Do not Update OS or is there a trick?

[BSchmitty]

If you are using a TV for a monitor, you should try "Game Mode" settings. It allows very low latency for fixing timing issues between game console controllers and the TV. 

For example,  there's about a 250ms delay between the controller and what happens on screen when not in game mode. In game mode, latency is barely noticeable. Probably about 20ms or so. Definitely  less.

I would imagine if you have not tried it yet, it may mitigate most of the issues with the meter latency and the audio lining up with the meters , if I am understanding the issue correctly.

[Dingo]

Now all the software companies out there should have been working with Apple in tandem, on the beta versions of the upcoming OS, so they could have their bread and butter apps ready for their loyal customers that are getting a nice new system for Christmas or their birthday.

And that is what they do.... even so major corporations like AVID with their mega resources are yet to release Sonoma certified versions.
It is not that straight forward or easy particularly when dealing with a 'new generation' of super fast M3 processor.

So it saddens me to hear when someone hasn't even tested yet with developer beta version, which was available Jun 5th of this year, and here it is 6 months later and they haven't even started the process (at least would seem that way to a layman by the statement above).

My understanding is that Nathan is in product support and is largely deployed making instructional videos - as such he is not a developer of the Ardour engine or Mixbus... yes he has a big say in product development, such as the Cue page, so Nathan's comments about not yet running Sonoma on his system do not reflect what is happening in the background.

I am sure Ben will chip in with an update on this, but from looking at the history of development (release of ARM compatible and Ventura etc) I would guess that M3 / Sonoma support would possibly happen in the Mixbus v10 release cycle.

---------

+1 to @BSchmitty for great advice on using Game mode.

[jeff_sloan]

Let's not confuse M3 with Sonoma, Sonoma runs on M1 just fine as the OS goes. As far as I can tell Apple just locks new systems to the latest OS at time of release, even if they could run on older OS.

Still sad, when MB10 comes out, new systems with OS 15 will prob be in stores.

New PCs will be out too, but still on Win11 and they will be supported just fine.

It is just the way Mac/software vendors have bigger issues than PC, even though I gave up on PC recently for the better performing less crashing (to me) Mac world.

It is sad that to run Mac, you must be on older generation platforms to use your software.

I waited until almost everything was M1 compatible before I got my Mac studio, and the M2 studio came out almost 1 month later. At least it was on 13.x and not 14...

[jeff_sloan]

If you are using a TV for a monitor, you should try "Game Mode" settings. It allows very low latency for fixing timing issues between game console controllers and the TV. 

For example,  there's about a 250ms delay between the controller and what happens on screen when not in game mode. In game mode, latency is barely noticeable. Probably about 20ms or so. Definitely  less.

I would imagine if you have not tried it yet, it may mitigate most of the issues with the meter latency and the audio lining up with the meters , if I am understanding the issue correctly.

Yes, I tried Game and Graphics mode (which is recommended for computer use as well), but still manually adjusted (turned off) all other latency inducing settings anywho.
None of that did much good with Sonoma, but Ventura is almost perfect now.
That was my hardheaded mistake.

[marratj]

For anyone still struggling with this issue on macOS 14 Sonoma: try enabling the option "Draw flat buttons" in Mixbus' appereance settings.

This seems to get rid of the sluggish mixer interface for me.

[jeff_sloan]

For anyone still struggling with this issue on macOS 14 Sonoma: try enabling the option "Draw flat buttons" in Mixbus' appereance settings.

This seems to get rid of the sluggish mixer interface for me.

Since I went back to 13, I would love to hear anyone else that is on 14 and if this works for them...

[arthie]

will try that after xmas, when I have some spare time.

[Ben@Harrison]

@arthie @marratj @jeff_sloan : I'm sorry for the late response on this thread.

I'm currently using a macbook air running Sonoma...  in fact I used this machine for demos at AES. As with prior versions, the drawing speed does suffer when using a 4k monitor at native resolutions. I find it annoying but not unusable. Your mileage may vary.

We know exactly what function inside macOS is causing the slowdown: it's a bit-blitting function that draws to the screen (optionally using your monitor color-correction settings).  Sometimes this function inexplicably takes many milliseconds to complete, and there is nothing we can do, from our side, to avoid that delay.  Mixbus has a lot of meters on the screen that get updated regularly, and we're forced to go through that function.  If other DAWs somehow avoid this issue (and also draw a lot of meters and knobs with gradients) then I applaud them.  Perhaps using strictly native macos 'metal' directly would avoid the issue, but that is not an option for us.

Using fewer gradients does lessen the problem:  in "Preferences->Appearance",  select 'flat buttons'.  And set "Preferences->Appearance->Editor->Timeline gradient depth" to 'zero'.   
(EDIT:  after some more objective testing, I don't think 'flat buttons' is an effective way to speed up the drawing.  There's a slight pause when changing the mode, and human nature makes it seem 'faster' when drawing resumes.  I think)

Anecdotally, I think the majority of our users will upgrade whenever prompted by Apple, and therefore many of our users are already on Sonoma. There is nothing in Mixbus that should care much about the OS version, and other than major platform changes (Apple Silicon) we do not worry too much about new mac releases.  We've had reports of the 'slow drawing' for several years, and as far as I have been able to determine, the main driving issue is simply the size of monitor (more people have big tv monitors now) and the number of meters/pixels being updated on the screen.

Best,
-Ben

[jeff_sloan]

@arthie @marratj @jeff_sloan : I'm sorry for the late response on this thread.

....

But still, why is is so much slower on Sonoma and not Ventura?

I went back to Ventura to get back to usable rates.

[arthie]

Hi Ben,

thank you for your response. So it is all about the grafiks? What does Logic do differnerntly in that reguard that they do not encounter these kind of issues? Would be fun to learn ybout that. As I use mixbus for the sound and not for its grafiks (I still find them not too clear and a bit cluttered), switiching grafik options which slow down the system will be no problem to me.

Best
Arne