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OP:

My impression is that you simply "have too much stuff goin' on at once".
Again, I wonder if that VPN is impacting recording.

For a recording session, reboot with as little stuff as possible running... only the essentials.

I wouldn't run Cubase "alongside of" Logic.
Just one at a time, thank you very much.
 
OP:

My impression is that you simply "have too much stuff goin' on at once".
Again, I wonder if that VPN is impacting recording.

For a recording session, reboot with as little stuff as possible running... only the essentials.

I wouldn't run Cubase "alongside of" Logic.
Just one at a time, thank you very much.
I don't have Cubase installed.

Doesn't seem to add up. I have VERY little installed - about half of which is Apple software. This is depressing.
 
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I can certainly turn off VPN - but were you thinking uninstall PIA VPN?

This is the software I have on this computer (a completely fresh install - NOTHING imported from a previous install)

Apple or Apple Store Software
Logic Pro X (Apple),
Final Cut Pro X (Apple),
Pages (Apple),
Numbers (Apple)
iReal (from Apple App Store),

Non-Apple Software
Parallels Desktop,
VPN (PIA),
Yamaha USB audio driver (Steinberg),
dspFxMx (Steinberg mixer for audio interface),
Zoom (for meetings),
Finale (music notation software - I think Finale comes bundled with something called ARIA Player),
 
TBH this thread is going in circles for almost 2 months now...
Listing up all symptoms / possible causes/ software installed will not change anything at all...

As long as one doesnt dedicate some time to start troubleshooting methodically, nothing will ever change.
There have been posted a lot of advices/ recommendations/possible clues by several members.
I sincerely hope you'll find the root of the problem.

Just sharing my opinion...
Good luck!
 
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TBH this thread is going in circles for almost 2 months now...
Listing up all symptoms / possible causes/ software installed will not change anything at all...

As long as one doesnt dedicate some time to start troubleshooting methodically, nothing will ever change.
There have been posted a lot of advices/ recommendations/possible clues by several members.
I sincerely hope you'll find the root of the problem.

Just sharing my opinion...
Good luck!

I think that I would have looked for different hardware by now.
 
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Kees wrote:
"TBH this thread is going in circles for almost 2 months now...
Listing up all symptoms / possible causes/ software installed will not change anything at all...
As long as one doesnt dedicate some time to start troubleshooting methodically, nothing will ever change."

Good advice.
The OP seems resistant to changing anything.

My final suggestion:
Create a NEW USER ACCOUNT with administrative privileges.
Now move things into it, BUT ONLY A LITTLE AT A TIME.

The idea is to see if the new user account (with next-to-nothing in it) has the same problems as the "regular" user account.

If the new account runs more "cleanly", then you can surmise that the problem was due to something in the regular account.
It can be a job to "find out what".
 
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I quit PIA VPN - and made a point of using that computer for the entire day. It still freezes. Not sure if I should have uninstalled PIA though.
 
In September I uninstalled PIA (VPN software). For a while I thought, maybe, that fixed the horrible freezing problem. But, I did get a freeze last night. Cursor disappears, trackpad/haptic stops working, my audio connection to my audio interface got disconnected.

I was using Finale (music notation software) and I did happen to have Parallels Control Center app open at the time. To be clear, I wasn't running a Virtual Machine (VM) - just the Parallels Control app happened to be open (from where you launch VMs). I had been making a point of exiting the Parallels Control Center - but, I had forgot this time. I wasn't using Parallels the night of the freeze. It was on some other day that I had used Parallels.

This is all that I have installed (not counting what comes with macOS)

  1. Yamaha USB audio driver (Steinberg)
  2. dspFxMx (Steinberg mixer for audio interface)
  3. iReal Pro (Chart Notation for music)
  4. Logic Pro X (Apple)
  5. Final Cut Pro X (Apple)
  6. Pages (Apple)
  7. Numbers (Apple)
  8. Microsoft Windows Remote Desktop (Microsoft)
  9. Parallels Desktop 16
  10. Zoom

Again, this is a 100% clean install of macOS Mojave (10.14.6) - NOTHING was restored from a backup. Originally it was thought a clean install of macOS would get rid of the freezing issue.


