Ableton Forum

Hi !

I recently got my new Macbook Pro M4 to replace my old Macbook Pro M1 and I am really annoyed to see lower performances with the new one than with the old one.

The M4 beats the M1 in all benchmarks when it comes to CPU but when I open the same Live Project on both machines, I got 1.75-2 times higher CPU load on the M4. (20% on the M1 Pro; 35-40% on the M4)

Anyway, I tried adding more tracks to both projects simultaneously and it looks like the M1 gets more quickly to overload (>100%).

Anything can explain that ?

I am a bit scared cause I had to opportunity to get the M4 Pro instead of the Base M4 and didn't take it as I thought I would have better perfs than with the M1 (that was pretty good for my needs). Can't send the M4 base back to get the M4 Pro as I got it from my job and they only allow exchange for defects. (now I gotta wait 3 years to get a new one)

One thing : I didn't install Ableton on the new one but used the Mac migration tool.

Are all settings the same? Sample rate and buffer size?

Because the M4 pro (depending on the variant) has fewer performance cores than the m1 pro. And Ableton Live, like many other DAWs, only uses the performance cores.

And these marketing benchmarks should be taken with a grain of salt.