Is it normal that Max 6.0.5 consumes more than 100% CPU with no patch open ?

MaxMSP
Roald Baudoux's icon

Roald Baudoux

Hello,

I am in the process of debugging a very complex patcher which consumes a lot of CPU power. Therefore I opened the Activity Monitor and tried to remove parts to see which ones were the most consuming.

In between Max crashed with the activity monitor left open. I restarted it and was very surprised to discover that it consumed more than 100% or processing power (with spikes going up to 105%) without the audio on and even without any patcher open. It remained like that for around 90 seconds then went down to circa 9% (which I still find incredible for a situation with no open patch). Going beyond 100% is a funny situation. I suppose the i7-quad core CPU of my Mac might have something to do with these strange figures.

Any time I restart Max the same process happens.

So:
1. Is it a normal situation ? (I'd say no but who knows...)
2. Can I do something to stop this to happen ?

If it can be of any use I am running Max under MacOS 10.6.8.

Thank you in advance.

Ben Bracken's icon

Ben Bracken

Hi Roald,

This is currently expected with Max 6.0.5 and lower, while certain things happen wrt the database, preferences, intializations, etc.

However, this should improve in an upcoming update, so you can look forward to that.

Thanks,
-Ben