Visual Lags with Ableton 11.3.4 on Mac after migration from old intel system

[ludchinstki]

I was migrating from an old Mac Pro from 2013 to an new Mac Studio M2 Max. I noticed the old Intel version of Ableton and changed it to the universal version. After that the same issues are appearing.
The lags are:
- playhead don’t response when clicked on grid
- clicking and dragging is delayed
- session freezes randomly and after a few seconds it comes back to live
- buttons and values are very slow responding

The audio is playing without any clicking or popping and the cpu meter is very low in activity.
I can not find the problem what is causing the visual lagging and freezing.

I tried everything to fix it: Complete reset, reinstall with deleting hidden files, trying the options.txt trick, trying to launch with Rosetta, trying to run an older version, set the buffer size lower than 128ms.

Does anyone have had the same issues with a new Mac and could help me with the fixing process?

I am unsing:

Mac Studio 2023 M2 Max, 64GB RAM, MacOS Ventura 13.5
Ableton 11.3.4 universal App
All Plugins are updated (waves, fab filter, UAD, brainworks)

Hardware: UAD Apollo x8

Session Settings:
- 48kHz
- 24 Bit
- high quality setting enabled
- 512 ms buffer size

Guess: maybe I have to clear the currently migrated system and reset my MacOS. I recently installed Ableton on a MacBook M2 Pro and everything went well. No clue what else could cause these issues.

Thanks guys!

[[jur]]

I tried everything to fix it: Complete reset, reinstall with deleting hidden files, trying the options.txt trick, trying to launch with Rosetta, trying to run an older version, set the buffer size lower than 128ms.

Just from reading the "migration from old intel mac to new silicon mac" in your topic's title I thought "ohh... I would have never even try!"
With such jump/changes in architecture, imo (and that's what I did) a clean install is the only way to go ... and will actually be much faster than solving the issues of a migrated system. I might be wrong of course, though...
but then reading that you already tried even the most "in-depth" solutions around files and folders, I'm finding it really hard to not trust my 1st feeling.

You might want to check that :
- your soundcard drivers are up-to-date first,
- also try using the Mac's built-in audio just to be sure (and maybe check with other software),
- deactivate all your 3rd party plugins (and check they're silicon-compatible)
but it smells like a clean re-install of your system is around the corner.

[Pitch Black]

Counterpoint: I migrated from Intel to M1 with no major problems.

Here’s a video, it’s over a year old now, but I found it very helpful in understanding how the systems differ, how to check where Intel code is still running and being translated on-the-fly by Rosetta, plus I got helpful info about a tool called ArchiChect for examining my apps and plugins to check for M1 compatibility.

https://youtu.be/eqr9qjNS2kU
The relevant info starts at 5:21

FYI, regarding your buffer size, it’s now considered best practice to run the audio buffer at 128 on Apple silicon systems. This forces the system to use the high-performance cores, instead of first utilizing the efficiency cores of the M processor.

Hope this helps!

PS edited to add: are you aware that Live 11.3 introduced a new warping algorithm? Many people, myself included, have seen a temporary slowdown in performance while Live re-analyses each Live Set saved under 11.2 or earlier, until that Set is analyzed and re-saved as an 11.3 Set. With big projects with a lot of files this can take quite a while. Just a thought.

[ludchinstki]

I reinstalled macOS today and tried to fix it that way.
But it got just worse.
The same issues but worse are appearing. Complete freezing of the GUI, very long loading times and an loading bar over the locations section. After some minutes of waiting the loading bar disappears but the session isn’t free of the visual lagging. Still no cpu spikes or so.
Just the Mac feels like it is loading something in the background. The activity app says that over 75% of the cpu isn’t used.

I tried to install the intel version as well and wanted to start it with Rosetta at the beginning. But there wasn’t a button to activate the Rosetta function. Just for the universal version the Rosetta button was there. I am really confused.

But I can tell, that I had some issues with installing Sound ID Reference before I installed Ableton.
At this stage these audio apps were installed:
- UAD driver and mixer
- Sound ID Reference
I am not quite sure if the Mac hasn’t some physical problems, caused by a damaged chip. Or Ableton has some problems on running on the new Mac Studio M2 Max 2023.

Devices connected to it:
I am running the system with 3 displays over thunderbolt / usb c. The interface is wired over thunderbolt as well. A usb 3.1 hub for my mouse, keyboard, iLok and fader controller and a NVMe extension for extra fast space with m.2 SSDs.

I may need to unplug every device, reset the macOS again and just install Ableton plain to the fresh system to ensure that these issues are not caused by any other software or any device.

Wish me luck!

But I would appreciate every thought that may help me to find any hidden error. Thx.

[[jur]]

I may need to unplug every device, reset the macOS again and just install Ableton plain to the fresh system to ensure that these issues are not caused by any other software or any device.

First try with every device unplugged: just the computer, with one screen, and using the built-in audio.

[Pitch Black]

I may need to unplug every device, reset the macOS again and just install Ableton plain to the fresh system to ensure that these issues are not caused by any other software or any device.

Wish me luck!

Good luck!! But seriously, you’re going about it exactly the right way - reduce the number of variables and build up from there.

Keep us posted, it’s wonderful here in Apple Silicon Valley. Hope you get to join us soon!

[cids]

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/artic ... ilicon-Mac