# How to best protect your ears from bursts of noise? [update]



## Wunderhorn (Jul 21, 2020)

Recently Logic gifted me with a truly deafening and absolutely dangerous burst of noise. It did not happen like this before and I could not reproduce it afterwards. Not sure how it actually happened but that is rather irrelevant to the question of how can we protect ourselves from such things in general?

Does anyone know if there is an application out there that can monitor the computer's audio out ports for potentially harming noise and suppress it on detection?

Shouldn't a DAW have such a safety mechanism built in?


- - - update - - -

I found out where the noise burst came from. It was an instance of NI's grand piano The Grandeur. Some stacked clusters with sustain pedal enabled caused triggered Logic to go into a frenzy.

Last night I moved my production to my new Mac Pro (2019, 16 core, 224RAM) for the first time and low and behold, the same issue persisted there too (Catalina 10.15.6 vs Mojave on the Trashcan 10.4.6)
Thanks to the Ice9 plugin I was able to see it happen repeatedly without anything getting hurt. Once I tamed the piano cluster chords it was fine.

I wonder what is actually triggering Logic to create such noise. In a worst scenario, these piano clusters would result in a little bit of clipping, even though my levels are not even high enough for that. Something is weirs, but at least I was able to isolate and reproduce it.
So yes, it would be helpful for anyone to file a bug report with Apple (I did).


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## MartinH. (Jul 21, 2020)

Wunderhorn said:


> Shouldn't a DAW have such a safety mechanism built in?



Absolutely, and Reaper has it built in. 

Maybe there's something useful in this similar thread: 




__





Deafening parasite sound when using CinePiano in FL Studio 20


Hi everyone, I've been dealing with an very annoying issue for some time. Occasionally, when stoping the playback, FL Studio will suddenly output an extremely loud sound, that will not stop unless I close the software or shut down my audio device. It's a simple waveform but, and I can't stress...




vi-control.net





Some logic useres reported similar things, maybe ask them if they found a solution by now.


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## Bender-offender (Jul 21, 2020)

Ice9 Automute by Cerberus Audio - Utility Plugin VST Audio Unit


Cerberus Audio Ice9 Automute is a free utility which protects your speakers, your ears, and your nerves from dangerously loud output levels....




www.kvraudio.com


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## Wunderhorn (Jul 21, 2020)

Bender-offender said:


> Ice9 Automute by Cerberus Audio - Utility Plugin VST Audio Unit
> 
> 
> Cerberus Audio Ice9 Automute is a free utility which protects your speakers, your ears, and your nerves from dangerously loud output levels....
> ...



It is not officially available anymore, the developer has ceased to exist. But I could find it somewhere else. Thank god it is 64bit! Thanks for the hint.

The is also another one out there for $49 by Nugen.

I wonder what kind of additional latency you'll have to deal with.


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## jiten (Jul 21, 2020)

Wunderhorn said:


> It is not officially available anymore, the developer has ceased to exist. But I could find it somewhere else. Thank god it is 64bit! Thanks for the hint.
> 
> The is also another one out there for $49 by Nugen.
> 
> I wonder what kind of additional latency you'll have to deal with.



This is what I use too, no perceivable latency! Crazy that there's no good currently maintained alternative with the same simplicity / no-frills / no-latency approach (at least none that I know of...).


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## José Herring (Jul 21, 2020)

Wunderhorn said:


> Recently Logic gifted me with a truly deafening and absolutely dangerous burst of noise. It did not happen like this before and I could not reproduce it afterwards. Not sure how it actually happened but that is rather irrelevant to the question of how can we protect ourselves from such things in general?
> 
> Does anyone know if there is an application out there that can monitor the computer's audio out ports for potentially harming noise and suppress it on detection?
> 
> Shouldn't a DAW have such a safety mechanism built in?


