Why is Mac OSX so slow compared to Windows, especially using Logic and MainStage, despite better HW?

[MeldaProduction]

Aaaah, yeah, Reaper is, ehm, specific... The reason why I use it is simply that it is pretty fast and starts quickly, so for debugging it is the best. But there are lots of problems in it...

Well, Logic just wasn't that fast. As I said, it's probably because it used just 2 processing threads, but that doesn't change the fact, that with processing it has a problem... After all, this is all about processing... And with MainStage, I really don't get your point. You basically say "It's ok, that MainStage can handle 3x less processing, because it was made for it". What on earth does that mean? If a host uses just a single thread, to me it means the devs were lazy or stupid. There's no big difference between host for live use and studio use. Both must handle a lot of processing, otherwise they are useless. I could understand say 10%, maybe even 20%, lower performance for a dedicated live host, let's say "the devs did some precautions against glitches", but 70%??????

And we are talking about precaution against glitches!!! MainStage starts glitching 3x earlier than Reaper and 2x than Logic!!!

[machinesworking]

Ableton live handles generally 70% of what DP/Reaper can. Cubase was at about 85% lat time I checked, and Bitwig is the biggest pig. So, again, all the performance applications (Bitwig, Live, Mainstage) don't handle large track counts, but they do handle the end user changing things while the audio is running and midi is being input etc. You probably won't, (unless you're wanting to be embarrassed? ), use 70 instances of NI Massive in a live show, more like less than 5 instances. I've got Mainstage 2 on the laptop and testing it for live use, loading in a bunch of performances and quickly changing them, it does that very well. I never even thought about loading it up with plug ins to failure as it's obvious to me with Live and now Bitwig that there's a trade off for glitch free operation and lower over all CPU performance. Yes it seems strange, but load a large Kontakt string library or fx into a track while the tracks are running in most hosts and you get glitches. not true with Live, and I'm guessing that's why Mainstage also is a pig? It's what? $20? I doubt they spend a lot of time optimizing it asost people are using maybe two instruments and four fx for any preset/performance.

[MeldaProduction]

For the record, I was recently solving a problem with a customer, who claims to use about 400 tracks and 200 VSTis in a single project . There was quite a discussion about that...

[machinesworking]

^^^ a lot of DP users do that, mostly by using a slave computer running Vienna Instruments VEP Pro on another machine. That way they can have huge sample libraries, 100's of orchestral instruments loaded etc. The main computer then can handle FX and the like. I think with the advent of SSD's it's mostly because they'e used to working like that though. I don't fully get it, but I'm not an orchestra guy.

[JCJR]

In defense of live oriented apps-- The app I worked on for a long time and still occasionally program some, is more algorythmic composition than live performance, though it also records and responds to live performance.

The app is designed so that it HAS to make a lot of decisions just in time. Several features which will automatically semi randomly trigger events just in time to make the playback less monotonous from one playback to the next, and features such as auto harmonization which must decide immediately before playing the notes, and it can be the case that the notes are not known until the instant they must go out NOW.

On a straightforward sequencer I could pre compute a lot of things and start working on them a goodly time before they are due, but because not all decisions are known until they need to be triggered, I can't pre compute much. And of course any FX downstream of the synth plugins can't be rendered until the synths are rendered, so can't pre compute any of the FX either.

Because I can't even know for sure the duration of the notes ahead of time in all cases, have to handle synth plugins much the same as midi hardware synths, incapable of giving them hints as to expected note duration. Which most likely makes some of them run less efficiently.

In addition, those benchmarks on that good testing site, show most of the products evening out in performance at bigger buffers, but a live app can't afford big buffers and needs as short buffers that can assure glitch free playback.

Which has little to do with whether mac is slower (mac seems slower to me, overall, but might be my bad attitude). Just that live apps do operate under different constraints and it wouldn't be surprising to witness lower performance in plugin counts.

[MeldaProduction]

Understand, but little programs work like that. And if these computations are not audio related (and rather MIDI), then the overhead is almost zero. And mainly MainStage isn't one of them, it just opens plugins... In fact I don't know any such program you describe. I mean MDrummer does that, but the overhead of the MIDI & rhythm computations despite the engine is rather hardcore overcomplicated is minimal. After all it's just a few notes and with low latency processing nothing happens in most buffers.

[Winstontaneous]

And we are talking about precaution against glitches!!! MainStage starts glitching 3x earlier than Reaper and 2x than Logic!!!

This matches my experience using Logic Pro X 10.0.6 and MainStage 3.0.3. on a late 2012 MBP running OSX 10.8.5. MainStage uses waaay more CPU on the same Apple plugin chains, regularly giving me processor overload errors and heating right up to where the fans start spinning.