analogika

No option for multiple versions. I use 10.4.8 for one of my main clients, and 10.8.1 for everything else.

Are all of your plugins up-to-date?

I reiterate my advice from countless earlier threads: Keep a list of your OWN software — all third-party tools, plugins, device drivers, productivity software, etc. I have a table of ALL my stuff, with new columns each major macOS release: one for for links to support pages and one with checkboxes for certified compatibility and offical support. I don't upgrade until most of the vital software has official support for the new OS, but in situations where I don't have the option (such as when buying new hardware), I have a good overview of what might be potential problems. When I've upgraded MacOS despite some software not being officially supported, those pieces without checkboxes are always the first place I start troubleshooting when I run into any problems.

Glad to hear that checking your plugins resolved the issue. According to NI's compatibility statement, the earliest version of Guitar Rig that's supported under Sonoma is v. 7.0.2. You will need to upgrade it. https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/13671802084765-macOS-14-Sonoma-Compatibility-Statement

1.) update to the latest version of Sonoma. 2.) Are all of your third-party plugins explicitly compatible with Sonoma? Universal Audio and Native Instruments (both on your process list) only recently became officially compatible. Update them all and make a list of every plugin that is not explicitly certified — as a potential problem. 3.) any third-party software, especially background processes and system "enhancements", need to be updated to the latest version.

Had plenty of cheaper ones that didn’t…

Yeah, but at least they f$@%ing work. 🤷‍♂️

I wouldn’t trust the HAMA stuff as far as I can throw it. At least, that was my experience back in the 90s.

Ah, in that light, your comment makes sense and explains my misunderstanding. The OP talks about the "Gain Tool", but shows a screenshot of the Gain PLUGIN window. I assumed the subject was the plugin, which is under "Utilities" in the plug-in pop-up menu. That made sense to me, since he's talking about software instruments (EW orchestra), and I had absolutely no idea (until now, when I checked it) that the Gain Tool even works there!

Not really. This M2 Pro at least runs pretty cool, and when the fan does come on, it’s inaudible until it hits about 5000 RPM — and then it’s barely noticeable.

Wait — if you’re using the Gain plugin, the gain is applied wherever the Gain plugin is. If it’s the last plugin in the chain, that’s where the gain is. The only difference between a Gain plugin in the last slot and using the fader is that the plugin also affects what gets sent to an Aux bus, even when that is set to pre-fader.

Weird. I haven’t been able to achieve this. Could you post an example of how you did this?

Okay, so why do you think the E-core load drops on the M2 at the very moment Logic playback begins? The only thing Logic appears to be able to split is a few very specific audio instrument plugins — in fact, Alchemy is the ONLY one I can get to work on multiple cores (a maximum of three). The entire channel strip beyond that is always a single core. We have no idea what it looks like on M1 CPUs, because we're only seeing those already under full playback load, unlike the M2 and M3, where we're seeing them at idle AND under load. Interestingly, he doesn't show us this in either of his previous videos on the same subject, either. Both of which are built upon misrepresenting the M2 Pro as somehow inferior to the M1 Pro (which, as repeatedly stated above, is just a lie. He's comparing completely different product tiers). It's quite possible that the M1's efficiency cores looked almost the same just before he hit play, and load on the e-cores did not actually increase from Logic usage at all. Unless you've tried it yourself, I'm not going to accept any claims of M1 performance "seeming to work just fine" from a guy whose main claim to fame is three videos with click-bait titles based on a lie. (Incidentally, those three videos each outnumber the usual plays for his channel by 10x - 100x!)

I'll assume that Logic can throw stuff like meters and display scrolling, notation and the like at the E-cores, since those don't require much CPU. It does not appear to process the actual audio channel strips on the E-cores at all, which is the basic topic of this thread.

I'm not sure that we're seeing what you say we're seeing. On the M2, you can see clearly that the moment heavy processing begins on the performance cores, load DROPS on the efficiency cores. It is extremely unlikely that the efficiency cores are suddenly doing less work — I believe that what's actually happening is that the efficiency cores are being clocked up from their idle speed (around 700 MHz IIRC) to their full 2.4 GHz — to be prepared to handle any overspill from the performance cores, should they get overloaded. AFAIK, this is how Apple Silicon deals with load balancing across CPU cores (for processes whose QoS settings allow assigning them to efficiency cores). Does anyone know whether the CPU History window in Activity viewer shows current load per core as a percentage of power at current clockspeed or as a percentage of power at maximum clockspeed? If the former, that would explain the M2 performance graphs. We cannot compare the M1, since those only show the CPU already under full load. That also doesn't explain why the M3 shows little difference, but that may just be due to the fact that there's so much E-power available in those six cores, that the efficiency tasks just never really register much, anyway. Or they've changed something in the thread handling in M3. I haven't found a detailed analysis yet on my usual source for this stuff, eclecticlight.co (highly recommended, btw.) Because, again, they likely have completely different threading models.