Sluggish UI and performance on Mac Studio M2 Max

[Jac459]

Could you take a screen dump of the cpu gauges?

(And just to check, 3 note cords, one bar, looped)

Clearly the efficiency cores don't seems to be working. My 8 perf are at max, my 4 efficiency are below 30%...

[BobDog]

Good point!

Using "great" here, which is the setting if I add a Diva plugin and don't change preset.

It's interesting that the efficiency cores are not being used, I wonder why that is.

[vondersulzburg]

See this video. Unfortunately he doesn't get a Bitwig license.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSqX4bt9to4

or this one with Bitwig

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5_VMpnHL84

[BobDog]

I checked with logic here, even that doesn't use the efficiency cores and manages the same number of tracks as BW.

So for me here BW (and other DAWs by the look of it) on Apple Silicon (M1) performs quite a bit worse than running on an equivalent I7 (multi core geek bench scores about the same, M1 a bit better).

The I7 handles 1.6 to 2 times more tracks than the M1.

Not really a bother for me here as my stuff is usually pretty simple, but worth knowing if you are going to buy apple silicon and use heavy DAW projects, get as many performance cores as possible as only those seem to be used.

[kresbeatz]

I'm also experiencing very sluggish UI in Bitwig when the project is getting bigger (or while editing some amount of small events in layered detail view). I'm using latest Bitwig 5.1.2 and experiencing this on both Mac Mini M2 Pro with 32Gb RAM and MacBook Pro 14 M2 Pro with 16Gb RAM on latest Sonoma 14.3. Hopefully it will be fixed someday as it's getting slower and slower towards the finishing of the project.

[Hanz Meyzer]

Hm, yeah Bitwig GUI partly is slow AF.

For example you can see the pure slowness, if you copy sections of your song using the region selection tool. If you select a range of the song, and then copy, the gui freezes for some seconds. Same while pasting. This on a killer cpu system...

A lot in the JAVA part of Bitwig needs a complete overhaul / optimization, in my opinion.

Also the scrolling in a song with 10 or more tracks and some opened automation lines result into really stuttering scrolling. Quite annoying.

Sadly now a lot of fanbois will join, stating that Bitwig is the fastest GUI on earth, and they do not have these problems, and it is my machine... And the devs seem to became ignorant somehow, accepting such performance drops as "normal" now.

[Jac459]

Hm, yeah Bitwig GUI partly is slow AF.

For example you can see the pure slowness, if you copy sections of your song using the region selection tool. If you select a range of the song, and then copy, the gui freezes for some seconds. Same while pasting. This on a killer cpu system...

A lot in the JAVA part of Bitwig needs a complete overhaul / optimization, in my opinion.

Also the scrolling in a song with 10 or more tracks and some opened automation lines result into really stuttering scrolling. Quite annoying.

Sadly now a lot of fanbois will join, stating that Bitwig is the fastest GUI on earth, and they do not have these problems, and it is my machine... And the devs seem to became ignorant somehow, accepting such performance drops as "normal" now.

But hey.... Aren't you the same person relentlessly posting about the Avenger CPU spikes ???

Mmm, I see a pattern here ...

(and yes, you predicted well, right now the people reading your post and working in Bitwig at the same time like me are scrolling and asking themselves "what the f**k is he talking about")...

[Jac459]

WhatsApp Video 2024-01-27 at 00.51.46.mp4.zip

I suck big time at video capture, no doubt... But the UI is smooth on M2 Pro...

[Hanz Meyzer]

Test it with a larger resolution, i.e. 4K ++, then close clip launcher, then really scroll with longer tracks and two or three automation lanes opened (with points).

It is slow on any machine. It's JAVA and the GUI is mostly not GPU accelerated.

[pdxindy]

I'm also experiencing very sluggish UI in Bitwig when the project is getting bigger

What size project?

[Hanz Meyzer]

That lag while copying parts of the song surely is related to the JAVA garbage collection. Same lags happen in JAVA developer GUIs, too. I also imagine that the gui process is moved to an efficiency core and then does not feel fast anymore. Also updating so many pixels via cpu is not a good task for a cpu. Also mixing drawing with cpu and gpu might cause bottlenecks while exchanging data. Pretty sure that JAVA does not utilize a lot of Metal mechanisms.

Seems to be a non solvable, strictly ignored problem.

[pdxindy]

Test it with a larger resolution, i.e. 4K ++, then close clip launcher, then really scroll with longer tracks and two or three automation lanes opened (with points).

It is slow on any machine. It's JAVA and the GUI is mostly not GPU accelerated.

I have a 4K monitor. Mac mini M2 Pro.

I made a project with 28 tracks. A mix of midi and audio tracks. Maybe 8-10 tracks with automation open (each track 1 lane with points). I selected about a minute of time across all tracks. Then dragged a copy of that time out. Then I copy pasted a bunch more duplicates until the project was over an hour.

Navigating around is still speedy and fluid. Moving bigger chunks of stuff is slower than say an empty project but good enough not to be an impediment.

[Dionysos]

Seems to be a non solvable, strictly ignored problem.

Well, which one is it? Can't fault anyone for ignoring truly unsolvable problems.

[kresbeatz]

I'm also experiencing very sluggish UI in Bitwig when the project is getting bigger

What size project?

Right now I'm working on a project and there are 22 tracks already. It started to be sluggish at times after 15 tracks or so. As Hanz mentioned it happens when automation is visible, when copying parts of the song, or just using several tracks/events in detail editor (so where you can see waveforms of even two-three tracks/part of tracks simultaneously - just try to zoom in/out). It's not a game changer, but feels very sluggish at times and not pleasing at all. Also, I have to mention that I have 40" 5k2k display, so probably high resolution is also a factor. However it happens with my MacBook Pro 14" with M2 Pro, I just didn't test the same project to see if it's the same or the situation there is better. But there are GUI sluggishness for sure on both devices.

[Jac459]

That lag while copying parts of the song surely is related to the JAVA garbage collection. Same lags happen in JAVA developer GUIs, too. I also imagine that the gui process is moved to an efficiency core and then does not feel fast anymore. Also updating so many pixels via cpu is not a good task for a cpu. Also mixing drawing with cpu and gpu might cause bottlenecks while exchanging data. Pretty sure that JAVA does not utilize a lot of Metal mechanisms.

Seems to be a non solvable, strictly ignored problem.

1 - That's not how Java garbage collection works... It is determined by much more complex algorithms than the deterministic action of a user.
2 - There are extensive studies showing than Java is hands on the faster language with managed resources around.
3 - I would be the first to advocate a move out of Java for some services to go to C, Go or Rust. C and Rust in particular are freaking fast, but it goes with a complexity and maintenance difficulty for large scale developments. So, what you get in performance, you lose in stability. There is no magic and no free lunch.
4 - I am no expert but hardware acceleration is no free lunch neither. It requires direct access to some aspect of the computer or specific libraries Vulkan, metal, .... There is a reason why not a lot of games are ported to Mac. The port of a game to another platform is very costly on development and maintenance of this development.
What about Linux also?

Finally, you could conclude and tag me as a fanboy but it has nothing to do with that.
By complaining about performance you are effectively lobbying for the developer working on that. I personally thinks it is a bad idea as it will be costly and during this time they wouldn't work on new amazing features (or increase the maintenance price). You should expect and accept people to lobby against your proposition. Everybody has the right of his opinion.

Edit: by the way, likewise, I also respect your opinion and wish you an excellent weekend .