OSX 10.14: Renoise 3.2.1 keyboard input lag

Hi!
Please take a look at video comparison between 2.8.2 and 3.2.1 where I quickly bash chords:
https://youtu.be/Vk6jAnV2TNw

Both apps have “open in low-resolution” ticked in Finder properties and have identical settings.

3.2.1 simply fails to register notes. UI feels less responsive in general as well.

I’ve tried everything: low- and high-dpi modes, auto/manual scaling, fps limits on/off, windowed/maximised/fullscreen mode.

Plugin shown is AU 64bit, but instrument doesn’t matter, sample based instruments behave the same way.

Note that 2.8.2 is also laggy when “open in low-resolution” is not ticked.

My machine is MacBook Pro 15" 2018.
Any ideas?

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i’m on 10.14.6 (13’ mbpro 2017) and do not have this issue. what’s your samplerate/latency on audio setting?

it’s currently 44100 @ 6ms, but sample rate/latency doesn’t affect note input in any way.
neither does integrated/discrete GPU choice or loaded plugins

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sorry but i cannot reproduce this no matter what i do - yet i have the same OS as you do.

Are you using midi input or qwerty? do you hear ‘skipped’ notes or not at all? sound would be useful, too.
about ui - i use low resolution mode, since i do not care for quality that much, than the speed.
can you show some metrics of activity monitor/ ps / htop? can you record midi tab on instrument so we can monitor midi data of what’s going on while you bash chords again?
some more info?

Turns out it’s slow qwerty keyboard input in general. Midi keyboard doesn’t cause issues:
https://youtu.be/Z96F7a_WWZs
but I don’t use midi keyboards with renoise.

CPU usage of 3.2.1 in idle is 3 times as high as it is in 2.8.2, don’t know if that’s normal:
scr

And it gets up to 50% cpu usage when I start bashing chords, shown in the video below. It also shows keyboard input responsiveness compared to 2.8, not sure if it’s captured well but is in fact very noticeable:
https://youtu.be/DDms91DCDno

Its because:

  • 3.2.1 has Retina support, so the GUI has 4 times more pixels to draw than 2.8.2. You could even expect then 4 times more idle usage over 2.8.2. Be happy with only 3 times

  • Starting with late 10.13 and 10.14, Apple cripples the OS normal drawing APIs like CoreGraphics. So GUIs which were kind of GPU auto-accelerated before, maybe now be drawn purely by CPU only. Maybe Apple does this because it wants to “motivate” developers to use their proprietary API metal2. In a very negative way, of course. I conclude this by reading a lot of VST developers problem reports about recent macos versions. Almost all experienced heavy GUI slowdowns starting with 10.14.

  • Your mac hardware sucks by design.

After I now actually read all the thread, your problem seems to be very specific. Are you sure that nothing is running in the background in your os, e.g. a useless virus killer or so? But maybe it is your model, your specific macbook.

There were reports about audio dropouts in recent macbooks, due the shitty apple arm coprocessor doing audio. what happens, if you use a usb audio device instead? oh wait, does your macbook has an audio output connector at all, are you using bluetooth audio??

you could try reboot, turning all apps off, and start with that

and turn off that pycharm, take a nap :stuck_out_tongue:
@ffx

but if the low-resolution is checked, retina support shouldn’t be available at all? correct?

Not too sure, macos might then “scale” the gui back to retina resolution, of course using the most slow cpu driven algorithm Apple could find.

As far as I understood it (please Taktik correct me here with actual knowledge), macos “decides” if a CoreGraphics gui will be drawn by GPU or CPU, by itself, using some unknown criterias here. So if Renoise is considered to be drawn by CPU already, the up-scaling might happen on the CPU, too, fully.

EDIT: @foma Try to uncheck “enable hi dpi support” in renoise options instead using the low res checkbox in the app options.

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well, i tell you from my personal experience that if you do check low-resoluton, editing checkbox in the renoise (for retina support) does nothing at all. (no i did not inspect this, it’s just a shallow experience)

I tried unchecking hidpi support in options: input lag is present regardless of resolution mode, as mentioned in the first message.

About “low-resolution mode” on mac: I’m not an expert, but I think it makes apps think they’re running on a low resolution display. It also makes pixels crispy (disables interpolation). Nothing happens if hidpi is enabled in Auto mode/100% scaling. With explicitly increased scaling % everything becomes oversized but still pixelated.

Will try rebooting of course, but 2.8 works fine under the very same conditions and apps in background. System load is low as you can see.

No, I’m not using bluetooth/usb/analog outputs as you can see from the videos, just built in speakers

Ok then try a reboot and an usb audio device first. Else you might wait for a statement by @taktik. Renoise ignores the OS low res option AFAIK, and as I wrote, it then activates OS internal upscaling.

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A reboot and USB audio didn’t change anything

Hm, then I am out of ideas.

Maybe not related at all, but try to deactivate sandboxing of plugins. Then restart Renoise. Maybe its caused by poor 32 bit support in 10.14? Did you disable sandboxing in 2.82?

Sandboxing is already disabled on both versions since I hate not being able to bash keys when plugin windows are focused.
It’s the same way with sandboxing on though, and for my testing I removed all the plugins from the project and only kept a single sample instrument. Also tried disabling plugin detection completely so renoise doesn’t find any – and it didn’t make any difference.

Maybe try to remove all lua tools, by renaming the tool dir in the config dir, while Renoise is closed.

That didn’t help either, unfortunately.

Hm, maybe then check for a recent patch update for 10.14.6 (but do not update to catalina!)? I think this again is Apple’s fault, and Taktik as a single person cannot fix all those problems that Apple produces for the macos developers. Calling the apple hotline won’t help you, too :smile: It might be that 3.3 could fix such problems, but I have no info, when it will arrive. So then, stay with 3.1.

Also I somewhere read that Renoise requires “keyboard access rights” under macos security options (10.14++). Did you provide such rights? I personally would try to disable SIP and also disable a lot of launch daemon services (using a tool like launchcontrol), and see if this helps, but I guess as a normal mac user this goes beyond what you are willing to try, since you can break a lot of things.

I actually have no idea here anymore and started to blindly guessing.

Are you sharing the Renoise config dir in icloud or something?

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My 10.14.6 is up-to-date. You’re right that 3.1.1 works fine though.

Renoise 3.2.1 only requested calendar and contact access (which I granted), nothing else.

Tried a full config wipe (had to hide folders from earlier versions to avoid reimport) and bug is still present. No, I’m not storing config in a cloud

Can you try to switch to “sRGB IEC61966-2.1” color profile for your monitor?

Just tried that, it didn’t affect keyboard input lag