Pro Tools 2022.4 on Mac Studio M1 Ultra

[Selle Sellink]

Last week I received my Mac Studio M1 Ultra.

After installing Pro Tools 2022.4, all the plug-ins I use and opening the session I am currently working in, I was a bit disappointed with the GUI Lag. The Mac Studio does not feel significantly faster or snappier than my previous setup. A Mac mini intel based from 2018 with a eGPU Vega 56.

What can I do to make this GUI lag a thing of the past.

I've tried the classics.

Buffer size to 1024 Samples
Reserve a large amount (100GB) of ram for pro tools to use.

I did some trouble shooting and discovered the following.

• I experience Lag in specific actions. Zooming in and playback works fine(ish) but control, option arrow keys up and down is pretty slow. Also using D, F & G to make fades is not snappy.

• When I experience lag in Pro Tools I can easily run Logic next to it working as smooth as butter on a warm day. I used the demo sessions to test this. Because of this it seems to me this is not an issue which has to do with to little compute power.

• When opening a new session and using a single track there is 0 issue.

• When making 1000 empty mono tracks without any plugins their is a clear lag.



I would love for Pro Tools to run as smooth as Logic Pro X does. How to achieve this I would love to know.

Current Mac:
Mac Studio (2022)
Chip M1 Ultra
Memory 128 GB
Built in GPU 48 cores

Previous Mac:
Mac Mini (2018)
Intel 3,2 Ghz 6-core Intel Core i7
Memory 32 GB
eGPU Vega 56 8GB

Displays:
LG Ultra HD — 3840x2160
Samsung S24H85x — 2560x1440
Optoma UHD — 3840x2160

Audio Interface:
Focusrite Clarette

Eucon:
AVID S1
AVID Dock

[Chevron]

Wait for M1 native Pro Tools is the simple answer.

Does it happen on sessions that have minimal or no plugins?

[Antigua]

I’m getting significant GUI lag on a 2017 MBP 2.9GHz i7 16 Gb ram, Mojave. Initially I thought I thought it was a small price to pay for reducing playback errors during mixing, but then the random clicks and pops started, followed by plugin automation playing back erratically. Feels like I’m paying to beta test.

[Selle Sellink]

Originally Posted by Antigua

I’m getting significant GUI lag on a 2017 MBP 2.9GHz i7 16 Gb ram, Mojave. Initially I thought I thought it was a small price to pay for reducing playback errors during mixing, but then the random clicks and pops started, followed by plugin automation playing back erratically. Feels like I’m paying to beta test.

With your issue i can recommend an eGPU. This helped me a lot when using my mac mini. Not sure if you use many external monitors? if you do, that would help for sure. If you don't use any external monitors I wouldn't know what the issue is. How is your RAM looking in "system usage" window in Pro Tools?

[Selle Sellink]

Originally Posted by Chevron

Wait for M1 native Pro Tools is the simple answer.

Does it happen on sessions that have minimal or no plugins?

I did some trouble shooting. One track works fine. And 1000 mono tracks without plugins is laggy.

[Chevron]

Originally Posted by Selle Sellink

I did some trouble shooting. One track works fine. And 1000 mono tracks without plugins is laggy.

I wonder if that is a consequence of Pro Tools running under Rossetta 2 emulation?

[K Roche]

I would also consider ("all the plugins I use") one or more,, 3rd party especially,,,, could be slowing things down ??

[thebeatless]

It's been like this for me with any computer running an OS newer than Catalina. Big Sur was unusable, at least it's slightly better on Monterey.

[dankin]

It's disappointing to hear that PT has the gui lag even with the M1 Ultra. 2022.4 is a little better than the last few versions on my 2019 i9, but it's still laggy compared to 2021.3.1. Being that the gui lag has been around for a bit, and also happens on intel, I doubt Rosetta 2 is the issue.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Selle Sellink

Reserve a large amount (100GB) of ram for pro tools to use.

What does that mean?

Probably not related but lets clean this up.

You mean 100GB Disk Cache? That is *NOT* "reserved for Pro Tools to use", it's just a disk cache, it might be taking away memory Pro Tools or other apps could better use.

You have a 128GB system?

How large are your sessions?

I would be setting disk cache to cache typical sessions I am working on. Look at the disk cache meter and try to get it so sessions loaded fully cache (turn green). You can also just set to "normal" to see if that makes a significant change.

The macOS Activity Monitor memory pressure chart at the bottom of the memory page is a good indication of memory issues on the machine. What is it showing? Hopefully it's all green. But just worth checking just in case -- might be perfectly OK but I would not just wind up the disk cache to 100GB on a new system without looking at that.


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Beyond that you should do careful standard troubleshooting, looking for plugins etc. that might be causing problems.