automation 'limit'

[subliminal]

Hi. I've built a bunch of Max for Live plugins for lighting (via DMX or ArtNet). I'm using automation lanes to control the plugins, which smoosh together the DMX data and send it out either using the Serial object (for regular DMX, via an ENTTEC DMX USB PRO) or via sadam.udpSender. There's a LOT of automation going on and I guess a lot of data being sent around (to be clear, it's not a totally crazy set-up - around 50 lights with a simple RGB profile on each).

At certain points in the track this data just seems to completely 'seize up' and the lights freeze, or at least really slow down. Usually if I stop and start again at that point it'll recover, but it's as thought there's some kind of throttle that gets reached. Everything else seems in order - the audio plays fine, the CPU meter never gets above about 45% (this is on a high-spec M1 MacBook Pro btw), and the activity monitor says about 8% system load and 18-20% user.

I think I've had this problem before (though previously it was with OSC messages I think), that there seems to be a limit as to how much automation can be used and/or how much data can be sent out via serial or udp. Has anyone else experienced this? Can anyone think of any ways I can somehow broaden this bottleneck, or some good pointers as to how to 'throttle' or thin out the data? I've tried speedlim but it didn't seem to really help. Obviously I'll probably just have to simplify the lighting, but I'd like to see if anyone has any bright ideas here - very much appreciated if you do!

[[jur]]

First thing I'd try: select an automation, right-click it, select "simplify envelope" (the wording might be a little bit different, I'm not in front of Live atm, but you get the idea).
This will remove a lot of points and place curves instead.