HELP! needed concerning Home studio (Computer Hardware related)

    Hi there,


    I need some serious help with upgrading my recording setup.
    First I'll give you some insight in the things I use at the moment , then all the things I want to upgrade and then I would be quite thankful if someone could help me out and pointing out where I'm going wrong with my train of thought.


    Computer Specs:


    Early Macbook pro 17"
    2,3 GHz Intel Core i7 quad core
    8GB RAM
    7200rpm 500 Hard-drive disk
    Running OSX Yosemite


    Audio Interface:
    Apogee One


    DAW:
    Logic Pro


    So, the problems at this moment.
    I do a lot of quad tracking on my guitars, add some bass and rely fully on Superior drummer for drums.
    All goes well until I get to the point I want to lay down guitar solos and the vocals on top of the songs...
    CPU use goes nuts, and latency becomes unbearable, but did not even start on adding some effects within my DAW.


    so that comes down to 4 tracks of guitar, 1 track of Bass, 1 track of drums...and already pushing my system to its limits????


    What I plan to do on getting rid of the aforementioned hustle:
    Get a SPL crimson interface instead of the apogee ONE (will this help with the latency problems?)
    Upgrade my RAM to 16GB (Does this affect latency at all?)
    Replace my harddrive with a SSD 512GB (I rely fully on the internal hard drive, maybe that's something I do wrong as well?)


    Or should I even consider going the 2nd hand MACpro desktop route with more CPU cores and massive RAM capacity?


    Will these upgrades make an enormous difference or am I just dreaming wildly?
    The big plan is to implement orchestral software etc in the whole equation of producing my own album, so I need much more power on tap!!!!

    What is Your I/O buffer size in the Preferences -> Audio settings?
    Try to increase this value, the lower it is, the more load Logic put on your CPU.
    Low values here are only necessary when You are playing sounds generated by the computer, i.e. playing thru a software amp sim or playing a synth using a midi keyboard.

    [deleted[ Actually ignore what I wrote before - those specs you have look good - I think there is a problem elsewhere.


    Where are your drum samples being stored? I have BFD on an external USB3 interface and it eliminated glitching. I think superior drummer streams a lot of samples from the HD which could be causing a bottleneck.

    It's definitely the hard disk. Don't forget that as well as streaming the recorded audio, it's also streaming the drum samples and all the while OSX is trying to do its house keeping. 16 GB RAM would be recommended if you plan on installing orchestral software, as well as an extra external HDD to stream the whole lot off.


    Cheers,
    Sam


    ps just saw you wrote 17 inch Macbook Pro : isn't it quite old? As far as I recall, they were discontinued some years back. It might be that the hardware is struggling with Yosemite..?

    Yes the ideal setup (which I have) for my desktop windows PC:


    internal HD - operating system and programs
    internal HD - recorded music
    external HD - samples


    It is good to split everything out or the system HD will be too stressed out.

    I did this with my Mid-2009 Macbook Pro and it's VERY fast now:


    Replace my main hard drive with a 480GB SSD drive (cost $220 on Amazon)
    Converted my Optical Drive to an Internal Hard Drive slot and moved my 750GB 7200 drive there as a DATA drive. This is cheap.
    Purchased an external Optical Drive for $25 on Amazon for use with Disc installs.


    Then I reinstalled everything from scratch to do separation properly. All music apps install on the SSD, as do most VI's. Large VI's like Omnisphere, Superior Drummer packs and my WAV files (or aif if you use native Logic) go onto the DATA drive. This is the "drive separation" others her talk about.


    It's a completely new computer. The 8GB RAM is fine. But if you can upgrade, that never hurts. The speed of an all SSD drive almost negates a RAM upgrade for your needs.


    You SHOULD look into an external backup. I bought a 1TB external drive ($100), split it and keep a DATA backup and a full bootable backup using Carbon Copy Cloner. Test the bootable backup via USB. You don't need to swap the hard drive to test it.


