New Mac Studio Lost AU Connection while testing

[Julia123]

I did a test comparing my iMac with an i7 Intel to my new Mac Studio, which I purchased soley for the purpose of having better CPU handling in Ableton for plug in intense projects. In this test project I had the iMac spiking the CPU with periodic little pops, dropouts but hangin in there around 72%.

The exact same project on Mac Studio with M2 (at the best buffer that I had determined), went way in the red for a second and then lost all connections to the AU Instrument I was using. I have NEVER had this happen with any other computer. I am thinking maybe the M2 chip just isn't for music or am I missing anything? My test was just a duplicate of the same track multiple times. I am so disappointed I am not sure if I want to run amy more tests with different plugins, but maybe this one was faulty in some way, not sure.

I do like that I can keep a small buffer through the entire recording process. This would have been a huge plus, but not for the money this thing cost. I can still return it.

Any thoughts?

[Tarekith]

Which plug in? The M2 should be more than powerful enough for most music production duties.

[Julia123]

That's what I thought. I did another test with VST 3 and the Mac Studio was worse! This time it was the Aria plug in with CFX piano. It is Apple Silicon native. I thought for sure it would be clearly better. If it is just my weird plug ins it's not Ableton's or Macs fault but since I like them and they work better on the old computer I may as well stick with that awhile longer. Maybe tomorrow I will do a more mixed test just out of curiosity.

[Tarekith]

I have a feeling it might be just the plug ins you're using like you think, but maybe you can try some other's tomorrow and see how that is. At the very least would try just using Live and its native plug ins only, since we KNOW they they run fine on M chip Macs.

If you haven't yet, be sure to set your latency in Live to 128 samples in the audio preferences. That seems to be the sweet spot for the M-chip Macs.

[Julia123]

Thanks, I wasn't sure on the buffer setting. I am going to try more now. I just loaded in an older project on the new set up and am surprised that when I hit play anywhere in the arrangement window, it goes up over the 200's in the current CPU meter, then drops down to about 30. It also spikes when I stop play. Is that the norm?

[Julia123]

I did another test using only audio, Ableton automation, and then copied multiple tracks. With both computers working direct from desktop side by side, best buffer setting for each, my 2017 iMac i7 outperformed the new Mac Studio M2 by about 20% on the CPU, with much larger spikes showing on the M2. Also, the M2 failed much worse when pushed to the limit, whereas my i7 would pop and complain, but keep fighting to continue on. (-while sounding like a jet engine, whereas the Mac Studio never made a peep, another plus I was looking forward to).

I called Apple support and spent a long time with him documenting what was going on for them to look into further for future reference. He thinks the lack of performance when comparing may have something to do with how Ableton deals with the multiple cores in the new M2.

If someone is starting fresh with no comparison the M2 will probably run fine. It is wonderful to be able to keep that buffer low! I was going to keep the computer just for that if they were equal. I can't rationalize spending that much money for a downgrade in performance in my situation though so I am returning it. Hopefully the next model and Ableton will get along better.