Brand New MacBook Pro 16'' - Loud Fan Noise

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Jenaux
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Brand New MacBook Pro 16'' - Loud Fan Noise

Post by Jenaux » Wed Nov 27, 2019 4:57 am

Hey all -

I just got a brand new macbook pro that came out about 2 weeks ago. I finally reinstalled everything, launched Ableton successfully with Catalina OS, and everything is working smoothly.

However, my fan noise gets really really loud. The computer is brand new, and in the activity monitor its showing barely any CPU usage (~12% on an intensive project) - and using 9-12gb of 16gb in ram.

Is this common? Are there fixes? Should I give it back and upgrade RAM? I just have no idea what to do, it's hard to record because the fan noise bleed is pretty unbearable at times unless I work in a new project. Anyway, anything helps, thanks!

-Jenaux

[jur]
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Re: Brand New MacBook Pro 16'' - Loud Fan Noise

Post by [jur] » Wed Nov 27, 2019 8:24 am

Try the Search system of this forum... you'll soon learn that it's very common with macs laptop.
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Tarekith
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Re: Brand New MacBook Pro 16'' - Loud Fan Noise

Post by Tarekith » Wed Nov 27, 2019 3:31 pm

Interesting, not seeing that here with mine, it's about the same as my 2017 MBP that it replaced. Extremely quiet in other words.

Are you using any third party plus in? Do you have Ableton indexing a new folder in the browser? What's your latency set to?
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Jenaux
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Re: Brand New MacBook Pro 16'' - Loud Fan Noise

Post by Jenaux » Wed Nov 27, 2019 4:17 pm

Hey man - yeah it was a heavier project, lots of plugins, but felt like it was getting really loud. Not sure if this is a ram issue or cpu issue (I have an I9 chip).

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Re: Brand New MacBook Pro 16'' - Loud Fan Noise

Post by Tarekith » Wed Nov 27, 2019 4:50 pm

Fan noise is almost always a CPU issue. Remember that Live distributes processing to your CPU cores on a track by track basis, IE track 1 to core 1, track 2 to core 2, etc. So reordering your tracks might help.
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Jenaux
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Re: Brand New MacBook Pro 16'' - Loud Fan Noise

Post by Jenaux » Wed Nov 27, 2019 5:40 pm

It didn’t seem like my cpu was really pushing ... had 12% - 16% in use but the fan would start moving really fast ...

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Re: Brand New MacBook Pro 16'' - Loud Fan Noise

Post by Tarekith » Wed Nov 27, 2019 5:57 pm

I would start removing plug ins one by one, I'm guessing one of those is causing the issue. See if you get the fan noise to stop that way, which will at least narrow down the problem.
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TLW
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Re: Brand New MacBook Pro 16'' - Loud Fan Noise

Post by TLW » Fri Nov 29, 2019 6:20 am

Jenaux wrote:
Wed Nov 27, 2019 5:40 pm
It didn’t seem like my cpu was really pushing ... had 12% - 16% in use but the fan would start moving really fast ...
What can happen is that one core goes into “turbo” mode to keep up with the demands from the audio driver and buffer. That can get the fan going sometimes.

Another possibility is the problem Live sometimes seems to have with the Mac WindowServer. If that’s the problem there’s a possible fox in the tips and tricks part of the forum. If the gpu is being hit very hard by Live than that might kick the fan in.
Live 10 Suite, 2020 27" iMac, 3.6 GHz i9, MacOS Catalina, RME UFX, assorted synths, guitars and stuff.

Seb Da Flou
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Re: Brand New MacBook Pro 16'' - Loud Fan Noise

Post by Seb Da Flou » Tue Dec 03, 2019 8:52 am

Hi,

What is your configuration ? I7 or i9 ?

It seems that i9 would be hot really fast.

Maybe someone has tested it with an i7 ?

scheffkoch
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Re: Brand New MacBook Pro 16'' - Loud Fan Noise

Post by scheffkoch » Tue Dec 03, 2019 11:05 am

...i reckon that reducing live's frame rate will have a positive effect regarding this BUT: the 2019 i9 mbp has the advantage over the 2018 i9 mbp that it's cpu can sustain at a higher frequency level for a longer period of time...and this only works at the cost of fans kicking in...it's in fact the same cpu but it now works much better (the 2018 i9 had serious thermal problems resulting in massive throttling even lower than the base frequency) because of better thermals and of course a better fan system...to get rid of fan noise we have to wait for intel's 10nm cpu or apple's own processors...
macbook pro m1pro, macos monterey, rme multiface via sonnet echo express se I, push 2, faderfox mx12, xone:k2

Jenaux
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Re: Brand New MacBook Pro 16'' - Loud Fan Noise

Post by Jenaux » Tue Dec 03, 2019 1:21 pm

Hey all -

The noise has gotten better, I think it was a specific project. Also, I found that the fan got significantly louder when plugged into a monitor.

[jur]
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Re: Brand New MacBook Pro 16'' - Loud Fan Noise

Post by [jur] » Tue Dec 03, 2019 1:30 pm

You can try changing your monitor's profile:
Setting => Display => Color => choose "sRGB IEC61966-2.1

It seems to help a lot for many people.
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Jenaux
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Re: Brand New MacBook Pro 16'' - Loud Fan Noise

Post by Jenaux » Tue Dec 03, 2019 1:37 pm

[jur] wrote:
Tue Dec 03, 2019 1:30 pm
You can try changing your monitor's profile:
Setting => Display => Color => choose "sRGB IEC61966-2.1

It seems to help a lot for many people.
wow thank you!! will year it out

Steril
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Re: Brand New MacBook Pro 16'' - Loud Fan Noise

Post by Steril » Tue Dec 10, 2019 9:06 pm

I have exact the same problem with my new i9 MacBook Pro 16.
On an external monitor the fans kicks in direkt after the Ableton Live start, without starting any plugins or projects.
The fans are so loud, that I can't concentrate on making music and stay on all the time until I quit Live.
I had a phonecall with apple. They let me do some resets of the machine and a reinstall of Catalina, nothing works.
Ihm very close to returning the MacBook and buy an ultra silent PC Workstation for my studio.
Another issue is, that Live has no access to the complete Steinberg Catalogue, since live has no access to control Synsopos.app.
Bad, bad, bad....
I switched from PC to Mac because of USB problems with external hardware drivers. Now I spend 3000€ on much more significant problems:-(

akaspeedy
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Re: Brand New MacBook Pro 16'' - Loud Fan Noise

Post by akaspeedy » Wed Dec 11, 2019 4:39 pm

It’s probably the spotlight feature indexing as I had the same issue when I first got my 2017 MacBook Pro

It will eventually go away once the indexing is complete

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