SaschaFranck Posted June 27, 2020 Share Posted June 27, 2020 I was meant to post this before but always forgot. Anyway, here goes: Out of the plugins I'm using (which are quite a plenty), HXN is by far (!) the slowest to load, regardless of whether I force it to come up with an empty patch (via Logics library presets) or a completely stuffed one. Heck, even some rather large Kontakt instances come up faster - including sample loading! Seriously, there's no other plugin even remotely as slow. I don't think there's anything to do about it, but I think this could be massively improved - it's not that HXN would be all that much more complexed than others. Fwiw, I'm using a 5,1 2x2.66 Mac Pro. And yes, I'm aware it's a little dated, but that's rather irrelevant because, as said, other plugins aren't even close in terms of loading time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dannywmusic Posted July 11, 2020 Share Posted July 11, 2020 i never had that issue before (i was on protools) just upgraded my computer and changed to logic, and now it is super slow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SaschaFranck Posted July 11, 2020 Author Share Posted July 11, 2020 Made a stress test some days ago - I can load well over 30 instances of HXN (comp, drive, amp, cab/IR, EQ, some FX in each instance) easily, but project loading time is horrible. With Logic already opened in the background, a 30 instances project takes over 2 minutes to load the project. More than even the most demanding projects using large sample based patches - and it's not that HXN would have anything to load but its UI and a few kb-sized IRs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soundog Posted July 11, 2020 Share Posted July 11, 2020 I did some testing on my system (Logic Pro 10.4.7 and Mojave) and am not noticing any sluggish load times when HXN is active in a project. I'm wondering if reinstalling the plug-in would help? It almost sounds like an authorization problem. Any other Logic users out there experiencing this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SaschaFranck Posted July 11, 2020 Author Share Posted July 11, 2020 1 hour ago, soundog said: I did some testing on my system (Logic Pro 10.4.7 and Mojave) and am not noticing any sluggish load times when HXN is active in a project. I'm wondering if reinstalling the plug-in would help? It almost sounds like an authorization problem. Any other Logic users out there experiencing this? Why would an authorization problem cause slow loading times? And fwiw, I have seen it act pretty slow on other Macs already as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soundog Posted July 11, 2020 Share Posted July 11, 2020 It shouldn't, although I have seen some plug-ins that phone home and require internet access which can be problematic. I think with HXN that once the plugin has been authorized, it should be OK after that. If you are seeing it load slow on other Macs, I must one of the fortunate ones... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SaschaFranck Posted July 12, 2020 Author Share Posted July 12, 2020 What's the specs of your machine? And would you care to check how long it takes to load a test project? And fwiw, why are you still on Logic 10.4.7? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soundog Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 First, I found 10.5 and 10.5.1 to be buggy. And .... I don't like/need the new features (they seem to be Ableton copies and targeted towards EDM). When I get a chance I'll check the load times of a project. Just with HXN on a track, or what would you like me to test? FYI, my system is a Late 2015 27” Retina 5K iMac, i7 4.0 GHz. Its tricked out with lots of RAM, a SSD internal for Logic and plug-ins, and fast external drives for virtual instruments and project files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SaschaFranck Posted July 13, 2020 Author Share Posted July 13, 2020 Well, I'm on 10.4..8, which I found to be working pretty well (need a new GPU to update to Mojave and 10.5, will be doing that in 3 weeks when back from holidays). Anyway, we could try a little comparison of an otherwise empty project with, say, 30 Helix instances. I could prepare something so it's defenitely the same project. I could suspect things such as AVX instructions to be the culprit, that's something this 2010 cheesegrater Mac Pro doesn't support. Otherwise I wouldn't happen to know what's slowing things down that much - because as said, there's pretty much no other plugins (and I've got a plenty of them) acting so slow (apart from a few huge samplebased things, but that's to be expected). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soundog Posted July 13, 2020 Share Posted July 13, 2020 Here are the results: I Created a new Logic project with 30 mono audio tracks, each containing a HXN (mono to stereo) plug-in. No other plug-ins on the tracks. I'm using Logic 10.4.7 on Mojave 10.14.6. The time to open the project after Logic had already launched was 4.02 seconds. The time to launch Logic and load the project (double-clicking the project file while Logic was closed) was 15.14 seconds. Hope thats gives you useful info.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SaschaFranck Posted July 13, 2020 Author Share Posted July 13, 2020 5 hours ago, soundog said: Here are the results: I Created a new Logic project with 30 mono audio tracks, each containing a HXN (mono to stereo) plug-in. No other plug-ins on the tracks. I'm using Logic 10.4.7 on Mojave 10.14.6. The time to open the project after Logic had already launched was 4.02 seconds. The time to launch Logic and load the project (double-clicking the project file while Logic was closed) was 15.14 seconds. Hope thats gives you useful info.... Uhm. First off: Thanks for doing that test. So, now I'm wondering what might be the issue on my machine. Or on the others I've seen it happening on (which admittedly were all similar 2010 Mac Pros). I'm wondering whether I could actively do something to improve the situation. The machine itself is pretty well maintained and I'm not experiencing any problems, so I'm really out of ideas... