Logic Pro 10.6 is out

Ok. So why do you think that is?

 

At first I had no idea and suspected something to be wrong with Logic - but now I need to officially apologize (<-!) because quite obviously it's been user error (not mine, though...). I didn't think it was, because I even told folks to check for "Performance Threads" in the audio preferences (has been asked for in another GS thread), which the guy performing the test obviously didn't care about.

And well, here's another, quite more promising video. Logic benchmark test on an M1 Mini:

Guy is testing Alchemy and Diva, too - and those seem to perform way worse than Sculpture (which is used in the "normal" Logic benchmark) on the M1 machine. I could possibly understand that for Diva (maybe not yet fully optimized, maybe even running through Rosetta), but not so much for Alchemy - which should be optimized already. But then, maybe it isn't yet.

Still, all this is looking *way* better.

 

And well, my humble apologies again!

Automatic apparently only uses high performance cores.

Whatever it is, as a Logic user, you essentially get a 4-core machine for the time being.

Just done a quick search on youtube to see someone testing it, Shows 8 threads on there (timestamped):-

 

Not watched the full video, and I don't know a great deal about the M1, but i expected to see 8 threads as is displayed in Logic, unlike the Intel HT chips which would show double the threads per core.

 

What i don't quite understand is with 4 of the 8 running in eco mode you'd expect to see half of those threads under more load in comparison. Not that it's really something that bothers me right now as I'm just pleased seeing a Macbook Air achieving ~75% performance of a 2020 iMac i7 whilst running cool. It's that real world use and experience that matters to me more.

 

Edit: lol sorry, you posted inbetween me writing this.

Automatic apparently only uses high performance cores.

 

Which might even make sense in some situations, such as having other, less hungry apps running parallely while not needing all the juice for Logic.

Still would love to see a singlethread test. I'm already preparing one (started with Alchemy but will now use Sculpture because Alchemy quite obviously isn't really optimized yet - maybe because it's still developed by Camel Audio, who knows...).

At least people are starting to see some sense about jumping to conclusions and forming quick opinions based on very early, possibly shaky and not verified information from single sources.

 

It's *very* early days - all this stuff will shake out and we'll get a better picture of performance over time.

 

Right? I'm so conflicted… lol

 

Also not for nothing but I personally haven't seen any sense of the menu translucency that others showed in some photos earlier in this thread. Wonder why that is.?

 

everything is translucent (unless disabled in accessibility settings, then it becomes opaque)

 

Thanks for pointing out the Accessibility settings.

 

Its not just on BigSur.

 

I am currently testing out OpenCore Catalina on a MP5,1...running LPX 10.6.

 

At first I did not notice that his transparency stuff is happening across the entire OSX desktop, but now I see it. Even the main menubar has it...but its not nearly as noticeable when the pull down menu is white. Actually kind of nice on some things like that, gives the desktop a modern 3 dimensional quality.

 

However, in certain cases if I have, for example, a black pull down menu in LogicPro and the white Scripter window happens to be behind it, it washes it out and makes it harder to read the white fonts on the black pulldown menu. Bleh..

 

 

I found the Reduce Transparency option in Accessibility (thanks Ploki) and that gets rid of it, though the desktop now looks a lot more like Mojave!

 

The Menus in logic throw me off as well. Not quite used to it yet. The plugin dropdown is much taller because they changed font and spacing

The Accessibility option turns off the translucent menu and docker bars too..which is a bit of a drag.

 

I don't know who's idea it was to make pull down menus translucent.. dumb idea...

Fwiw, the first Logic benchmark test using an M1 machine (MB Air, it's on Gearslutz) seems to indicate only 4 CPUs are used. ProTools however supports all 8 CPUs - even if it's only running in Rosetta 2 mode.

I think that's quite embarassing, given that the Logic programmers should've had plenty of more time to properly prepare for the M1 launch.

 

 

You must enable something in logics prefs. Hyperthrrading i think it is.

However, in certain cases if I have, for example, a black pull down menu in LogicPro and the white Scripter window happens to be behind it, it washes it out and makes it harder to read the white fonts on the black pulldown menu. Bleh..

You may want to look at calibrating your monitor mate, as that looks fine here - still very clear to me.

Edited November 18, 2020 by skijumptoes

Nothing wrong with my monitor calibration....mate. The washed our black menu makes it harder to read white fonts. Stupid.

Fwiw, the first Logic benchmark test using an M1 machine (MB Air, it's on Gearslutz) seems to indicate only 4 CPUs are used. ProTools however supports all 8 CPUs - even if it's only running in Rosetta 2 mode.

I think that's quite embarassing, given that the Logic programmers should've had plenty of more time to properly prepare for the M1 launch.

 

 

You must enable something in logics prefs. Hyperthrrading i think it is.

 

I think this is mostly going to end up being confusion by all. The M1 has 4 performance cores and 4 power saving cores. I think it will be shown that high performance processing like DSP, for example..will only use 4 cores. the other 4 cores are for when your Mac is sitting around not doing much, in some special way that burns through the battery more slowly. It doesn't surprise me at all if LogicPro shows 4 cores...because that's all that matters in the LogicPro cpu meter. If pro Tools shows 8 then its probably a bug in Pro Tools that needs to be caught up to M1 architecture.

Nothing wrong with my monitor calibration....mate. The washed our black menu makes it harder to read white fonts. Stupid.

 

not having any issue here...

Not having any issue means what? You have better eyes then me or you don't see the translucent behavior happening or it doesn't bother you as much as it bothers me?

It doesn't surprise me at all if LogicPro shows 4 cores...because that's all that matters in the LogicPro cpu meter.

 

This has already been settled. Logic shows all 8 cores and they're all working, too. You need to set your processing threads accordingly in Logics audio preferences.

