Mediocre Ableton performance on new iMac 2020?

[Citizen]

I bought a brand new iMac to improve the performance with Ableton Live, and to be honest, the observable difference is disappointingly minimal. I've done comparisons opening and running the exact same project on both my new and old system and the difference is marginal in both time for opening projects, and CPU reading.

These are the specs:

(Old) Mac Book Pro 2012, 2.6GHz Intel i7, with 16 GB RAM – running Mac OSX 10.14.6 Mojave
(New) iMac 2020 – 3.8Ghz 8-Core Intel i7, 64GB of RAM – running MacOSX 10.15.7 Catalina

For example, I have a reasonably 'heavy' project that hits the CPU meter at 60-70% on my Mac Book Pro – but it still touched 40% CPU reading on the new iMac.

Likewise, when I load the 'Selector Kit Clean.adg' drum rack (which has a large amount of samples in 128 drum racks) on both computers at the same time, the new one is maybe a split second faster – it still takes 2–4 seconds to load this kit, and I get the spinning wheel and the progress bar in the bottom left of the Live interface as the samples load.

I am also still experiencing a noticeable lag with Push 2 when loading devices and instruments, which when compared to Maschine's instantaneous responsiveness, is disappointing. I had figured that the lag on Push 2 was due to my older computer's lack of performance, but this does not appear to be the case.

Is this lack of performance improvement normal, given the huge difference in spec between my two computers, and if so, how can I improve the performance of Ableton Live on my new computer? Ideally, I would like the large drum racks and projects to open near instantly.


Thanks in advance.

[yur2die4]

Well. A lot of this is difficult to fully quantify.

The percentage change is quite a difference. You should expect there to be Some amount of demand from a heavy set. To have a 30 percent drop is pretty impressive. There is a performance test at the top of this part of the forum where people have all tested the same set and reported a simple stress test. It only really gives a comparison to other models.

As for loading the kit. We might need more details. A drum kit comes from a drive of some sort. We don’t know if that drive is the same drive used on both machines, how it’s connected, whether it’s a solid state or a disc. On top of that, we don’t know if Live on your new machine is done doing it’s ‘indexing’ process, which can cause your setup to have to multitask. But if you’re using the same drive, perhaps it is the drive and the means of how it is connected that might be a limitation.

Still. Aside from all of that, it’s easy to feel let down with new computers. We struggle with the limitations of a computer that once was perhaps considered high end. The improvements over the years are a nice few steps up, but they’re still beholden to reality. They can only perform so much better than the previous generations of ‘impressive’ models. It’s the same tech, just pushing harder, slightly more efficient, and expanded.

There’s a lot of buzz going on now with Apple’s new in house silicon. I think the big jumps in performance are going to come from these in the next few years. Especially as software devs start taking advantage of the new norm.

[Citizen]

As for loading the kit. We might need more details. A drum kit comes from a drive of some sort. We don’t know if that drive is the same drive used on both machines, how it’s connected, whether it’s a solid state or a disc. On top of that, we don’t know if Live on your new machine is done doing it’s ‘indexing’ process, which can cause your setup to have to multitask. But if you’re using the same drive, perhaps it is the drive and the means of how it is connected that might be a limitation.

Both computers are using local SSD drives. In both instances the User Library – and contained racks etc – are stored locally on the SSD.

Still. Aside from all of that, it’s easy to feel let down with new computers. We struggle with the limitations of a computer that once was perhaps considered high end. The improvements over the years are a nice few steps up, but they’re still beholden to reality. They can only perform so much better than the previous generations of ‘impressive’ models. It’s the same tech, just pushing harder, slightly more efficient, and expanded.

Mmmm... granted, but given that there is eight years between these two models, and the latter has EIGHT cores, and 4X as much RAM as the previous machine, I was expecting an absolute night and day comparison on direct tests.

Am I being unrealistic in that expectation? I don't update machines often, so this is kinda my 'once in a decade' upgrade – and I was expecting it to be a bit more of a leap. Starting to think that I could perhaps have gotten a second hand iMac from 2-3 years back and had a similar performance improvement.

