Why is Diva and Repro Performance so Poor on M1 Max MacBook Pro?

[Phantom Menace]

this is a sus thread

What is a "sus thread," btw? If by that you mean my asking basic questions regarding the performance of Diva and Repro on 12th Gen Intel Core i9 12900H and Apple M1 Max laptop processors and receiving a number of obfuscated, disingenuous replies from the head of u-he who should know this information off the top of his head if he is running his business transparently and competently, then by all means this is a "sus thread," whatever the f*ck that means.

[Phantom Menace]

I have no idea what weird things you’ve done to your M1, but I have a M1 Air here that has no issues at all with Diva. I do not own Cubase though so that may be your issue. Diva performs fantastically in Live, Logic, DP, Bitwig and Reaper here.

Wow, that was an amazingly hyperbolic and unnecessarily confrontational post. I haven't done anything "weird" to my Apple M1 Max MacBook Pro with 64GB of RAM and a 2TB internal NVMe drive other than perhaps having it come preinstalled with macOS Ventura and using the VST3 versions of u-he plugins that the company has had the past 10 years to begrudgingly optimize and which are the only versions of Diva and Repro that will run in Cubase 12 Pro.

It's funny how my 100+ other VST3 plugins (some of which are known to be notorious "CPU hogs") run great on the M1 Max and yet the performance of Diva and Repro is a complete joke by comparison. Perhaps u-he should do a bit more testing in Cubase 12 Pro considering it is one of the most popular DAWs on the market used primarily by professional composers like Hans Zimmer unlike Live and Bitwig which are used by no-talent DJs and laughable "producers" who can't play a lick of music or god forbid any first year piano piece.

Which one are you?

EDIT: All I want to know is whether the performance of Diva and Repro is better on an Intel Core i9 13900H or M1 Max processor. Why can't I get a straight answer from the owner of the company for Christ's sake?

[Urs]

EDIT: All I want to know is whether the performance of Diva and Repro is better on an Intel Core i9 13900H or M1 Max processor. Why can't I get a straight answer from the owner of the company for Christ's sake?

I think I gave you a very straight answer: To my best knowledge, we do not have a machine with such a processor.

[sqigls]

this is a sus thread

What is a "sus thread," btw? If by that you mean my asking basic questions regarding the performance of Diva and Repro on 12th Gen Intel Core i9 12900H and Apple M1 Max laptop processors and receiving a number of obfuscated, disingenuous replies from the head of u-he who should know this information off the top of his head if he is running his business transparently and competently, then by all means this is a "sus thread," whatever the f*ck that means.

meesa nubie

[Fannon]

Some numbers from my 16" 2021 M1 Pro, Multicore turned off, 44100 / 256 buffer size, in Ableton Live (native Apple Silicon): With the "BS Deep Space Diva" preset, each Diva instance playing 6 notes, I can have up to 51 Diva instances playing at the same time without dropouts. So 306 voices in total. There are other more expensive presets that use Voice Stack, but the performance is fantastic on my end.

Phantom Menace, what are your results (in numbers) using this preset? Or if you have a particular preset where you found the performance to be poor, I can test it on my end.

Nice idea to come up with something so easy to replicate and compare.

I don't have an M1 mac, but my Windows 11 desktop machine with Ryzen 5800X, Bitwig, 44100 / 256 buffer size can handle 48 instances, but that's VERY close to maxing out.

So from that perspective, the performance of a M1 is imho really impressive.

[aMUSEd]

One thing that is interesting is the CLAP versions seem to do better in Bitwig with multicore on, on my M1 Max (but not Reaper)

[Urs]

Yes, Bitwig Studio being the actual host application apparently has better means to determine what cores to render on. I guess a plug-in does not have that kind of control, hence in CLAP it's possible to render on performance cores only.

[machinesworking]

I have no idea what weird things you’ve done to your M1, but I have a M1 Air here that has no issues at all with Diva. I do not own Cubase though so that may be your issue. Diva performs fantastically in Live, Logic, DP, Bitwig and Reaper here.

Wow, that was an amazingly hyperbolic and unnecessarily confrontational post. I haven't done anything "weird" to my Apple M1 Max MacBook Pro with 64GB of RAM and a 2TB internal NVMe drive other than perhaps having it come preinstalled with macOS Ventura and using the VST3 versions of u-he plugins that the company has had the past 10 years to begrudgingly optimize and which are the only versions of Diva and Repro that will run in Cubase 12 Pro.

