Audio Performance Options

This option dialogue provides you with several choices for multithreaded processing.

Number of processing threads

To utilise multiple CPU cores, the processing work is divided into sections known as "Threads."
This option controls how many threads the work should be divided into. Higher numbers will, in theory, give a better distribution of work among the CPU cores. However, when latency should be low, the overhead of synchronising all the threads, among other things, often eats up this benefit.

Recommended values:

The same number as physical CPU cores. For CPUs that have cores with different performance, only the number of high-performance cores should be used.

MacOS Threads

On Apple Silicon, the number of audio processing threads should not exceed the number of the highest-performance CPU cores available in the processor.

On M1 through M4 processors, Apple calls these Performance Cores. In the current specifications for the M5 family, Apple calls the fastest cores Super Cores. The recommendation remains the same: set the number of threads to no more than the number of Performance Cores or Super Cores available in your processor.

Select the row matching the total CPU core count shown for your Mac. M4 Ultra and M5 Ultra processors are not listed because Apple has not released processors under those names.

Multithreading Mode

These are different strategies for how to utilise the multicore performance best. Technically, these settings have to do with how to return resources to the computer while still ensuring they are available for low-latency performance.

Recommended values

On PC: "Hybrid" is the default as it gives the best performance on most systems.

On macOS: "Apple" is the preferred setting as it utilises the built-in features of macOS to prioritise audio processing.