As a side note - because this is taking months and months to resolve - other factors impede. The computer I am trying to troubleshoot is getting VERY little use (because there's almost no software installed - so I use another MacBook for daily use - it has the same freezing issue).

The situation seems, hopeless.
 
I got another freeze last night - this time Parallels Control Center app was not running. I had Logic open, iReal open and I was playing music using Quick Time. During the freeze the music stopped and Logic lost its connect to my audio interface. I just so happed to have a USB memory stick in the USB port - and I got a "Disk Not Ejected Properly" message. So, it's fairly obvious the freeze is rather severe.

This feels ever so reminiscent of a Windows operating system.
 
I got another freeze last night. The app called Parallels Control was open - but it seems that isn't the issue. At that time I was transferring files to an external drive. I had two external drives connected - one was sitting idle. After the freeze I needed to enter the password for the idle drive. I have no idea if the freeze corrupted any files that were transferring to the external drive. They were all FCPX libraries and LPX projects.

Oh, I did install two other apps. One from a company called Eventide (they make professional audio equipment). And, the other is Apple's Keynote. Here is the current list of installed software:

  1. Yamaha USB audio driver (Steinberg)
  2. dspFxMx (Steinberg mixer for audio interface)
  3. iReal Pro (Chart Notation for music)
  4. Logic Pro X (Apple)
  5. Final Cut Pro X (Apple)
  6. Finale (MakeMusic, Inc.)
  7. Pages (Apple)
  8. Numbers (Apple)
  9. Microsoft Windows Remote Desktop (Microsoft)
  10. Parallels Desktop 16
  11. Zoom
  12. H9 Control (Eventide)
  13. KeyNote (Apple)

If someone asked me to point to the most janky software installed then I'd eye the driver and associated apps for my DAW (items 1 and 2 above) - which uses the audio interface hardware called Steinberg UR44. Now, I've used this same software since late 2015 (with the same laptop) and for many, many years did not have freezing up until I upgraded macOS. However, my experience with Steinberg software is - messy. That is to say the approach Steinberg takes for their licensing and installation onto macOS is convoluted and upsets other programs and causes lots of error messages to display - which then requires aggressive repair in order to restore the other applications to normal operation. I have contacted Steinberg about this - but, not surprisingly, they simply don't give a flip.

The real problem is that troubleshooting requires the user to use the affected laptop frequently - but the laptop has very little software installed. At this time I only use this laptop when I need to edit a video or use Logic Pro X. Since I need a DAW for both I can't realistically uninstall all the Steinberg related stuff used for the DAW.

So, the catch-22 here is that I hardly use this laptop for lack of installed apps, but troubleshooting requires frequent use while uninstalling random apps. Currently, I only use this computer for music and video editing - removing the janky DAW software would mean I'd stop using this laptop entirely.

Data logs of some type might be helpful - but, I'm not technical on these matters. I'm just a user (kind of the reason I got an Apple in the first place).

I have to wonder if Mojave is the problem or part of the problem. Both laptops have Mojave - and both laptops freeze.

Anyway, I'm very pessimistic that there even is a solution that would fix my 2015 MBP. If I had the money I wouldn't even be dicking around with this nonsense - I'd just run out and get a new $5000 MBP. But, I've got to stick with this 2015 MBP for a little while longer.

I'm beginning to just hate Apple in much the same way I hate Windows.
 
I got another freeze last night. The app called Parallels Control was open - but it seems that isn't the issue. At that time I was transferring files to an external drive. I had two external drives connected - one was sitting idle. After the freeze I needed to enter the password for the idle drive. I have no idea if the freeze corrupted any files that were transferring to the external drive. They were all FCPX libraries and LPX projects.