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soundog Posted July 13, 2020 Share Posted July 13, 2020 Stuff like that is maddening. Its odd that it seems to be HXN specific. Are you OK on RAM (and if that's a possibility, use Activity Monitor to watch what's happening when you launch). I suppose if it were me I would 1) use Activity Monitor to see if you are bumping up against any kind of CPU or RAM ceilings when loading the Logic project, 2) reinstall HXN, and/or 3) open a ticket with Line 6 and see if their database indicates others with similar systems are having similar problems, and if there is a known solution or planned update. Otherwise I'm plumb out of ideas right now. On a side note, when I was running my previous old Mac, which was coughing and choking on large Logic projects (I was constantly freezing tracks), I sometimes ran into mysterious plug-in problems and it was driving me nuts. I ended up updating my system (to the one I mentioned, which I bought used a couple of years ago) and lo and behold lots of oddities vanished. Not to say a system upgrade should be the solution to a problem, but sometimes it is... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SaschaFranck Posted July 13, 2020 Author Share Posted July 13, 2020 8 minutes ago, soundog said: Stuff like that is maddening. Its odd that it seems to be HXN specific. Are you OK on RAM (and if that's a possibility, use Activity Monitor to watch what's happening when you launch). Yeah, RAM is fine (I only have 16GB installed, but it's always been sufficient) and there's no anomalies in Activity Monitor at all visible (checked that a while ago already). Quote I suppose if it were me I would 1) use Activity Monitor to see if you are bumping up against any kind of CPU or RAM ceilings when loading the Logic project, 2) reinstall HXN, and/or 3) open a ticket with Line 6 and see if their database indicates others with similar systems are having similar problems, and if there is a known solution or planned update. Otherwise I'm plumb out of ideas right now. I might try reinstalling HXN - but honestly, as it's running just fine and dandy once it's instanciated (and not using up much CPU juice, either - in fact, I always found it to be amazingly efficient), I wouldn't happen to have an idea why that would/could help. I may try nonetheless. Quote On a side note, when I was running my previous old Mac, which was coughing and choking on large Logic projects (I was constantly freezing tracks), I sometimes ran into mysterious plug-in problems and it was driving me nuts. I ended up updating my system (to the one I mentioned, which I bought used a couple of years ago) and lo and behold lots of oddities vanished. Not to say a system upgrade should be the solution to a problem, but sometimes it is... I will need a new computer one day, but Apples current offerings aren't encouraging at all, to put it carefully. Anything I could afford would not give me much better performance with most of the things I'm doing. And fwiw, for the first time in over 20 years I am now considering to leave Logic behind (which I know pretty much inside out) because of that. Anyway, that's why I try to squeeze as much life as possible out of this machine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soundog Posted July 14, 2020 Share Posted July 14, 2020 I hear ya on all of that. I don't like the direction Apple is heading. I'm basically investing in 5 year old machines (a 2015 MacBook Pro and the2015 iMac for studio) becauseI think that was the last good year and I like them better than the new ones. I was tempted by Studio One and tried it for a month, but turns out I'm so invested in knowing the ins and outs of Logic that I'm efficient and fast with it and learning a new DAW was frustrating (though Studio One was excellent). But I don't particularly like the 10.5 Logic update or the direction its taking. Or Catalina, for that matter. So .... I'm planning on using my stable set up to make music with what I have. Until a killer app comes along I may just sit here with my antiques and not worry about the updates. Bah, humbugger. Good luck to you... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wilsonazguitar Posted May 28, 2021 Share Posted May 28, 2021 I also run the same Mac and have problems with Native. I use Reaper and the actual project with Native loads fast enough - but when I open Native and try to click around to edit it is so sluggish. Can you help me with this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soundog Posted May 28, 2021 Share Posted May 28, 2021 I'm not a Reaper user, so maybe some of them will chime in here with specific ideas. In general, though, use Activity Monitor when using Reaper + Native to try to determine if the issue is memory related, or CPU related. Then you can try to address the issue by using any tricks used by other Reaper users. If you are only seeing the behavior with Native (and not other CPU-intensive plug-ins like virtual instruments or IR reverbs) I suggest you open a ticket with Line 6 to investigate further. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wilsonazguitar Posted May 28, 2021 Share Posted May 28, 2021 Thank you. I used Activity Monitor and realized the CPU spikes up to 42% when I actually open Native (window open, navigating within it), and I'm using 50% RAM. Would you suggest upgrading RAM on my computer? I only have 8gb. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soundog Posted May 28, 2021 Share Posted May 28, 2021 Here's a little more info on watching Activity Monitor to see if you're stretching your RAM to thin. https://support.apple.com/guide/activity-monitor/check-if-your-mac-needs-more-ram-actmntr34865/mac I've heard Reaper is not a huge memory hog, but if you're running soft synths and virtual instruments together with Native, I think 8Gb is too lean for a project studio, especially if you need more than, say, 10 tracks. At a minimum, make sure you're not running any other apps in the background. RAM is pretty cheap these days, and most Macs are easy to upgrade yourself (it depends on which model). Of course, I can't guarantee more RAM will cure your sluggish Native. But I do know when I upgraded my RAM and installed an SSD for my internal/operating system drive, everything ran better! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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