    Last thing: Get your optical drive at OWC (Other World Computing) and you can look up ALL these changes there on their install tutorial videos. Awesome help, and awesome prices. They also sell a tool kit, sometimes combined with a hard drive or optical drive to handle all the little screws you need to take out.


    Be patient and careful, but otherwise this is not hard stuff to install.


    The SSD will be the MAIN change in speed, not RAM. You will thank me after doing this and give your computer a few more years of usage.

    Quote from Janne

    What is Your I/O buffer size in the Preferences -> Audio settings?
    Try to increase this value, the lower it is, the more load Logic put on your CPU.
    Low values here are only necessary when You are playing sounds generated by the computer, i.e. playing thru a software amp sim or playing a synth using a midi keyboard.


    It's running at 128 now, should be decent enough, no?


    Quote from endlessnameless

    [deleted[ Actually ignore what I wrote before - those specs you have look good - I think there is a problem elsewhere.


    Where are your drum samples being stored? I have BFD on an external USB3 interface and it eliminated glitching. I think superior drummer streams a lot of samples from the HD which could be causing a bottleneck.


    They are on the internal HD so that could be a big error from my side since I didn't have the latency problems before.
    I used to track with the logic pro drum sounds and later on in the mixing process I added the superior drummer.
    But I got a bit used to hearing the big drum sounds while recording and it definitely gets me more "into the zone" while tracking some heavier stuff.


    Quote from sambrox

    It's definitely the hard disk. Don't forget that as well as streaming the recorded audio, it's also streaming the drum samples and all the while OSX is trying to do its house keeping. 16 GB RAM would be recommended if you plan on installing orchestral software, as well as an extra external HDD to stream the whole lot off.


    Cheers,
    Sam


    ps just saw you wrote 17 inch Macbook Pro : isn't it quite old? As far as I recall, they were discontinued some years back. It might be that the hardware is struggling with Yosemite..?


    Yeah, I really need to get myself a ssd so it seems, the more I read about it the more it seems the right decision.
    Well, the 17" isn't actually that old, the casing is from early 2011 but they installed a new motherboard somewhere late 2013, due to the fact the previous one died.
    So the CPU is actually from a later model.
    But on the other hand I saw a decline in performance after I installed Yosemite, but when I monitor everything I see a huge use of RAM in shrill contrast to what it used to do when the machine ran under snow leopard.


    Oh this looks exactly like the right road to take!

    I had tools from OWC and was able to get all this from Amazon (some from OWC through them):



    1) This was for backup (and I split the drive in 2 for a DATA regular file/folder backup and the other for a Bootable backup:
    1.0TB Toshiba Aquarius 5400RPM 9.5mm SuperSlim SATA Notebook Drive with 8MB Data $64.99
    Sold by : Other World Computing


    2) I just saw this is $245, my mis-stated price was an SSD I was thinking about for my PC since this upgrade worked so well for Mac:
    480GB Mercury Electra 3G SSD 2.5" Serial-ATA 7mm 3Gb-s Solid State Drive. $274.00
    Sold by : Other World Computing


    3) OWC Data Doubler Optical Bay Hard Drive-SSD Mounting Solution for select Apple L $35.00
    Sold by : Other World Computing


    4) Aluminum External USB DVD+RW,-RW Super Drive for Apple--MacBook Air, Pro, iMac, Mini $40 (I chose this over the $25 one because it had more features and said it was seemless. Glad I'm looking up ACTUAL Prices, my memory sucks!)


    seriously, thanks a lot for the elaborate posts of information you guys keep sending my way!

    Oh btw, the change of audio interface, does that change anything in the workload towards the cpu or am I completely wrong here?
    'cause that's together with the SSD the first thing that will be changed, and I would be glad to know if I am going the right route with the SPL crimson.

    I am slightly concerned about SSD because of the stories about limited amount of 'writes'. I would ensure none of your song date goes on this just in case (although to be fair all HDs can fail which is why backup is a good suggestion).


