Hi,
I own Bitwig since the beginning but never really used it that much...
I'm on a Macbook Pro 2015, i7, 16 Gig of RAM and now each time I want to give Bitwig a try as soon as I create a track (vst or audio) my MBP is getting super hot and the fan start running fast. I have difficulties to believe I could create a project in those conditions....
I don't have that problem with Logic...
Is this a problem ? Am I the only one that is experiencing this ?
Thanx !
Latest News: Bitwig updates Bitwig Studio to v5.1
Macbook Pro getting super hot...
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 839 posts since 25 Jan, 2014
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- KVRAF
- 2797 posts since 26 Jul, 2015 from Philadelphia
People have reported similar issues with Ableton. In case of Ableton there is consensus that this has something to do with the dedicated graphics card. Are you running Mojave? Could have something to do with the depreciation of OpenGL. But that is just a guess.
Follow me on Youtube for videos on spatial and immersive audio production.
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- KVRist
- 235 posts since 22 Aug, 2010 from Eindhoven, The Netherlands
you are not alone.
I used to have it on my 2012 MacBook Pro (2.2 Ghz i7 Quadcore running High Sierra) as well. heats up pretty fast and the fan starts running.
I also have a new iMac 4.2 Quadcore i7 (High Sierra) and it happens here as well.
both with Bitwig 2.4.
one scenario where this happens is when I have a few plugins in a project, and it seems to happen faster when all those plugin windows are open.
there might be more scenarios but I can't remember right now.
granted, Bitwig isn't the only host where I have this issue. it happens in Logic X & Ableton Live 10 as well (although not as fast as in Bitwig I remember).
maybe it's a graphics card thing? I don't know...
I used to have it on my 2012 MacBook Pro (2.2 Ghz i7 Quadcore running High Sierra) as well. heats up pretty fast and the fan starts running.
I also have a new iMac 4.2 Quadcore i7 (High Sierra) and it happens here as well.
both with Bitwig 2.4.
one scenario where this happens is when I have a few plugins in a project, and it seems to happen faster when all those plugin windows are open.
there might be more scenarios but I can't remember right now.
granted, Bitwig isn't the only host where I have this issue. it happens in Logic X & Ableton Live 10 as well (although not as fast as in Bitwig I remember).
maybe it's a graphics card thing? I don't know...
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- KVRAF
- 2797 posts since 26 Jul, 2015 from Philadelphia
If the CPU does not show any significant load and the MacBook still gets hot, chances are this is due to high load on the GPU. Some people in the Ableton community reported success by forcing the Macbook to use internal graphics only. There is an app for that you can google. But that is a bit of a hack I would not necessarily recommend and it only works if you do not use an external monitor.
Follow me on Youtube for videos on spatial and immersive audio production.
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- Banned
- 11467 posts since 4 Jan, 2017 from Warsaw, Poland
It's not the load that's important (for heat), but the clock. I can have 100% utilisation with 1,6GHz and the computer won't be hot, but I can have 10% with 3,0GHz clock and it will be.
I'm just saying it's not as clear cut.
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- KVRAF
- 6305 posts since 9 Dec, 2008 from Berlin
Well, I once in my life had a 17" MacBookPro and it was the worst laptop I ever had for high performance use. It was probably made for casual use, email reading and webbrowsing and some intermediate stuff in the relatively light and non-continuous range of load.
But since I do 3D graphics as my main job, where 100% CPU/GPU use is the norm for hours and days on end, the whole system was simply not able to cope, I could have baked eggs on the thing. After some weeks, the whole motherboard went dead and had to be replaced.
This was several years ago, but from what I read and have seen, this didn't change much and in some areas got even worse.
What good is a theoretically powerful system when it can't be actually used at 100% power for extended periods?
It's like a Porsche that can do 200mph, but for only 20 seconds before it overheats.
Silly.
I know many people who do heavy projects in the audio and video realm who moved to PC and find that they are better served with a system that is much more open and configurable - Apple pretty much lost it in the professional realm as far as I can see.
(And especially for heavy 3D-use, there isn't a worse system than Apple at this point in time).
I personally wasn't compatible with Apple/Mac OS anyway and installed Windows on those two Apple systems I had after a period of trying if it's for me - which it wasn't. Also funny: My old MacPro (2008) runs the latest Windows 10 no sweat but can't be updated to newer OSX versions for some years now.
