (20% if possible) to ensure an adequate swap file for optimal memory availability.

best of luck!

peace.

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!

Actually - couple of audio tracks and one-two realtime effects is too much for the internal soundcard and will cause dropouts :-( You can run multiply audio tracks, but not realtime effects. They need realtime rendering processeor...

Drumloops can be both audio and "real instruments". Real instruments need more "power" because they are sampled in real time. I see You use lot of real instruments in Your track. Real instrument is a virtual instrument and You use your Mac as a sampler. This means (again) realtime rendering. As the internal soundcard is not ment for this job (its only for primary recording/playback), it does not have its own processor and/or memory. So everything that in normal condition soundcard would do, no you "give" to your computer. Basically it means, that soundcard uses Your computer memory, processeor and harddisc to process all the rendering. Normally this is all done with the soundcard memory and processor. If you dont want to spemt money to a normal soundcard (if you want to make music, youll have to, sorry), then one way is not to use real instruments ! Or use them one by one. Make a track with real instrument, record it to audio and then delete the real instrument track. THen add another ect. Finally mix your song only with audio files. Ofcourse, at one point you run out of power even this way. The more you use effects, that need realtime rendering, the faster you run out of power even with only audio files. Such effects are all reverbs (the large and more complex the reverb, the more power it needs) , flangers - choruses, ofcourse all mastering effects (compressors take a lot of power from Your computer) except equalizer.
So - to some point You can use internal soundcard, if you don't use real instruments or record them to audio, then mix your tracks and bounce to single stereo file and do the mastering with the stereo file.
But better - buy a firewire or USB soundcard. This must not be a expensive profi interface. You can make your things with interface such as Line 6POD studio, M-Audio Fast track, Steinberg CI2 (very good one !) or Edirol UA (also very good). They all cost around 170 - 200 EUR (220 - 260 USD) so I think they don't hurt Your wallet.

Tommy


[One more thing about real instruments You use. As I already told you - these are sampled instruments and you use Your Mac as a sampler. It means, that all the real instruments are made from a number of different audio files that are rendered back in real time if you play the instrument. Different isntruments have different number of audio files, depending, how complex the sound is. The fingered bass You use in Your song for example, takes 44MB of samplememory (in You case memory of Your Mac) and it's made of 116 audio files ! Simple way to understand it, is that by selecting this real instrument, you have loaded 116 audio files to the memory for instant realtime playback.
Pianos, organs and all other polyphonic instruments that have long decay for every note, takes a lot of more memory. The organ You use, takes about 200MB at least.

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.

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.

The M-16 you mention is a reasonable example of a device which might help, in that it actually IS a processor itself. It takes each individual track (up to it's own channel limit) and can add EQ, dyn, fx before sub mixing also internally. In this case, the M-16 is taking some of the load off the host computer. It won't offer any help whatsoever to the OP running software instruments as these are completely generated on the host Mac's processor. As far as I'm aware, there is no external device available which allows the offloading of the generation of software instruments to an external device.

So the OP could add an external mixer to his set-up for adding rudimentary processing, a device such as the M-16 would work. Of course, you're then limited to snapshot automation only which for many modern styles of music is rather limiting for many people. The M-16 fits very neatly into my category of 'other devices' such as ProTools MIX/HD where the job of processing is removed from the Macs's CPU.

The UA25 on the other hand is merely an audio interface. It does no processing or mixing of any kind. In common with other audio interfaces, it is only a front end for getting an audio signal into and out of your Mac via USB. Yes, your M-16 do this too, only your M-16 also has the ability to process. My ONYX mixer does that too (though only on input), before routing the audio for further processing by the host Mac. It doesn't matter whether I use GarageBand or Logic, the processing is still done on the Mac. Now, I could go and buy some of the MOTU interfaces which are also capable of some 'off host' processing- just like your M-16.

I mentioned previously of my iMac which is showing the same problems as the OP. What you're suggesting is that if I take my ONYX mixer or interface if you prefer and plug it in to my problem iMac, all my problems would disappear. They won't. They can't. Because the interface is not offloading any processor cycles from the host.

