Anyone have tips or advice on Maschine cpu issues?

24

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  • D-One
    D-One Moderator Posts: 2,811 mod

    I agree and would not recommend using this sort of app neither, they have improved a lot since back when they were just a scam but they still use shady marketing to trick people into thinking they will magically speed up their computers.

    I had the same mac as you do now and got a 900$ M1 Macbook Air, it's about 10x faster, it almost rivals my desktop computer for Audio and it doesn't even have fans.

    Regardless you should not be having issues as severe as you do, I still think you should look at your CPU temperatures when the issue oocures to check if you're thermal throttling to not, up to you tho...

  • Kubrak
    Kubrak Member Posts: 2,772 Expert

    I am not on Mac..

    M2 is very similar to M1 CPU vice. It has faster CPU clock, more RAM and some CPU improvements. (Beside that much stronger iGPU, and AI computations....) So, CPU vice, if something runs on M1, it should run on M2.

    Once NI SW runs natively on M1, it should run natively on M2....

    How much RAM one needs for music production greatly depends, what music one does and how.... For me 8 GB were fine for few years till I have started to use symphonic Kontakt libraries. I upgraded memory to 16 GB. It was OK for a year, till NI has released Cremona Quartet Kontakt library. One instrument may take 4-8 GB.... 16 GB became rather low.

    Now, 32 GB will do for me, but I bought PC with 64 GB to be safe for few years....

    M2 computers should come in month, two, but I do not know which models. For sure it will be the most simple ones. If you strugle with 8 GB RAM now, I would go for M2 model with more RAM. It has 24 GB, I guess. Or took M1 Pro (32 GB), or wait for M2 Pro...

  • ozon
    ozon Member Posts: 1,302 Expert

    Have you never installed nor reinstalled the macOS on your Mac Mini?

    It is could be called a factory reset, however it’s not like you push a button and your Mac is reset. It’s a rather longish procedure which will wipe the harddisk so you will also lose all your data. Thus it is necessary to make backups of all relevant data (or better the whole disk) before proceeding.

    However, if you’ve never done this before, I recommend you get some help. For example at an Apple Genius bar or a local computer shop.

  • AxMusic
    AxMusic Member Posts: 117 Member
    edited July 2022

    No i have never installed Mac OS on my Mac.

    Ok, thanks for the explanation. I will look into that for sure. I do have time maschine set up on my Mac… So I for sure have some back ups.

  • AxMusic
    AxMusic Member Posts: 117 Member

    Got it, I have Komplete 13 for instance and when I load up pharlight for example the system struggles somewhat, but when I have the plug in window open in maschine the whole thing grinds to a stop. Maybe something higher then 16gb of ram, would be a way of sort of future proofing.

  • AxMusic
    AxMusic Member Posts: 117 Member
    edited July 2022

    Wow that’s a nice difference in speed to be sure. I uninstalled that cleaning app, and my Mac is now very slightly faster, but nothing that resolved the problem. I just had a look at my cpu temp last night and was surprised to see… at its peak it was 140 degrees Fahrenheit! I was so confused as to why it was so high… The Mac is well ventilated, and its not like I have it front of the scorching sun all day long.


    Just wondering what exactly is thermal throttling? I not the best at now the intricacies on computer components, and what the do or don’t do…

  • DeepThumb
    DeepThumb Member Posts: 170 Advisor
    edited July 2022

    Hi, my 50 ct:

    IMO when I read postings on several forums many non Apple developers in the audio industry obviously desperately try to solve incompatibility issues with every new OS or CPU release.

    So personally I'd get a MAC solely for Apply apps and fun and a WIN notebook for music production.

  • Kubrak
    Kubrak Member Posts: 2,772 Expert

    140 F is 60 C and that is by far OK. Real problem would be, say, over 95-100 C (200 F), maybe a bit sooner...

    Thermal throttling is, CPU devilishly boosts to do heavy task fast, cooler is not able to cool it aproprietely and CPU temperature rises above limit (not sure how much it is, may be 95-100 C/200 F, or so...) and CPU clock has to drop considerably to let CPU cool a bit. Dropout. And after some time again. Dropout.

    Last few generations of intels are rather prone to it, as they are sort of factory overclocked to be able sort od compete with AMD.... They do not run at optimal speed (that is one of the reasons they are so much power hungry), Intel tries to squeeze from them maximum possible, far behind optimum.

