Hello all,
Whenever I press the record button of Scaler in Ableton the CPU goes to 200+ and leads to an overload combined with a dropout. This also happens when I press the button again to stop recording. I would be happy to make a video of this.
The question now is whether it is my Mac Studio or a programming error?
Has anyone had similar experiences?
Video of CPU Overload
First - I did a test on my Mac - OS Catalina/iMac Intel and while there is a jump of CPU on the track monitor of Scaler the Main CPU monitor in the corner stays barely moving.
I can just barely see your input but it looks like it’s set to All Ins so you could be creating a feedback loop.
Set the input just to the keyboard you are using and see if it does the same.
You don’t need to push the record button to detect MIDI, just Drag and Drop a MIDI file onto Scaler and it will detect it.
Hi Jamieh,
first of all thank you for the tip.I don’t drag midifiles into Scaler because I record my chords to play around with it in Scaler. I have uploaded another video where you can see that the behavior happens regardless of the input.
I was previously on Monterey where this error did not happen (the upgrade to Ventura was not done by me, but in course of a logicboard replacement on Apple’s part, without me being able to downgrade because the attempt ends in a complete failure).
I don’t want to blame scaler, I’m just desperate. I don’t know if it’s Scaler or my computer, because I’m still not sure if my Mac is a completely broken machine, despite logicboard exchange.
Are you using Scaler 2.7.2? 2.7.3 is supposed to be ready soon. I haven’t seen this problem before and I can’t duplicate it.
Looks like you are using VST2. Can you try using VST3 and see if that makes a difference?
Hi Jamie, sorry for the late response. I use the latest version and the problem appears also by using VST3. What I found out is, when I disable the instrument section, the behavior leads also to CPU spikes
( 60%-80% ), but not to an overload. As I said before it’s very strange, cause on my old iMac I never had such problems. My system is Mac Studio M1 Max with 32GB.
I can’t find any Mac Studio users who share their experiences with me, cause I think my Mac is defective ( even if Apple repaired it by replacing the logic board ).
Hi @intersolar and welcome to the forum.
I have given this a test myself and can confirm I am seeing this same behaviour and it’s not just confined to M1 or Ventura as we are seeing it on Intel based and Monterey also. So if it’s any consolation it does not appear to be caused by your computer.
@Ed1 would you please be able to take a look at this and see if this is a Scaler issue? I am aware that Live 11 had some CPU spike issues when released so potentially could be related. You need to be monitoring the “Current” CPU load in Ableton not the “Average” for this to be obvious. Thanks!
Hey James, thanks for your answer. I was going crazy with this issue ( it’s the only issue regarding Scaler, I have many more problems with the Mac and audio plug ins and stability)! I guess that the architecture switch from apple set many developers under pressure to deal with it. My opinion is that this whole Apple chip thing is far from being fully developed and only reads well on the paper. I can not really work since my switch to Mac Studio 5 months ago because I’m am rather busy with troubleshooting than that I can produce music.
I had a look at this issue, it seems Ableton is struggling with the reset messages we send before starting a recording. The same CPU spike happens when using the MIDI Panic button. Not too sure why it became an issue, especially on the M1 Max.
I only have a basic M1 machine to test with but I’ve been able to reduce the CPU load quite a bit already. We’ll do further testing and this imporvement should be part of the next patch.
Cheers,
Ed