The golden rule is to never upgrade a working setup unless you have to.
Now that it supports Apple Silicon, Live is faster and uses way less CPU.
“So far, it’s flawless.
Ableton
“I am also experiencing fewer spikes/dropouts while using other programs simultaneously.
but not anymore.”
Live Fast
Ableton Live is one of the most creative Digital Audio Workstations (DAW) around.
Ableton
Being able to run a complex project on a lightweight laptop is essential.
The performance improvement is very noticeable.”
The result of this is a massive performance boost.
Live was already pretty snappy on the new Macs because they are so snappy themselves.
“Base CPU usage in previous versions of Live was around 27%.
Now it’s 5%,” says Ableton user andmusician Badbassin theElektronauts forum.
The CPU reductions we’re seeing reported are better than buying a whole new computer for many people.
Plugin Perils
Its not all great news, though.
Many have been updated to run on apple Silicon, but many have not.
And those will not load in Ableton Live 11.1.
Thats precisely why musicians like to hold off updating for as long as possible.
But there is a workaround.
it’s possible for you to launch Live in Rosetta 2, Apples translation layer mentioned above.
The problem is that Intel plugins cannot run inside an M1 host.
So if you relaunch Live using its Intel-compatible version, those plugins will run again.
Thats a good workaround until your favorite plugins are updated.
You lose some of the performance boost, but not all.
Musician and Elektronauts forum memberv00d00ppluses an older Intel Mac and still gets an impressive jump.
The performance improvement is very noticeable.
On my 2017 iMac Pro, I was getting 27-30% CPU on single tracks sometimes.
Now I am running at 3-5% depending on whats going on, saysv00d00ppl in the Elektronauts forum.
But AUv3 is also the plugin format used on iOS.
If you use Apples Logic, you’re able to load those plugins, which is pretty wild.
In Ableton, you cannot.
But this is still a milestone release for Live.
M1 Mac-owning musicians are going to be very happy.
