IS YOUR COMPUTER TOO SLOW? TRY THIS.

With the help of Activity Monitor, an app included in every Mac, we can monitor processes performed by the machine.

Music Production is an activity that can require a lot of effort from any computer. The amount of channels, plugins used and, in particular, low latency required from the audio interface affect the amount of work required from the team made by Processor, RAM and storage disk. These days, the cost of SSDs (solid state drives) has dropped a lot compared to a time not too far away when having an SSD, even if it was just a small model dedicated to the machine's operating system, was a luxury. DAW sessions with many channels will obviously require storage media with fast write/read performance and in the past we delegated this function to 7200 RPM hard disks, which have faster write/read response than 5400 RPM models (although some modern 5400 RPM drives can offer faster speeds than older 7200 RPM drives), but for our good, SSDs have come for all and we've gained in speed and durability, especially in portable systems like laptops, which are thrown in backpacks and shaken without any care. Such a feat can be a fatal threat to conventional hard disks, as they have moving parts that are easily damaged by mechanical impacts. SSD's are somewhat more resistant to such impacts and this is a very positive point, especially today, where modern laptops have more than enough processing power to handle most music production processes, from capture to mastering, mostly of cases. However, even with satisfactorily capable machines, problems like the one shown in the figure above happen to us and leave us frustrated, making us think that we are targets of sales strategies by manufacturers, who intentionally, when modernizing their operating systems (OS), make them "heavier", "slower" or optimized just for their newer machines, offering older machine owners and new OS adopters a significant loss of performance with every new OS update. Few years ago, Apple was sued for intentionally slowing down its users' devices with every OS update. And they had to confess the scam. So we can conclude that, yes, there may be a bad intention by the manufacturer in this equation, but there may also be a part that is the responsibility of the user and today I want to share a tip that can free many of our readers from a recurring predicament that I face, but of (almost) easy solution.

The problem is shown in the figure above, where the process called 'kernel_task' consumes a large percentage of the total processing of the machine and may reveal a thermal limitation (protection) of the processor. This fact can be noticed when the computer is subjected to a lot of processing effort, typical in sessions of video rendering, mixing or audio recording with many plugins in a dense session in your DAW, for example. Due to this situation, the system will limit the processor's capacity to prevent it from overheating, probably caused by the lack of adequate cooling caused by the high ambient temperature (laptops working under direct sunlight, on a hot day, also suffer from this same problem) or by the simple accumulation of... dust.

The inside of some MacBook Pros where we see dust build up in the cooling ducts. Symptom? Fans going off all the time and computer slowing down whenever a more challenging task is required. The coin in the last figure is for the purpose of comparing the size of the dust tufts taken from my machine.

And that's exactly what occurred to me a few weeks ago, when I was trying to finish a mix in a Pro Tools 2021 session that didn't have a lot of plugins, but the computer wouldn't do the job and error messages would pop up on the screen, indicating that the machine was without enough processing power to proceed with the job. I tried to increase the 'Buffer Size' value in my DAW's 'Playback Engine' to the maximum value (a resource to decrease the CPU load required in exchange for a higher audio latency which is an acceptable solution when mixing, but undesirable when recording because the musician would hear himself/herself with a huge delay and would not be able to play/sing along with the band), but even doing that the CPU usage meter, displayed in the Pro Tools 'System Usage' window, continued to peak at its max, interrupting the mix playback. Right away, I knew it was time to stop, visit ifixit.com to find a tutorial on how to open my Macbook Pro, make sure I had the right tools for the task, and get my hands dirty, literally. If you are not experienced with this task, I would suggest leaving this task to an expert technician, especially when breach of warranty is at stake. This wasn't my case, and with the tools at hand, a few minutes later and a few brush strokes here and there, wisps of dust blocking the processor's cooling ducts were removed, and the machine was back to action. The cooling fan was no longer activated and the 'kernel_task' shown in Activity Monitor returned to its doghouse, tail between its paws along with my plans to buy a new Mac, as these were postponed until after a well-deserved vacation, whose plans started today with the purchase of two tickets to see Toto! (laughs) The new Mac will have to wait because Steve Lukather doesn't wait for anyone, man!

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From Jerusalem,

Tairo Arrabal

(Enginear Audio Solutions)