Blue Cat Audio

Blue Cat Audio · Post by **Blue Cat Audio** » Tue Oct 10, 2023 1:53 pm

New blog post!

Has MacOS Sonoma Fixed Multicore Performance for Apple Silicon?

machinesworking · Post by **machinesworking** » Wed Oct 11, 2023 5:11 am

This is pretty cool. I had a few glitches in audio while streaming youtube on an M2 in Ventura and went directly to the RME forums to see if it was a driver issue, someone there mentioned that many people were having much worse audio issues with Ventura and that is was an OS problem. I'm guessing this is related?

Side note, in stress tests for Digital Performer it got much better numbers before failure on an M1 Air, and used all of the cores, whereas Logic only really used the Performance cores. I wonder how this translates in the future here? DP has a few bugs in Sonoma and is due for a bug fix update in the coming weeks.

Blue Cat Audio · Post by **Blue Cat Audio** » Wed Oct 11, 2023 7:33 am

It is hard to say if it is related, but the scheduler has definitely been changed quite a bit regarding how threads priorities are managed and how they are dispatched on performance cores, so it should definitely have a system-wide impact.

machinesworking · Post by **machinesworking** » Wed Oct 11, 2023 6:03 pm

Blue Cat Audio wrote: ↑Wed Oct 11, 2023 7:33 am It is hard to say if it is related, but the scheduler has definitely been changed quite a bit regarding how threads priorities are managed and how they are dispatched on performance cores, so it should definitely have a system-wide impact.

I'm mostly on DP so since it needs a Sonoma realted changes update it's that much harder to tell. But a lot of the issues people were reporting on Ventura seemed like the kind of thing that would happen if the OS was keeping on an efficiency core too long for sure.

mustgroove · Post by **mustgroove** » Thu Oct 12, 2023 5:45 am

I had actually noticed some nicer performance in Sonoma on some very heavy Ableton projects, interesting to see the explanation behind it

Blue Cat Audio · Post by **Blue Cat Audio** » Thu Oct 12, 2023 7:05 am

It could be something else, but I would indeed not be surprised if the scheduler was the culprit! It has been giving us headaches for a while!

nonan · Post by **nonan** » Wed Oct 18, 2023 10:36 am

Hey thanks, very interesting post.

Did not have the chance to try Sonoma yet, but on the developer side, would this mean that with Sonoma there's no need to jump through hoops anymore and that Audio Workgroups won't be necessary anymore? i.e. setting the thread to "real-time" through QoS via thread_policy_set is enough? That would be great news (:

Blue Cat Audio · Post by **Blue Cat Audio** » Wed Oct 18, 2023 4:10 pm

We have actually made some quick tests with the good old pthreads priorities (not using QoS), and it works fine. Using QoS might actually help when CPU load is very high - not sure yet.

Blue Cat Audio · Post by **Blue Cat Audio** » Mon Nov 06, 2023 4:03 pm

Well, it looks like I was actually wrong and there is no magic with the scheduler in MacOS Sonoma!

songcitynashville · Post by **songcitynashville** » Mon Nov 06, 2023 7:28 pm

I need some official insider advice on current MacOS compatibility...

I'm waiting on my new Mac Studio Ultra and I use Bluecat Patchwork extensively. I'm trying to decide which MacOS I need to immediately downgrade to before doing a fresh install of all my audio software. I want to ensure complete audio and video compatibility across the board. I can always upgrade to Ventura or Senoma later once they are fully functional with all audio software.

I'm not going to be using my audio system for anything else but Video and audio editing and mixing. No browsing or anything other than syncing licenses, etc. Keeping it pure.

So, from what I'm reading, I'm assuming that I should probably downgrade my new Mac Studio to Monteray, correct???

Thanks in advance for your response

Blue Cat Audio · Post by **Blue Cat Audio** » Mon Nov 06, 2023 8:08 pm

I don't think you can actually downgrade a brand new machine, unless Apple has changed its policy...

songcitynashville · Post by **songcitynashville** » Mon Nov 06, 2023 9:13 pm

Okay, So, Even if I wipe the OS and re-install will Monteray be my best bet for Bluecat Patchwork to be multicore compatible?

songcitynashville · Post by **songcitynashville** » Tue Nov 07, 2023 12:21 am

For now, I just want to know if Monteray will give me full "Bluecat Patchwork" features without issues until full multicore function can be achieved on the newer MacOSs.

Can anyone give me a fairly definitive answer to that question?

songcitynashville · Post by **songcitynashville** » Tue Nov 07, 2023 2:03 am

No worries, I found this link discussing Monterey's compatibility...
viewtopic.php?p=8466929&hilit=Monterey+ ... e#p8466929

Blue Cat Audio · Post by **Blue Cat Audio** » Tue Nov 07, 2023 4:17 am

songcitynashville wrote: ↑Tue Nov 07, 2023 12:21 am For now, I just want to know if Monteray will give me full "Bluecat Patchwork" features without issues until full multicore function can be achieved on the newer MacOSs.

Can anyone give me a fairly definitive answer to that question?

I think Monterey is probably the best bet. However I don't know if the changes that happened in Ventura were not also applied to a later version of Monterey.

Blue Cat Audio

KVR Audio

MacOS Sonoma / Apple Silicon: Multicore Performance Fixed?