Random playback and recording stop/start in Logic Pro on Mac Studio
Hoping someone can help. I have tried everything I can think of to resolve and nothing has worked. This is driving me absolutely crazy.
Below is a video showing an example of what is happening. Sometimes it is even way worse than this. It happens during both playback and during recording.
Mac specs:
- New 2025 Mac Studio with the M4 Max
- 48gb of RAM
- OS is Tahoe 26.0 (I just updated yesterday but this was doing this prior to the upgrade as well)
- Logic Pro version 11.2.2 (also just upgraded, was doing this on the previous version as well)
- Audio interface: brand new UA Apollo Twin QUAD
Symptoms:
- During playback and recording, the transport will randomly start and stop. Sometimes it is more like a stutter, sometimes it is a full stop and then start. So far I have only seen it start from the same spot it left off at, I haven't seen it restart the whole track.
- Also, and this is the first thing I noticed....even when the track is stopped and not playing at all, it will randomly start on its own. As I am typing this, my current project is starting/stopping over and over and over when I don't even have Logic pulled to the forefront.
- This just randomly started occurring two days ago. I had been running Logic for about a week or two on my new gear (I just recently purchased the Mac Studio) and never had a single issue. No crashes, no freezes, no issues at all.
- Sometimes the stop is very quick, as you can see in the video. Often times, it can be 5-10 seconds before restarting. I have seen it go a minute or so in between stop/start. There is no real pattern here, it is entirely random.
Troubleshooting notes:
- This happens regardless of how many tracks are active, whether there are or are not any plugins on any of the tracks
- I have unplugged all peripheral gear from the Mac Studio and tested and it continues to occur regardless of what is/is not connected. I have disconnected the UA Apollo Twin, it still happens. I have disconnected all of my USB/MIDI gear and it still happens, I have disconnected my (typing) keyboard that connects through USB and it still happens. Have disconnected my external hard drive, still happens.
- To confirm, if I turn off/unplug the UA audio interface and run audio straight out of the Mac/Core Audio, it still happens.
- I have tried restarting, I have tried shutting down. After both, I would pull up Logic first and it would almost immediately start happening.
- I have tried shutting down all programs/apps so that only Logic Pro was operating....still occurs.
- I have tried adjusting the buffer size up and down to see if that made any impact. It did not. I also tried making these adjustments, closing the program and then opening it back up again. Still happening.
- In the activity monitor, I never see the CPU usage rise above more than 2-3% or so while I am playing a track in Logic. Same for memory and disk usage, nothing ever spikes or shows that there is stress on the system.
- I have tried resetting/defaulting my preferences. That didn't work.
- I removed the Logic Pro .plist file as outlined here and did a restart. That didn't work.
- I don't have any control surfaces connected and the only external transport controls would be on my Native Instruments Maschine and Komplete Kontrol and it still occurs even when those are disconnected. The clip below has a track using the Maschine plugin, but the issue occurs even with a clean track in Logic on a brand new project.
- It occurs on projects with any kind of tracks.....all software instruments, a single audio track....there are no patterns I can detect for what causes it to occur. it is entirely random. It is almost acting like someone is sitting there randomly hitting the play/stop button.
Help me, Logic Pro community, you are my only hope. If I have forgotten any troubleshooting options or settings I should try, please let me know. I really really do not want to remove Logic altogether and reinstall it. But, if that is what it takes to fix this, so be it.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Original Title: start
Mac Studio
