Digital audio isn’t always blue skies and faithfully recreated emulations.
Who hasn’t held their breath for a moment when this thing shows up?:
And then groaned with disdain when Logic:
- Crashes unexpectedly, or
- Crashes on start-up because of a plugin
These errors can cause even the most Zen of studio cats to start howling.
The least horrible that could happen is you could lose hours of unsaved changes.
But once in a while – dare I say it – projects can even get corrupted.
What then?
Today we’ll go over the winning habits and sneaky tips Logic Ninjas use to control and recover their projects from digital dementia.
1. S is for Don’t Stop Saving
The first line of defense lies with you my friend.
Your commitment to Saving will prevent much pain when the Beachball comes knocking.
Commit this to muscle memory:
Command – S.
Train your digits to hit those keys every spare moment you have. The goal should be for you to tap them like it’s a nervous tick.
Sure, you could go up to File > Save.
But the faster you can get down to saving, the sooner you can recover.
What happens when you’re so engrossed in your project that you forgot to save? When your mix flow was strong, but that wicked Beachball came through and smashed your session?
Well, Auto-Save!
2. Autosave For the Win
Autosave is Logic’s personal apology when the Project snaps shut. It says,
“hey! I goofed. Sorry about that.”
To make up for skipping out on you, Logic takes snapshots in the background as you work. These snapshots are Autosaves.
In the event Logic closes out unexpectedly, it offers you 2 options when you reopen the session:
- Would you like to resume from the last time you personally saved the session? Or,
- Would you like to resume from the Logic’s last Autosave?
This is tremendous. Because instead of losing hours of work you only risk minutes.
BUT!
Logic only keeps Autosaves around for when it unexpectedly quits.
If you personally quit Logic, all Autosaves disappear.
That’s because Logic says to itself, “this person quit, so they must be all set.”
This is an important distinction. Which circles back to number 1 – always be saving.
3. Backing On Up
But say you’re working right along. Logic’s behaving, no crashes or quits.
Instead, you make a major goof.
Perhaps you committed Selection Based Processing just a bit too early. You rendered the file, and a while after you realize you made a mistake. But the chance to Undo is long gone.
Thankfully, Logic provides a system for Reverting to a previous Saved versions. We call these previous versions Backups.
To access these Backups, head up to File > Revert to:
A second menu will pop up containing the last 10 saved versions of your project. These are from all the times you dutifully tapped Command – S to Save.
Though it could hurt a bit to go backwards, Logic is lending you an olive branch for sticky situations. And those you shouldn’t be too picky about.
But say 10 versions isn’t enough. You save a lot (because you’re smart), and want to make sure you’ve got plenty of versions to refer to.
Then head up to Logic Pro X > Preferences > General:
And in there is the Project Handling tab in the General Preferences is the Auto Backup preference:
This preference is not related to Autosave. Instead, Logic lets you decide how many Saves it holds onto!:
- 1 version
- 3 versions
- 10 versions
- 30 versions
- 50 versions
- 100 versions
Now you can be sure you’ve got all your bases covered in the event of catastrophe.
4. Laying Breadcrumbs With Project Alternatives
Sometimes you can hit a fork in the road during a project.
You’ve got a great arrangement going. But you’re thinking about making some major changes. Moving parts around, swapping instruments.
If you try what you’re thinking, you could end up with an even better song!
Or you could end up with something not as good. Which leaves you stuck trying to retrace your steps before you made all these crazy changes.
Or you could use Project Alternatives.
Project Alternatives lets you save multiple versions of the same Project. But instead of having tons of Projects all over your Mac, Logic saves all the Alternatives in the same Project.
So say you’re about to embark on changing your song’s arrangement.
Instead of dismantling your current version, go up to File > Project Alternative:
Choose a New Alternative, and give your New Alternative a memorable name:
And start rearranging!
If you do end up deciding your changes were pointless, go back up to File > Project Alternative, and choose your original Alternative:
The best part is you can save as many Project Alternatives as you like 🙂
5. When Logic Crashes at Startup – Option
Up until now we’ve examined all the measures you and Logic can take to cover your bases.
But what happens when Logic just doesn’t want to open?
You double-click your Project, and Logic tries to startup. It starts loading your project – but then quits. Followed by a Crash Report:
You keep trying to open your Project again and again. But Logic keeps crashing again and again.
Now what?
Not well known, but Logic has a couple key commands for getting around these hangups.
Before opening your project, hold Option and then double-click the project.
Logic will begin starting up, but will quickly display a dialogue. This dialogue allows you to choose the Project Alternative and Backup to load from!
If a particular version of your project is messed up, this can help you sneak around to a different version.
6. When Logic Crashes at Startup – Control
But say the last time you worked on the Project you killed it. Everything was exactly the way you wanted it. So you Saved and Quit.
But today Logic won’t open. And you don’t want to revert to a previous Backup. This was the one, dangit!
Very often the culprit of crashes at startup are 3rd party plugins.
Many of my 3rd party plugins have caused crashes at startup: Waves, Soundtoys, Slate.
What can you do though? The Crash Report tells you a plugin is causing the crash. But you can’t get into the session to remove the plugin!
Or can you?
