Terrible performance on M1 Pro 16 inch Macbook Pro

Same here, got the M1 Max with 32gb ram tho. Struggling with CPU spikes constantly, not a significant differens in workflow from my old 2014 15.4inch macbook pro with system overloads every 15mins....

Sadly I can't be of help but just to add that I am also having this issue

M1 Max 64gb and the system feels like a **** dog. CPU spikes every 30 seconds or so. Will randomly glitch and go to the start of a loop. It feels like a buggy **** mess.

Gutted!

I haven't fully got into the trouble shooting. My gut feeling is its my Native Instruments plug ins which are supported but they freely admit, with issues. I only noticed as I was mixing a big track and had a nightmare.

I'll try with a more basic mix and see if I'm generating the same issues without any third party plugins.

Hi. As someone who uses NI plugins almost exclusively, or at least third-party plugs via komplete Kontrol, I can say it's probably not that, unless you're discussing effects.

The issues I've personally faced have come from a variety of places, including most recently Surge-XT running natively in Logic without the use of Komplete Kontrol.

Until a few days ago, I thought all my issues were Native-Instruments-related as well, but nope.

Due to being blind, I have to run the majority of plugins via NI hardware, so haven't had much call to test outside of that ecosystem until Surge became accessible on it's own via Juce.

I put together a track-stack of 12 Surge instances to make a drum-paqtch, followed by three separate instances I used to make a track.

It took my M1 Max to it's actual knees. Never have I seen the like.

My gigging machine, a 3x cheaper 2020 Intel MacBook Air with only 16GB RAM can run the same project without crying about it. Unfathomably stupid.

I am with the rest of you here. absolute outrage. Got my new 16" today. so excited. but not now!

Not only was I forced to move to an M1 because my intel logic board melted cos of the fan failing and so destroying a three year old 2018 15" (my previous MacBook lasted for 10 years, like a tank.)

i then end up with this new machine and problems as you all describe. The rosetta setting is at least enabling me to keep doing some tracking but I have some huge sessions that I'm meant to be mixing and its impossible. maybe if we all keep making a noise about it Apple might sort it out quickly. Not looking forward to explaining that to my client tomorrow. feel like suing them for lost earnings! good luck people.

Same here. Although there are some 3. Party Plugins involved that are not M1 Native.

Contacted Apple support. They said they haven't heard of poor Logic performance on the new M1Pro/Max Macbooks. (lol)

But there should be a Logic update in the next weeks, though he does not know, whether these issues are adressed.

Problem could be; although the Plugins are M1 Native, Monterey ****.

Ableton is working fine though.

So the question to me is. Do I send it back and re-order in 3 Months when the issues have been taken care of (fingers crossed) or do I use it as a very expensive webbrowsing tool, while keeping my 2014MBP alive.

I'm not to keen on wiping the System and loosing a registration of my PluginAlliance Plugins but on the other hand I'm not so happy to loose 1-3 months of guarantee without using the thing properly and being treated as a beta tester.

[Edited by Moderator]

You are limited to 7 machines. Unfortunately it does not matter if you de-authorize the computer.

"Please note that you can’t reclaim the same plugin license from more than seven different machines, but if the same machine is deactivated more than once, it will not be counted again. So if you frequently need to move your licenses to new computers, please consider using a flash drive as one of your three devices (see USB Activation)."

So the smart thing to do is, if you test a system, use a thumbdrive for authorization. I wasn't smart though...

it might be time to start posting about these problems on twitter or Instagram and tagging apple. I’m tired of hearing “we’re unaware of any problems like this” and also, the “we don’t check the discussion threads” even though they really should is absolutely ridiculous.

Two things happened today.

1. I got a response from feedback I submitted via the Logic feedback form, from an actual human! Well, his name's Mike, and he wrote like one, but who knows what AI's Apple have cooked up these days?

Anyway, he asked me for a project that fails, so I sent one, along with the feedback report from the Logic help menu.

2. MacOS Monterey 12.2 is out today, currently downloading as I write this (so better hurry up) and one can only hope with fingers crossed, that this has undocumented fixes for Logic Pro.

There's nothing at all about it in the changelog, but when the original M1 MacBook's came out, they too, had audio dropouts and glitches, and that got fixed with one update but I don't recall which one.

Eagerly awaiting an install and reboot to see what happens.

I mean it surely can't get any worse, right?... Right?

Have I just killed it forever?

Since the Monterey update did help squat; Another question. Has anybody managed to install an older Logic Version e.g. 10.6.x one the M1pro/max MBPs?

The M1 crowd says, that everything was good until Version 10.7 came along.

So thats my last hope at the moment.

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.

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.

suprisingly, after some testing it seems like even when running logic under rosetta, setting the processing threads from 8 to automatic, the performance seems to be better and more stable. Projects with a track count in the 200s, which would gave me system overloads every once in a while, and would quite probably give a system overload when jumping to other applications while logic is still playing, doesn't seem to give me any system overloads when the processing threads are set to automatic.

This might be a Logic 10.7 vs 10.6 difference. in 10.6 the performance was noticably better with the processing threads set to 8.

Ah, interesting... So maybe the "performance tweak" of setting to max threads is only the best solution when you're running 10.6.x with many (or certain) Rosetta plugins? I'm currently running 10.6.2 with no real problems. I'm not launched in Rosetta mode, and I do have my threads set to all 10 cores. I kept my Logic 10.7.2 copy, so I may try 10.7.2 with the Automatic setting again, just out of curiosity.

My guess is that the "automatic" processing threads setting was tweaked quite a bit in 10.7 compared to 10.6. On 10.6 in my experience no matter the plugins, rosetta or native, setting the processing threads to the maxium number resulted in better performance. In 10.7 it seems to be the opposite, no matter rosetta or native..