And just to be clear: This is not about Platform wars, I just want to state that Apple may no longer be the best option if you want really good performance. There are still some nice things about OSX like core audio etc. and the gear looks cute, but from my point of view, it's no longer the reliable and low maintenance system it used to be and for poweruse, it's just not worth the money they ask.
YMMV of course, but I get astonishingly good performance (in BWS and even for 3D) out of a 3 year old 800,- Euro laptop... And it doesn't even get more than lukewarm when CPU and GPU run at 100% simultaneously...
Just some food for thought, no need to shout at me if you disagree
Cheers,
Tom
But since I do 3D graphics as my main job, where 100% CPU/GPU use is the norm for hours and days on end, the whole system was simply not able to cope, I could have baked eggs on the thing. After some weeks, the whole motherboard went dead and had to be replaced.
This was several years ago, but from what I read and have seen, this didn't change much and in some areas got even worse.
What good is a theoretically powerful system when it can't be actually used at 100% power for extended periods?
It's like a Porsche that can do 200mph, but for only 20 seconds before it overheats.
Silly.
I know many people who do heavy projects in the audio and video realm who moved to PC and find that they are better served with a system that is much more open and configurable - Apple pretty much lost it in the professional realm as far as I can see.
(And especially for heavy 3D-use, there isn't a worse system than Apple at this point in time).
I personally wasn't compatible with Apple/Mac OS anyway and installed Windows on those two Apple systems I had after a period of trying if it's for me - which it wasn't. Also funny: My old MacPro (2008) runs the latest Windows 10 no sweat but can't be updated to newer OSX versions for some years now.
And just to be clear: This is not about Platform wars, I just want to state that Apple may no longer be the best option if you want really good performance. There are still some nice things about OSX like core audio etc. and the gear looks cute, but from my point of view, it's no longer the reliable and low maintenance system it used to be and for poweruse, it's just not worth the money they ask.
YMMV of course, but I get astonishingly good performance (in BWS and even for 3D) out of a 3 year old 800,- Euro laptop... And it doesn't even get more than lukewarm when CPU and GPU run at 100% simultaneously...
Just some food for thought, no need to shout at me if you disagree
Cheers,
Tom
"Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there." - Rumi
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- KVRAF
- 2398 posts since 28 Sep, 2012
This is exactly correct.mgw38 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 19, 2018 4:00 am If the CPU does not show any significant load and the MacBook still gets hot, chances are this is due to high load on the GPU. Some people in the Ableton community reported success by forcing the Macbook to use internal graphics only. There is an app for that you can google. But that is a bit of a hack I would not necessarily recommend and it only works if you do not use an external monitor.
I use Ableton. Always got super hot.
Hooked up an external monitor.
Something melted and fried the logic board.
But it doesn’t need to be using Ableton or using an external monitor. The same thing happened to me before to both of my parents identically MBP’s. (Laptops were replaced by Apple for free at the time) And they use it for websurfing, email, watching videos and in one case Matlab (Mathematica programming environment).
My latest laptop was not replaced because it was 6 years old, and officially EOL (end of life).
Using a busted up loaner from the Uni for now, hesitant to get a new MBP and don’t want to use Logic.
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 839 posts since 25 Jan, 2014
I'm on Mojave but I had the same problem with High Sierra...mgw38 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 19, 2018 2:51 am People have reported similar issues with Ableton. In case of Ableton there is consensus that this has something to do with the dedicated graphics card. Are you running Mojave? Could have something to do with the depreciation of OpenGL. But that is just a guess.
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- KVRAF
- 2398 posts since 28 Sep, 2012
It’s poor thermal cooling of the GPU.
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Ezhdproductions Ezhdproductions https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=383584
- KVRer
- 12 posts since 4 Aug, 2016
MacBook pros, especially the new ones, are known to run hot. Mine runs stupid hot as well. Apple needs to seriously rethink their thermal cooling for their Mac product line.
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- KVRAF
- 2301 posts since 11 Jan, 2009 from Portland, OR, USA
Everyone is this thread is blaming it on the MBP, but I think the issue is actually Bitwig -- because I have an iMac, and when running Ableton, everything is fine; but just one or two minutes into running Bitwig (even with an empty session) the fan on the iMac starts running loud and fast, and continues that way as long as bitwig is running. It's a GPU issue, as mentioned here, though I don't know much about that stuff. I hope BWS can deal with this in the future, because loud fans and music mixing are not a good pair!
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- KVRAF
- 4818 posts since 25 Jan, 2014 from The End of The World as We Knowit
Your Activity Monitor utility will give you the info you need on CPU usage.