After you double-click to open your session, hold Control.
Logic will then ask you the following:
Core Audio is your Mac’s system for managing audio devices and AU plugins. If you choose to disable Core Audio, you effectively pull the plug on all the plugins in your session.
No Core Audio means no active AU plugins.
Disable Core Audio, and Logic will open right up:
Now you have 2 choices:
- You can try turning Core Audio back on with Logic Pro X > Preferences > Audio. Or,
- You can find the plugin referenced in your Crash Report and remove it from your session.
Option 1 lets you keep your processing, but runs the risk of more crashes at startup. While option 2 lets you remove the pain in the butt plugin.
7. When All Else Fails – Import to New Session
Sometimes Logic projects get corrupted.
I don’t know why, and it’s totally B.S.
But there’s that 1% chance it could happen.
All hope isn’t lost though. You don’t have to rewrite, rerecord, remix, or anything else.
But you do have to spend a bit of time setting your project up in a New Session, importing all the content, plugins, and routing from the corrupted session. This post will show you how.
This can be a little cumbersome, but it can save you a ton of heartache.
Being able to pull your session data out of a corrupted Project is like like another lease on life! Don’t take it for granted.
Conclusion
Recovering your sessions when Logic bugs out may be no fun. But it’s far worse to have no options at all!
Remember! You have 7 to choose from:
- Save early, and save often with Command – S
- Autosave saves your project when Logic unexpectedly quits
- Revert to Backup saves you from making a terrible mistake
- Project Alternatives let you save different snapshots of your Project
- Holding Option at startup lets you choose which Alternative and Backup to start from
- Holding Control at startup lets you turn off CoreAudio
- Importing Session Data from your corrupted session into a new session saves you from utter doom
Awesome post Chris! I am a bit curious to know about the auto-save relative to the physical user save. When I hit save, do the previous auto-saved reference points get deleted? For example, if I hit save and then one minute later Logic crashes—if I get the option to choose between ‘last saved’ and ‘last auto-save’—is it ever possible that the last auto-save is before the last physical save? Or is it always more recent to go with last auto-save? I apologize if this is unclear.
Something that happens to me frequently (and I think a lot of users have their own, personal, unique, idiosyncratic Logic bug) is that my audio will start to lag by about two seconds. I don’t believe it is a hardware issue, as the hardware does not do this by itself. When running Logic, I can be playing and monitoring just fine –but the out of nowhere, when I got to play a chord or note on my instrument, it takes about two seconds for the note/chord to sound.
I can always fix this by going to the audio preferences and reselecting the driver. But I would like to find out why this happens and to maybe even convince it to stop. Its certainly not the worst thing, but it can be frustrating if I am in the middle of recording a take, or if I am in the middle of a lesson, or even if I am just in the middle of riffing!
Thanks for all the great tutorials and KTCC!!!
Hey Corey! Didn’t mean to let this comment fall off my radar.
I believe that the autosave vs physical save is a matter of timing. If your last personal save occured before the autosave had a chance, then that’s your answer. But I’m sure you’ll agree Autosave is pretty good 🙂
Regarding the recording lag – I’m not sure on that one. I’ve invested in more memory, an SSD drive, and a Thunderbolt interface. So lag is few and far between for me. However, I have experienced Logic’s audio dropping out for a second or two when I try to Punch on the Fly.
It’s always HIGHLY recommended to submit User Feedback to Apple regarding Logic. That’s how they know what’s a serious bug:
https://www.apple.com/feedback/logic-pro.html
Thanks Corey!
Thank you
Thanks for this. Just disable the core audio using Control when loading the project and saved myself an hour and a half of work. You made my day and night!
Awesome!! Happy to help any way I can Itay 🙂
Very helpful, you took your time and explained everything in detail thank you
Thanks for saving my life.
Chris, this was so hilariously written and thoroughly enjoyable to read. I love how you made this interesting for me with jokes throughout and even some sexual innuendo, while also showing me some really life-saving stuff. I’m hooked on the website, now. It’s amazing, and so helpful for me. I just started messing with logic, initially studied as a concert pianist, had a life, and now I need to learn how to record well. I got a binaural head and I am so stoked to hear/read what you have to say about recording bi-nauraly.
Anyways, thanks so much for this. It was wonderful!
Keenan
Any tips on what to do if none of my projects will open, both holding down option and starting without core audio fail to work, and I have tried removing all component/vst files and my projects still only open for about 1 second before unexpectedly quitting? I have also checked my disk utility it seems to be all good. I’m running Logic Pro x 10.0.6 on high Sierra 10.13.6
I have a quite simple logic session with only sampler and a few soft synths which would make logic pro crash. I had been moving folders from my internal to external ssd’s. Tried without plug ins, resetting permissions, reinstalling macOS, etc etc. Meanwhile I had setup a new account just in case everything went south even more. Restarted in that account and voila my session loaded with no problems. Had to relicense my plugins, but it solved my problem; I now use this account purely for logic sessions, the old one for fcp, office stuff etc
What if nothing works and Logic keeps crashing upon attempting to start, Control doesn’t work, option doesn’t work, importing doesn’t work, etc!? I’m on the latest version of logic and Mac OS. Thanks!