It use to happen many many years ago with me. It's due to an audio driver crash. Since then I've upgraded my soundcard and Cubase has a built in detector that will mute audio automatically if that happens. I can't believe that Logic doesn't have the same thing. I remember how unnerving it use to be, you're listening to some passage of music at a good level then BAMM!!!! full scale odb white noise burst. After a couple of those I was on my way to swaping out my soundcard, which handled it then Cubase updated to include the mute feature and between the two is been about 15 years since that's happened. Probably saved me from a heart attack. 

What is your soundcard btw?


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## Rex282 (Jul 21, 2020)

Wunderhorn said:


> Recently Logic gifted me with a truly deafening and absolutely dangerous burst of noise. It did not happen like this before and I could not reproduce it afterwards. Not sure how it actually happened but that is rather irrelevant to the question of how can we protect ourselves from such things in general?
> 
> Does anyone know if there is an application out there that can monitor the computer's audio out ports for potentially harming noise and suppress it on detection?
> 
> Shouldn't a DAW have such a safety mechanism built in?


Yep same thing happened to me last week and I had my big monitors on....thought I was gonna go deaf....hurt like hell.It was the 3rd time in 10 years.Logic needs to fix this before it does some serious damage to someone.


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## JEPA (Jul 21, 2020)

Use Nugen, it’s very good and somebody on classifieds is selling it I think 🤔


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## ReelToLogic (Jul 21, 2020)

+1 for Sigmod by Nugen. I have it on the master bus of every project.

https://nugenaudio.com/sigmod/


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## Rasoul Morteza (Jul 21, 2020)

José Herring said:


> Since then I've upgraded my soundcard and Cubase has a built in detector that will mute audio automatically if that happens.


That happened to me quite recently, so I'm not sure if Cubase has everything covered. Unless the burst I heard was due to my interface, do you have a Steinberg link about this?


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## I like music (Jul 21, 2020)

Wear a mask. And socially distance from your speakers. But seriously, would love to know if Cubase has something built in and where I can get more info on it. Can't seem to find anything.


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## José Herring (Jul 21, 2020)

Rasoul Morteza said:


> That happened to me quite recently, so I'm not sure if Cubase has everything covered. Unless the burst I heard was due to my interface, do you have a Steinberg link about this?


It's been years but it was definitely due to my interface. I wished I could find the article that talked about the feature. I think it was in Cubase 5, but doing a quick search of the internet, I see it's still a problem. 

The main culprits these days are bad or outdated audio drivers and Virus (the synth) software and Plugin Alliance v 3.1


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## jiten (Jul 21, 2020)

ReelToLogic said:


> +1 for Sigmod by Nugen. I have it on the master bus of every project.
> 
> https://nugenaudio.com/sigmod/



I think this introduces some latency though, right? At least that's what I recalled when I was searching for something like this awhile back, which is why I had settled on Ice9.


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 21, 2020)

Sigmod is nice software but yes it does add a small amount of latency for this particular feature we are talking about (audio blast protection).

Ice9 works very well if you can locate it, no latency:

Try here: https://www.logicprohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=145531&hilit=blast#p757888


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## charlieclouser (Jul 21, 2020)

When the noise blast happened, did it show up on Logic's meters? Like, did the peak-hold indicator show some ridiculous level like +700db? If so, then it WAS coming from inside Logic, but if not, then it was coming from the audio interface driver and was therefore "downstream" of Logic's audio engine.

In 20+ years of using Logic's native audio I have NEVER had a noise blast, so unless someone can narrow it down to a particular VI or library causing it in a repeatable manner, I'm inclined to suggest it's due to the audio interface's driver taking a crap. I definitely use just about every VI and library you can think of, and never had this issue, from the Mac G4 era through G5's and cheese graters all the way to the cylinder Mac Pro. 

I've been using MOTU interfaces the whole time - first the PCI based 2408 systems, and now the AVB+Thunderbolt 112d+1248 boxes - and their reliability and predictable performance is part of the reason why I stick with them. Noise blast issues seem to be more widely reported by users with USB audio interfaces like Focusrite Safire etc., so perhaps it's a USB thing?

