
The sound drops out when I play a project
Sometimes when you play a project, you might hear the sound drop out or distort. Playing a project with a large number of tracks, or with many effects turned on, can overload your computer’s processor, especially on slower computers.
If you hear sound drop out or distort when you play a project:
- Watch the playhead as the project plays. The playhead changes color to show how much of your computer’s processing power is being used to play the project. If the playhead turns red often or remains red for long, your computer’s processor may be overloaded.
- If possible, delete some tracks in the project, or turn off some effects.
- Choose GarageBand > Preferences, click Audio/MIDI, then click the “Minimum delay when playing instruments live” button in the “Optimize for” section.
- Click the Advanced button in Preferences. Choose lower settings from both the “Real Instrument Tracks” and “Software Instrument Tracks” pop-up menus in the “Maximum Number of Tracks” section. Choose a lower setting from the “Voices per instrument” pop-up menu.
For more information on GarageBand performance, see Related Topics below.
Related Topics
Optimizing GarageBand performance
