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The White Noise Blast of Death -- I'm losing my mind

marclawsonmusic said:
I would guess it's some kind of reverb / spatialization plugin. That's the only time I've encountered this before.
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I never had a full blast, but some Synths with Combfilters or Resonators should be handled with extra caution, SigMod stopped some careless tweaking. The Apple Magic mouse, no matter how careful you are, scrolls evil things in a synth…
 
Previously it has always been VI synths that caused the blast. This time it was a Kontakt piano I was using which is very stable. I don’t think it was this.

I almost always add plugins during playback. I like to keep the music going when composing and editing, keeps me in the flow. If I have a consistent issue with a plugin working this way, I’ll just stop using it. Fast and stable are what I look for the most.

I added a newer high quality EQ plugin and an overload popup came up which was strange. I added a compressor and got the same overload popup. I recalled a preset in the Eq and then blast of death. Next time I get an overload like that I’ll quit Logic and relaunch. After I installed, I restarted the Max and recalled the same ch strip settings and didn’t have any issues. So it’s hard to say what caused it but I’m guessing the new fancy Eq didn’t help. It was also total overkill for the pop piano sound I was going for…the stock Eq would have been fine. I’m a beta tester and even though this was a release, I wanted to try using it more to see where it works well.

It seems like once I started using Ice 9 on my Trashcan I never got the BoD. It would trigger if my output crept up too high as it should though. Ice 9 wouldn’t pass AU at all on the Max. Unfortunately SigMod isn’t M1 ready but it seems to be working fine in Monterey and Logic 10.7.4 in Native mode. I recommend grabbing it while it’s on sale for $29.
 
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I can recommend Sonnox ListenHub! It has saved me at least once from a really bad noise burst and does not add any additional latency to the audio stream (as opposed to SigMod). Works system-wide and as a plugin.
 
maestro2be said:
It's actually the reason I left Logic many years ago. I worked with Apple for 6 months on it. They literally did everything they could from upgrading my computer for free, to giving me the latest OS's for free. No one could get rid of the issue. The last time I did it, I ended up full out punching myself right in the face and almost blacked myself out from having headphones on and it doing it.

I will never use Logic again as long as I live from that scare. It's never happened to me again (moved to Windows and Studio One).

Hope you figure it out. Please put some type of hardware protection into your system if you don't have it. They literally happen without warning and without knowing cause. Your hearing is way to important and the fear I had every day working in Logic took away some of my creative power.

I wish you the best figuring this out!
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If you have an AUX that has the output to that AUX, you get a loop and this terrible sound
 
I got a white noise blast of death from a cheap sound bar I bought for the TV. Switching between analogue and SPDIF triggered a full volume white noise blast of death... right in my face hahah. Nope - straight back in the box for that guy. Any software or hardware that does that to me just once gets binned.
 
Hans-Peter said:
I can recommend Sonnox ListenHub! It has saved me at least once from a really bad noise burst and does not add any additional latency to the audio stream (as opposed to SigMod). Works system-wide and as a plugin.
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Seems like a good alternative. Haven’t noticed any influencing Latency with sigmod, but will have a look into Listenhub.
 
Would volume limiting headphones be an effective option - it looks like the Beyerdynamic 770 PROs have some form of limiting built in? Or a simple device like this Amazon product ASIN B08HPPXZLH
I don't know if it would function as a hard limiter or just lower the relative levels, seems more like the latter so I'm not sure that would help with a spike.

Also found for Mac a software called EarSafe that appears to function as a limiter on all audio output.
 
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Just looping back here to say I upgraded to a Mac Studio about a year ago and have not had any buzzing or WNBOD issues since. I know that's not much of a solution (giving Apple more money in response to the hearing damage, yay!) but... gotta do what you gotta do.

On my old computer I found that starting a fresh project was really the only way to deal with those issues. Something about the project seemed to be getting corrupted. Such a pain, but I'd have to export my stems and MIDI, and reload all the instruments and plugins manually to ensure it was safe to use again.

Also, I noticed a bit of a pattern with one of my virtual instruments which would start buzzing every once in awhile. The buzzing was usually a precursor of the WNBOD, so I just stopped using that library entirely. A reinstall of any problematic / buzzing libraries may help though, if anyone else is experiencing that. I use that library on my new computer with no issues.

These are the only patterns I was able to observe. I hope one day we'll all find a foolproof solution!
 
I haven't encountered this yet in over 20 years of using Logic, but there's always a first time I guess. I'd be curious to know what the common thread is because I have have over 400 plugins and it seems like I would've run into this at some point, especially during the Intel>M1 transition when not every AU was behaving correctly. I do generally keep a limiter on the master buss though, just in case, to help protect from any scenario which can lead to unexpected outbursts of noise. For example, lots of sample libraries are mixed really quietly, but many commercial virtual synths are mixed "commercial ready" loud and can be quite jarring.
 
I get a lot of crackles and very short noise bursts and dropouts when quickly switching between different tracks in large/close to overloading projects.

And also when opening the midi data of a lot of tracks in the key/midi editor and switching back into the project.
After closing the midi editor the loud crackles appear.

By looking at my limiter I can see those crackles were over 600dB in volume.
There are probably lots of things that can cause stuff like that but that could be one of them.

It could have something to do with the Asio Guard Protection feature. I only know Cubase but there is certainly something similar in Logic. It's a setting to reduce CPU/audio performance load by only "realtime-processing" the currently selected track and taking the load off all the others somehow. I don't know much about it.

When switching between tracks Asio Guard changes the way they are processed and it seems like Cubase struggles with those switches if the project is very big and close to overloading.
Sometimes the project also crashes.

It might just be one of the many things causing noise bursts and loud crackles but it seemed worth posting about.
 
Reaper has a setting that automatically mutes any audio spikes over a certain decibel level, so the user is protected. Doesn't Logic have something like this?
 
This was one of the main reasons I moved from Logic to Reaper back in 2019. Not once has this happened in Reaper (or any other DAW I used besides Logic). It just happend in sich unpredictable ways, even in empty projects, that I always had my left hand on the monitor controller volume knob and was listening at lower than adequate volumes. As nice of a DAW Logic can be, operating it with fear can totally kill creativity and productivity.
 
Snoobydoobydoo said:
Seems like a good alternative. Haven’t noticed any influencing Latency with sigmod, but will have a look into Listenhub.
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Sigmod has a very small latency added. It is definitely reported to the daw as latency but it’s very small believe less then one Ms.

That being said there is still that freebie plugin floating around with no latency. Ice9

I have had the white noise blast happen to me with enough situations in general in several different daws that i consider it an always possible threat of working with a daw. I always try to have some kind of plugin to block it on my master bus.
 
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