Does VST3 or AU eat more CPU?

Share your favorite Ableton Live tips, tricks, and techniques.
Post Reply
Greenapples2019
Posts: 283
Joined: Wed Apr 10, 2019 6:43 pm

Does VST3 or AU eat more CPU?

Post by Greenapples2019 » Fri Feb 26, 2021 10:28 am

tl:dr VST3 plugins use less CPU than AU on MacBook M1

Greetings Macusers, I have always taken a haphazard approach to choosing between VST and AU so decided to experiment by putting 20 instances of a plug-in on a channel strip and seeing the effect on CPU. (I have an M1 MBP, 16Gb running Ableton 10). Here are the results for some Plugin Alliance plugins (where the CPU was fluctuating lots I estimated an average):

Channel strips
Lindell 80: 51% (VST3) v 170% (AU)
SSL 9000J: 40% v 88%

Compressors
Purple 77: 90% v 90%
Shadow Hills: 28% v 37%
bx townhouse: 29% v 31%

EQs
Maag EQ4: 17% v 27%
BetterMaker: 38% v 39%
bx digital v3: 18% v 48%

Also, the Blackbox HG-2 was 41% (VST3) and 75% (AU). And Valhalla Vintage Verb was 22% (VST3) and 26% (AU).

This may be different on Intel chips and may change if/when AU goes native on the M1, but for now I'm sticking with VST3.

[jur]
Site Admin
Posts: 5307
Joined: Mon Jun 01, 2015 3:04 pm
Location: Ableton

Re: Does VST3 or AU eat more CPU?

Post by [jur] » Fri Feb 26, 2021 10:35 am

VST also port over to Windows, if you sharing set, or ditch mac osx in the future.
Ableton Forum Moderator

Dopecomposer
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Mar 30, 2021 8:15 pm

Re: Does VST3 or AU eat more CPU?

Post by Dopecomposer » Fri Apr 02, 2021 2:03 pm

I noticed a big difference in CPU load for Plugin Alliance VST vs AU. Essentially, PA was nearly unusable in the VST format.

A few days ago, PA released an update. Things seem to be much better now. VSTs that would peg the CPU meter are now useable.


Latest MAc OS, M1.

Post Reply