Ableton Forum

I just got a MacBook M1 Max and installed the latest version of Ableton (12.3.2) and Expressive Chords is using a crazy amount of CPU.

A set with an instance of EC and nothing else (no instrument) hits 32% CPU when I hold down a note. As I hold down the note, CPU meter drops down to 2% over the course of about 3 seconds but the spike is enough to cause overload and dropouts when I put a synth after it.

Granted I'm running at 64 sample buffer but for comparison, Drift default patch set to unison with 32 note polyphony hits 15% when I hold down a 4 note chord manually (no EC).

How does a chord util use twice the CPU as a synth?

This is definitely not normal.
First (maybe too obvious, but...) question: is your EC version up-to-date?

I downloaded it from within the Live browser, it's the version with the Learn function so I'd assume it's the latest but not sure how I would verify?

Yes, that's the last one then.
I'd suggest trying to reset Live.

Update: it's a Tahoe thing.

I noticed a few other M4L devices causing crazy CPU usage as well (Melodic Steps for example).

I downgraded to Live 12.2, which is what I was running on my old machine without issue - no luck.

I downgraded from Tahoe to Sequoia (that was an adventure) and everything is back to normal. I didn't like Tahoe anyway...

Ope, never mind, I forgot to set my buffer back to 64 samples.

So it seems like a buffer size issue - for Expressive Chords and Melodic Steps at least, CPU usage goes up dramatically as I change the buffer size from 256 to 128 to 64. Native devices (I tried Drift & Meld) don't seem to suffer from this issue (CPU usage goes up but more or less linearly).

The plot thickens. Moving over to the M4L forum viewtopic.php?p=1836204#p1836204