“Audio playback has overloaded” on M2 Mac

[Torbin]

I am playing back a track with about six audio tracks and I am getting this message "Audio playback has overloaded your computers processor. Digital Performer has detected an error in audio. Samples may have been dropped. You can continue or disable this alert."

I increased my buffer size to 2048 and I am still randomly getting this message.

On several DP11.33 projects same message.
Anywhere from a couple of audio tracks and a couple of plugins to twenty plugins and forty audio tracks. I get this same message. I never got this message when I ran DP 11 with my 2014 iMac. This is a new issue I am experiencing with DP11 with my M2 Mac Mini pro as the computer.

I don’t understand why the same project w the same amount of plugins and tracks played without a problem on my 2014 intel iMac. And the exact same project triggers an audio overload on my new M2.

Please assist.

[cuttime]

My first question is if you are running DP on the new computer in Rosetta mode, and if all your plugins are up to date for Apple silicon.

[Torbin]

Hi, good questions. The plugins work when I run Logic Pro. But I don’t know if that answers your question. How do I know if it is running in Rosetta?

[cuttime]

I believe you are stuck in an Intel>Apple Silicon transition. The first thing I recommend is using https://www.thinkersnacks.com/pluginfo/ to determine what plugins you are using that are Apple Silicon compatible. The next step would be to open DP in Native or Rosetta mode to accommodate. To determine that, in the Finder, r-click DP or ⌘-I and see if Rosetta is checked.

[bayswater]

Is it actually interfering with anything?

I get this message from time to time, even on a project that is just starting that has very little going on. It never actually interferes with playback for me. I attribute it to some background activity going on in macOS or DP that has little or nothing to do with playback.

If it is happening regularly, or you can reproduce it, maybe start up Activity Monitor and see what it says when this happens.

There was a similar thing in DP a few versions ago where the real time processing bar would go nuts, even though activity monitor show next to nothing going on. That got fixed and maybe this one will to.

[HCMarkus]

Issues at six tracks? Something is wrong, for sure. Do you have a long chain of CPU-hungry plugins on any of these tracks?

Definitely pick up $2.99 PlugInfo.

[EMRR]

I have a few things that require Rosetta, never have this problem because of it. If they need Rosetta, they simply won’t be available or will crash DP the second you add them to a track, at least in my case.

[Torbin]

Hi Cuttime. I am not running in Rosetta mode and I found out that the Lexicon reverb, made by Lexicon, I was using is not silicon compatible. So I am switching to the UA lexicon reverbs and testing. Will post results.
Thank you

[Torbin]

Hi HCMarkus, no long chains of plugins, just a handful of eq, compressors, spread out on mixing board, I removed a lexicon plugin that is not compatible. I am curious to see if that caused the problem. Will post update.
Thank you everyone for thoughts and ideas.

[Torbin]

Hi Bayswater. Yes the message pops up and it skips the audio playback.

[HCMarkus]

I have a few things that require Rosetta, never have this problem because of it. If they need Rosetta, they simply won’t be available or will crash DP the second you add them to a track, at least in my case.

For me, Rosetta is in the past as far as plugin are concerned. Everything I run now is AS-Native. That said, I successfully ran Altiverb under Rosetta within DP-Native for several years without issue, The key for that plugin was to install, then run DP in Rosetta Mode once,, IICR. After that, Altiverb worked great under Rosetta in DP Native.

In contrast, BFD and a couple of Boz VIs (Stomp, Clap, Snap) would crash DP if run under Rosetta. BFD is now AS-Native. The Boz VIs have been tossed in the waste bin, as they have yet to (and may never) be updated to AS-Native.

I still use Rosetta for a couple of things, most importantly the App for my TEControl Breath Controller.

[Michael Canavan]

So one thing I run into being a plugin wh*re, is the occasional spiky plugin. This is almost certainly the issue here.

On one of these songs that are overloading the CPU open the Effects Performance window and see what plugin is chomping away at CPU. Recently I had an older copy of BX Oberhausen the OB-1 clone and it was eating a ton of CPU, more than any of the plugins that are known CPU pigs. Chalk this up to the growing pains of Apple Silicon, it does seem that the updated version I installed works a lot less randomly spiky.

[mikehalloran]

So one thing I run into being a plugin wh*re, is the occasional spiky plugin. This is almost certainly the issue here.

On one of these songs that are overloading the CPU open the Effects Performance window and see what plugin is chomping away at CPU. Recently I had an older copy of BX Oberhausen the OB-1 clone and it was eating a ton of CPU, more than any of the plugins that are known CPU pigs. Chalk this up to the growing pains of Apple Silicon, it does seem that the updated version I installed works a lot less randomly spiky.

This is where I would look.

Some Plugin Alliance plugs have this issue over Sequoia, even though Support claims they don't since being fixed over Sonoma. I've been sending screen shots but that hasn't helped.

A few MOTU MasterWorks plugins have this issue big time. MW Limiter is useless since Sonoma as far as I'm concerned. I had a screen-sharing session with MOTU Support to verify this over a year ago. It's unchanged in Sequoia.