If it IS the interface / driver that's causing the blasts, then it's dubious that something like Ice9 will prevent the issue, since the plugin will likely be "upstream" of the noise blast.

But it can't hurt to have it installed.


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 21, 2020)

This definitely has been happening. I had the same problem a few months back, and found others experiencing the same thing...in logicPro. Putting ice9 on the master bus stopped the problem.

now that being said, I'm a few versions later on LogicPro now, I can't remember what version I was on when that happened like a few times in a row after an LPX upgrade...but I haven't used ic9 in a while and haven't had any noise blasts either.

I personally think it could have been logicPro, or could have been a plugin or could have been OS or audio driver related also ( happen to be using built in audio on MacPro in this case).... All Apple's fault either way! But it was definitely happening with some version of LPX a while back and I haven't had it happen in quite a while, so maybe its fixed now...


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## jcrosby (Jul 21, 2020)

Rex282 said:


> Logic needs to fix this before it does some serious damage to someone.


Had it happen a few months ago. It blew the speakers in my MBP. Apple development is seriously fucking up lately.

Also Pretty sure a limiter wouldn't help. At least what I experienced wasn't happening inside Logic's mixer, it was some kind of driver or core audio failure. 

I'd seriously suggest anyone experiencing this in Logic report it as a bug via the Logic feedback page. IMO issues like this go unaddressed unless multiple people report the same issue...


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## jcrosby (Jul 21, 2020)

I just filed this as a bug. Really hope others do as well. Linked to this thread..

Also I'm pretty sure they've added a few feedback categories. I don't recall seeing _Audio Quality_,_ Quality of service_, and _Connectivity/Interoperability _before_. _(I could just be clueless )


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## Wunderhorn (Jul 21, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> When the noise blast happened, did it show up on Logic's meters?



I can't tell because at that moment I was sitting back on a couch to taking notes while a work in progress was playing.

It certainly could have been a driver crap-out or something else but my gut instinct tells me that it was most likely coming from within the project.

I have the Ice9 plugin installed - but of course, if it is not Logic related, a plugin won't help and there is a bit of me that remains freaked out.

I'll do what @jcrosby did and will file a bug report.
If Logic is actually what causes it and it damages people's ears (speakers can be replaced) I would see legal issues coming up. Health is not something to be messed around with.


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## synergy543 (Jul 21, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> I've been using MOTU interfaces the whole time - first the PCI based 2408 systems...


I had the noise burst happen using a MOTU 2408 MK III when I was first trying the Embertone Joshua Bell (which I love). However, the noise burst was so bad that it left me paranoid everytime I try Joshua Bell again sadly. Now I use Iced9 and try to keep the volume down most of the time. There really should be protection built into the DAW and the audio interfaces so this never happens. Fortunately I don't have ATCS150S to worry about blowing out. (but I did actually shoot a tweeter across the room once).


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## Traz (Jul 21, 2020)

José Herring said:


> It use to happen many many years ago with me. It's due to an audio driver crash. Since then I've upgraded my soundcard and Cubase has a built in detector that will mute audio automatically if that happens. I can't believe that Logic doesn't have the same thing. I remember how unnerving it use to be, you're listening to some passage of music at a good level then BAMM!!!! full scale odb white noise burst. After a couple of those I was on my way to swaping out my soundcard, which handled it then Cubase updated to include the mute feature and between the two is been about 15 years since that's happened. Probably saved me from a heart attack.
> 
> What is your soundcard btw?


I also use Cubase and this is exactly whats been happening to me in the last month, just happened to me a couple days ago even. It doesn't happen a lot at least.


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## José Herring (Jul 21, 2020)

Traz said:


> I also use Cubase and this is exactly whats been happening to me in the last month, just happened to me a couple days ago even. It doesn't happen a lot at least.


