Ableton on Mac M1

The Lounge Other Gear
101

I upgraded to 11.2 and Ableton so far is running great on my new M1 MacBook Pro. I finally am using Diva without fear of CPU crackling like on my old PC.

I was curious about a few things related to MacBooks? - Does a really small audio interface exist that also has MIDI I/o? It would be amazing to have a super small one (it could even use 1/8 jack inputs) that I could plug into the patchbay and sample my synths with.

Also for those of you who use Blackhole what is the easiest way to switch it on and off? For example when I use it to sample from YouTube, it works great but after that I want to go back to just audio out of my headphones. The main reason is that I can not adjust the volume with Blackhole as an output.

I would love to figure out a smooth way around this. I currently have to tweak the Audio/Midi setup, abelton’s sound settings and the Macs sound settings every time I want to switch back.

102

Maybe not as small as you’re thinking, but Motu M2(or M4) is usb powered and has 2 (or 4)in/out and a MIDI in and out and is relatively light, even if bulkier than you are looking for. The Motu also has audio loopback as an input choice (with or without mix from other inputs), so anything you listen to out of the interface can easily be recorded as an input and so Blackhole wouldn’t be needed.

It would be interesting to see a mini interface that used 1/8" jacks for midi and audio, but I’m not aware of any.

[edit: I’ve used my M4 for a little over a year and I love it]

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103

Damn that sounds really great, thank you. A lot of times I do work on my sofa with no interface, just using the trackpad but honestly if I just have to plug that in to sample, it probably is still less of a hassle than black hole.

What I love about this MacBook Pro is it has 3 thunderbolt inputs, which is plenty for the way I am working. I thought I’d need a hub, but I really do not.

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104

Hi so I just got this M2 and it’s really nice. Just curious what tips you may have for optimizing it. I believe I have the newest firmware and the new Mac drivers. I noticed that the buffer can’t really get that low in a medium sized project without major dropouts. It is basically unusable below 256 buffer. I may just be spoiled by the RME in my studio which I pretty much have locked in at 64.

I also am not sure if I should run it at 48 or 44.1. I need to learn the Mac audio settings better, coming from Windows. I noticed if I plug it in sometimes I have to power cycle or just listening to Spotify gives me small clicks and pops in the audio, not sure why there.

I don’t always keep the M2 plugged in, I don’t need it all the time. So I need to figure out the best way to fire it up when needed with no issues.

Besides that stuff, which I just need to figure out, I think the device is great.

105

…there’s never a one size fits all scenario…

and when it comes to computing and operatingsystems, that statement grows in value and truth like nothing else in modern days…

and that’s the big point for apple ecosystems…osx/ios are simply tailored for ALL their own computing backbones…

while windows can be found and has to run on anything that claims to compute…

and even the long short comings of the gamers planet starts to crush within the next two years…apple is ready to compete for real also here…

i worked throughout all 90ies with an apple mac quadra 650…running a cpu with 33 mhz !!!
and while collegues of mine bought their next and next new superfast pc based cpu pentium weapons, i was still able to get every audio job done with no fuzz ever, on that same, once pricey yes, but worth every penny end of the decade totally “outdated” machine…

and nowadays, even that old “too pricey” argument is down the drain…
u can buy a brand new macbook air for under 1000 bux…
u can buy a brand new mac mini for under 1000 bux…
and if u read their techdetails, u still might think, pooo, that sounds lame and poorish in comprison what the pc world has to offer…
but that’s only blurry by numbers…

tru benchmarks speak a different language…

so u might get one of those and never look back, since they simply do what u want them to do…
since intel is out, they even brake no sweat anymore…no matter how hi ur taskdemands might be… :wink:

but yes…for some reason ableton is still not really m1 optimized…but that’s only a question of short terms…since the most common used daw of the actual planet can’t afford for too long not to fully harvest the new potentials of apple silicons power horses…
most pro and semi pro users got ableton running on a mac for too many good reasons…
but hey, meanwhile, in 99% of all cases u won’t even feel it’s realtime translated by rosetta…

most third party code companies did the full compatibilty jump for silicon already quite a while ago…
the rest will follow soon…no worries…

106

I’m running Ableton with tons of plugins on my 2015 Macbook Pro and it works great, so I can only imagine the new M1 machines fly. I’ll probably pick one up after we get details on the Macbook Air.

My brand new HP “Elitebook” on the other hand (supplied by work) buckles and lags if I open too many Excel sheets at once. This isn’t even mentioning how generally ugly, buggy and awful the Windows OS is. The build quality is mediocre as well. No amount of spec in the world would ever make me go back to using a Windows machine at this point.

2 Likes
107

Could you elaborate? What specs should be preferable then?

