Terrible performance on M1 Pro 16 inch Macbook Pro

To anyone who cares, I've been going back and forth non stop with these m1 issues. I have been able to either fully solve my pops / clicks / logic restarting playback due to cpu overload of a single core issue, or at the very least reduce them extremely. Here are the steps I took to investigate this and what I've come to understand.

I purchased an m1 MacBook Air, and I migrated my entire system from the Mac Studio onto it.

I then purchased a Razor thunderbolt dock -- that way I could easily connect every peripheral device, including my audio interface, which is a UA Apollo X6 - thunderbolt 3 version, to both setups, by simply plugging the single dock connector cable into either system, bringing them into theoretically the same environment, just on two different machines.

I then ran sessions in which I was having intermittent audio issues as described above, on both machines. I was trying anything I could to cause the machine to pop / click or restart playback -- often times this would happen if I was typing, using a browser or copy / pasting / editing within the DAW during playback.

I was able to make these issues happen on both systems. So, from there I began narrowing down the devices. I tested on both systems with my USB hub disconnected - it still happened. I tried it on both systems with the monitor I was using disconnected - it still happened. I tried it with no midi controllers or external hard drives connected - it still happened.

I then disconnected my Universal Audio Apollo X6 - connected via thunderbolt 3 cable, and I attempted to run just the session listening from the headphone jack of my laptop, after about 25 minutes of testing I could not reproduce the issue.

I then tried the same test with the Mac Studio, again, into the headphone output, and no UA device, tested it for a good 25-30 minutes, no issues.

I then re-connected the UA to both systems and within the first playback on both systems, I was able to re-create the issues.

I then tried an alternate thunderbolt 3 cable, the issues happened again.

I then updated the laptop to Ventura - as the Studio is my work machine and I cannot risk it not running older sessions.

Ventura on the m1 air made no such difference as far as the audio issues were going. They happened with the UA, and did not happen when it was disconnected.

I then went to Guitar Center, purchased a cheap Focusrite 2i2 3rd gen, USB C device. Ran my monitors into it and I've been playing the problem sessions with it and have yet to hear any audio issues. Across both systems. I've even had it on play during the entire time I was typing this and still haven't had the issue happen.

I've called apple support and filed a ticket with UA. Apple told me that it is on UA and not them to fix the issue, as when doing playback with the built in audio output, there are no issues.

I think I have it solved! I also had the same problem on my 16" M1 Max - I tried increasing the I/O Buffer Size, increasing the Process Buffer Range, changing the Multithreading to 'Playback only' - nothing worked, then I noticed on this video he increases his Processing threads from Automatic: https://youtu.be/CTWbLt1g2_c?t=120 So, I changed my Processing Threads from 'Automatic' (which seemed to only use 8 cores) to 10 (8 High Performance Cores) and immediately problem solved. The app is not running under the "Open Using Rosetta" option. For my own interest I tried running a very basic session on all of the different Processing thread options, they all gave me clicks & pops, the only option that works was 10. Hope this helps.

Okay this is what seemed to be the solution for me in this situation.

I've been using Logic on my M1 mac mini from pretty much right after they're released. 2020 december. To my surprise even then, when running logic under rosetta, I had zero issues with 3rd party plugin compatibility, which is quite remarkable since back then basically no plugin was apple silicon native.

When running Logic under rosetta, setting the processing threads in the preferences from automatic to 8 resulted in a big jump in performance.

So by now a big part of the plugins I use has the native arm version. So I tried running my projects without rosetta. Then I got these random cpu spikes and system overloads..

What solved this for me somewhat counterintuitively, is setting the processing threads from 8 to automatic. No cpu spikes, stable consistent performance this way. To be honest the cpu meter in logic is actually more stable compared to when running logic under rosetta. This huge project that was running okay with rosetta but would give me system overloads every once in a while, didn't give me any since running logic native.

So this is with the original M1 not M1 pro or max.

same issues (pops, clicks, overload, cpu spikes) on a M1max, 64gb. Pops, clicks, 2 cores are spiking while using Apogee Ensemble Thunderbolt.

In a specific case of a 3 track project - I have all the issues listed in this thread but they go away when switching the input to my Mac internal mic instead of the Apogee. I have the same issues when using 10.7 and 10.6.2 on the m1max.

My 2015 machine runs the same project without any issues.

Ok, switching the Input (In Logic's Preferences/Audio) to Mic stops the crackling?

One thing everyone should be doing is using Logic's Preferences to setup the audio interface and setting the Mac's System Preferences/Sound to built-in audio. This was the recommended way to run Logic years ago. Give Logic exclusive use of the interface. Also, to be safe as MacOS becomes more like iOS, run your projects at 44.1 or 48kHz 24-bit. All bets are off if you're running a higher sampling rate. New ARM based processor and a new MacOS being converted to the iOS development platform, problems are to be expected. Make sure your interface clock is set to internal.

