This resolved the issue for me - I was getting unusably slow performance on a 2019 iMac Pro
Switching colour profiles did the trick 
Thanks!
Hi,
I confirm this slow behaviour / poor graphical performance is happening to me also using a 5K iMac in macOS Catalina. I´ve downgraded to macOS Mojave and Renoise performance became great again. So pretty clear that the culprit is Catalina.
Tonight i will upgrade to Catalina again and try that sRGB color profile suggested and then report back in this post.
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We shouldn’t have to change the color profile for our entire system just to use Renoise, though… so even if that ‘works’, I don’t see it anywhere close to being a solution to the problem.
But how should Taktik fix something he did not wrong at all? Renoise worked in previous macos versions, obviously Apple changed something and then did not document it. Also this is happening to a lot of macos audio developers. So you should call the Apple hotline or so.
Maybe Taktik can activate the sRGB profile for the used CoreGraphics renderer, only for the Renoise app.
In my theory macos decides, if an app using CoreGraphics will be rendered thru the CPU entirely or the GPU (the usual). This seems to depend on various things nobody knows for sure. One thing obviously is related to the color profile.
E.g. u-he doesn’t have a fix for this either so far, AFAIK. Or do they have a fix? I found you in the u-he kvr forum, too. If so, I am sure, Urs would share some info here.
That’s called the world of software development, and every developer is used to it (and frustrated by it, of course, understandably).
But look at it this way; Every other DAW managed to get themselves working on Catalina, but Renoise should be exempt from this responsibility? That would be terrible news for Mac-using Renoise users, no doubt!
Devs are furious with Apple all the time, it’s true. But if they aren’t interested in handling the issues with the updates, then they shouldn’t be selling the product on that platform. Keeping up with OS-level updates affecting software is part of the job, albeit a crappy part.
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I did a complete reformat and clean reinstall of macOS Catalina 10.15.5 on mi iMac 5K.
Using the default color profile “iMac” or “Adobe 1998” makes terrible laggy graphical performance in Renoise.
Changing the color profile to “sRGB IEC61966-2.1” makes Renoise to work smoothly.
Even changing color profiles while Renoise is playing makes difference immediately.
I can live with this workaround, using this specific profile for Renoise sessions and the default one for the rest.
This is a quite weird bug, by the way.
Maybe a OS X “Metal” renderer will be considered for upcoming Renoise versions?
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Thanks for posting your findings, Klez.
I can confirm the behavior: on my iMac, Catalina OSX, switching the display > color mode to ‘sRGB IEC61966-2.1’ fixes the graphical issues with Renoise.
That said, i’d really like this to get fixed. That particular color mode makes everything on my mac look bright and sort of ‘un-subtle’; it’s not something I can just leave on permanently and be OK with.
This means to use Renoise I have to go into my display settings before and after every use…Not Great.
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In case anyone else is interested, it seems like about half of the Catalina color profiles run pretty smooth for me so you may not be limited to just the profiles mentioned.
I ended up going with rec. ITU-R BT.709-5
That one runs nice and smooth and also looks good on my MBP.
Weird issue.
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that’s good to know, I’ll check them out for sure – the sRGB mode does some obnoxious stuff with colors on my mac. Thanks for the heads up!
Here another post by Urs (maybe outdated since they seem to have sorted out these kind of problems): https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=7966642#p7966642
This might be an interesting read, too: Developing a fast and responsive GUI - is JUCE too bloated? - Page 2 - DSP and Plug-in Development Forum - KVR Audio
Interestingly, I recently bought a Mac Book Air M1 (Big Sur) and there are no graphics issues on this system when running Renoise, whereas on my iMac (Catalina) I still have to switch to RGB color mode every time I load Renoise, otherwise everything is sluggish as previously described.
So, at least on these latest macs, it appears to be a non-issue.
Nice. Is it also different, if you update your iMac to Bug Sur then? I wonder if Rosetta2 is fixing it, or the system itself…
I updated my iMac Pro (2017) to Big Sur and I still have to change color profiles, unfortunately. I did not do a complete reinstall, though.
I hope this gets addressed for real.
It’s incredibly annoying have to open my OS settings and change the color profile every time I want to use Renoise, then change it back afterward.
As stated previously on my new Macbook Air M1, this isn’t necessary (for whatever reason). But I do most of my music making on my iMac / Catalina.
Agreed, it’s very annoying. I made a little script that changes the color profile with the MacOS utility ‘Alfred’ but even that only saves a bit of time and the color profile that works is noticeably harder on the eyes (for me, at least)
Question for you Michael – can you confirm the UI issues still are not an issue on your newer M1 laptop?
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Correct, on my Mac Book Air M1 the issue does not exist, and I do not have to do any color profile switching. It’s only on my older iMac / Catalina that I encounter the issue.
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I’m running into the same issue on one of the new M1 Macbook Pros, I have to switch to a display preset that uses the Rec 709 color gamut rather than P3 for the UI to be performant. I hope this gets fixed asap as using a non-default mode now seems to break other display features like night shift and the ability to change brightness at all.
The master volume meter also goes “behind” the bezel in full screen mode, I’m not sure if there’s a way to force the full screen view to not take up the full screen height.
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