Kinda geeky question but I still rely on a legacy audio editing app called Peak, engineereed by Bias in the 2000s.

It's Intel 32-bit native, works up through OS 10.14/Mojave, and in that case, only with an external HD formatted HFS+ instead of APFS as the "write" drive. It cannot write to a 64-bit or APFS formatted HD...but the app itself - kind of remarkably- still works in Mojave.

Since it was designed in the early OSX era to work in that architecture understandably the stability is a little shaky at times when doing a lot of edits - which are creating temp files each time.

Specifically there can be a lag, and temporary 'hang time' when saving an edit as if the ram is being taxed and frequently this will lead to a crash. If so, all's lost if i didn't Save up through the very last edit performed.

So what are best practices in this scenario? Is it possible that the write-drive is "too fast" (?) I don't know if SSD as the host and external HD should matter.

Just trying to diagnose and optimize the setup -- and there are several adjustable settings within Peak's Prefs, for playback buffer, amount of ram assigned.

Should I put it on an older OS entirely? (would rather not; )

Thanks for any thoughts!!!

Peak was good in it's day, albeit it was always a little clunky in terms of it's interface etc (imo) - but that day is long in the past. As it's essentially just a wave editor, apart from familiarity etc, what does Peak do that the current crop of modern wave editor applications don't (Wavelab, Audition and so on)..?

If it's unstable with the demands on modern workflows, then you could keep an old mac to turn it on, or virtualise an old macOS system in a VM possibly, which might help.

And if it has a unique feature you rely on that you can't do in current software, then you could keep it just for that feature, and do all your other editing in a different application.

You're generally not going to fix old weird behaviours because these things are engineering things in the app (like data structures and memory management) that you can't change - nothing to do with drives being "too fast".

But honestly, sometimes it's just better to say goodbye to an old friend (I did this with SoundForge, for instance, which I loved back in the day) and move forwards with something that fits better into today's world. Once you familiarise yourself with the new thing, you often get many many benefits that you were missing out on.

Agreed. Hell, I'll go one step further, I had to move to Peak when Sound Designer was no longer supported, and it bothered the f out of me as the edit points and quick keys were in the opposite direction or different places etc... so I grumbled to myself every time I had to employ Peak.

So I can get the momentary inconvenience and small frustration the op feels to some degree.. but... hey...

There are so many 2 track audio editors out there that can accommodate for a whole wealth of features depending on your needs, from freeware, Audacity and Twisted Wave (they still exist right?), and WaveLab, SoundForge, etc etc etc down the hill.... and one can chose one depending on their needs, wallet, or whatever.

Losing Peak would not be something I would climb a hill to die on... let alone change my os...

and if it's sheerly familiarity, hopefully with the elasticity of the human brain, or barring that, remapping or quickkey software should hold up the other end of that desire... as I can't think of anything Peak does that something else currently cannot, unless it's possible ability to access tdm plugins or something else extant...

When I moved to the Mac in 2000/2001-ish, Peak was a bit of a curve compared to Sound Forge and Wavelab (which didn't exist on the Mac at the time).

It worked, it was what we had, but I am glad its gone heh. I wouldn't trade my current version of Wavelab for anything. You can go with Amadeus, Twisted Wave, Audacity, even Reaper.. There's much more modern and efficient ways to edit audio, you don't need to stick with Peak. I still have my Peak 4 retail box on the shelf downstairs next to Recycle, Absynth, Logic Platinum, etc, but that's just for nostalgia purposes hehe.

All due respect, there are specific aspects of the UI in Peak that no other app to-date has replicated.

The coding, intentional or not, has always given me the ease of being able to click in, drag/scrub and simply cut and paste, with zero needless complexity in between thought and action.

It is the MOST fluid UI I have found and none has matched it and I have tried them all in hopes that one finally would. This may be one of those - "I'd have to show you to explain" situations... the semantics and definition of what I describe totally vary from app to app.

Twisted Wave is the closest thing yet IMO but not, in terms of being able to click in and on the waveform to zero in on edit points quickly and audibly drag jump around, scrub cut and repaste and leave everything I'm viewing alone without invoking anything else.

Alot of it is the precision of the scrub and pinpoint responsive accuracy of the edit marker placement. BTW, it always amazed me that people could settle for an audio editing platform where HEARING the audio (scrubbing) was incidental or optional and the primary reference was the visual waveform alone.