It's funny how my 100+ other VST3 plugins (some of which are known to be notorious "CPU hogs") run great on the M1 Max and yet the performance of Diva and Repro is a complete joke by comparison. Perhaps u-he should do a bit more testing in Cubase 12 Pro considering it is one of the most popular DAWs on the market used primarily by professional composers like Hans Zimmer unlike Live and Bitwig which are used by no-talent DJs and laughable "producers" who can't play a lick of music or god forbid any first year piano piece.

Which one are you?

EDIT: All I want to know is whether the performance of Diva and Repro is better on an Intel Core i9 13900H or M1 Max processor. Why can't I get a straight answer from the owner of the company for Christ's sake?

I'm always amazed at people who come to conclusions that defy every other example given, get confronted with evidence that something must be wrong on their end and get angry at other people who chime in with evidence. It's such a cool thing about trying to help people on the internet.

I have no doubt that Cubase isn't the problem, something is amok on your system, but instead of coming to that realization and attempting to troubleshoot that obvious conclusion from my tests and others here, you're offended and doubling down, even insulting other DAWs etc. I named 5 DAWs and you singled out Live because I don't know insecurity? You have issues, and it's not surprising that you run into technical problems and can't work your way out of them.

[PieBerger]

Sounds like touching grass, with a nice hot cup of cope is in order here

[tehlord]

this is a sus thread

Quick test, M1 Air in Ableton Live, not arguably the most CPU sucking DAW out there, built in audio, init preset, Great mode, 6 voices, 6 note chord, 128 buffer, 16 tracks. [same number in Reaper] There's no way in hell that Cubase performs worse than that. DP11 can do 22 tracks, and seems to allocate instances or resources to efficiency cores just fine. Everything is maxed out in DP, whereas in Live only the Performance cores are near max. This applies with Reaper as well, and the same numbers show.

So Bitwig and Live- 16 tracks no use of Efficiency cores.

Digital Performer and Reaper- 22 tracks, Efficiency cores being used.

Something's weird about OPs set up, that's all I can say, the M1 Air is significantly underpowered compared to his machines.

I had pretty much the same experience with my old M1 Air a year or two ago. I recall 20 or more instances of Repro running 5 not polyphony on the init patch with Ableton Live. Remarkable performance from their budget 'coffee shop' machine.

[sqigls]

exactly, the OP either tried to run a buffer of 2 samples in divine mode, or it's just a farce aimed at debasing u-he, and/or Macs or whatever. Doop de doo. We try to help, like i know KVR has some crazy mofos, with whatever issues (myself included) but there are a lot of folks who are ready to help genuine audio folk with audio troubles... u-he also, they've gotta be some of the most approachable and helpful purveyors of fine audio cuisine... this type of flaming, fishing, whatever the feckin word is just unwarranted. Not needed. Plenty of genuinely asshat devs who need flaming out there :\

[lostmemories]

If it can help, having had an 8 core MacBook Pro i9 and for a year a simple MacBook Pro M1, Diva on the M1 is much more efficient than on the i9 whose fans were driving me crazy. I work on Logic. 128-sample buffers. No multicore activated with Diva. Audio Unit version.

[vurt]

hmmph, always two there is, master and apprentice...

[Phantom Menace]

I have no doubt that Cubase isn't the problem, something is amok on your system, but instead of coming to that realization and attempting to troubleshoot that obvious conclusion from my tests and others here, you're offended and doubling down, even insulting other DAWs etc. I named 5 DAWs and you singled out Live because I don't know insecurity? You have issues, and it's not surprising that you run into technical problems and can't work your way out of them.

Did you not read a single word of my post regarding the embarrassing performance of the VST3 versions of Diva and Repro when running in Cubase Pro 12 on Apple Silicon?

How is it possible that 100+ other plugins run exceptionally well on my M1 Max MacBook? Are your critical reasoning skills so lacking that you can't appreciate the significance of that comparison? So let me repeat this with the hopes that it will penetrate that thick skull of yours: 100+ synth plugins running extraordinarily well and 2 (Diva and Repro absolutely sucking ass) on the VERY SAME LAPTOP in the very same DAW.