    Maybe that on Mac things are set so that intels behave decently, I do not know. AFAIK there are not means in OS to setup CPU things, so I assume it is not needed. On Win user usualy has to setup it correctly...

  • D-One
    D-One Moderator Posts: 2,811 mod
    edited July 2022

    140 Fahrenheit / 60C, is totally fine but you have to watch the CPU clock speed...

    @AxMusic said:

    Just wondering what exactly is thermal throttling? I not the best at now the intricacies on computer components, and what the do or don’t do…

    It's simple: CPU's have a variable speed, the faster it runs the more power it consumes and more power = more heat, so if the cooling is inadequate because of poor HW design, too small of a case/fans or 7 years of accumulated dust then the system will slow down the CPU so it doesn't reach a temperature that is too high.

    On Macs this is even trickier because often MacOS will slow down the CPU in favor of the fans running slower for a more quiet operation.

    There are 3 different Mac Minis from 2014, assuming you have the mid-tear, this one:

    https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/specs/mac-mini-core-i5-2.6-late-2014-specs.html

    Then the behavior should be very similar to my old MacBook, this one:

    https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook-pro-core-i5-2.7-13-early-2015-retina-display-specs.html

    Which looks like this with Intel Power Gadget:

    As you can see that's 16 loops all playing at the same time, no issues (224 buffer), CPU is at 3GHz as it should and temps are very high at 90C (200F). This is what you have to check: If your Mac can stay close to it's top-rated turbo speed (with a straight blue line not dropping over time) and if temps are ok, if the "Frequency" line starts dropping to keep the temps down then it's thermal throttling or even if it never reaches the top speed to begin with. If all is good with the graphs the I Gadget shows then move on to debug other things.

    With an app called MacFanControl I am able to drop that super high temp to around 75C at the expense of having the fans spinning a lot faster and making more noise.

  • D-One
    D-One Moderator Posts: 2,811 mod
    edited July 2022

    Oh I forgot, making a clean MacOS install is easy, just google it; however if you then use a backup from time machine you will bring any potential driver, sw issues the old OS had anyway, making the process pointless unless you're ready to start over and install (and copy all files you need) manually.

    I do this every 3 or 4 years and altho it's a lot of work and you have to be careful with projects and important data it does work wonders for a stable system.

    All my NI apps work fine on M1 BTW, but the M1 Max, and those other higher-end models do have some issues. (I don't use my laptop for production much tho, so take this with a grain of salt)

  • darkwaves
    darkwaves Member Posts: 336 Guru
    edited July 2022

    I may have missed it somewhere in the thread; but you may want to actually show the project.

    2 audio loops and a drum loop sounds minor. My weak little surface go can handle that.... but if I were to put something like Ozone on the master and a bunch of effects on that drum group; :dead emoji:

  • AxMusic
    AxMusic Member Posts: 117 Member

    Just ran another test

    here are the stats


  • D-One
    D-One Moderator Posts: 2,811 mod
    edited July 2022

    Your temps and CPU frequency look normal but wait... I was under the impression that you were talking about only loading a few loops and that was already enough to cause the problems but you got a ton of Groups there.

    It's hard to know if the extra loops are causing the problem or if your project was already too big to fit more stuff. On projects around that size my old laptop would ****** it's pants too.

  • AxMusic
    AxMusic Member Posts: 117 Member

    Yeah, Those groups are all empty. They are from a default templete I made. I have them just to simplify the organization of the project. The patterns are all empty too, simply to organize things. The only thing loaded in this project are those 4 loops.

  • AxMusic
    AxMusic Member Posts: 117 Member

    Update on this feed.

    1. I attempted to remove all extra files, old samples, docs…etc that are not needed.
    2. talked to apple support and they had me start a “test” account to see if it was any faster. The account was a little faster but still lagged. So that didn’t help much..
    3. Have login items down to simply NI stuff. *I will add a pic*
    4. I reinstalled Maschine via Native Access; the issue seemed better for a few hours then went back to how it was.
    5. Now the issue seems a bit worse I had a sample loaded and as I was slicing it via the manual slicer it started stuttering/lagging/crackling HARD. I took a picture of the cpu states at this time. They seem different from the last post, but I can’t tell if the cpu performance is still in the normal range or not.
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