I added a new keyboard to the studio this week, a Korg Kronos X.  What a beast, it sounds awesome!

I had a problem though, it seems to keep crashing my Mac when using Reason 7.1 or Logic Pro X.  What gives?

First thing I noticed is that Logic seemed a lot more stable, though still with some issues including the sound being distorted on the Kronos, or even on my TR-8 and TB-3.

Above is my setup of my aggregate audio device that has all my USB enabled equipment setup.  It’s mostly greyed out and you’re not seeing all the ports as I’m writing this disconnected from my studio.

In short, both Logic and Reason were somewhat wired up incorrectly.  For some reason I had two audio tracks hooked up to the exact same device and exact same input.  While at one level Logic handles it much better than Reason, it doesn’t make for good results.

The only way around this is to go through each track and ensure you’ve got the right ports hooked up.

I am actually a very big fan of the way Apple handles the aggregate device in CoreAudio.  But there’s a down point to it.  Your devices are not always guaranteed to be setup properly each time you plug in.  For the most part they are.  So this necessitates going into Audio MIDI Setup, double checking the setup, then you can start your DAW.

You do need to make sure that each device is in the correct order too otherwise your DAW will be out of sync.

You might need to check your DAW track setup, especially if you’ve been working on the road.

My recommendation to Apple and the various companies that create DAWs – Please come up with a nice user interface that clearly shows and easily allows you to clean up track connections easily.  Not all of us have dedicated systems for DAWs so connecting and reconnecting is common.