108

There must be something wrong. I’ve been running the Motu M4 for a year on a MacBook Air M1 with a buffer size of 64 and have had no problems with drop-outs or other glitches. As DAWs I use Logic and (since the release of 11.1) Ableton Live under mac OS 11.6.2.

One thing to note regarding Apple Silicon machines is that a buffer set too large has a counterproductive effect on CPU load. Sounds strange, I know. The M1 seems to be different in many ways.

109

I just have a soft spot for those 2012 quadcores.
I wouldn’t recommend buying them as your rig now…unless you’re using them as VEP nodes. Make a super compact 200$/node setup.

They also make great little home esxi hosts. They run baremetal out of the box.

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110

Right it may be a setting, Im not sure that’s why I posted. I am on Monterrey and downloaded the updated Mac drivers for the M2. My Mac is the new M1 MacBook Pro 16, so it has a ton of juice.

I opened a project that’s running at around 35% or so CPU in Ableton 11.1 and with the buffer at 64 it barely played back. That’s why I dropped it to 256, it is the lowest audio rate I can get clean audio playback with.

Is there any optimization guide I should look at? Maybe the new driver isn’t as good? I don’t know, but I feel like it’s something I can fix.

111

I have 3 external SSD’s on my Mac Mini 2018 (6 Core i7) running Catalina. The SSD’s are setup 1 for Archival, 1 for DAWs and 1 for Samples. NP…

112

I also use the latest driver and firmware. Therefore, I do not think that the problem comes from there.

I don’t know of any tips or settings. I suspect that you are running Ableton 11.1 in Rosetta mode and the cause may be some plug-in(s).

Maybe the information on this page will help you:

113

Not sure I’ll be much help, I’m a windows user… and with Ableton and a not super new laptop, I run at 512 samples to avoid crackle, which seems to be more a limitation of my laptop architecture than a limitation of the M4 I use.

114

i was watching appletv today and my shiny powerful mbp was incapable of playing it full screen without introducing cracking audio.

one of the most powerful machines theyve ever made… cant play a stereo audio stream with video.
quality control :frowning:
sorry . off topic…

latest ableton is smoother, running roland cloud things are nice… definitely need a bigger screen than 14inch though.

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115

That is real helpful thank you. It appears that Diva (I tried multicore armed and disarmed)may have been causing this. I’m a little bummed that the diva monster still can not be tamed by a 16 inch M1Pro MacBook, but it’s not the end of the world. I bounced it to audio and am able to run at 64 now, so that is good news.

And on the Plugin compatibility I guess it safe to say that any plugin that does not show up in the VST3/VST2 list and only is in AU, is not updated for silicone yet? This may explain why my Moog Minitaur editor was acting super weird and causing clicks as well.

116

I’ve heard from other users that Diva is ported to Apple Silicon. They are all excited about the performance boost it has provided. I can’t say anything about it because I don’t own Diva.

If the same plug-in is available in Ableton Live as AU but not as VST, you can assume it’s still an Intel version. This happened to me with Vital. I thought the plug-in was already available as a native version for Apple Silicon. Then I did some research and found that it actually doesn’t run native yet.

117

Funny … I just wanted to ask how Diva performs on the communities’ M1s. I own a non pro M1 … and Diva is the only plugin that is still glitching. I don’t see a huge performance increase. I even switched from Rosetta to native … from 128 to 64 samples … now I’m going to 32 – no huge difference :smiley: only for some presets though. Only at 256 samples it’s okay but still glitching

32 samples:

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256 samples:

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118

Nice, I knew I wasn’t insane…haha.

Do you get better performance having it open in Rosetta? I wonder if that is a thing I should mess with when using incompatible plugs…I will probably keep it as is for now and just bounce Diva to audio.

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119

A dev gave me a cheat code I think! Just checked twice …Ableton is running without Rosetta.

Now iZotope Vinyl + Trash2 are back in the game!

Cheatcode seems to be: press option-Key while rescanning your plugins library.

What a wonderful day! Thought they were not working anymore! But maybe just overlooked it and it’s nothing special :slight_smile: Now that I think about it … I remember that there is this AU compatibility layer.

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Quite CPU hungry

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120

Hi! I tool the dive and bought an Mac Mini M1. I have my ableton live 10 running under Rosetta with the rme digiface. It seems to be running flawlessly at 32 samples latency.

The one I can’t get to work is my Usamo plugin. I can get ableton to see the au plugin, but when loaded it stalls and freezes live.

The vst is in the right folder, but live crashes scanning and then switches off the vst on the next start.

What am I doing wrong here? The usamo plugs should work natively, according to the -very friendly- maker…

Hope someone has a tip. This plugin is really all I need at the moment.

Thanks!