Noob question about using GP as a plugin wrapper to avoid CPU issues on M1/2

Hey GP community. Just found you (Thanks Decap).
TL:DR: is GP 4.5 good at multithreading within Ableton, using Apple Sillicon, with a heavy load of plugins inside (As a wrapper plug)?

There is a long running issue with Acustica Audio and Izotope plugins in 96khz sessions on Apple Silicon. I have a M1 Ultra, but both Logic and Ableton will only use one core for the master channel. They won’t multi-thread like on my Intel machine. Logic is way better than Ableton at maximising performance of the cores. Ableton dies pretty quickly. But I only use Logic for occasional projects. Ableton is my main DAW.

I wondered, if I put Gig Performer on the master, and run my mastering chain of plugins inside it, will GP multi-thread itself? This is the issue. If a plugin doesn’t multi-thread, then (Currently), Ableton 11.2.6 will not multi-thread Rosetta or native plugins on the master. I’ve tried BlueCat and even Ksmr’s Chain, no dice.

I chatted with Steve Duda and asked him to add multi-threading to Serum, like Diva has. He said he won’t because it’s really difficult, even for Intel. Now Serum runs worse on some M1 machines when using a lot of oversampling or 96khz rates, because of the single clock speed of M1 being a lot slower than 4.7ghz on my MBP.

Thanks for any thoughts.

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Hi TapeRock, welcome to the family.

Diva and Kontakt for example support Multi threading and it is working very well in Gig Performer.
Gig performer also supports Multi Instance.
This way you can start Gig Performer for example 2x or 3x and spread things and this way optimal use of cores.
Because you fan freely route signals in Gig Performer multi threading would be a source of sync issues.
Better use multi instances.

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Thanks. Yes, I found a workaround, which is to create my 2buss over several channels, but that is super annoying as I have to constantly go between 3-4 channels to tweak the master buss chain. I love Diva and Kontakt on my M1 machine, Omnisphere also works amazing, barely using the CPU. They are my main plugins. But mastering plugins are super CPU intensive and so far Acustica and Izotope a disaster. I loaded one Acustica plugin in a 96khz session (Because Acustica plugs are IR based, and 96khz in the native sample rate), then I added Ozone 10 Advanced. Crashed Ableton on an M1 Ultra. Just two plugins. Ridiculous.

For what use case will you use Gig Performer?

I normally have 8 plugins+ on my 2Buss. At 96khz, heavy plugins like Acustica Audio’s Opal, El Rey and Gold can each use huge amount of CPU. When I was running 48khz sessions, they didn’t sound great. IR based like Acustica plugins sound way better at their native sample rate. Acustica is 96khz. So I bought a Mac Studio Ultra because I wanted to start working at 96khz, only to find out Ableton haven’t coded multi-threading for Apple Silicon in Live 11.2. I’m an INB producer (Used to use hardware), so I use the best tools on the market like, Gullfoss, Soothe2, Pro-Q 3, Acustica Gold/Opal/Ivory, Unisum compressor and saturator. Also UAD EQs and pre-amps, Ozone 9 modules (Forget Ozone 10, instant crash), and then Eventide mastering tools and KClip.

That chain works on a 2019 i9 MBP at 48khz (Just, gotta clean the fans), but I can’t get two or three heavy plugins to work on the master channel on Apple Silicon Ableton. I might have spent 4k for a complete dud machine because I stupidly assumed Ableton would multi-thread their native version of Ableton Live native, like they do for x86 processors. How wrong I was. So looking for easier workarounds instead of chains of buses.