What plugins/devices are you using and how many instances of them?
Live 11 works fine on my venerable iMac because so far I’ve only loaded less than five instances of Lion or M4L devices.
Just anecdotal, but my 2011 iMac barely runs Live 11. It’s too frustrating to do much work at all. Every click brings on the beachball/candywheel for a good while.
I’ve gone back to Reason 11 for now to make music - which runs just fine by the way with lots of tracks and devices. I don’t understand why one DAW can run so smoothly while the other shits the bed constantly. Highly disappointed with Live’s performance over the past few years. I’ve paid for tons of upgrades, a Push 1 & 2, and max4live devices, so I’m invested and still interested in working with Live.
I’m an Ableton fan when it works, but this is too much stress for it to be creative or fun. I’ll try again when I can buy an Apple silicon iMac sometime this year, hopefully. 
(FWIW, I hardly ever use more than 12-15 tracks. Maybe 1-2 instances of Diva, Synplant, TAL Sampler, and maybe 5-7 instances of fx like Valhalla. Rest of my instruments and fx are Ableton stock devices and a couple max4live devices here and there. Plus I freeze tracks like crazy.)
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personally i wouldn’t buy that one or any intel mac. i’d wait for the apple silicon updates whenever they happen. if i needed to buy something to fill the gap i’d look for a 2015 macbook pro for $1000 or something.
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It still works fine, I was just agreeing that it uses more CPU for the same projects vs 10.
Right, I was just curious as to what plugins/devices you’re using and how many instances, as these details rarely come up in this type of discussion. This would be useful information for those of us who are less familiar with Live and are considering what computer to get. 100x more useful than just “buy the fastest you can afford, with the most storage you can afford”. which has been repeated so much, and so thoughtlessly that it’s useless these days.
I recall one person stating that his typical Live Set was 80 tracks with 15 plugins/devices per track or something like that.
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I hear you.
I use a UAD satellite for CPU intensive plugins like reverb, but excluding those, typical project will have 25 to 35 tracks, and 4 or 5 busses with channel strip and bus strip plugins on them (Lindell series) plus others (3-5 plugins, per track).
3-5 of those tracks will be VSTi tracks (typically Kontakt, Reaktor, Omnisphere, etc).
10-15 of the channels also use an external instrument (synths and eurorack modules).
4 of the tracks are overbridge audio tracks, and 4 midi tracks going to the Digitone.
The rest will be audio tracks (rendered eurorack/synths)
a few M4L devices scattered around the project.
5 send/return channels (mostly external effect or UAD plugins).
Master track has a master chain containing around 5-7 plugins (some of those are analysis plugins like Metric AB, some are dynamics (bus comp and limiter), master EQ, and Sonarworks Reference.
Final project normally gets boiled down to fewer tracks, but the above is typical while creating, and trying different things.
Live 11 CPU meter reads 35 to 40% on average, sometimes 50-60% if there’s CPU hungry VSTis.
So still quite a bit of headroom left, but 10 was a bit less resource hungry, and definitely more snappy with similar projects.
It’s worth noting that without using the UAD satellite for reverbs and other hungry plugins, the average would be a lot higher. decent reverbs are the biggest culprit.
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Thank you! Very interesting and useful details.
The M1X is the best choice but 2019” i9 2.4 must be better than 2015 Macbooks or am I wrong? I’ve got a mid 2015 MacBook Pro 2.2 quad core 16 GB and it has serious problems with keeping up with Ableton 11.
I come from Studio One 4 where a full project that I did landed on a total of 22% in CPU load. Now I need to freeze tracks like a maniac in Ableton 11.
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Peronally I find that using the same plugins and system settings, Live 11 uses nearly the same amount of CPU as Live 10. Obviously if I use something like the Hybrid Reverb (not available in L10) then the usage goes up conciderably but then I’m no longer making an equivalant comparison.
Which buffer size can you use on a project that you described? How low can you go without any issues?
It will run on a 128 buffer, but CPU usage gets pretty high, so I typically run with 256 @ 4800 sample rate.
I’m running 2 external displays which may also have an impact on CPU usage.
Here’s the spec for reference:
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The M1 machines are quite capable at this point but Live 11 isn’t optimized for them yet (or it seems many other machines for that matter). Whatever the M1X looks like won’t matter if the software isn’t improved.
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yeah… it’s faster for sure but there’s lot’s of complaints about the i9 8 core and i don’t know how much faster it truly is to an i7quad 2.9.
my thinking is i’d want whatever the next apple silicon macbook pro is and it’s probably close.
if you’re planning to get a laptop to last for say 5 years and you absolutely have to have one now then go for whatever makes sense…
if i was in your shoes i’d wait or get something cheap to hold me over. used macbook pros will always be around… so
the 15inch 2019 models are getting pretty cheap actually… so there’s that
Not sure what complaints you’re referring to, but the throttling issues were related to the older i9 models with the class action on the butterfly keyboard. The throttling issues were resolved along with a new (back to the old style) keyboard on the late 2019 models.
I had the prior one with all the issues, had it replaced twice, and it was still plagued with issues. The 2019 one I got to replace it has been solid.
If/when a new M based 16" is released, there will be some good deals on the late 2019 intel models.
As for speed comparisons, the geekbench scores give a rough idea of performance, I think the single and multi core scores give a realistic comparison of performance between models.
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This the content of the email I got from Apple, which was hinted at earlier but not directly quoted.
Spring loaded.
Please join us for a special Apple Event broadcasting
from Apple Park. Watch the show online at apple.com.April 20, 2021
10:00 a.m. PDT
No doubt this is when they will announce the much-anticipated Apple Raincoat and Umbrella Cover
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4/20 - could be apple weed
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that’s good to hear. i read a lot of chatter about a handful of issues. i have a 2018 i9 6 core and it’s pretty fast but gets really hot. the macs fan control app helps because i can turn on the fans earlier and moderate the temperature.
there’s a long thread at gearspace with info about specific issues people had/have w/the 2019 8core.
i think real world i7/i9 comparisons have certain models performing really close.
anyway… there seems to be plenty of 2019 models used… just gotta make sure if buying used ya get a good one.
is the new KB a return to old style or is a hybrid design or a new design entirely? seems the profile and key travel are similar though improved to the butterfly KB we all hate… though w/a different/better mechanism
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I luckily haven’t had any issues with mine to date. the keyboard is the old scissor one essentially. I preferred the feel of the butterfly one, but mine failed, twice, so I’ll take the scissor one 
Only issues I’ve noticed on places like Gearspace were fan noise related. Mine run most of the time due to running two external monitors, and/or when I run CPU heavy programs, but I’m ok with it, I’d rather that than a throttled CPU, or other issues. Luckily I don’t do much that would be affected by the noise. For any mic recording, I just run a longer mic lead/preamp lead, and keep it away from the fan noise.
The new M chips run a lot cooler, so fan noise should be significantly reduced on future models.
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so is it the 2019 i7’s with the Touch Bar and touch id that are the MacBooks that are not good for Ableton?
I don’t think the Touch Bar is the problem to watch out for. It’s the T2 chip from what I recall
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