Hi so as I mentioned, I'm one of the developers on Surge, and the user who posted here about surge shared their logic file with me. https://github.com/surge-synthesizer/surge/issues/5876

Upon opening the logic project I saw what all of you did, namely just garbage performance. In the case of that project, just completely unplayable. But that performance gap isn't in surge it's somewhere in logic land, I think, especially since I was able to take a set of steps to resolve it. I am curious if these steps help anyone else. (That project has 15 instances of surge some of them using our most CPU intensive features. Once resolved it uses roughly 40% of 4 of my performance cores to play in realtime to the speakers with a buffer size of 64; before resolved it wouldn't even start).

What I did was as follows (I'm on M1Max MBP pretty close to full spec).

1. Quit logic
2. Open terminal and type `sudo killall -9 AudioComponentRegistrar`. This will kill and restart the registrar.
3. Restart logic
4. Audio/Preferences - pin to 8 threads on 8 performance cores
5. Logic/Plugin Manager - rescan Surge XT

After those steps it played fine. I then upgraded to os 12.2 and it kept working.

(The reason I tried this is because I did an x86 only build first and that didn't help).

I'm not sure why this fixed the problem (I have a completely half baked theory) but I am curious if these steps help anyone else. If so it may help validate or reject my half baked theory.

If after doing this you have logic projects which use surge and still perform like garbage on lpx10.7/m1max then i would love to know over on that GitHub issue (or here too but I'm not that active on these forums).

As I’ve said before, I firmly believe that it’s in Coral audio. It also has to do probably, with the software that some of us are using, for plug-ins, for interfaces etc. up until two weeks ago, I had eight month old pre-Sonus quantums, running on thunderbolt two. On my brand new Mac book pro, 14 inch 64 gigs of RAM, 6 TB hard drive, absolutely no reason whatsoever, for any kind of latency issues, or cracking or popping.

After reading down in this group, I noticed, that others were having issues playing back YouTube audio, or Apple music audio, and I further solidified my idea, that it was definitely an issue with core audio. So I ran Logic in Rosetta. On those same interfaces. No problems whatsoever tracking 13 drum mics, live guitar, live bass live vocals, All with multiple plug-ins running. Switched it back, the popping came back. So I said to myself, I don’t want to spend more money but I’m gonna try this is an experiment. And went out and bought two focusrite claret 8 pre+ . I’m still waiting for the other one to get here, but these run on USBC, and unfortunately cannot be daisy chained, and I have no idea how I’m going to clock them when they only have word clock out. Hopefully they’ll clock internally fine. But I can say this much. I have no more issues with audio.

These problems have been driving me absolutely mad as well. Logic has basically been unusable since I got my new computer. I've tried absolutely everything, but I believe I've found a solution that seems to work so far.

In Library-Audio-Plugins-Components, remove anything that has a date last modified that is older than 2019. I had disabled these plugins already in the Plugin Manager, and nothing changed, but once I removed them from the folder, Logic performance significantly improved. For me, it was an old version of Superior Drummer causing the issue. Even when it was not engaged in my sessions.

I'm still using Rosetta, but I can at least work for now. Just posting because I know how infuriating this is. Hope it helps.

Thanks to all here with the Rosetta detour proposition: Tried it with GarageBand and really solved all my problems. Although I had to reauthorize some of my plugins as it may have appeared to them as a fresh GB installation it was a relatively seamless transition.

The main issue seems to be the Audio Units hosting processes between the DAW (no matter if it's Logic Pro or GarageBand) and the plugins. These are now completely gone due to my activity monitor. OTOH it now shows that GB under Rosetta can eat up more than 115% of the CPU power (how is that even possible?) - depending on the session complexity.

I'm pretty sure you could use GB or Logic native (without Rosetta) if you disable the activation of Audio Units in the preferences. Downside: You cannot use any 3rd party AU plugin.

Update: I asked Waves Tech Support about it and did get this answer today that may also be valuable for Logic Pro users:

"Please note that Clarity Vx and Clarity Vx Pro plugins require the Rosetta 2 emulator to run on Apple M1 processors. We are working on adding native M1 support for these plugins soon. ETA is currently not available. In the meantime, please run Garageband in Rosetta mode to use the plugin."

All my other native and non native plugins now work fine with my DAW in native mode though.

OK - been doing some more testing.

Latest Monterey 12.3.1 update - Logic Pro 10.7.3 on MacBook Pro 16" M1 Max 32GB

My projects are not opening natively - they will open if I switch Logic to Rosetta mode.

I ran the laborious task of finding out which plugin was stopping the project from opening up under a native version of Logic

1. Open the project within Logic running in Rosetta mode
2. Remove a particular manufactures plugins from the whole project and save the project as a new name
3. Flip Logic back to native mode and open the project.
4. Repeat until the project opens under a native version of Logic

I did this process over and over until I narrowed it down to the particular manufactures plugins that were giving me grief. There would have to be 30-40 plugs I use - so this took some time.

For me - it was iZotopes Ozone 9 plugins. I removed all their plugins from channel strips and master buss and it works.