Going back to your comment about how many audio/software instrument tracks I can run on my system: as I said, my iMac which I use for admin at the moment barely runs one software instrument without glitching. My colleague uses his same spec machine all the time and regularly runs full band mixes with additional software instruments without any issues. His machine does not have an issue.

My credentials: I run a legacy ProTools MIX3 system linked into Logic (incidentally running on a Core 2 Mac Mini) via MOTU 2408 and an ADAT bridge, a MacPro running Logic ( with my ONYX for I/O), 4 Intel Core2 duo Mac Minis with Logic Express and two iMacs of the spec mentioned before running GarageBand.

My final word on this is to say that the OP's issue is the same as with my iMac. Spending money on audio I/O will not solve the problem. Just as with mine, the Mac probably coupled warrant a clean install, though it might be worth trying a reinstall just of GB first. Sorry for the long response, but just trying to clear up this difference between an interface and an off host processor. I hope the OP gets his system working again without wasting money. Happy music making all.

2GB RAM is barely enough to run the OS, max out your RAM.

Best practice is to record to external hard drive, that will also free up system drive for virtual memory.

Emm -

OSX 10.5 needs 256 mb memory and what virtual memory ??

you must be a Windows guy :-)

I run iMac with 2 gig memory in our studio and I run about 15 virtual instrument tracks with no problem.

OSX will ALWAYS use part of the system drive for virtual memory.

As virtual instruments and effects are added, more virtual memory is required.
OSX will ALWAYS have top priority, and may delay other processes, while it handles virtual memory.(pops and clicks for audio apps).

Observe the activity monitor(utilities folder) system memory, disk activity, when adding plugs.

Currently my Blackbook's virtual memory is 43GB, with only a browser and the finder open + the background processes.

Depending on your processor and disk speed you may never encounter a problem with your current load.

The OP has a Macbook, that come standard with 5400rpm hard drives it could be the bottleneck

Also for the original poster, be aware that when you open a new track in GB, you are actually opening a channel strip with effect applied.

To improve performance disable the effects.

Yes, but in this case the "bottleneck" is the integrated soundcard that is not for musicmaking an multitracking.
What you need is a good firewire or audio interface that is meant for musicmaking...
Such as Edirol FA-66 (firewire), Edirol UA-25 (usb) , Edirol UA-101 (USB) if You need more inputs, M-Audio Fast track Pro (USB), or M-Audio Solo (firewire), EMU Tracker (usb), Lexicon Omega or Lexicon Alpha (usb) ect.

They all use Core Audio drivers with zero or low latency that is essential for recording and multitracking (integrated soundcard doen not have Core Audio, it is not made for musicmaking !)

Audio interface is not JUST A SOUNDCARD (such as Creative soundblaster or similar).
USB or firewire audio interface is the essential HEART of music-making or homerecording.

Right now Your Mac has to handle all the audio rendering ect, audio interface takes this away from Mac and does ti itself. (sorry, I try to explain, but my english is not so good). Basically it takes the sound from your Mac via firewire or usb, and sends the audio to Your Mac via sub or firewire. All the processing and rendering takes place inside the interface and the playback of result comes also from the interface, not from the Mac.

I show You an example.
I use 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo iMac (vers 9.1) with 2GB of memory and run Logic Studio 9 with Edirol UA-101 USB audio interface.
I open and play one song I'm working with and take a screenshot for You.

This song has 4 stereo audio tracks recorded @ 48Khz/24bit, 2 Virtual Instrument tracks running@ 48KHz (Native Instrument Kontakt 4 with Scarbee Jay Bass loaded and Independence Free), 12 "real instruments" or EXS sampler instruments a lot of effects running (14 effects are open) and a mastering effect strip with 6 effects). I take a screenshot somewhere, where most of the instruments play....

Take a look:


I have CPU running on 30% max !!!

This is why you need audio interface, not integrated soundcard, not soundcard or soundblaster.
You can't make multitracking without audio interface


Tommy