Fwiw, the MB Air guy on GS is getting some shockingly great results now. Waiting for him to conduct the single core benchmark I've just set up (in case anyone wants to run it on their machine, I'll post it).

Not having any issue means what? You have better eyes then me or you don't see the translucent behavior happening or it doesn't bother you as much as it bothers me?

 

logic looks the same here as it did on 10.5. so nothing's changed for me, hence... no issue.

You have better eyes then me or you don't see the translucent behavior happening or it doesn't bother you as much as it bothers me?

I personally only mentioned it as the text is very clear to me on the screenshot you posted.

 

I asked about your monitor as i had a similar issue a while back with google maps was very hard for me to see thin roads, i sent a screenshot to my mate who i was complaining to saying that google should sort it out. He replied saying it looked fine, unbeknownst to me my monitor contrast was out of whack - was only when i checked the same screenshot on my phone that i realised.

 

So please don't take offence, i only suggested as help. I feel that you have taken it the wrong way, so apologies on that.

I will try to go back to Mojave and LogicPro 10.5 later today to see what it does...but no I don't think it was translucent before. This is new. It may have to do with hardware acceleration or something..You still haven't answered the question, are you seeing translucent menus or not, yes or no. As to whether that bothers you or not is entirely subjective, but in my view, allowing an app to put white fonts on a lighter background is GUI design stupidity 101. Maybe you are younger then me and don't have to squint, there is always that too.

 

My monitor is extremely good with excellent color and RGB accuracy and requires no calibration otherwise..

the windows are slightly translucent (am in dark mode, btw), and if they weren't in 10.5... i didn't realize notice a change. everything looks fine, and nothing has disrupted in my workflow; white text looks white. so, no problem here.

Alight, I just rebooted back to Mojave and LPX 10.5 to compare. Mojave and Logic 10.5 had transparent menus, but not nearly quite as transparent. Here are screen shots with same situation....scripter's white background behind a black menu...

 

10.5 on Mojave:

 

 

 

10.6 on Catalina:

 

Not sure whether I should rather create a new thread, but as it has been mentioned here, I think it's ok to supply you folks with a brief update. The guy at GS was running my little singlethread test project. I used Space Designers (they're doing a nice job for such things) and serial bussing (details are irrelevant).

On my 2010 2x2.66 MP I can run 24 instances at 44.1/64. Another guy managed to run 52 instances on his new 16 core MP. And the baseline Macbook Air pulled off 80 (!!!).

Alight, I just rebooted back to Mojave and LPX 10.5 to compare. Mojave and Logic 10.5 had transparent menus, but not nearly quite as transparent. Here are screen shots with same situation....scripter's white background behind a black menu...

 

10.5 on Mojave:

 

10.5.jpg

 

 

10.6 on Catalina:

 

transparency.jpg

 

maybe... don't have a white window under a menu? i never have this problem, as i open menus over the main logic screen. and, either way, i have no problem seeing text on your second picture... but yes, the window is more translucent.

 

anyway, i live to make music. some people live to complain... when they could be making music. so it goes....

https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/production-expert-1/macbook-pro-m1-audio-power-test-logic-pro

and some people seem to live to be the thought police.

On my 2010 2x2.66 MP I can run 24 instances at 44.1/64. Another guy managed to run 52 instances on his new 16 core MP. And the baseline Macbook Air pulled off 80 (!!!).

 

It really does seem to be a processing power and energy efficiency leap for both the Mac, and desktop and mobile computers. Finally all the work they've been doing all these years on the iOS hardware is paying off for us Mac peeps! It's an exciting time!

 

We've been running tests for several hours now on all the major DAWs and this entry-level Apple Mac M1 computer is, to put it bluntly, f*cking insane. In our early tests, the hype is actually less than the reality and whenever Apple launch their next-generation professional Mac computers, we expect that they are going to be very special.

https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/production-expert-1/macbook-pro-m1-audio-power-test-logic-pro

 

For me, the most astonishing takeaway with all these is that all too apparently, any thermal issues are *completely* gone. Sure, you could expect better thermal behaviour from a CPU developed along with fanless mobile devices, but I was still thinking that there would be some critical point. Apparently that isn't so.

Also, working on battery becomes a completely new meaning that way.

Can't help it, but I want such a machine to be mine one day (let's hope for the C19 drama to end, otherwise I'll never be able to raise the funds).

Me too - I hate hot laptops (my 2011 MBP is notoriously poorly designed for thermals and has eaten two GPU chips - and I run mine as cool as I can by running the fans higher and sometimes using external fans on prolonged workloads) - and I hate fans.

 

To be honest, a machine with the performance of my current one, that stayed cool, didn't run fans, and had good battery life is already a *way* better machine for me. But when you add in the power of these things, it's really incredible what they've pulled off.

Fact that it's not draining the battery so quick also reduces heat too. It's a real lesson in efficiency.

 

Anyone done a Logic comparison between the MBA and MBP? I never thought i'd say it, but i'm really leaning towards the MBA as a portable machine, i love everything about it as an all-round machine.

Can you imagine if the 16" MBP comes out next year, and it's rocking like 12 high performance cores plus four efficiency cores in an M1X, 32GB ram, and is two to three times faster than the current low end M1 machines, all while staying way cooler than the Intel ones, requiring marginal fans at sustained workloads, and still giving three times the battery life of the current machines..?

I don't know if Apple have min order quantities still to fulfil with Intel. But really, i can see sales of Intel macs dropping like flies if these reports carry on.

 

As you say, what the hell is the 16" going to perform like. If i was in the market to buy this year i'd be slamming the brakes on and pausing for 12 months. That's not really ideal for Apple if they have many people queue in the 'wait and see' camp.