Oh, I did install two other apps. One from a company called Eventide (they make professional audio equipment). And, the other is Apple's Keynote. Here is the current list of installed software:

  1. Yamaha USB audio driver (Steinberg)
  2. dspFxMx (Steinberg mixer for audio interface)
  3. iReal Pro (Chart Notation for music)
  4. Logic Pro X (Apple)
  5. Final Cut Pro X (Apple)
  6. Finale (MakeMusic, Inc.)
  7. Pages (Apple)
  8. Numbers (Apple)
  9. Microsoft Windows Remote Desktop (Microsoft)
  10. Parallels Desktop 16
  11. Zoom
  12. H9 Control (Eventide)
  13. KeyNote (Apple)

If someone asked me to point to the most janky software installed then I'd eye the driver and associated apps for my DAW (items 1 and 2 above) - which uses the audio interface hardware called Steinberg UR44. Now, I've used this same software since late 2015 (with the same laptop) and for many, many years did not have freezing up until I upgraded macOS. However, my experience with Steinberg software is - messy. That is to say the approach Steinberg takes for their licensing and installation onto macOS is convoluted and upsets other programs and causes lots of error messages to display - which then requires aggressive repair in order to restore the other applications to normal operation. I have contacted Steinberg about this - but, not surprisingly, they simply don't give a flip.

The real problem is that troubleshooting requires the user to use the affected laptop frequently - but the laptop has very little software installed. At this time I only use this laptop when I need to edit a video or use Logic Pro X. Since I need a DAW for both I can't realistically uninstall all the Steinberg related stuff used for the DAW.

So, the catch-22 here is that I hardly use this laptop for lack of installed apps, but troubleshooting requires frequent use while uninstalling random apps. Currently, I only use this computer for music and video editing - removing the janky DAW software would mean I'd stop using this laptop entirely.

Data logs of some type might be helpful - but, I'm not technical on these matters. I'm just a user (kind of the reason I got an Apple in the first place).

I have to wonder if Mojave is the problem or part of the problem. Both laptops have Mojave - and both laptops freeze.

Anyway, I'm very pessimistic that there even is a solution that would fix my 2015 MBP. If I had the money I wouldn't even be dicking around with this nonsense - I'd just run out and get a new $5000 MBP. But, I've got to stick with this 2015 MBP for a little while longer.

I'm beginning to just hate Apple in much the same way I hate Windows.
Sounds like a move to Catalina or big sur is your best bet as has been pointed out. I recently installed big sur on my 2013 13 inch MBP and I can honestly say it seems to be actually running better. Do take a carbon copy cloner complete copy of your system and create a usb stick with mojave if all goes wrong and you need to reset.
 
Sounds like a move to Catalina or big sur is your best bet as has been pointed out. I recently installed big sur on my 2013 13 inch MBP and I can honestly say it seems to be actually running better. Do take a carbon copy cloner complete copy of your system and create a usb stick with mojave if all goes wrong and you need to reset.
It's encouraging to hear that the upgrade is working for older computers. It's been a number of months - but, I seem to remember a phone call with Apple regarding rolling back macOS if needed - they didn't have a solution - or were highly hesitant to offer a solution. It might have something to do with a low level file system - being incompatible - if I'm remembering that correctly. This was likely in the context of using Time Machine (my only backup workflow). I do own Carbon Copy - but, not sure that can restore the system with Carbon Copy - I just used it briefly to synchronize files between two drives. I would prefer my operating system to be housed within the internal SSD. Running macOS from a USB stick must surely be incredibly slow. I probably won't upgrade until I have about $5000 free to replace the laptop should my computer get bricked by Big Sur. So, maybe a year from now?
 
