Mixing in Luna

While i have been using apollo hardware for many years, I am new to Luna. I absolutely love the interface, workflow, and the sound Im getting out of it. However, while I am mixing, I am noticing that the system is really bogging down. Do you guys have any tips and tricks on how to lighten the load so that things like the playhead staying in sync with the timeline and speed of the system won't bog down?
 

A.C

Member
While i have been using apollo hardware for many years, I am new to Luna. I absolutely love the interface, workflow, and the sound Im getting out of it. However, while I am mixing, I am noticing that the system is really bogging down. Do you guys have any tips and tricks on how to lighten the load so that things like the playhead staying in sync with the timeline and speed of the system won't bog down?
Hey, just wanted to mention a super quick point, in that the UI is not latency compensated yet, so the more plugins you run, the more the play head will be ‘off’ with the music.
 
I can adjust to the playhead being off during a Mix, but do you know if this latency will impact the sound of the overall Mix? Also, will freezing tracks help?
 

LesBrown

Hall of Fame Member
I can adjust to the playhead being off during a Mix, but do you know if this latency will impact the sound of the overall Mix? Also, will freezing tracks help?
Latency will not impact the sound. Freezing tracks can help reduce load.

Other things I do to reduce load during mixing:
1. Keep projects on an external SSD, not on the internal (primary) drive. I also have another separate SSD for virtual instrument libraries.
2. Deactivate tracks that aren't being used.
3. Bounce (Mixdown) heavy virtual instrument tracks to audio, then mix with the audio instead. Keep the original midi track in case you need to change something later and re-bounce, but Deactivate the track. I usually Hide deactivated tracks to reduce crowding.
4. Use UAD-2 instead of UADx plugins whenever possible. If you don't have a DSP unit (Apollo or Satellite), ignore this option. This moves some (sometimes a lot of) processing from your computer's CPU to the external DSP.

... off the top of my head.
 

MarkH

Member
While i have been using apollo hardware for many years, I am new to Luna. I absolutely love the interface, workflow, and the sound Im getting out of it. However, while I am mixing, I am noticing that the system is really bogging down. Do you guys have any tips and tricks on how to lighten the load so that things like the playhead staying in sync with the timeline and speed of the system won't bog down?
Can you provide some context? What spec is your machine, how many tracks, are you using all native plugins, what’s your buffer setting for mixing, etc..
 
Can you provide some context? What spec is your machine, how many tracks, are you using all native plugins, what’s your buffer setting for mixing, etc..
You bet. I am on a MacBook Pro M2 Max with 96gigs of memory. Im running the latest version of Luna and rotate between a few different Apollos depending upon where I am working. Currently on my Twin X Quad with a UAD 2 Satelite Thunderbolt 3 Octo. Im running 32 tracks with 5 buses all through the Main buss (though I guess that is a given in Luna). For my UA plugins they are all UAD 2--no native. I am also running other plugins from Waves, etc. My buffer setting is 2048. Also note, my session is on an external SSD connected via a USB-c cable and I am running no instrument channels--yet.
 
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A.C

Member
You bet. I am on a MacBook Pro M2 Max with 96gigs of memory. Im running the latest version of Luna and rotate between a few different Apollos depending upon where I am working. Currently on my Twin X Quad with a UAD 2 Satelite Thunderbolt 3 Octo. Im running 32 tracks with 5 buses all through the Main buss (though I guess that is a given in Luna). For my UA plugins they are all UAD 2--no native. I am also running other plugins from Waves, etc. My buffer setting is 2048. Also note, my session is on an external SSD connected via a USB-c cable and I am running no instrument channels--yet.
Well that’s a brilliant computer, so I can’t imagine that being the bottleneck. I am on an old Mac Mini 2018, and probably run a similar track count to you roughly (as well as mostly use UAD DSP for the majority of my processing) and I find I get by okay. I do tend to be fairly minimal with my mixes, though. I stick to the API console and tape extensions, and only venture out to other plugs if I’m really not getting what I need with those, so are you simply using just a ton of plugins? What @LesBrown said above is pretty spot on in terms of getting back some processing power, so I’m not sure I can add anything further on that front! At what point do you find the performance becomes an issue? Is it simply sooner towards the end of a mix than you’re used to with other DAW’s, or is it early on?
 
I have yet to verify this, but I have read on Ableton page that on silicon machines is actually better to work at lower buffer sizes.. You could give it a go..
 

hotspot

Venerated Member
Your computer is powerful enough, so as long as everything is in order with your drives, there should be no problems with the few tracks.

Are you only using your integrated screen or also an external display?
The 2nd screen issue is better in the current versions than in the early days, but not yet completely off the table.

