MacPro Quad Core 32g Ram running slow Logic using only 9g in Activity Monitor

Question

Well its taken a while, but this is my first foray into the world of forums! I'm so hacked off with this regular problem and havent been able to find anything anywhere to solve it i thought i'd see if anyone has any similiar issues and maybe even a solve to it.
So.... im an orchestrator and producer and after my mid 2008 Macbook Pro with 8g ram started freezing up i invested in this 3 years ago -
Mac Pro 2x 2.4ghz Quad Core intel Xeon and stuck in 32gb of lovely Crucial RAM and 3 seperate internal 1TB drives with one for operating system (10.6.8), one for Audio recording/saving and one for all my sample libraries.
32gb ram - should be enough i thought!
So i regularly run at least 30 VI's - Ni The giant, Spitfire Orchestral librabies (say 12 string instruments up to 0.69g per load) LASS strings, plus perc STYLUS, ABBEY road drums, Trillian basses (acoustic/electric), ominisphere etc etc. So pretty hefty sample instruments. But theyre sooo nice!!
In addition, the 32 bit server will come alive (NOT! So unstable i find) with my Waves plugs etc.
Looking at ACTIVITY MONITOR however i might be not touching 9 gig (and sometimes even less) of usage for Logic, and only say 800MB for 32 bit server and have NOTHING else open - and what do i find .....
- Mouse lag and cant really do anything with the mouse whilst playing the track - cant adjust volume - too slow, zooming problems
- Takes a good 2-3 seconds for track to stop playing
Dont get System OVERLOADS so much, its just that the system goes REALLLLLY slow.
What ive tried- - -
- Running Mountain Lion off another drive (havent had time to install it and wanted to be sure everything worked etc)
- Tried all audio prefs - large/small buffers/threads etc and yes i am on 1024.
in a nutshell how come with 32g RAM everything is so slow when barely using 10g of that???????
I dread getting to the end of a project cos i know im gonna be freezing so much, but with so much editing all the time for the orchestral parts i need everything unfrozen and working.
Sorry if this is long winded but wanted to describe what im experiencing.
Any feedback most welcome! Thankyou in advance.
Mac Pro 2x 2.4ghz Quad Core intel Xeon 32g RAM, 3TB storage
10.6.8
Logic Pro 9.1.8

Answer 1

Hi
A few thoughts:
julian6400 wrote:
In addition, the 32 bit server will come alive (NOT! So unstable i find) with my Waves plugs etc.
The 32bit server is a pita: Waves v9 are 64bit  compatible (they run fine). 32 bit VI's can be run outside Logic using Vienna Ensemble Pro (see later)
julian6400 wrote:
So i regularly run at least 30 VI's - Ni The giant, Spitfire Orchestral librabies (say 12 string instruments up to 0.69g per load) LASS strings, plus perc STYLUS, ABBEY road drums, Trillian basses (acoustic/electric), ominisphere etc etc. So pretty hefty sample instruments. But theyre sooo nice!!
Some of these VI's are extremely CPU hungry: Abbey Rd drums for example, really do hammer the CPU. What does Logic's Performance meter show in the way of CPU load. What does Activity Monitor show regarding CPU load?
With 32G of RAM, this should not be the issue, but you might have general CPU problems (see above), and you may also have Sample disk streaming limitations if all the Loibraries you mention are on the same drive. How does Activity Monitor look regarding disk access? You might find it helpful to add a second drive and split the sample libraries across 2 for faster disk access.
I presume that you have plenty of free space on the System drive?
Logic can get sluggish if the Undo info gets way too big, and also if there are loads of regions in the Arrange: check Options:Project Information.
Many are finding some benefits (me included) by running the VI's in Vienna Ensemble Pro:
Better CPU load distribution than directly in Logic
"Persistant Samples": they can remain loaded whilst you switch Logic Projects
Logic is effectively running much less itself, so generally flies.
32bit Plugs hosted separately in VEP so no 32bit Bridge issues in Logic
Something to consider,though perhaps not yet, would be setting up a Slave computer using VEP.
CCT