Cubase 11 CPU Performance WORSE on M1 Mac Mini

Hi, so I’ve had a 6-Core Trashcan for several years now and although it still functions fine, the CPU was starting to have trouble keeping up with some of my bigger sessions.

So I bought an M1 Mac mini - 8 core with 16GB of RAM. I just spent all day today setting it up (read fresh installs for everything). After opening up my template I was shocked to experience worse CPU performance.

I was expecting potential RAM issues or compatibility issues with Sound Toys or some other “essential” plugin. But I was not expecting my 8 year old computer to have better real time CPU performance.

I’m scratching my head as to what could be causing this??? Maybe some specific plug in that is causing the CPU to spike??? But I’ve gone through and removed plug ins and instruments from my session hoping to see a big CPU drop from one of them. But unfortunately the CPU only goes down in small increments as I remove things.

If anyone has any ideas I’m open to anything. Below are my session details, these plug-ins are in every session and part of my starting template.

Interface = MOTU 1248
VEP6
Reaktor 6 - (non essential)
Valhalla Room
EchoBoy
Decapitator
Effect Rack
Audio Damage EOS2
Kontakt 6
Omnisphere 2

All of the above were installed “fresh” with the latest drivers/installers as of this posting.

Oh and I’m running at 512 Buffer without the ASIO Guard on

You’re running through Rosetta 2 right now. I wouldn’t expect amazing performance til a native ARM version of Cubase is released.

Hi GPnicolett, I understand. I guess I was just surprised that it was actually worse than an old computer. I knew I was gonna take a hit from Rosetta 2, I just didn’t imagine it would be this bad.

Update. I’ve gone back to my 6-core Trashcan and performance is noticeably better with the same buffer settings and same session.

Gonna return the M1

A lot of plugins are not yet working right even under Rosetta. Reaktor, Sound Toys for example. It is too early to switch if you use a lot of plugins.

I get that, I knew this would be an experiment to begin with. As an FYI to anyone else looking at this, everything installed fine and passed VST validation. I didn’t get into functionality testing too much as the audio performance was so bad.