Logic Pro- need to run VI on each track? / overload message

[brownbird]

I've been using Logic for a while now but this question has been lingering:

Let's say I have two tracks on which I want the same instrument... is it necessary that I run the same virtual instrument plugin on each track? After a few tracks, it really starts to eat up the processing power and before you know it, I'm in overload hell (even with a large buffer size) with only a few tracks.

Here's hoping it's possible to have only one virtual instrument loaded and the output going to separate tracks...

Thx.

iMac 3.06 C2D 8 GB ram

 

[MacYost]

If you want to output the same music from one instrument to various tracks, so that you can process every track differently, you need to use 1 track, and route the output of this track to various busses. A bus is kind of a track, but without an input or a virtual instrument. Every bus is feed from one or more tracks (yes, you can mix different tracks to the same bus), and has its own processing and effects.

If you want to play different melodies at the same time on the same virtual instrument, you need different tracks, each with the same instrument loaded. In "normal" operation this should not overload a modern Mac.

Maybe what is going wrong, is that you use the same instrument including all the effect processing, on various tracks. So you are not only having multiple instances of the instrument loaded, but also multiple instances of (all) effects and plug-ins that are used on the instrument. Effects like Space Designer, and surely multiple instances of Space Designer, will overload your Mac quite easily.

In this case you need to create one bus with all the effects and plug-ins, use various tracks with only the instrument loaded, and reroute the output of the tracks to the bus where the effects processing will take place.

 

[brownbird]

Yes you are right. That makes a lot of sense, I'll try that. Thank you