Ableton Forum

Same issue here.
Brand new MacBook Pro 16" i9 with 32GB of ram. Very loud fan noise as soon as a I run Ableton Live, even with an empty project. Very annoying.

I am puzzled why this is a concern?

Seems like normal behavior? The noise?

It’s definitely a concern. It means Live is taxing the system heavily. That shouldn’t be happening upon initial load of a DAW with an empty project open.

I had the same issue with my MBP, although recently it seems to have stopped. Perhaps Live was doing indexing for a long period of time, which finally finished.

I have never experienced this issue with other DAWs.

there are a number of changes in the thermal system behavior in the 16" macbook pro compared to previous generations.

The fans spin up much more quickly and also pre-emptively especially with applications that use the GPU.

The previous gen with the butterfly keyboards overheated a lot and as a result the performance was poor.

Are you experiencing bad performance?

It looks like there's a way to solve the fan noise problem with new Macbook Pro 16".
As soon as Ableton starts, the CPU frequency enters the turbo boost mode, up to 4,8GHz for the 8 cores version, even if the CPU load is null. It looks like Ableton sends a message to the machine saying to be ready to provide the maximum power at any time. Since the consumption in turbo boost mode is very high, the CPU temperature rises up immediately and the fans start spinning fast and loud.
There's this little and free tool, Turbo Boost Switcher, which prevents the processor from entering the turbo boost mode, maintaining the CPU frequency to the standard 2.3Ghz.
This way, you keep having an enormous amount of power but in a much cooler machine and with the fans completely inaudible.
For more info, have a look to this video from Max Tech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkmdHVfk4XE&t=282s

This nailed it for me:

1. Charge laptop to full + about another 4 hours on charge to make sure it's really at full charge.
2. Reset SMC https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

I can run Ableton with 20 channels of Diva on beast mode and the fans kick in at only a moderate level.

Graphics and video processing still make the fans jump up massively but Live and every other software I use are fine now. This is MBP 16".

Hope this helps.

Not a solution for me....

I can run protools with a lot more processing, more quiet !

hmm, I think, Ableton has to fix there something ... ?

But how we can push them ?

shazbot79 wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 19, 2020 10:19 pm

Hello, I think I know why this might happening. Basically any DAW kicks in the dedicated graphics card which in turn makes the fan spin after a few minutes on this model, I have had mine since the 4th Dec 2019. Great machine but this was starting to annoy me. Install gSwitch by Cody Shrank and select integrated and voila. Your fans will not spin up as quickly and the battery will last longer. I'm still not happy at having to do this but I genuinely do not think Apple will fix this. If I browse, email word etc this machine is whisper quiet. Fire up Live, FL or Logic and it really takes. I feel your pain, but gSwitch works.

https://codyschrank.github.io/gSwitch/

Does this work with an external display? I have the LG 27” 5k monitor attached to my 2019 16” MBP. Fan noise makes it almost impossible to work.

frabo wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 20, 2020 7:31 pm

But how we can push them ?

Write to [email protected]

michaeljra wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 22, 2020 11:50 pm

shazbot79 wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 19, 2020 10:19 pm

Hello, I think I know why this might happening. Basically any DAW kicks in the dedicated graphics card which in turn makes the fan spin after a few minutes on this model, I have had mine since the 4th Dec 2019. Great machine but this was starting to annoy me. Install gSwitch by Cody Shrank and select integrated and voila. Your fans will not spin up as quickly and the battery will last longer. I'm still not happy at having to do this but I genuinely do not think Apple will fix this. If I browse, email word etc this machine is whisper quiet. Fire up Live, FL or Logic and it really takes. I feel your pain, but gSwitch works.

https://codyschrank.github.io/gSwitch/

Does this work with an external display? I have the LG 27” 5k monitor attached to my 2019 16” MBP. Fan noise makes it almost impossible to work.

no, you can't lock out the discrete GPU when an external display is connected...

[jur] wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 23, 2020 4:45 pm

frabo wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 20, 2020 7:31 pm

But how we can push them ?

Write to [email protected]

...yes, I will

frabo wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 25, 2020 10:18 pm

...yes, I will

Did you get any answer from support?

Having the same issue.

Can't use the switch GPU option because I'm using an external monitor. The reset SMC option didn't help either.

fedesilvaponte wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 23, 2020 2:53 pm

Having the same issue.

Can't use the switch GPU option because I'm using an external monitor. The reset SMC option didn't help either.

And how is it going when only using the laptop's screen?

In any case, please report to [email protected] with your detailed setup; we need as much info as possible to tackle this down.

I've tried with the integrated card only using gSwitch and with no external monitor and its pure silence, no overheating and no fan noise. It's obvious in my case that's the issue, something wrong about ableton and the usage of the GPU.