Terrible performance on M1 Pro 16 inch Macbook Pro

I thought I was going nuts, but at least I've found that I'm not the only one with these issues. I have a brand new M1 Max, 10 core, 32 GB, and I'm running several Intel plugins and it's basically impossible to get through a playback with all the glitching, crackling and crashes. The plugins that have been causing this are EZDrums, Arturia instruments, and Neural DSP Archetype plugins. I reached out to Apple Care Logic experts and it seems that they're barely collecting info on these issues from users. I'll try the Rosetta mode, but It's just frustrating that the plugin companies are releasing brand new plugins and versions that are not optimized for M1. The best we can do is reach out to them so they know it needs to be updated, and it's not just user ignorance. I'm going to send Arturia, ToonTrack and NeuralDSP e-mails and links to this thread. Thank everyone for sharing your experiences, I was about to return my MacBook thinking it was faulty.

@tannercundy

I think the problems I am have are due to not starting up in Rosetta. I have many Native Instrument plugins and checking some are just not ready to work with Silicon. I will test this when I get home. Not sure if this helps you at all https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/360014683497-Apple-Silicon-M1-Compatibility-News

Hey All,

I too have been experiencing these problems with horrifically bad performance. I was having issues like those described right when I got my machine, then I made some tweaks to the Audio preferences (enabling all processors, etc.) and it went away. Recently, I upgraded to 10.7.2 and everything came back again. The really glaring thing I noticed, which I hadn't noticed before, was extremely bad MIDI latency—in the range of 500ms.

Someone in a thread over on Logic Pro Help mentioned that they were running a new MBP without issues on 10.6.1, so I had a friend send me his copy (he has 10.6.2, but I figured it would be close to the same). I'm running on that now and all seems fine. So it does appear to be 10.7.x that's broken things. I haven't run it over any long sessions, so I'll post again if performance degrades over time, but so far so good.

So just to re-iterate I am running Mac OS Monterey 12.2.1 on a 14 inch Apple M1 Max with 10-core CPU, 32-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine, 64 Gigs. It is the highest spec machine you can get except for the hard drive.

I am NOT using Rosetta. I have tested 7 different project running off a slowish external USB drive (I will try direct from the laptop and report on that later). All projects are using an array of logic plugins, Native Instruments, Izotope and Accusonus and so far I am having no issues at all, none. I have not tested it with an audio interface yet.

This is my second Mac of this sort and the first one was riddled with all the above in this thread.

The system has been set up in exactly the same way that my first MBP was set up, exactly the same software. The only physical difference was the previous one had 32gigs of ram and it was one rank down on the cores. Also some of the software may have been updated in the two months I had to wait for this .

My next test will be using Traktor which also had issues.

If the lack of issues proceed, (praying to all the Gods that will listen!) I can offer three possible theories.

1. The software updates have made a difference.
2. Some tweaks have been made to the hardware manufacturing that we don't know about since my new machine. I can only imagine that if Apple did make subtle fixes in the production line it wouldn't make any noise about it because they don't want everyone sending back their original machines. This is obviously just a theory and may have no basis in reality.
3. The updates mean that it doesn't need Rosetta anymore and it is causing more harm than good?

My suggestion to those who have a machine riddled with issues, is update everything to the max. Test with and without Rosetta. using no external hardware. If this doesn't work and your machine is still in warranty, take it back, even if it is out of warranty, if it's consistently not working demand a new one!

I will keep you updated on my tests with Traktor, Premier and running things off the internal SSD.

BTW, rolling back to my 10.6.2 backup is fine again, as it was before.

I do notice that the last thread is also "kicking" on idle in 10.6.2, and has a similar weird pattern of jumping occasionally. But in 10.6.2 it idles around 14% and the jumps peak at around 25%, rather than 100% in 10.7.3.

Right. My conclusions then.

The same Surge-XT project I had problems with is still problematic but only under Rosetta 2. Natively it's fine.

I had a big template project I used for playing on Jamulus with about 14 tracks and prior to MacOs 12.3 and Logic 10.7.3, it just would not play nicely at all.

Due to Komplete Kontrol I'm still running under Rosetta 2, as I rely on that for my workflow, so switching to native is simply not an option until it's supported properly.

As a result, I've been unable to use this project for the last 5 months, but today, I can.

I tested a few other things that used to make my system fall over and that has completely stopped.

My issues are 99.99% fixed, the remainder is just that one Surge-XT thing, but at least I know a way around it.

I really didn't want a £3300+ paperweight sitting on my desk, so glad to see that's basically not so much of a problem any longer.

Those people that returned their machines really should have held onto them imo.

PS. I'm using a Native Instruments Komplete Audio 6 MK2 for Logic, Komplete Audio 2 for VoIP and Zoom, and Komplete Kontrol S61 MK2 as a keyboard.

These are all connected to the same Anker bus-powered hub, and that's how I've always run them, both on previous M1 MacBook Pro (what I call M1 Classic), and older Intel Mac's.

Until the Max, this hadn't been a problem, so I knew it was only a matter of time.

Glad to see that's pretty much done and dusted.

I tried presonus studio. No dice. I ended up replacing my interfaces from presonus to focusrite. Defaulted the bit rate to 48k, have had zero issues since. Once I saw what plugins weren’t compatible, I ditched them, and logic had been working fine for over two months now. Native

I can tell you from experience, the pre-Sonus, even with its own software, is no good on the new platform. On Intel it works flawlessly. And as far as I know I don’t believe that either universal audio apogee software, have compatible interface drivers for anything beyond Big Sur, on an M1. Sweetwater has a complete list of every vendor, that has migrated over to M1, or at least made viable software to make it run That’s what led me to focusrite. I am getting a weird thing though. Just yesterday I figured out how to make Mitty footboard controllers work with a amplitube5 as a plug-in in logic, and there’s latency because of it. If I run amplitube5 Stanalone, zero issues with latency. However, when I was running a wire pedal off of a Behringer fcb10, as a software instrument chained to my guitar track, there was some latency period that has me surprised

In my case the issue was with heavy CPU live tracks, ie. having a midi track selected during playback. This always caused issues on my old intel machine too, I had to select a benign track, like an audio track to stop the cracking and drop outs.

I sort of forgot this when I moved over to the new machine. It's a shame this is still a thing in this day and age, but apparently it is and it's no worse on my M1 than it was on the intel, in fact it might be slightly less bad....

UPDATE:

I made a roughly 40-track session in 44 100 kHz / 24 Bit. Performance Meter got max 10% of CPU usage on total 8 cores. Suddenly — no latency, no midi crackling and errors, no performance issues. Everything is fine.

So the problem is related to Sample Rate. Frustrating.

I too have an Apollo x6, on a MacBook Pro M1 Max - I too was having these issues, however for me they were solved simply by setting my Process Buffer Range to 'Small'. I realise this may not be a solution for all systems, but quite a few people in this thread have also had this help them. Good luck

Have you tried it without your audio interface and just native plugins? Do you get the same issues?

Installed 10.5.1 and now it seems everything works. Had to downgrade waves as well.

Update to Logic Pro 10.7.3, which was released earlier today.

The most obvious tip would be to update to Monterey 12.3

This fixed most of the issues for me.