Ableton Forum

Food for thought.

I recently switched to 4K screens to maximise my viewable area in Ableton, however this seems to have caused significant performance issues while running projects at 50~70% CPU with a resolution greater than 2560 x 1440.

Using a 4K monitor I made the following tests:

1. OSX scaled at 1920 x 1080 fullscreen mode, live at *50~70% CPU = No problem
2. OSX scaled at 2560 x 1440 fullscreen mode, live at *50~70% CPU = Ok but with some pops in audio
3. OSX scaled at 3008 x 1692 fullscreen mode, live at *50~70% CPU = Audio slows down with pops and clicks
4. Greater than #3, unplayable

Interestingly, whilst testing point 4 in OSX in fullscreen mode, switching back to primary desktop so that Ableton runs offscreen, plays audio perfectly — a possible indication that Ableton requires a decent graphics card when running at higher resolutions (UHD/4K).

I'm using a Mac Mini 2018, this has virtually no GPU power and at 4K resolutions, it won't work with medium to large sized projects unless I use a eGPU, reduce my resolution or work in smaller window on my desktop.

Running the test tone at 80% CPU in fullscreen mode at 3840 x 2160 detects no issues, run a real project at that percentage, audio playback is impossible.

Ableton Live Version: 10
OS X Version: 10.14.5
MAC: Mac Mini 2018, i7, 32GB RAM, 512GB SSD

Try the suggestion in this thread. It reduces Live’s frame refresh rate and so takes a lot of the load off the WindiwServer process.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=230967

TLW wrote: ↑

Sun May 26, 2019 2:08 pm

Try the suggestion in this thread. It reduces Live’s frame refresh rate and so takes a lot of the load off the WindiwServer process.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=230967

Smashed it!

Tried MaxFpsMac 30, still popped and clicked, lowered it to 15, thankfully that did the trick! Thanks!

I have my frame rate set to 30, which sent Live's audio system meter down from a minimum of between 25% and 30% for an empty project with audio breakup happening at 32-35% down to 5-6% for an empty project and I have run it up to over 70% without problems with a 128 sample buffer. Visually I can't tell any difference.

That tip is one of the most useful there is. For whatever reason Live really makes Intel graphics work really hard.

Turn off OS resolution scaling scaling all together (some apps let you do it per application). Scaling is oversampling. I think at the natively supported max scaling res its 2x on just below 4K if you are using an app you can do 2x on 4k so thats trying to push double the resolution at 60fps. Its a lot of pixles.

Either do 1:1 (seems much better on my 12 core mac pro 5,1 with an RX580) or find a happy medium. On my retina screened mac book pros it seems to run smoothly too so maybe reduce the resolution down to the equivalent of 2X 1920x1200/1080 and see if it helps.

Also if you are trying to do this on integrated intel graphics then yikes.