Terrible performance on M1 Pro 16 inch Macbook Pro

New M1 MBP fully loaded 64 / 4TB.

Logic Pro is basically unusable now.

Can someone take screenshots of this thread and post it to an Apple support site that will actually read this?

We may have a shot that way of getting it corrected.

I too find this thread with my head in. my hands... £6k on M1 Pro Max MBP which has turned out to be a downgrade.

Going to have to go back to the i9 - though the hard drive is full as can be. Every time I load up a demanding soft-synth in Logic like Serum or Astra I get hopeless crackling and bit crushing of the audio, sample rate errors. Unusable..

Question is do we hold out for a fix or return the laptop while we still can?

Hi!

Yep, it's frustrating.. And yes, only when using Logic. I don't use other DAWs, but for example large Final Cut Pro X and Motion projects run perfectly even though they are very processor/graphics-intensive. So this is a Logic-related problem for me.

That's valuable information that Pro Tools seems to be okay! But at the same time it'd be hard to believe that Apple's own DAW doesn't work while 3rd party DAW works.. :D

With the sheer volume of posts on this thread (which I've been following for months now), I feel like I should post my own experience with running Logic Pro X on M1 hardware, just to point out that the problems described here are not universal.

I run Logic Pro X, with a mixture of native and non-native plugins (mainly the GGD Smash and Grab compressor, Studio Cabs, a couple of Neural DSP Archetype: amp-modeling plugins, along with a few NI software instruments), on a Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra SoC, 64 GB RAM, and a 2 TB SSD. It replaces my 8-core iMac Pro which also had 64 GB RAM and a 2 TB SSD. With my iMac Pro, I would run into problems with several of the different amp models I use, especially at 96 kHz: the new AmpliTube 5 amp models, like the Mk IIc+, the Mk V, and the Cali Tweed, would glitch, pop, break up, etc. So would the Archetype: Nolly and Plini models. It was fine for playback, so I could mix with those models. But it did make tracking kind of annoying; I’d just have to put up with it. I’d more or less given up on recording at 96 kHz.

But the Mac Studio has none of these problems. I can use three different amp models simultaneously, say the Archetype: Plini, and the Nolly models, along with say an AmpliTube Cal Tweed model ((which used to cause glitches all by itself), and record to all three tracks with no pops or glitches, even at 96 kHz. And only the AmpliTube models are even M1-native; the other ones are still Intel processes. GGD’s Smash and Grab, which is my go-to compressor for drums (some projects have eight or ten instances of Smash and Grab) isn’t M1-native either, but the Mac Studio seems to have no problems with it. Even at 96 kHz, I can track just fine, recording multiple tracks using non-native plugins with software input monitoring turned on, with a 256-sample buffer.

One oddity: I keep reading online that you have to run Logic in Rosetta mode to use non-M1-native plugins. Completely not true. I still have half a dozen non-native plugins, and Logic runs them just fine without being in Rosetta mode.

It seems like the Mac Studio can take whatever I can throw at it. And it does it with literally a sixth of the power (25 watts instead 150 watts), and the air coming out of the rear exhaust feels like it’s at room temperature. The iMac Pro runs at around 130° even when it’s just sitting there idling. The Mac Studio barely gets above 100°.

I don't doubt that the problems described on this thread exist. But they are certainly not universal.

I'm using the M1 Pro CPU. Your concerns seemed to center around sound editing as you mentioned midi files. Do you feel other programs are problematic also. If it's just sound editing software I'd lean more towards that being the problem than the OS. I've also got Parallels and Windows 11 installed and haven't noticed any particular problems with my 16-inch 2021 MBP received on day 1. A number of people have experienced some issues with the USB-C ports and don't know if that could be part of your problems?

It's possible that Logic is the problem, however this is owned and maintained by Apple, you would expect that it would work properly with the M1Max, however given the general state of Apple at the moment I'm really not surprised.

Also, people are reporting a lot of bugs with M1Max, regardless of the software/DAW used.

I found that things were OK on a MacBook Air M1 after the last Logic update, on Big Sur. However, I've since bought an M1 MacBook Pro which is running Monterey, and despite the fact that it handles my projects much more efficiently, I find that Logic hangs on opening any project at seemingly random points around 2/3rds of the time. So I have to force quit Logic and re-open until the project loads. The MacBook Air doesn't do this. Also, just one specific project which runs fine on the Air crashes at random points on the Pro, and I can't see any reason why. I've done a boot system check and no errors are found, but the behaviour does seem to imply either a general problem with Monterey, or a hardware problem with my system. Is anyone else here having issues with Logic just hanging on opening projects (for me this is all projects rather than specific ones)?

I don't know if people here have been trying the Ventura public betas, but the latest version is running okay for me now on my Audient iD22. I have this on a separate drive, so it's just a native/base install, but the demo template projects all run well. I did have some glitching with one of the spatial audio projects at first, but after setting my prefs to use all 10 cores it ran well.

So, it seems promising that Ventura will work well with the latest Logic versions... It would be nice if Monterey could get these fixes, but I guess we'll have to wait and see...

Apple purchased Logic Pro in July 2002, that's 20 years they've had to get it updated and prepared for a new operating system release. It is well known among Logic users that they are often used as Beta testers for new OS updates while other Apple applications seem to be prepared and compatible with new OS updates. Logic has had problems with new OS updates since Maverick. This IS the official Logic Pro forum.

Update for everyone. I run my sessions 48, and 128 buffer... but I've tired 256 - 1024, as well as well as 32 - 64 just to see. Nothing helps it.

However, I just tried the last thing I could think of and I installed reaper...I've been running everything as a audio units, have been looping playback with 30 tracks plus an imported video file, a Valhalla reverb and some instances of sound toys echo boy on every track - so like over 100 plugins total, and have had zero issue whatsoever. No audio pops, no restarting and no cpu overloads...Using my Apollo x6, all running on Arm 64 version of reaper. What could this mean?

Same here. It actually makes things worse! In fact, i got more stable performance when i set processing cores to 4...weird.

Are you running under Rosetta?

Also, I don't think there's any performance hit by running in High Precision (64-bit), at least that's what I heard from Logic devs.

Thanks for trying.... very odd that selecting the MBP mic as an input device would clear up the noise.

It’s not just logic. It happens in any DAW. I verified this with others, Studio 5 is supposed to be native and it does the exact same thing, with or without plugins.

Hey All, NI just dropped an M1/Monterey compatible Kontakt! Downloading now.