There's a beautifully simple tactile splicing experience that I love in Peak. I've equated it before to an ancient word processor called MacWrite. (stuck in the 80s much haha). Zero fluff or unnecessary junk to navigate. Just a simple keystroke command to do just about anything.
On that note...Mac OS 9 was awesome. Talk about minimal needless complexity. Windows was the antithesis..and subsequent Mac OS versions became less and less straightforward with more and more clutter and proprietary illogical confusion.

I may be using Peak for something totally unique from what you guys typically might. I'm sure you can relate though, to the likes of the old 360 Systems audio editor... and even the earliest incarnation of Pro Tools when it was ...Session 8? The scrub-ability and simplicity therein - single step actions was similar.

In my case simple rules the day for straight-forward cut paste move at a rapid pace literally as fast as I think... and essentially this is the closest thing to cutting analog tape that I've ever used.

While I don't miss tape -and I edited miles of it -just to date myself haha - this remains the closest thing in terms of drop dead simple and an ability to click thru and cut at warp speed. Even with Peak, most of the stuff besides pure editing I have never had use for and no doubt newer apps surpass those but there's a very particular thing about the UI that I guess I love and you hated. It's just relative to how I prefer to edit and hard to explain without demonstrating it side by side with any of the rest.

The same function in other DAWs can require an extra 1 or 2 steps...or a view auto-changes or cursor 'becomes' a different icon by default. Peak is just 'static' in that respect and i love the transparency of that.

Sorry to evangelize.. I did for years on forums, did promo video stuff for Bias for years and talked to Steve Berkley many times- begging for a revival of Peak for newer OS's -especially the Studio version that would have been multitrack -- but yeah, that ship sailed.

Hey, I hear you. And I'm the last person in the world to tell you what YOU like or how you like working...

If you have a 1:1 mind meld work flow that prefers Peak and you haven't found anything that supplants it, I'd be the last guy to tell you you are wrong on that!

We like what we like. And we work the way we do, and it's all different and all fine.

(and yes, I was a fan of os9 as well!)

As I said in a previous comment, I only moved to Peak when my Sound Designer was no longer supported or whatnot, and I had problems dealing with my speed of operation on that, and while I may have gotten over it in time (well, I guess, it's been awhile right? 25+ years lol?...)

So yeah, I guess if your problem is dealing with different drive formats if you have a cpu that is running it etc, is simply to employ formatting the drive for that system that will be able to be read by other systems should you need to imaginably transfer the date....

I would 'think' formatting HFS+ would be fine with both something that was running Peak, and then able to be hooked up to and communicate with the latest m4 etc...

So I guess I probably wouldn't use apfs on that if it's causing problems...

but is the issue that you are trying to use "one" system and have one foot in the past and one in somewhat current days?

That might be problematic, but you could have different boot partitions perhaps or a vm capable of running Peak I'd imagine... or you could pick up an intel MacBook for peanuts that has usb just to run Peak and swap the usb cable over or whatnot to the new system...

I wouldn't run the older system as my primary driver as with internet connectivity and security issues down the line... it just doesn't make the best sense... but hey, I have friends that have older os9 g3 laptops still kicking to control their Nord Modulars etc, and I don't see this as being that different... unless Peak is your main bag, main app, and everything else..

obviously, since you said you haven't found something else you like, ... I guess that's pretty much what it is, as it certainly isn't going to be running on a modern/currently supported MacBook or apple computer as nature of being a 32bit app....

So depending on where you are, it's either get another system on the cheap to run it, with hfs+ formatted drives, (as no, the drives being too fast is not the problem I'd imagine), and do what you gotta do... but I wouldn't hobble your main system to stay in that world unless 'that world' occupied most of what I did... I would just create/buy a machine that would run it, and use it like a piece of outboard gear and just sneaker net the drive over to something more in this millennia you know?

as sadly, I think you would be waiting for Godot regarding a new version of Peak coming out, and if you can't find anything else...

Former Peak user here. I loved it at its time, but these days I simply use ocenaudio. It might not be the same thing, but it's good enough for me. I don't do complex edits, but when I do it's very quick and versatile.

I do need to use old software, so I keep old machines around and/or use emulators. Long time ago now I needed this though, except Windows.

Thanks for the recommendation on the Mikael B, somehow that one slipped by me, but I just looked at it, and it seems like a svelte little 2 track editor that could solve some problems, is lite, and free it looks like...

so just downloaded and will check out later and see what it feels like... but thanks again.

Might want to check out DSP-Quattro. It even looks like Peak and has the same functionality, except of course it works on the current Apple OS.

https://www.dsp-quattro.com/dspquattro/Site/