But it MUST be my laptop.

Go away you pathetic u-he apologist. This issue requires more brain power than you can ever hope to offer.

The fact that u-he apparently NEVER tests its plugins on even last gen Windows Intel laptops strongly suggests the following: u-he is sucking up to Apple with hopes of a big pay out just like Emagic and Camel Audio did back in the day. Both companies left their loyal Windows customers twisting in the wind.

But by FAR the worst offender was Redmatica whose former owner is a complete piece of shit who should rot in hell if there was such a thing. If I recall, he shut down his company with 2 weeks notice to his customers and then went off to work in sunny California for Apple.

Who could blame Urs for taking a big cash grab and most likely head up Apple's software instrument development? If I used Logic (like I did for almost 30 years starting on the Atari 1040ST,) I would hope and "pray" that Apple would acquire a company like u-he in order to include revamped versions of their plugins in Logic for free. F*ck everyone else. That's just how life in the software business goes.

It's why I own 30 hardware synthesizers and will NEVER rely on plugin developers for any mission critical work. For me, this thread clearly exemplifies everything that is wrong with the music plugin ecosystem.

Incidentally, I know for a fact that Spectrasonics was offered an obscene amount of money by several companies for their technology and talent. But to his credit, Eric (Persing) didn't want to be under the thumb of a scumbag company like Avid. I might rightly mock Eric's ridiculous Evangelical faith. But at least he has the moral compass to do the right thing by his customers.

But most of these other music software companies will f*ck you over any chance they get. Native Instruments anyone?

[machinesworking]

I have no doubt that Cubase isn't the problem, something is amok on your system, but instead of coming to that realization and attempting to troubleshoot that obvious conclusion from my tests and others here, you're offended and doubling down, even insulting other DAWs etc. I named 5 DAWs and you singled out Live because I don't know insecurity? You have issues, and it's not surprising that you run into technical problems and can't work your way out of them.

Did you not read a single word of my post regarding the embarrassing performance of the VST3 versions of Diva and Repro when running in Cubase Pro 12 on Apple Silicon?

How is it possible that 100+ other plugins run exceptionally well on my M1 Max MacBook? Are your critical reasoning skills so lacking that you can't appreciate the significance of that comparison? So let me repeat this with the hopes that it will penetrate that thick skull of yours: 100+ synth plugins running extraordinarily well and 2 (Diva and Repro absolutely sucking ass) on the VERY SAME LAPTOP in the very same DAW.

But it MUST be my laptop.

Go away you pathetic u-he apologist. This issue requires more brain power than you can ever hope to offer.

The fact that u-he apparently NEVER tests its plugins on even last gen Windows Intel laptops strongly suggests the following: u-he is sucking up to Apple with hopes of a big pay out just like Emagic and Camel Audio did back in the day. Both companies left their loyal Windows customers twisting in the wind.

But by FAR the worst offender was Redmatica whose former owner is a complete piece of shit who should rot in hell if there was such a thing. If I recall, he shut down his company with 2 weeks notice to his customers and then went off to work in sunny California for Apple.

Who could blame Urs for taking a big cash grab and most likely head up Apple's software instrument development? If I used Logic (like I did for almost 30 years starting on the Atari 1040ST,) I would hope and "pray" that Apple would acquire a company like u-he in order to include revamped versions of their plugins in Logic for free. F*ck everyone else. That's just how life in the software business goes.

It's why I own 30 hardware synthesizers and will NEVER rely on plugin developers for any mission critical work. For me, this thread clearly exemplifies everything that is wrong with the music plugin ecosystem.

Incidentally, I know for a fact that Spectrasonics was offered an obscene amount of money by several companies for their technology and talent. But to his credit, Eric (Persing) didn't want to be under the thumb of a scumbag company like Avid. I might rightly mock Eric's ridiculous Evangelical faith. But at least he has the moral compass to do the right thing by his customers.

But most of these other music software companies will f*ck you over any chance they get. Native Instruments anyone?

I wonder how long it will be before you're banned again?

I also will always wonder what kind of chemical imbalance makes someone think they're right in the face of public ridicule, and create sock puppet accounts to come back over and over again?

Get professional help.