GarageBand says it needs more power?!

[jamdr]

I was playing around with GarageBand on a friend's computer (a 20" iMac) and it came up with this error message. It's kind of sad that Apple's high-end consumer machine can't handle a consumer-level app. Has anyone else seen this before?

By the way, I know when GB was announced, I didn't have many kind things to say about it. I still don't know how well it will sell, but it is quite a cool app to just play around with. I probably wouldn't spend $50 on it, but it is an interesting idea.

[raptorhigh]

Wow, that doesn't give me much hope for my 867 powerbook. I know it says processing problem, but could it be RAM related.

[millhouse]

you got more hope then me, im on a g4 450mhz blue and white, if garage band even runs ill be happy.

[RStone]

The key part of that error message is "real time". Real-time anything takes a lot of power, as I know many fellow FCP users will agree. Real-time is a luxury that comes with higher-end comps.

Welcome to the world of rendering. :D

Audio rendering usually doesn't take long anyways, at least not in my experience. Unless you've got several audio effects applied to multiple tracks of audio. Then you may be in for a wait.

[LethalWolfe]

How many tracks and how many FX was your friend trying to play in real time?


Lethal

[crossed-over]

I got the same message, running it on a dual gig mdd power mac. Only other program open was ichat. Other than that one time though, it has been just fine. I LOVE GB! No joke, this thing rocks. I am having such a blast just messing around with it.

[jigglyjon]

how much ram do ya have in ya'lls machine I have 256 in my iBook G4 and i get the message if i add more than 10 tracks. I am hoping that adding some ram can fix it. Other than that, the only problem is it takes a while to start up. Other than that its a great program

[pixelhead]

I got the same error with about 8 tracks of loops and midi on a dual 2gig G5 with 3.5 gig of ram. I only got it once.

[CmdrLaForge]

Thats terrible news. i have got an 900MHz iBook. OMG.

[Kingsnapped]

My 1.25 albook got it's ass handed to it trying to play back one of the demo tracks (forgot which one..) around the end of the song, it slows way down and I get a few error messages. To it's credit, it's a really complex song, and I still have the stock ram in here.

[Nosh]

Has anyone with performance problems tried changing the Buffer setting in the Audio/MIDI tab of the Preferences for GarageBand? Better Performance is a large buffer size, recommended for G3 systems, which might solve problems related to rendering many tracks. Also, in the Advanced tab, you may wish to change the number of software instruments from Automatic to 8, or 16 if you're using more than 8(someone said 10). I haven't run into this problem myself on a 1.33ghz Powerbook with 1GB RAM, though I wonder if the lack of L3 Cache might play a factor.

Nosh

[pyrotoaster]

Just about any non-G5 machine is going to go nuts trying to handle real-time audio. I've had the same problem playing several tracks at once on my 12" Powerbook (1 GHz, 768 RAM). It's a bit annoying, but pretty understandable.

Maybe Apple can work out an option to buffer the whole song before playing it, or something else like that.

The simple solution is to just watch the little triangle along the top. It turns red when your system's being strained too much. If you just stop and start again, the problem's solved (a makeshift solution, but still).

[Torajima]

Originally posted by pyrotoaster
Just about any non-G5 machine is going to go nuts trying to handle real-time audio.

Well, it shouldn't. My 350 mhz G3 handled real-time digital audio just fine. Then again, it was Digital Performer and Mac OS 9....

[markjones05]

I have no problem using garage band on my dual ones with 1 gig ram. However my girlfriends g4 ibook gets that message after i let the loops repeat about 20 times. Then i push ok and the program works fine again. And she has the base ibook g4 model.

[tjwett]

Originally posted by pyrotoaster
Just about any non-G5 machine is going to go nuts trying to handle real-time audio. I've had the same problem playing several tracks at once on my 12" Powerbook (1 GHz, 768 RAM). It's a bit annoying, but pretty understandable.

Maybe Apple can work out an option to buffer the whole song before playing it, or something else like that...

I dunno about that. Ever try Ableton Live? Even a modestly spec'd G3 can handle a nice amount tracks, fx, and TONS of realtime audio rendering in that app, and it's not even optimized for AltiVec. You'll never see a better example of realtime audio processing anywhere. The things you can do to audio on the fly are simply amazing. Perhaps their are some bugs or users aren't setting things up correctly. Curious, does GB allow you to stream audio from RAM as well as the HD?

[jamdr]

I think there were maybe 6 instrument tracks being played at one time. Everything on the machine was stock--so only 256 MB of RAM. The message came up at the exact same spot of the song every time I tried to play it. I followed it's suggestion, and looked under help, but couldn't find anything at all on the topic.

God, it would have been embarassing if this happened during Steve Job's keynote; thank god it didn't. Does anyone know if it's possible to render a song before playing it?

[DVDSP]

I had one song open with about 11 different instruments (loops) playing, not all at the same time but always at least 3. No problems with playback at all.

In "song 2" I had just 5 instruments playing and I got the slow down and then the "not enough power" message. I started muting tracks individually to see if any one of them was the culprit. Turns out that it was "Classic Rock Piano 06". Even if I play ONLY that instrument the little triangle turns yellow by 16 beats, red before 32 beats and then I start getting non-real-time playback and static. Without that one instrument everything else plays just fine.

Has anyone else noticed that specific instruments are causing the trouble? For the record, GB is running on a Dual 800 G4 with 1280 MB RAM.

[virividox]

i cant wait for my copy UGH

[Engagebot]

i was saying this in another thread, but i have a song going with 3 recorded guitar tracks, 2 bass, and one vocal track. havent even added loops or software instruments, and my GB is giving me all kinds of errors. one said my disk was too slow.

this is a 15' 1Ghz Al powerbook with 768MB of DDR333. funny how theyre pro laptop cant handle the consumer apps...