Apart from that, you don't seem to be using many buses with hungry extensions, so that shouldn't be the cause.
I would make sure that you deactivate your plugins one by one, there may be a black sheep among them.
 
This is all good info guys and I greatly appreciate your feedback and suggestions! I do run a 2nd monitor as it can get a bit tedious trying to mix on a single 16" laptop screen, so it is great to understand there are quirks with that. As to the black sheep plugin comment, I think the potential issue might be the Precision Multi-band Compressor I have on a handful of tracks. I will try deactivating them and see what happens. With that said, yesterday I was working on adding in a few instrument parts and decided to freeze all of the tracks but the instruments I was actively working on. That fixed everything but the playhead sync issue.
 

DaveNJ

Established Member
What is your buffer set to?
 

alamere

Active Member
You bet. I am on a MacBook Pro M2 Max with 96gigs of memory. Im running the latest version of Luna and rotate between a few different Apollos depending upon where I am working. Currently on my Twin X Quad with a UAD 2 Satelite Thunderbolt 3 Octo. Im running 32 tracks with 5 buses all through the Main buss (though I guess that is a given in Luna). For my UA plugins they are all UAD 2--no native. I am also running other plugins from Waves, etc. My buffer setting is 2048. Also note, my session is on an external SSD connected via a USB-c cable and I am running no instrument channels--yet.
I run that type setup all the time, and my computer doesn't even stutter.
I'd check the connection on your external hard drive. Needs to be 3.0.

You can also move the session to the internal, and run from that to see if it improves performance.

Per UA:
SSD Storage Requirements
  • Fusion hybrid drives are unsupported
  • SSD storage must be formatted as APFS (Apple File System)
  • ExFAT, FAT, and Mac OS Extended formats are unsupported
  • External SSD must be within USB 3.0, USB 3.1, PCIe, or Thunderbolt enclosure
  • View this Apple support article for details about formatting an SSD for APFS
 
I run that type setup all the time, and my computer doesn't even stutter.
I'd check the connection on your external hard drive. Needs to be 3.0.

You can also move the session to the internal, and run from that to see if it improves performance.

Per UA:
SSD Storage Requirements
  • Fusion hybrid drives are unsupported
  • SSD storage must be formatted as APFS (Apple File System)
  • ExFAT, FAT, and Mac OS Extended formats are unsupported
  • External SSD must be within USB 3.0, USB 3.1, PCIe, or Thunderbolt enclosure
  • View this Apple support article for details about formatting an SSD for APFS
It is awesome to know your setup is not having that issue and also, thank you for the advice/info on drive formatting. I had no idea that they were so limited. I will double-check all of that.
 

Nicolher

Active Member
Some good tips here…
I remember having this problem once and the black sheep was a waves plugin, nowadays, it’s Sound City !
I have 3 instances of these in of my projects and it’s killing my MB intel i7 !
But it’s so good 😊
 

alamere

Active Member
Some good tips here…
I remember having this problem once and the black sheep was a waves plugin, nowadays, it’s Sound City !
I have 3 instances of these in of my projects and it’s killing my MB intel i7 !
But it’s so good 😊
GREAT point.
One tip/trick is def making sure that LUNA is up to date, and also that all plugins are updated as much as they can be also.
I had an issue with SOOTHE2 the other day in Luna, and turns out that it just needed an update.
Anytime I applied it to a track it overloaded my system.. then updated, and boom, everything was fine again.
 

chrisso

Venerated Member
Yeah, the only issues I've ever had with Luna were down to Waves plug-ins. I don't use them any more.
By the way, I have always used two monitors (arrange page on one, mixer on the other) since I started using Luna over three years ago and have never had a problem.
 
All of my software and plugins are up-to-date. My issues are definitely plugin-related. I went through and re-formatted my SDD to APFS and saw zero improvement. Then I removed the Precision Multi-band Compressor and voila--things started working great.
 

Pumping Alien

New Member
On ARM, lower the buffer to make the system faster. This may be caching related. My CPU is fastest at 256 or 512 and slows down heavily at bigger values.
 

Pumping Alien

New Member
Recuce the buffer size on ARM CPUs to make the system faster. Somewhere at 256 or 512 is the maximum performance.

I assume, the different CPU caching (compared to the old „Intel“ technology) is the cause. On Intel it was, the higher the buffer, the lower the CPU load. But that’s not how it works on modern ARM technology.

(Don’t confuse the Luna arm recording with ARM CPU‘s/Processors. If you’re using any „M“ mac, you’ll likely have an ARM CPU at the time of writing.)
 
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