Squeezing the last performance out of Macbook Pro 2012
Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2021 9:27 pm
Hi guys, yet another hardware performance mac query here.
I have been using my MBP 2012 without any trouble till I upgraded to Ableton 11 Standard (via 10 Standard) from Ableton 9 Intro.
When I have Neural DSP plugins running I'm topping out the processor and getting artifacts. I used to freeze tracks when this happened but was able to get a couple of audio tracks to work with plugins running. Now it seems I'm out of headroom - CPU monitor shows 107+ and it's unworkable.
With just one track and a Neural DSP Plugin running in normal/mono the sound is great and latency is < 20ms
I have played with all the preferences - the buffers and sound quality is also on standard (plugins on mono and normal not high oversampling)
The machine is 2.7GHz Quad core i7 with 16G ram and ssd
The audio interface is Komplete Audio 6 Mk1
I also have a iMac (late 20125) 3.2GHz Quad Intel Core i5 with 8G ram and I doubt that this is a viable alternative (but I suppose I can lug it around the house and see if it works better if anyone thinks that's worth trying).
Would a better Audio Interface help? It might be cheaper to replace the Komplete Audio 6 than a new laptop, but I suspect I'm barking up the wrong tree here - the processing load is on the Mac after the signal is delivered from the audio interface right?
Maybe this is another case of someone needing to switch over to PC as I already looked at all the new MBPs and found them wanting, hence why I stuck out my old MBP (which is also stuck on Catalina now as it is a late 2012 model)
Interested in your thoughts, expertise and thank you for reading - I'm still very much a beginner when it comes to balancing all these computing requirements.
I have been using my MBP 2012 without any trouble till I upgraded to Ableton 11 Standard (via 10 Standard) from Ableton 9 Intro.
When I have Neural DSP plugins running I'm topping out the processor and getting artifacts. I used to freeze tracks when this happened but was able to get a couple of audio tracks to work with plugins running. Now it seems I'm out of headroom - CPU monitor shows 107+ and it's unworkable.
With just one track and a Neural DSP Plugin running in normal/mono the sound is great and latency is < 20ms
I have played with all the preferences - the buffers and sound quality is also on standard (plugins on mono and normal not high oversampling)
The machine is 2.7GHz Quad core i7 with 16G ram and ssd
The audio interface is Komplete Audio 6 Mk1
I also have a iMac (late 20125) 3.2GHz Quad Intel Core i5 with 8G ram and I doubt that this is a viable alternative (but I suppose I can lug it around the house and see if it works better if anyone thinks that's worth trying).
Would a better Audio Interface help? It might be cheaper to replace the Komplete Audio 6 than a new laptop, but I suspect I'm barking up the wrong tree here - the processing load is on the Mac after the signal is delivered from the audio interface right?
Maybe this is another case of someone needing to switch over to PC as I already looked at all the new MBPs and found them wanting, hence why I stuck out my old MBP (which is also stuck on Catalina now as it is a late 2012 model)
Interested in your thoughts, expertise and thank you for reading - I'm still very much a beginner when it comes to balancing all these computing requirements.