Yeah, as I search through the internet I'm noticing that this problem as crept back into existence. I wonder what changed?


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 21, 2020)

Wunderhorn said:


> If Logic is actually what causes it and it damages people's ears (speakers can be replaced) I would see legal issues coming up. Health is not something to be messed around with.



Never mind your ears, I nearly had a heart attack!


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## averystemmler (Jul 21, 2020)

I used to have spontaneous noise blasts with my MOTU Audio Express (I think I was using Cubase at the time) when connected to my desktop via USB. I'm sure this isn't a solution for everyone, but I bought a firewire card and used the interface's FW connection instead, and haven't had a single issue in the 5+ years since.

I don't think it was necessarily firewire that solved the problem, but rather having dedicated throughput for the audio interface (my motherboard's USB ports have always been a little iffy, and I have a lot of devices for the two internal buses to handle). Apparently chipset can make a difference too. I bought a FW card with the particular chipset that was recommended for my interface, but I haven't tested an "unrecommended" one to know the difference.

With my next PC, I intend to get a nice USB interface, but connect it to a dedicated PCI-e USB card. If I have trouble, you'll see me on this forum bitching about it, I'm sure.


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## JEPA (Jul 22, 2020)

The reason why I have bought Sigmod from Nugen audio was a burst of noise as I was using Logic and VEP. I had the three effects: ears explosion, blowed speakers and nearly a heart attack...
I suspect is a combination of plugins and Logic, because I put Sigmod only on some projects...


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 22, 2020)

I have been suspicious the problem is vepro when Mirpro is automatically added to the vepro project without a room. I don’t want to start a controversy though.


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## PaulBrimstone (Jul 22, 2020)

Dewdman42 said:


> I have been suspicious the problem is vepro when Mirpro is automatically added to the vepro project without a room. I don’t want to start a controversy though.


Maybe, @Dewdman42 but I stopped using VePro a while ago, and I still get heart attack inducing sonic bursts now and then in Logic. I have no good data, but I suspect plug ins are the culprits. I'll try to make better notes when it happens next.


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 22, 2020)

Yea me too, well it may be that certain scenarios cause logicpro to do that. Anyway logicpro should be more protective about it in my view


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## Wunderhorn (Jul 23, 2020)

I found out where the noise burst came from. It was an instance of NI's grand piano The Grandeur. Some stacked clusters with sustain pedal enabled caused triggered Logic to go into a frenzy.

Last night I moved my production to my new Mac Pro (2019, 16 core, 224RAM) for the first time and low and behold, the same issue persisted there too (Catalina 10.15.6 vs Mojave on the Trashcan 10.4.6)

Thanks to the Ice9 plugin I was able to see it happen repeatedly without anything getting hurt. Once I tamed the piano cluster chords it was fine.

I wonder what is actually triggering Logic to create such noise. In a worst scenario, these piano clusters would result in a little bit of clipping, even though my levels are not even high enough for that. Something is weirs, but at least I was able to isolate and reproduce it.

So yes, it would be helpful for anyone to file a bug report with Apple (I did).


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## CT (Jul 23, 2020)

It has happened to me in Logic, a number of times, and it was that "700db" type thing Charlie described. I used to use Ice9 but it hasn't happened in a while so I stopped.

The only plugin I could almost rely on it happening with was Voxengo's OldSkoolVerb. Aside from that it didn't seem specific to any plugin or VI.


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 23, 2020)

I don't think its particularly specific to any one plugin, but some conditions put Logic in a state where it will do that. When it was happening to me it was happening with ultra simple projects, I can't even remember now what I was using, but it was nothing fancy at all and it happened like 4 times in one day....that was not long after 10.4.5 came out... Ice9 worked around it at the time. I haven't had it happen in a long time, and I haven't used ice9 in a while either, knock on wood. I did get some weirdness when I was using VePro and it was previously setup to automatically insert MirPro into new projects...(but without a room, but with the room tone channel included) and that would cause noise bursts to come into my speaker, but I think they were not quite as violent as the ones I remember from the 10.4.5 case...but I changed my defaults in VePro so that MirPro isn't automatically loaded and I make sure to never have an empty room.

