Redux AU in Logic Pro X creating giant file sizes

I don’t know if this is a Redux issue or a Logic issue, but I haven’t noticed this kind of behavior using other plugins in Logic, so guessing it’s a Redux issue.

Logic project size gets very bloated quickly when using Redux. For example, as a test I just performed:

  • I load a single instance of Redux with a 60mb xrni instrument in a new Logic project, with no other plugins or media.

  • When I save that project, having done nothing, project size (.logicx file) is 160mb.

  • I click around in Logic, record or add nothing, click save again, and the project is now 252mb.

  • Click save again, it grows to 334mb.

If I go to File - Project Management - Clean Up, which deletes unused files and project alternatives, the project shrinks back down to 160mb or so, but again will just continue to grow as soon as I save again.

This kind of memory usage makes Redux pretty unusable in Logic - I’ve had small projects with a couple instances of Redux quickly grow over 1-2 GB in size.

Running Logic 10.3.1 and Redux 1.0.1 on El Capitan 10.11.6. Any thoughts are appreciated.

Thanks for reporting!

Sounds like the logic edit/undo history is capturing the entire plugin state multiple times.

That shouldn’t really be necessary, and obviously yes, bloats a project.

I wonder if something can be done to prevent this through the plugin itself as Redux presets are self-contained.

Will pass this info on…

Thanks - I’m a big fan of using Redux in Logic, so hoping this can be fixed!

Any idea on when this might be addressed, or when an update of Redux may be coming? Just wondering since Redux hasn’t seen an update in quite a while (June 2015). Happy to beta test if that’s an option. Thanks!

Turns out that it’s a feature of Logic. It allows you to automatically save multiple “alternative” versions of any given project, which, in the case of Redux can translate into quite large file-sizes.

Since there is not standardized undo/redo for plugins, DAWs often implement their own systems to deal with this. And it would seem that Logic picks up some changes and basically duplicates all the “embedded” samples in the plugin.

If you haven’t used the “auto-backup” feature, nothing is lost by disabling it I guess? That should result in more reasonable file sizes :slight_smile:

Thanks for the response. Unfortunately that didn’t fix the issue.

With the auto backup feature turned off - I started a new empty project, loaded a 95mb Redux preset, saved, and the Logic file is 100mb. Doing nothing and saving a few more times makes it grow to 400mb +.

Ugh, sorry. We didn’t recreate the problem as you described it, but researched what others had to say about similar issues.

I’m still convinced that this rather special feature in Logic is somehow to blame, and therefore, isn’t really something that can be solved by us - that is, unless Redux would completely change how it handles files. And please don’t hold your breath for this to happen - the next planned update is simply a bugfix release with no major changes under the hood.

No, we need to figure out why Logic bloat the project files in the first place. Luckily I’ve now got access to a copy of Logic and can try it out for myself.

Actually it looks like that is a partial fix - the file sizes don’t seem to get as bloated as before, but still are larger than they should be. The file size varies in size randomly, but seems to settle back to about double the size of the Redux instrument that is loaded in a session.

This still isn’t really acceptable when working with large projects, so it would be great if it could be addressed in a bug fix. Please let me know if I can do anything to help figure out what’s going on.

I don’t know how Kontakt differs, but in comparison, an empty Logic session with one instance of a very large Kontakt instrument is under 1mb.

This still isn’t really acceptable when working with large projects, so it would be great if it could be addressed in a bug fix. Please let me know if I can do anything to help figure out what’s going on.

Unfortunately, it’s not really possible to fix on our side, as it’s a consequence of how Logic is handling plugins in general + the fact that, unlike e.g. Kontakt, we are embedding samples in presets.

Generally speaking, plugins do not have a standard for undo/redo - it’s up to the DAW to handle this. And the approach taken by Logic seems quite unique.

So the only solution I can think of would be not to make Redux presets self-contained - because, it’s almost certainly the embedded samples that somehow gets caught up in Logics undo/edit history - even when no changes are made.

This is just not supposed to happen, and would mostly likely also apply to other plugins that embed data in their presets (for example, IR reverbs…). Only the developers of Logic are actually able to explain exactly what is going on here.

As for our approach, it can be argued that Redux should support loading external samples as an option, like Kontakt. This would most likely solve the issue - but a deliberate decision was made NOT to go in this direction, as self-contained presets means that projects will always load, without complaining over missing samples, etc. Redux was not intended to be a sampler dealing with multi-gigabyte libraries - there are plenty of alternatives there.

So I hope you understand that we’ve given this some thought and acknowledge that the self-contained presets are a solution, with mostly practical benefits but - apparently - also some disadvantages.

Thanks for the response and the explaining the thought process behind embedding the samples. I can see your logic (no pun intended) and the advantage of doing it that way, but obviously for me there is a huge disadvantage to that design choice. It would be nice to be able to turn off the feature to embed the samples within the presets, but it sounds like that isn’t going to happen.

In my defense, I’m not talking about multi gigabyte libraries - I’m talking about 100 mb or so, which is certainly not that huge for any preset involving anything longer than single drum hits.

I love Redux, so it’s disappointing to find out that the combination of how you guys wrote the plugin and how Logic handles it makes it pretty unusable to use for anything that’s not a simple, small instrument.

Yes, it’s not ideal - not even the workaround, as this “alternative” project feature in Logic sounds like it could be a handy feature to have turned on…

But I think it’s fair to not promise you that “we could make it work” when this is not a feature which is on our immediate roadmap

(should that ever change, then I’ll mention it here…)