Ableton 11 is Unusable on my M1

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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ohthepain
Posts: 18
Joined: Sat Apr 15, 2017 7:06 am

Ableton 11 is Unusable on my M1

Post by ohthepain » Thu Feb 16, 2023 3:15 pm

Constant dropouts. I have seen many many posts about this all over. Nothing helps. Ableton needs to fix this.

I am currently on Ableton 11.2.7.

Same thing regardless of sound card or using the laptop speakers. Buffer sizes of 32, 64, 128 and 256 all exhibit the issue.

I am not running with Rosetta. I have 8 performance cores sitting there almost idle. Ableton reports using 5% CPU. So I am clearly not pushing things.
Last edited by ohthepain on Thu Feb 16, 2023 8:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

lincolnkid
Posts: 178
Joined: Tue May 03, 2005 3:03 pm
Location: Berkshire, England.

Re: Ableton 11 is Unusable on M1

Post by lincolnkid » Thu Feb 16, 2023 5:18 pm

I'm on a MacBook Pro M1 (10 core), macOS 13.2, Live 11.2.7, and all is good. For audio I use an Apogee Duet or an Apogee Groove.

What problems are you having?
[ Macbook Pro M1 Pro | Sequoia 15.7.3 | Live 12.3.2 | Apogee Duet / SSL 2 | Roland D-50, etc. ]

ohthepain
Posts: 18
Joined: Sat Apr 15, 2017 7:06 am

Re: Ableton 11 is Unusable on M1

Post by ohthepain » Thu Feb 16, 2023 8:08 pm

lincolnkid wrote:
Thu Feb 16, 2023 5:18 pm
I'm on a MacBook Pro M1 (10 core), macOS 13.2, Live 11.2.7, and all is good. For audio I use an Apogee Duet or an Apogee Groove.

What problems are you having?
Dropouts. Sounds like we are on the same machine and the same Live version.

I have a UAD audio interface but get the same behaviour out of the internal speakers.

No issues on my Intel MacBook.

misterpatrick
Posts: 16
Joined: Fri Jan 20, 2023 4:43 pm

Re: Ableton 11 is Unusable on my M1

Post by misterpatrick » Thu Feb 16, 2023 11:37 pm

I’m also using an M1 Pro and having no issues. I wonder if it’s a plug-in issue. I’m running Monterey 12.6 and no Rosetta.

yur2die4
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Location: Menasha, Wisconsin
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Re: Ableton 11 is Unusable on my M1

Post by yur2die4 » Thu Feb 16, 2023 11:53 pm

I’m on M1 MBP and have no issues but I keep holding back on updating Live / OS. I can go check to see which version of each I’m currently running. Maybe it’s a version issue.

Considering that the computers are pretty much the same, I’d imagine we can mostly rule our hardware issues.

lincolnkid
Posts: 178
Joined: Tue May 03, 2005 3:03 pm
Location: Berkshire, England.

Re: Ableton 11 is Unusable on M1

Post by lincolnkid » Fri Feb 17, 2023 7:59 am

ohthepain wrote:
Thu Feb 16, 2023 8:08 pm
lincolnkid wrote:
Thu Feb 16, 2023 5:18 pm
What problems are you having?
Dropouts. Sounds like we are on the same machine and the same Live version.

I have a UAD audio interface but get the same behaviour out of the internal speakers.

No issues on my Intel MacBook.
I get the odd glitch with a complex set when on internal speakers at buffer size 32 or 64. Not so bad on headphones. (I have noticed the coreaudiod process takes a lot more cpu when on speakers.)

But no problems at all on Apogee interfaces. Is your UAD device running native?
[ Macbook Pro M1 Pro | Sequoia 15.7.3 | Live 12.3.2 | Apogee Duet / SSL 2 | Roland D-50, etc. ]

ohthepain
Posts: 18
Joined: Sat Apr 15, 2017 7:06 am

Re: Ableton 11 is Unusable on my M1

Post by ohthepain » Fri Feb 17, 2023 12:57 pm

I tried changing out Avenger for bx_oberhausen. Far few dropouts with Oberhausen despite much higher CPU usage. Like 25% vs 13%.

I duplicated some chord tracks to increase the cpu to about 30% and started getting dropouts again.

The there is a slight CPU spike when the dropouts occur.

I also notice some dropouts in other applications when running Live in the background. Including YouTube and Audacity.

misterpatrick
Posts: 16
Joined: Fri Jan 20, 2023 4:43 pm

Re: Ableton 11 is Unusable on my M1

Post by misterpatrick » Fri Feb 17, 2023 4:53 pm

Here is one possible option. When you bring up glitches in other apps if makes me think you could have a audio Hz mismatch. I record and perform in 48KHz. At one point I was getting a bunch of dropouts in Logic and it appeared to be because I had Audio MIDI Setup (the Apple utility) set to 44KHz and Logic in 48KHz. This was also causing iTunes and other apps to crackle. Changing that solved the issue. Just one thing to check!

ohthepain
Posts: 18
Joined: Sat Apr 15, 2017 7:06 am

Re: Ableton 11 is Unusable on my M1

Post by ohthepain » Wed Feb 22, 2023 6:23 am

Great idea, thank you! Still glitching though :cry:

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