So I haven't had any noise bursts in a while, but I think in the 10.4.5. period, when I almost had a heart attack from it...I wasn't use VePro either.. So basically....I don't think its any one specific plugin causing this...but some kind of condition that comes up...which could be caused potentially by any number of different plugins or might not even be plugin related at all, who knows...but I can say...I haven't had any noise bursts in a while... and haven't been using ice9 in some months... I probably should though..... I mean seriously.....about gave me cardiac arrest every time...


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## jcrosby (Jul 23, 2020)

Dewdman42 said:


> I don't think its particularly specific to any one plugin, but some conditions put Logic in a state where it will do that. When it was happening to me it was happening with ultra simple projects, I can't even remember now what I was using, but it was nothing fancy at all and it happened like 4 times in one day....that was not long after 10.4.5 came out... Ice9 worked around it at the time. I haven't had it happen in a long time, and I haven't used ice9 in a while either, knock on wood. I did get some weirdness when I was using VePro and it was previously setup to automatically insert MirPro into new projects...(but without a room, but with the room tone channel included) and that would cause noise bursts to come into my speaker, but I think they were not quite as violent as the ones I remember from the 10.4.5 case...but I changed my defaults in VePro so that MirPro isn't automatically loaded and I make sure to never have an empty room.
> 
> So I haven't had any noise bursts in a while, but I think in the 10.4.5. period, when I almost had a heart attack from it...I wasn't use VePro either.. So basically....I don't think its any one specific plugin causing this...but some kind of condition that comes up...which could be caused potentially by any number of different plugins or might not even be plugin related at all, who knows...but I can say...I haven't had any noise bursts in a while... and haven't been using ice9 in some months... I probably should though..... I mean seriously.....about gave me cardiac arrest every time...


It definitely isn't. It happened to me when I loaded a Space Designer instance that couldn't find an IR. I hit play intending to browse to the file while listening, and boom went my MB speakers... 

IIRC the project was also virtually bare. I believe I was just making a bunch of samples on one or two tracks and bouncing in place in an otherwise bare project.

Previously I had an issue where Space designer went silent on me during playback but I could see the output still showing audio. I decided to strap an analyzer after it and for whatever reason SD was putting out DC offset at full volume. (Explaining the maxed out master fader LEDs.) I'm not saying it's the same issue, (not at all), but I'd definitely seen a few anomalies with SD around the same time, and believe it was around the same Logic version 10.4.5/10.4.6-ish.

I also had installed a security update sometime amidst all of this, and based on my experience with security updates I personally think it was related to an issue introduced in the security update at that time.


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## JEPA (Jul 27, 2020)

Just today, Logic 10.4.4:


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## Ivan M. (Nov 20, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> When the noise blast happened, did it show up on Logic's meters?



When that happens, your reflex is tossing away your headphones immediatelly and looking for a kill switch, not the meter! You don't even think at that point, it's automatic :D 
Reaper's automute saved me countless times...

I've been working on some ios audio code recently, messed up the pointers, forgot to lower the volume, and got blasted with some deadly noise. I wasn't feeling well for some time... 

Most software is crap. Trust me on this, most code is just crap. The complexity and edge cases are often overwhelming, and deadlines short, most devs don't write tests etc. 

Moreover, Apple's documentation on audio units is practically nonexistant, you have to buy a third party book. And the docs are poor for higher level wrappers. Why do I get several route changes when initializing audio? Why does it not automatically switch the route to headphones when plugged in, as the docs say? No, I have to restart the engine, and then sometimes it gets into a recurring route changes. Why? Who knows...

