2018 Mac Mini and Music Production

[Jay_NJ]

Hi,

Anyone using a 2018 Mac Mini for music production and Ableton? Previously, I had an '11 iMac and it was solid for years. Due to that, I decided to stick with Mac and just recently bought a brand new Mac Mini i7. 16gb ram and 256 internal SSD. I also purchased another SSD to keep my sample libraries offline. The result? I can't run more than 1 track without crashing and freezing. Keep in mind, I'm not even getting to the point where I can arrange anything. I'm in session view and simply playing Omnisphere and the thing crashes. Serious buyers remorse. The worst part is, I've only made a few payments and have a lot more to go for something that's amazingly not going to work it appears. Had issues with final cut pro too on a 30 sec video at 1080p. Anyone had any success with these things or is this a known issue? Thanks!

[[jur]]

There’s definitely something wrong here. If you have this issue with Logic too that could be because of your sound card? Is everything up-to-date?

[Jay_NJ]

I'm using a Focusrite Scarlett Solo (3rd Gen). Says on their site that it's compatible with Catalina. Hmmm. Sucks. I was hoping that would have been the problem. At least then I'd know.

[[jur]]

Can you give us more details on your setup? Things like midi controllers; midi remote scripts...
Also, do you have problems only with audio softwares or with other ones too?

[Jay_NJ]

Hi,

Sure man. Thanks for the reply. I've got a Push 2 and a Native Instruments m32. I'm using Live 10 and have the Scarlett solo 3rd gen. No remote scripts as far as I know. As for plugins, Ive got Omnisphere 2, Vengeance Avenger and EZ Keys by Toontrack. All legit. Aside from Live, the performance is also really bad with Final Cut X. I was working on a 30 sec corporate video at 1080p and was getting the spinning beachball with almost anything I did. Ultimately, like with Live, it would freeze on me or crash. I'm not very mac savvy, so I'm not too sure what I should be looking for. I'd love to take it to an Apple store, but that's not happening now.

[Jay_NJ]

Update - I ran diagnostics at startup to see if there were any hardware issues and everything checked out fine.

I opened Ableton and loaded an instance of Diva. I went through various patches and the CPU hit ranged from 10-35 for some. These weren't complex patches. Is that normal? A few times, the CPU stayed high even after I stopped playing the patch.

Thanks for any advice anyone might have!

[redlester]

I’m using a 2012 i7 Mac Mini with Ableton Live 10.9 on Mojave, with absolutely no issues. There is definitely a glitch somewhere in your setup.

You might find this, from a year ago, of interest. Perhaps try a USB to Thunderbolt adaptor for the audio interface?

https://www.gearnews.com/apple-partiall ... ve-update/

[Jay_NJ]

Hey guys, let me ask you this. I've got a satechi dock that I purchased for the mini. It's essentially a base that the mini sits on top of and is connected via usb-c (https://satechi.net/products/type-c-alu ... r-mac-mini). I then have 3 drives plugged into that. I will say this - tonight I unplugged the satechi from the mini and ran Ableton. I had a drumloop, an arpeggiated bassline, and was playing a riff over it on another track. Using Diva for the sounds. I also have my push 2 connected. I noticed the following:

- First thing I noticed is that the mini was A LOT cooler than when I have everything connected.
- CPU meter in upper right corner of Live was around 27%
- Activity Monitor: These numbers were fluctuating, but were roughly as follows:
- Live - between 40-50%
- System 1.90%
- User 3.63%
- Idle 93-94%

First question is, what is the difference between that cpu monitor in Live and the one in activity monitor?

Second question, do these numbers look fairly normal?

Last question, is it a problem to have multiple drives working? I have an SSD, a Thunderbolt, and a USB.

I wonder if the satechi is the problem? I read nothing but excellent reviews for it, and a google search didn't reveal any reported issues but who knows. The mini is still cool after running for awhile. I can tell you, that's a first. This thing is normally red hot and happens fast. I did see someone in a forum saying his mini overheated when he had a regular USB drive connected. One of the drives I had hooked up is a WD usb.

Thanks!

[[jur]]

If everything's fine without the Satechi thing, then I guess you've found the culprit...

[TLW]

First question is, what is the difference between that cpu monitor in Live and the one in activity monitor?

The big difference is that Live’s system load indicator is not a cpu meter. It attempts to indicate the load on the system for working with audio as a whole, but exactly what that means in practice...? My Mac usually has one core go into Turbo mode almost all the time I’m running Live, it seems to be whichever core is handling the audio driver even when Live’s meter sits at around 5%. Intel’s free power gadget is a useful tool for seeing deeper into what’s going on with the cpu.

External drives shouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference, my MBP, running Mojave, has a mix of the internal SSD, a TB2 connected Intel SSD in a powered TB2 enclosure and a couple of external USB 3 drives connected to an unpowered USB 3 hub and has no problems. Having said that, if an unpowered USB hub is putting a heavy current demand on the Mac’s USB system that might cause problems, though in my experience if the load exceeds the USB spec the drives just fail to spin up and the Mac sometimes pops up an error message.

[TLW]

You might find this, from a year ago, of interest. Perhaps try a USB to Thunderbolt adaptor for the audio interface?

When released Mojave had some strange behaviour with some USB interfaces that seem to have been connected to the USB subsystem and drivers etc. on Macs with the T2 chip. RME found that using a TB to USB hub could work, but only if the hub meant the Mac’s USB subsystem was completely bypassed by the hub and not all hubs do this so only certain ones might work.

I think this was fixed, or almost entirely fixed, by a Mojave update around 18 months ago and interface manufacturers affected by it releasing updated drivers. There are some quite long threads about it on RME’s forum for those looking for the gory details.

[Jay_NJ]

Yeah, from my initial tests, it looks like the hub is the issue. I had a few drives connected to the hub, among them, a couple usb 2 drives. I suppose all this combined sucking power from the mini's usb-c port was the problem. I do need the extra ports, so will look into a self powered hub. No joke, when I would work with all of this connected, the thing would be red hot within 15 minutes. Now, played around for an hour and it was barely warm. A shame if this is the issue, as it was a really cool base. But - good to be making some progress and maybe I didn't throw 1600 out the window. Thanks guys. I'll post up once I do a full test later this afternoon.