Terrible Logic Pro X Performance (M1 MAX MacBook Pro)

[Picpoul]

Hey Zip, yes I've tried with just headphones from the internal core audio only as this was suggested on another forum, with no audio interface connected - and have tried also with three different audio interfaces - the SSL 2+, a Clarett 4 and a Scarlett 2i2, all with the same results. 

[des99]

Sorry to hear of problems - mine (M1 Pro MBP) has been pretty smooth, other than at first when Apple were tuning Logic between Native and Rosetta, and more plugins weren't optimised etc, but it settled down and is pretty great now.

I'd start by trying to reduce variables, trash your Logic prefs, disconnect audio and MIDI hardware and controllers, new fresh project from scratch, load an audio file (24-bit, 44.1KHz), 128 buffer size etc, and watch the performance meters (both CPU and Disk).

Pile on a bunch more audio files (from your system SSD for now), and verify you can play them smoothly without problematic spikes in your performance meters. (You will see some spikes due to Logic doing work, spikes aren't inherently a bad thing).

Assuming that's Ok, start adding some plugin processing across those tracks, (Logic only, not-third party for now) - for example, add an EQ (all bands active), a compressor etc on each track. Keeping adding more EQ's & comps across all tracks and observing the CPU meters for any behaviour that seems to be odd.

Let us know how many tracks you could play, and how many EQs/comps you could run, before you start running into problems.

If you can do a hundred odd tracks, and have a few hundred EQs and comps running (I don't have figures, but there are benchmark tests elsewhere in the forum you can check for performance), and you're making some kind of impact on the performance meters, but things still seem to work smoothly and predictably, then I'd guess your system is working more or less ok.

If not, let us know what problems you're encountering and we'll see where that takes us.

Edited January 2, 2023 by des99

[willmarlogic]

On 1/4/2022 at 4:46 PM, a-stream said:

Not sure if this would help in your specific case but you could try downgrading to Logic 10.6.1. Runs without issues on my M1Max with 64Gb over here. I'm running 100's of instances of Kontakt at the same time (in Rosetta mode). I tried native M1 mode and it seems to work just fine too.

Also check Activity Monitor if anything is happening in the background that could cause CPU spikes such as spotlight indexing e t c.

Do you mind letting me know what your RAM usage in Activity Monitor goes up to with that many instances of Kontakt? And if things like zoom, scrolling, creating tracks, etc. slows down with that many running? On a 16gb M1 it seems to start slowing down after about 20 instances at once

[a-stream]

It sounds like you are running out of memory. If everything gets sluggish like that it’s usually due to high memory in my experience. My usage often runs over 50gb in Activity monitor if I load a lot of large sample libraries but Logic never gets sluggish even then.

[willmarlogic]

On 3/14/2023 at 9:15 PM, a-stream said:

It sounds like you are running out of memory. If everything gets sluggish like that it’s usually due to high memory in my experience. My usage often runs over 50gb in Activity monitor if I load a lot of large sample libraries but Logic never gets sluggish even then.

Wow at over 50gb, yeah it is seeming like I'll need to upgrade sooner than I was hoping due to not realizing how much RAM I'd be using later on.