FX Chains randomly work and then don’t as Logic plug-in

[amop]

I finally got comfortable with using the H9K as a plug-in for Logic. and was very happy with the results.   I then created what I wanted to be my default Session for Logic production, which includes 4 stereo FX Chains with some reverb algorithms in each (I modeled this after the 901 Reverb Buses Session which I read was a good template for this).  My goal was to use the Logic I/O plug in to assign different FX Chains to different buses using their USB I/O.  So I would have Bus 1 for USB 1/2, Bus 2 for USB 3/4, and so on.

Everything worked for a while (all USB assignments were tested and worked), but then some of the chains stopped working, and rather randomly at that.  The FXchains would not receive any input, or they would receive an instance of say 100 ms and then go silent. In most cases a couple FX chains responded, and the others would not.  Sometimes restarting everything fixed it for a while, or changed which of the FX Chains worked and didn’t.

I had a couple bus instances of the Emote plug-in and thought that would create conflicts, so removed all but one, but no fix.

This is very frustrating as I hoped to have just one baseline H9K Session for all my Logic work, and access up to the four FX Chains as needed.

I am using an Intel I7 iMac with Sequoia 15.1.1, Logic Version 11.1.1, and all the latest H9K and emote downloads.

Appreciate any help.  Thank you.

[chriscarter]

We’ve had this same ‘random missing audio’ issue since day one of using the H9K with the Logic Pro I/O plugin and Emote (5 years or more), although we are streaming the H9K audio over a Dante network. But in all these years nobody I’ve mentioned it to knows why or has a solution and I assumed it was either an H9K, Emote or Dante problem (or a combination of all) but I’ve recently been thinking that it’s more likely a Logic issue. A couple of years ago I found that if the audio to/from the H9K (via the I/O Plugin) goes missing placing a Logic Test Oscillator before the I/O and briefly activating it (be careful with your monitoring levels) can ‘nudge’ the I/O audio into action and the audio magically appears again,… akin to opening/triggering a noise gate – it doesn’t always work but often does, with our setup. I’ve also noted that some of our newer Logic projects never have this issue whilst older projects suffer quite badly with the audio going missing. I guess it’s down to some behind the scenes Logic routing shenanigans going on, who knows. Anyway we now have a handful of Logic templates that we know work with Emote… well 95% of the time (and using only one instance of it per project). Any older projects that are troublesome are moved to one of the newer working projects, which is both annoying and time consuming. Anyway that’s my take on it, maybe it will help.

[amop]

Thank you for the recommendation.  Disappointing to hear this is a longstanding issue.  I was hoping it was operator error.  I’m a bit too invested in Logic to make a DAW switch, if that’s the root cause.

Did a quick try of your suggestion by inserting the osc utility before the I/O and emote on my AUX channel.  No luck yet but will keep at it.

PS – hope you don’t mind a brief aside, but appreciated the opportunity to see you perform with TG in Los Angeles in 1981.

[tbskoglund]

Hello, thanks for reporting this.

I will spend some time trying to reproduce this issue with some different setups and let you know what I find.

How is your clocking configured? If the H9000’s clock is unlocked, this can result in no audio passing through FX Chains.

If this issue happens and you try loading the oscillator, please confirm that the FX Chain output shows signal from the oscillator. You should also see signal on the USB output meters on the front panel if you go to Meters > More Meters > I/O Meters.

[amop]

Hello –

Thank you for your quick reply.  I did verify those items (my H9K is clocked over ADAT from my audio interface).

I went back into my project to try a fix as recommended by chriscarter and finally noticed a duplicate instance of the emote plug-in in the Logic project.  I deleted one of them and so far can reliably use the four FX Chains and access them individually over separate tracks / buses.

So far so good…I’ll report back if I come up against any further issue.  Thank you

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