It's encouraging to hear that the upgrade is working for older computers. It's been a number of months - but, I seem to remember a phone call with Apple regarding rolling back macOS if needed - they didn't have a solution - or were highly hesitant to offer a solution. It might have something to do with a low level file system - being incompatible - if I'm remembering that correctly. This was likely in the context of using Time Machine (my only backup workflow). I do own Carbon Copy - but, not sure that can restore the system with Carbon Copy - I just used it briefly to synchronize files between two drives. I would prefer my operating system to be housed within the internal SSD. Running macOS from a USB stick must surely be incredibly slow. I probably won't upgrade until I have about $5000 free to replace the laptop should my computer get bricked by Big Sur. So, maybe a year from now?
Carbon copy clone can clone you complete drive OS X and all and you can restore it as it was. You can use disk maker x to make a bootable copy of mojave and then reinstall it and restore from your time machine back up if you wish. This is really a belt and braces approach where you can either just restore back from your carbon copy image of your whole computer. Or you can reinstall mojave and migrate all your apps and files back from time machine. Hopefully neither will be needed and big sur will sort out your issues and you’ll stick with that.
 
I'll ask again, are these 13" Macbook Pros or 15"? If they are 13" models, then you're likely experiencing the problem I've described here.
Are you running on 10.14.5 or above? Also, when it freezes, does any audio that was playing infinitely loop on the last sound bite?

It already sounds like it, but if the upper two things are also true, then you definitely have the same bug that I—and many others—are having.

This link has threads of all the people reporting similar issues.

The long and short of it is: it's a bug introduced in 10.14.5 that only affects early 2015 MBPs. No one really knows why, and there's no real fix. I downgraded to High Sierra to stop the random freezes. The only other thing I could recommend doing is leaving feedback to Apple. :/
 
After several sessions with my therapist I worked up enough courage to upgrade from Mojave to Monterey. I'm pleased to report that there were no catastrophic incidences due to upgrading - such as "bricking". Although, I don't think my MacBook mid 2015 15" Retina has the T2 chip. Isn't that the problem with bricking - the T2 chip?

Anyway, I have two identical 2015 15" MacBook Pros - and both were upgraded with extreme care - just incase things went sideways (bricking). There are no problems with the upgrade that I can see (it's been over a week now).

The best news is that I have NOT experienced the dreaded freezing on either machine.

I came up with a really good way to detect freezing (which is quite intermittent). I would run Logic Pro in a loop while connected to my USB audio interface. When there is a system freeze this would interrupt the USB connected audio interface and Logic would display a message reporting that it had lost the audio interface. I've been running Logic Pro in a loop for days and days over the past week or so - about 8 hours per session. I never saw that message indicating audio had been dropped.

However, when I tried to run Logic Pro in a loop for 24 hours or more - there was an interruption. On two occasions when I attempted to run Logic in a loop for beyond 8 hours the sound stopped, but Logic Pro continued to play in its loop as if nothing happened. There was no error message about a lost USB audio connection (which is really good). During this condition other applications had sound coming through the audio interface (YouTube/Safari). Fiddling with Logic (without closing or resetting anything) seemed to cause the audio to come back. I think I hit stop and then play - I forget. So, I'm guessing that anomaly is more specific to the application, Logic Pro - rather than due to a system freeze.

And, like I said, I have not experienced ANY freezing on either machine while interacting with either laptop - zero freezing experienced while typing, using the mouse or watching a video. What a relief!

Fingers crossed this problem has finally been eradicated.
 
I'll ask again, are these 13" Macbook Pros or 15"? If they are 13" models, then you're likely experiencing the problem I've described here.
That seems very close to my issue - however I have the mid 2015 15" MacBook Pro. When the system froze the audio would stop for a few seconds then continued. So, for example while watching youtube if I got a freeze - I believe the video kept going (not sure now), but there was no audio for a brief moment. There were many other things that would freeze - if it occurred while typing the letters would stop showing up as I typed - but the buffer would continue to catch all of my keystrokes - when the system came back - an entire sentence would quickly populate Pages (or whatever I happened to be typing into). The Haptic thingy associated with the track pad would also stop working during freezes. And, of course the cursor would freeze.

In case you didn't see my previous post - it's looking like upgrading to Monterey fixed the freezing problem. I cautiously report this after upgrading two laptops with freezing issues - then testing for a little over a week. I have not personally experienced freezing with either laptop - both 2015 15" MBPs. At this time I believe the freezing issue has been resolved by upgrading to Monterey.
 
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