FYI, each "family" of CPUs is spec'd with the same cooling capacity. If you have a CPU in that family at the high end of the clock speed range it will run hotter than the same CPU at the low end. I have a 17" MBP that runs cool for that reason; I also put it on a Crane stand so it has airflow all around.
FYI, each "family" of CPUs is spec'd with the same cooling capacity. If you have a CPU in that family at the high end of the clock speed range it will run hotter than the same CPU at the low end. I have a 17" MBP that runs cool for that reason; I also put it on a Crane stand so it has airflow all around.
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- KVRAF
- 2313 posts since 20 Oct, 2014
Bitwig so far doesn't use the GPU at all, so it cannot be caused by GPU usage. The GUI is drawn by CPU and for 4K/retina resolution, that is a lot of pixels. They are working on this, and once Bitwig uses the GPU for the basic scaling/drawing stuff, the heat actually should be actually much lower, not higher. Such 2d graphics stuff is nothing which is heavy work for a GPU, it was designed to do a thousand times more at once. That said the Bitwig team already heavily optimized Bitwig 2.51 regarding CPU usage - but obviously there is more to do.
I think also Ableton draws parts of the GUI thru the CPU, at least if your scaling is not set to 50,100 or 150%, If it is, obviously the Ableton GUI is much faster, so I guess then the GPU is used. So as Ableton user, maybe try that.
Also Apple slowed down Graphics a lot in Mojave, started a conflict with nVidia (so no nVidia drivers anymore). They are really locked into their bubble now, not able to communicate with the outer world anymore. That's why you all really should blame Apple, if your computer gets too hot. By blame I mean to use Apple bugreporter, all of you. In no situation ever, a hardware should get too hot at all, or clock down the CPU. The newer Macbooks are very poorly designed when it comes to cooling. No wonder, these devices are too thin, so thin it has no benefit anymore, only disadvantages. But if you keep on buying this kind of hardware, you actually will support the end of macOS like we know it.
My macbook pro 2013 works quite ok with Bitwig 2.51. Yes, the fans will spin a lot, i usually put a small book under the device, if I place it on an uneven ground.
I think also Ableton draws parts of the GUI thru the CPU, at least if your scaling is not set to 50,100 or 150%, If it is, obviously the Ableton GUI is much faster, so I guess then the GPU is used. So as Ableton user, maybe try that.
Also Apple slowed down Graphics a lot in Mojave, started a conflict with nVidia (so no nVidia drivers anymore). They are really locked into their bubble now, not able to communicate with the outer world anymore. That's why you all really should blame Apple, if your computer gets too hot. By blame I mean to use Apple bugreporter, all of you. In no situation ever, a hardware should get too hot at all, or clock down the CPU. The newer Macbooks are very poorly designed when it comes to cooling. No wonder, these devices are too thin, so thin it has no benefit anymore, only disadvantages. But if you keep on buying this kind of hardware, you actually will support the end of macOS like we know it.
My macbook pro 2013 works quite ok with Bitwig 2.51. Yes, the fans will spin a lot, i usually put a small book under the device, if I place it on an uneven ground.
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- KVRist
- 351 posts since 18 Oct, 2015 from Germany
There are two problems. The first one is already mentioned. Bitwigs GUI is rendered on CPU. A lot threads have talked about that - Bitwig is working on it. Takes time to get the GUI to the GPU on all three platforms.
Second one - poor air cooling from Apples hardware. I had a Macbook Pro 15 mid 2010. It melted 3 times. Sold it one month ago on ebay. If Apples hardware gets a lot to do (like 100% cpu usage) which is normal in 3D work, the hardware gets far to hot.
Thats not a software problem. The hardware design is just not good. It looks great and it is ultra thin. But you cannot use it for pro work.
Even if you have a bug in software which causes 100% CPU load, your hardware has to be designed to handle this.
Second one - poor air cooling from Apples hardware. I had a Macbook Pro 15 mid 2010. It melted 3 times. Sold it one month ago on ebay. If Apples hardware gets a lot to do (like 100% cpu usage) which is normal in 3D work, the hardware gets far to hot.
Thats not a software problem. The hardware design is just not good. It looks great and it is ultra thin. But you cannot use it for pro work.
Even if you have a bug in software which causes 100% CPU load, your hardware has to be designed to handle this.
RME Babyface Pro / Bitwig / Adam A7X / Elektron AR MKII / Novation Peak / Akai Force / Eurorack