A native running version of Logic Pro plays through the whole song without any issues - minus their plugins.

Looking at their web site - they have missed their deadline of a Rosetta version of Ozone 9 by Q1 2022. Hopefully this is not too far off.

The project has plugins from Waves, Native Instruments, Toontrack - they all seem to work. The project is completely dead in the water with iZotope plugins loaded.

Maybe the process listed above might help someone else track down the reason why their old Logic projects are failing.

Hi all,

I wanted to come back to this idea that has been mentioned earlier in the thread. I went to Logic Preferences and Audio and switched to the 10 core processing threads. This seems to have definitely had a positive effect so far.

I have a project with live acoustic guitar (with Logics EQ and Space Designer), Alchemy track and three EastWest Opus sounds. That's it...on a new 14inch M1 Max. I have done the most recent updates to Monterey and Logic and yet as soon as I got into my 4th and 5th tracks I started noticing the CPU spikes causing the pops. I am also using Logic in Rosetta since EastWest Sounds are not native at the moment.

When the Preferences/Audio was set to Auto on the number of cores, I could see the CPU maxing on the two far right bars. First time out after switching to the 10 cores I immediately saw a more balanced usage across the meter and the spikes/pops were gone. I am hoping this does the trick for me. I think a few of you might have already tried this without success but give it a go if you have not done so yet.

I will update if things change as I do tend to end up with about 15-25 tracks with added FX.

I finally found time to do some more testing. What I did first was to remove all non-Native plugins. I used a handy little free app from iMazing called Silicon to check: It isn't obvious from the UI, but you can drag a plugin onto the interface and it will report to you where it's native or Rosetta.

I cleared the AU cache then rebooted the machine. AU validation went fine and I launched the included Ocean Eyes project. This still gave me stuttering audio, though interestingly the CPU spikes on the last core were totally gone—when running Rosetta plugins, the last CPU core regularly spikes anywhere from 50% to 100%. So it seems like maybe the Rosetta plugins run on their own thread, which is totally reasonable (and that thread takes a bit of a thrashing from Rosetta). Anyway, what's also interesting about this is that it means the drop outs and choppiness—and occasional jump-back in time—during playback are not really related to CPU spikes. That makes sense to me, since they've always seemed like synchronization errors to me (mostly because of the jumping back in time).

My next step was to switch to built-in audio, running on external headphones, which still caused playback errors. However, once I actually unplugged my Audient ID22 USB interface and relaunched Logic it played fine. It's been fine ever since. So, it does seem to be related to the way Logic is using USB interfaces (and imho is to do with some kind of syncing issue—perhaps the T2 bug mentioned earlier in this thread?). This experience suggests that those with solid systems running TB interfaces have probably got the best working solution, for now. I'm going to have to figure out what interface to go for, and hopefully find a good home for my Audient... It's a shame because I've been really happy with it—perfect solution for a simple and great sounding interface. Bummer. (Not to mention having to drop $$$ on a new one running TB.)

Since I really need some of my Rosetta plugins I have I'm going to try running with my Audient totally disconnected, on headphones. My guess is that the spikes will return but playback will be fine. Fingers crossed. Of course, Logic 10.6.3 also still works fine for me (which of course suggests that the T2 bug may not be the issue), so I may just stick with that until the Logic team works it out.

Hope that helps. I'll report back on whether Rosetta plugins + built-in audio only is stable.

[Link Edited by Moderator]

Just to update this thread as well, I did some extensive testing with the Roland Jupiter-8 plugin as it was easily choking the whole system taking AUHostingService over the top.

The result is that the setting that has the most effect is to set the Process Buffer Range to LOW.

I can now run a handsome amount of very intensive plug-ins on my 16" MBP M1 Pro and the processing threads stay fairly balanced.

Of course this IS A BUG but I hope this helps some of you. It was driving me nuts!

It is also worth mentioning that the 256 for buffer was on average the best (apart from Roland System-1 that needs more)

I sincerely hope that someone can forward this info to the Logic team as I am sure they want to look into this.

Check the audio i/o buffer size, and increase the sample count.

I found Logic Pro X/Mainstage had it set at 16 samples. Bumping that up to 64 samples resolved all my issues. The CPU load is much lower everything performs wonderfully now.

Check under Preferences > Audio then to the right of Sample Rate, you'll see the button for Advanced Settings.

This takes you to the screen that allows you to manipulate the I/O Buffer size.

As is the case with these audio apps, your specific set up (instruments, plug-ins) will have an impact on far you can reduce the i/o sample count without running into issues. You may need to set it at 128 or even higher.

Background:

I have a 2021 14" M1 MacBook Pro and initially I was having some issues with Logic Pro X and MainStage. I was very surprised because both of these apps worked pretty well using my much older (15" 2009 MBP; 13" 2011 MBA) hardware.

I've used my M1 MBP with a Steinberg UR22mk2, an ancient PreSonus Audiobox USB, and a Monoprice headphone amp/USB DAC - as well as with built-in audio.

The same audio i/o setting tweak applies to all.