[Citizen]

Just did a comparison using the Ableton Live 10 Performance test at the top of the forum. Thank you.

OLD:

Mac Book Pro was peaking at 30% CPU on the demo track – with occasional 'D' disk overload orange light.
Was able to stack 128 tracks before audio broke up.

NEW:

iMac was nudging 17% on the same demo track. I was able to stack 512 (!) track before audio broke up. 256 played back without issue, despite hitting 59% on the CPU.

Does that sound about right? I guess that is a discernible difference, but I big track counts isn't my issue....I rarely use more than 20-40 tracks. I just want shit to load faster – both projects and drum racks that have lots of samples. Is there a setting I can adjust to optimise this performance objective?

[Eightfoot1981]

Hi, I have the same new iMac as you, had it for a few months now and I'm not experiencing any lag or performance issues (and all my samples are on an external sad). What graphics card did you go for? That can have a serious impact on performance, especially if you're using duel screen or sidecar. I went for the 5700 XT 16gig. I might do the demo track test too to see how it compares. Prior to getting the iMac I ordered 2 brand new top spec MacBook pros and they were both faulty so I sent them back... You could have something wrong with the machine. Worth running geekbench and cinebench to test the performance.

[Citizen]

Well, that's weird.

When you load the 'Selector Kit Clean.adg' drum rack, do you not get the progress bar in the bottom left of the Ableton interface that displays while all the samples load?

I just have the standard graphics card. Didn't think that would drastically impact performance, except for video. Not running another screen or sidecar. (lol...I don't know what that is!)

Never used Geekbench before. Might look into that.

[Eightfoot1981]

Yeah, unfortunately the graphics card will impact the whole system performance. It obviously does primarily improve video/graphics etc also though. This isn't to say that the standard shouldn't be fine, it's just a factor to consider... The iMac has to run a 5k display after all. I'll check the load speed on mine etc when I get a chance this morning.

Btw sidecar is an option in Catalina to run an iPad as a duel screen wirelessly. It's pretty sweet.

[Eightfoot1981]

I just loaded in that Selector kit and I do get the progress bar but it's for a millisecond.

I also did the test and I got to 592 tracks.

Worth noting that I only have 40gig of ram compared to your 62.

Did you run the geekbench yet to see how that's stacking up?

[Citizen]

Did you run the geekbench yet to see how that's stacking up?

No I didn't, the instructions on how its used were not really clear on the website. Do you just download it and run it?

Once I have a Geekbench score, what does that mean? What do I do with that?

[Eightfoot1981]

Yeah, just download the app and run the tests.

It'll give you a score and you can compare that to systems of the same spec to see if yours is working okay.

[Citizen]

OK, I DL'd Geekbench and got the following:

1270 : Single-Core Score
8774 : Multi-Core Score

(The same model on the Geekbench site got a Multi-core score of 8045)

Soooooooo.... this means my computer is performing slightly above the average score, right? (presumably this is attributed to the additional RAM I added over the default 8GB, right?)

[Citizen]

This is what the in app interface showed me:

[Citizen]

So, from all of this, can I deduce that nothing is 'wrong' with my iMac, and that it is actually performing well?

[yur2die4]

Perhaps look into performance tweaks but also adapting your workflow to be less frustrating. It sounds like the 128 kit is a major source of frustration for you. Do things run differently when you do not use it?

Do you vary your buffer size depending on what phase of the project you’re working on is?

[Citizen]

Perhaps look into performance tweaks but also adapting your workflow to be less frustrating. It sounds like the 128 kit is a major source of frustration for you. Do things run differently when you do not use it?

A good point. I will try without it – but the main reason I use 128s in drum rack is to browse samples fast, which is a workaround for the shortcomings of browsing your own content via Push.

Do you vary your buffer size depending on what phase of the project you’re working on is?

No, I just leave it at 512. I wasn't aware of the need to adjust it at different phases of the project.

Is there anyway that I can assign more RAM to Ableton, or any other performance tweaks I could look at?