Ableton Forum

Hey guys,

I'm pretty new to the whole music production thing, although I have been DJing for almost 10 years.

I bought a Macbook Pro (the 13' inch version, from 2009, C2D 2.66Ghz with a 500gb 7200rpm drive) strictly for music and was surprised with how fast it reaches the 50% of CPU usage. Granted, I was making some music yesterday with NIs x-mas gift Mikro Prism and I assume that is a heavy VST to use. I opened about 10 tracks with 4 instances of that VST, other loops and Ableton effects and quickly reached about 50%.

This was with the Demo version of Ableton as my copy is expected to arrive tomorrow, as well as Komplete 7. If Mikro Prism is that heavy on my Macbook, I wonder what heavier NI stuff will be like. I have an overclocked Core i7 at home so I'll do most of my heavy stuff there but was wondering... will a firewire or USB audio interface decrease my CPU usage on the Macbook?

I have ran the Ableton Performance Test and got a 43% on my Macbook Pro and 13% on my Core i7. What sort of impact are we looking at with a good, portable, audio interface, if any?

Thanks guys!

I can't answer the question about the interface because I don't know, but I can say that I had that exact same MacBook Pro with Suite 8 and Komplete 6 and the only time I approached that kind of CPU usage was with multiple instances of Kontakt or Reaktor. So the 50% with 4 instances of a Reaktor synth seems normal to me. I used the crap out of all the other stuff and never had a problem.

So to answer this question: If Mikro Prism is that heavy on my Macbook, I wonder what heavier NI stuff will be like

I think you'll be fine because Mikro Prism is the heavier NI stuff.

Peripatetic wrote:I can't answer the question about the interface because I don't know, but I can say that I had that exact same MacBook Pro with Suite 8 and Komplete 6 and the only time I approached that kind of CPU usage was with multiple instances of Kontakt or Reaktor. So the 50% with 4 instances of a Reaktor synth seems normal to me. I used the crap out of all the other stuff and never had a problem.

So to answer this question: If Mikro Prism is that heavy on my Macbook, I wonder what heavier NI stuff will be like

I think you'll be fine because Mikro Prism is the heavier NI stuff.

Phew, that's good news! Don't want to spend more money on a new audio interface rightaway (assuming that will help!)

Thanks!