"system overload" in logic pro 8 on my Mac Pro with only three tracks

Question

I am running Logic Pro 8, on a 2.66 Quad Core Mac Pro w/ only 1GB of RAM. I have not had the money for the much needed ram upgrade, yet.
The day before yesterday I opened a project I had opened many times, with only three tracks - two audio and a midi synth with only a few notes. These tracks are fairly well plugin-ed up, but this Mac Pro has always eaten them up, no problems. When I tried to play the project, I got system overloads every 2 seconds, rather precisely actually. My CPU usage reads low in logic and with iStat, but suddenly it peaks to 100% on my third core and I get the system overload.
I had my buffer size at 128, so I switched it to 1024, it worked, and then I switched it back again and everything worked like it used to!
But now I have to go through this slightly illogical little procedure everytime I open a project. I have read threads here about this subject before, back I cant seem to apply them / understand them in relation to my particular situation.
any ideas?

Answer 1

Join the club...wait for them to patch/update it.
I've tried the various work arounds, sometimes they work temporarily, sometimes not at all.
For the overloads the most reliable "work around" is to select each track, open the VI/FX modules associated with that track, then close them, go to the next track and repeat the process. OR, if you know all the modules (VI/FX) you're using, just open each one. This will "initialize" their existance BEFORE the audio engine hits them in playback.
My guess is LP8 tries to reduce it's memory foot print and does NOT initialize all the VI/FX in a saved project that is just opened until it actually needs to use them -- a good idea one would think. However, when you do your playback and it hits the VI/FX for the first time (after you just opened your saved project) it appears the audio engine stalls waiting for the VI/FX to initialize the 1st time around and hence the overloads error. Obviously I can't prove this since I don't have access to the code, but I'm a developer and this would be my logical guess based on the evidence at hand.
I can reproduce the problem consistently:
1. Start LP8
2. Open existing project with 3 tracks (staggered to start a different times) with different VI on each track
3. Have 3 buses with a different FX on each bus
4. Do nothing other than hit Play
Overload when it hits start of 1st track VI, stop, restart, overloads when it hits start point of 2nd track VI, stop restart, overloads when it hits start point of 3rd track.
Why wasn't something this obvious caught in testing? Good question.
Rob.
Message was edited by: Rob A.