    If you want a list of priorities - the first in my opinion would be an external firewire drive that runs at 7200rpm (a lacie or something). Bung all your drum samples on there and see how it works. I had exactly the same problem you were having because BFD samples were choking up the HD -stuttering like mad. No way should an I7 with 8gb RAM be struggling with your track count.


    Backing up your data is a great suggestion. However, rather than just another drive you may want to look at online storage. I used CrashPlan and find it gives me peace of mind

    Quote from Vacant_Theory

    Oh btw, the change of audio interface, does that change anything in the workload towards the cpu or am I completely wrong here?
    'cause that's together with the SSD the first thing that will be changed, and I would be glad to know if I am going the right route with the SPL crimson.


    Not sure about the interface affecting the CPU too much - I think it does to an extent but probably negligible. If the drivers are unstable then this could cause glitching for sure. I don't know anything about the SPL but I use TC Electronic interfaces which are good. .

    Quote from Vacant_Theory


    It's running at 128 now, should be decent enough, no?


    It's a bit on the low'ish side, try 512 or 1024 and see if that helps.
    And I missed that you used BFD, I had version 1.0-1.5 for a while and could never get it to perform reliably. I switched to Toontracks offerings and haven't any problems since. (Disclaimer, I've not tried any recent versions of BFD and I guess they have a more stable product now)
    BFD does tax the disc and they don't recommend to run it from the system drive since it might clash with the OS disc usages.

    Didn't read through alot of the later suggestions, but defintely up your buffer beyond 128 for now to see check for improvement. You can also consider freezing your tracks for now, even if there are no fx running on them currently. Rather I mean you can render out what you have, and track in a new project with the backing track.


    Your interface as per buffer settings will have an impact on your CPU. But then you have to start considering latency in the trade-off.


    Even so though, with as few tracks as you have going on I'm surprised you're having an issue, especially with your given specs.
    You will see a great improvement upgrading to an SSD, but unfortunately this shouldn't be causing the issue you are having with only the four odd tracks or so that you mentioned having, and when I say improvements I'm thinking general system performance. The issue is likely something else. I track and stream from 7.2kRPM drives all day long. Your HDD is negligible when considering how most samplers are loaded onto RAM, so long as you wait for them to load upon starting the project, this shouldn't be affecting the disk i/o a great deal...


    RAM will only become a major factor if you find yourself running a large number of samplers that eat up resources. I've never noticed an improvement beyond avoiding crashing when loading projects too large from my RAM capacity. Even with the consideration of more samplers in the future, I would have to tell you that 8gb is enough (read: I have no idea what libraries you intend to use, or how you'll use them :P I often hit my ceiling of 12gb but most often because of the nature of the project!)


    SSDs typically improves on just about everything you can imagine! I wouldn't want to use it for a scratch disk though, if I was limited to just the one disk. Wouldn't hurt either way. Again I think your issue lies elsewhere.


    EDIT: Sorry, for some reason when you mentioned your issue, I assumed you meant 'snap, crackle, & pop' with your audio, typical of a low buffer or struggling CPU. Still given your specs, this is strange!

    You should ALWAYS have a backup. In fact, 3 backups are recommended.


    1) Bootable backup on another drive.
    2) Bootable or Data backup OFF site.
    3) iCloud data backup.


    I have a Bootable and Incremental backup on site and use a Cloud based data backup (Backblaze) which costs $5 a month. But it's only select data, not OS files.


    That said, SSD will not run out of write's anytime soon. Your spinning hard drive will crash loooooooooong before your SSD has run out of write-ability! Put another way, MECHANICAL THINGS BREAK faster than electronic things burn or become unusable.

    Yeah, buffer is a key issue.


    Certainly check your memory management for programs that eat up memory. Like having Safari open with a lot of threads, over time it gets to be a hog and you have to Quit it. It's often hard to see what's taking up space or still running on a Mac because out-of-sight doesn't NOT mean out of Memory or out of CPU.