Laggy and stuttering playhead on macOS Sonoma 14.3

Both, standalone and VST? Latest version, V1.10.1? Or Beta?

Both standalone and VST. Latest version and beta as well.

What makes me suspect that the incompatibility (or whatever it is) is possibly on the Synh V side – meaning that perhaps a fix can be applied within this software – is the fact that when the playhead reaches the end of the arrangement panel, so that the following part of the song is shown in the panel, the playhead movement becomes instantly smooth as it used to be, to become again laggy and stuttering after a while. This seems to happen at each change of view in the arrangement panel (not in the piano roll). You can see it in the example I’ve uploaded as requested by the Dreamtonics Support Team: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5GKtbpXlOY

Have you tried activating OpenGL:

PS: It would be nice, if Dreamtonics would support Metal instead, because Apple won’t support OpenGL for much longer, as far as I know. But currently it should still work even on Apple Silicon.

So, today I’ve spent about 2 hours on the phone with Apple support, neither the OS SONOMA nor Logic have issues on my machine, so it must be plugins side (wich one I’ll investigate in detail) and presumably the m-audio device that causes all the lag and stuttering. We’ve done a lot of experiments with the Apple guy.

My thoughts remain that the OS and Logic are written to fit together.

@Aymara, I don’t find such a setting in my system.

It’s in the general settings of Synth V …

Bildschirmfoto 2024-01-27 um 18.45.24100×868 7.21 KB

… just on top of all settings there.

Ah good point… I was looking for it in the macOS settings

Yes! That solves 99% the issue, meaning that there is still a little playhead shaking – say less than one-second long – at each view change of the piano roll during playback. Thanks for the great advice, @Aymara !

However, it works only for the standalone program. The VST still suffers from the issue, even with OpenGL selected – tested it in Cubase Pro version 13.0.20.

Time to contact Dreamtonics support

Is it only a graphical issue or is the audio also laggy?

As far as the Dreamtonics Support is concerned, I contacted them two days ago and they responded. That’s why I uploaded a video example (link a few posts above) that they asked for. Audio has no issue, as you can also hear in the video.

Well, that’s the important thing

And regarding the graphics issue … well, Apple stopped OpenGL support in 2018. It still works, but it’s deprecated, because Apple stopped OpenGL development for macOS (& iOS) in favor of Metal since macOS Mojave in 2018, as far as I know. And that might be the route to go for Dreamtonics, as for game developers too or all other software developers, who depend on graphics performance.

Then there’ll be loads of work for Dreamtonics guys to do in order to switch from OpenGL to Metal

Apple forces third party developers nearly every year to update their code to be compatible again with their changes to macOS, e.g. new security features.
My Native Instruments stuff for example often needs more than half a year to be fully compatible again.

I started a new Logic/Synth V project yesterday and it behaves exactly like in your video. Tested using OpenGL but that only made things worse. I’m on Sonoma 14.3 and use a 2019 27" iMac. 3,6 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9, 64GB RAM and Radeon Pro Vega 48 8 GB. And Synth V beta2.
However, no audio problems and no crashes so it sort of works.
Hope they release a new beta soon!

Four days ago, the Dreamtonics Support emailed me that they have forwarded the issue to their dev team for consideration. Let’s hope they find a fix.

Thanks but it doesn’t sound very reassuring! I better contact support as well so they understand that this is a real and annoying issue for many users!

Everybody being affected should contact support. The problem is, that OpenGL is no longer supported by Apple and switching to metal … I fear … is a lot of development effort.

Yes! Absolutely! And I have sent a detailed report about an hour ago! Hoping for a new beta soon!

I doubt, that the next Beta will solve that problem, when I see how huge the dev effort is to migrate OpenGL to Metal. THIS article might give a slight overview, how much documentation a developer has to check to learn it.