What I should be able to do with Bitwig on my computer

[Matspan]

Hello, I have a MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018) - 2,9 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i9 - 32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4 - Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB and I would like to know what I can expect in terms of performance with Bitwig. I have run into issues when I use third-party plugins such as Vital or Gforce plugins among others and I can have about 6 tracks maximum with some plugins before the CPU load is too much and the tracks become unplayable. Now I have the latency set at maximum. I find this very surprising as I didn't really expect to have any problems at all.
Do you have any light to shed on this? Any help would be appreciated.
Regards
Matthew

[EnGee]

Set the buffer size to 128 or even 256 and use 44.1 or 48kHz sample rate. Can't think of other things affect the performance more than that.

[Matspan]

Thanks for your reply - The buffer is at 512 at the moment sometimes I double it and occasionally double it again to improve performance. Yesterday I loaded 15 or so instruments that I thought might be CPU intensive and I was using about 50% to 60% CPU after this number it started clipping. This is perfect for me as I never have this many tracks, but other days I can't get past 6 tracks without having problems. I just feel as though my performance should be a lot better than it is. I have run diagnostic tests for Macs and everything appears fine. I would like to know if someone has a similar configuration and is able to load, for example, 30 tracks without any problems at all, then perhaps I would have a starting point.

[Passing Bye]

If you don't have actual benchmark for people to run, than nobody can determine how much 1 track takes up resources, let alone 30 of them.

[EnGee]

Vital is not what I call "light" but also not so heavy on CPU. It depends on the preset mainly.

If you can give us an example with a specific preset and number of tracks, it would be easier to know as Passing Bye said. You only can know if you compare with others.

[askoan]

There's this interesting thread about cores and cpu speed in Bitwig and in Daws :
viewtopic.php?t=542444

The performances are a lot less prectictable for daws (at least when using synthesis) than for games, because core allocation differs on the tools and soundchains setup on each project. Well, we already know that, but we mostly underestimate the constraints.

I don't know much about hardware, but can't your 2.9 Ghz Intel be safely boosted to 4 Ghz ? You'll have to lock the speed though, as ASIO doesn't like CPU throttling.

[BertKoor]

Performance of DAWs is of lesser importance than performance of your plugins.

If you use heavy-weight synths with heavy-weight reverbs and mastering compressors on all tracks then the system will struggle with a project of a few tracks.

I bet similar sounds can be made with plugins that are light on CPU. By choosing the right plugins you can have projects with dozens of tracks on such a machine.

I don't know much about hardware, but can't your 2.9 Ghz Intel be safely boosted to 4 Ghz ? You'll have to lock the speed though, as ASIO doesn't like CPU throttling.

He said MacBookPro, so that's no ASIO (which is Windows only).
Also overclocking is out of the question, they don't have the cooling required to keep temps at an acceptable level.

[excuse me please]

I run a duocore and still can run a decent project. So it shouldn't be a problem.

[Matspan]

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If you don't have actual benchmark for people to run, then nobody can determine how much 1 track takes up resources, let alone 30 of them.

I just tried with 6 instances of Equator2, which seemed to be OK then I tried with 12 and for the first 20 seconds it was fine and then the whole computer slowly ground to a halt. I have attached some screenshots. This is with no FX at all.
It seems to work for a short while and then it tanks.
I have tried with Bitwig 4 and 3.3.10. I hope this serves as a benchmark. I don't think the problem is the same with Bitwig synths. I tend to use a fair few modulators and sequencers and such, which i think consume more resources but with this experiment, I was just duplicating the same instrument.

[Matspan]

This was at 256 buffer, but after changing it to 1024 the improvement was minimal.

[jancivil]

problem is not going to be the clock speed anyway, the >500 something percent of CPU in Activity Monitor probably indicates a 6th core has been called. a 4ghz clock is only going to help stuff hammering a single core by its design really.
It's not feasible on that hardware, there's historically only been an anti-stepping application, don't know if it's still in existence.

I don't get much of anything out of the Activity Monitor depictions, except Clean My Mac which I advise to lose at once.
get OnyX, it's free, it's well thought-out/not stupid.

[jancivil]

Hello, I have a MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018) - 2,9 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i9 - 32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4 - Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB and I would like to know what I can expect in terms of performance with Bitwig.

I had that exact machine. I am not a bitwig user, but that machine specifically handled some very resource-intensive setups for me. HOWEVER you mentioned Equator 2, which has brought my system (8-core, 64GB) to its knees with certain patches, using it with many other things, and I think there's no help for that except to make the project based in it and commit to audio before other arranging. There are surely far lighter patches than the one I went with... But this was a hog like nothing before, including my own ridiculous Absynth designs.

I have run into issues when I use third-party plugins such as Vital or Gforce plugins among others and I can have about 6 tracks maximum with some plugins before the CPU load is too much and the tracks become unplayable. Now I have the latency set at maximum.

much past 512 when having serious performance issues isn't typically improved much IME.

I would look to hardware as potential bottlenecks first, because it looks like something is kind of blocking you.
I would take the time to refresh the system files via recovery startup, reinstall MacOS, first. It'll take half an hour or something.

what other peripherals are attached (I see things I don't know from)?
This hardware focus set aside for a moment, HDDFanControlDaemon looks quite dodgy, and it probably always runs. Lose that anyway. You're not quitting out of apps but running a lot of stuff at the same time. pretty negligible consumption in there as depicted, but your best practices trying to determine and then sort systemic issues this isn't.

[Matspan]

"I would take the time to refresh the system files via recovery startup, reinstall MacOS, first. It'll take half an hour or something."
I did a restore, which didn't seem to help much - This weekend I am going to do a fresh installation and install Bitwig and some VSTs first to see what happens. I used Equator2 as an example because I thought it might be quite a CPU-intensive app, normally I run one or two instances at a time with other VSTs but I thought using just the one app would make things a bit clearer.
I normally quit nearly everything before a session and I found that Google drive didn't help with performance.

Many thanks for the comments and the advice, I'll get back once I have done a fresh installation!

[Matspan]

I don't get much of anything out of the Activity Monitor depictions, except Clean My Mac which I advise to lose at once.
get OnyX, it's free, it's well thought-out/not stupid.

[/quote]

I will give OnyX a go!

[antic604]

Have you tried running it in low resolution and/or RGB colour profile? Those "tricks" usually help.