And it prefers crashing with some cryptic console error messages, instead of just giving you an error and leting you handle it gracefully. Want integers buffer? Crash! Want a specific input sample rate? Well on certain iphones it will just crash. Yeah, it's designed for speed and low latency, but if you can't handle it gracefully and simply, you'll get bugs. 

Maybe that's why people say VSTs are more stable than AUs. I don't know, haven't used AUs. Blogs say microsoft has the best sound system API and documentation.


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## fourier (Nov 20, 2020)

This thread makes me curious, albeit off-topic; as an acoustical engineer part of my work relates to the health impacts of sound and noise. In general, would you say musicians and composers are aware of temporary and permanent threshold shift and the risk of hearing loss?


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## Drjay (Nov 20, 2020)

Traz said:


> I also use Cubase and this is exactly whats been happening to me in the last month, just happened to me a couple days ago even. It doesn't happen a lot at least.





Traz said:


> I also use Cubase and this is exactly whats been happening to me in the last month, just happened to me a couple days ago even. It doesn't happen a lot at least.


This happens to me every other week with Cubase 10 when playing the first couple of notes in the Vienna Synchron Piano player. From what I read in this post, it is not supposed to happen in Cubase. Is there a special setting or configuration I overlooked?


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## Spices (Nov 20, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> Absolutely, and Reaper has it built in.
> 
> Maybe there's something useful in this similar thread:
> 
> ...



So Reaper has it? Smart move, this spikes could kill you!

Spices


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## charlieclouser (Nov 20, 2020)

Ivan M. said:


> When that happens, your reflex is tossing away your headphones immediatelly and looking for a kill switch, not the meter! You don't even think at that point, it's automatic :D
> Reaper's automute saved me countless times...



Yeah, I can imagine the last thing you'd be looking for in that moment is Logic's meters! But they'll display the last peak value in numerical terms, and that number (like +1,100db or whatever) will continue to be displayed after you hit stop and until you hit play again, so you can see if that noise blast was louder than the big bang or whatever. 

The reason I ask if noise blasts are displayed on Logic's meters is because if they were, then a safety limiter like Ice9 or whatever would work, but if they were not displayed then a safety limiter would have no effect as the noise blast was downstream from Logic's engine and likely the result of an audio interface driver malfunction.

Although I've never had such a malfunction. The MOTU interfaces I've used for the last 20+ years have never cut a fart and created any noise blasts, clicks, pops, etc. Clean since day one. 



Ivan M. said:


> Maybe that's why people say VSTs are more stable than AUs. I don't know, haven't used AUs. Blogs say microsoft has the best sound system API and documentation.



I wouldn't know about that as I've used AUs since they came out, and only use VSTs on those rare occasions when I used Cubase to exchange projects with non-Logic people. But out of more than 1,200 AUs installed at the moment none of them have ever blasted me - yet. The worst that's happened is that once or twice I've had some instruments do that thing where they fold up and put out basically DC, but all you hear in those cases is a soft "pop" and then silence until you de-instantiate the plugin and re-instantiate it. Can't remember which plugins did this, but I think it was synth instruments that got garbage parameter values by using randomize or some such.


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## Wunderhorn (Nov 20, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> The reason I ask if noise blasts are displayed on Logic's meters is because if they were, then a safety limiter like Ice9 or whatever would work



They are. And as I noted in my update in the initial post Ice9 does work. I have been able to reproduce the problem and Ice9 caught the blast. I now have this little helper in my master bus all the time. Good peace of mind.


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## charlieclouser (Nov 20, 2020)

Wunderhorn said:


> They are. And as I noted in my update in the initial post Ice9 does work. I have been able to reproduce the problem and Ice9 caught the blast. I now have this little helper in my master bus all the time. Good peace of mind.



Well that's good to know. Good thing I never use Grandeur!


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## SupremeFist (Nov 20, 2020)

I was having this caused intermittently by Massive X and assumed that was the problem, but the other day it also happened just with a solo piano. Safely ice9'd up here too now.


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