multicore processing ?

vichug's icon

Hey, potentially silly and/or outdated question, but i would like to know how Max handles using mutliple cores of a computer processor today. I remember that at one point, you could only use several core sa tonce by having several separate patchers, or/and in different poly~ instances. Is it still the case nowadays ? Thanks in advance !

vichug's icon

so for precisions...i want to know if a track FX rack in m4l consisting of only m4l devices would perform as well if it was all just one patch in Max, without Live ; not live devices plugged to each other, but just the max objects.

testcase's icon

can't definitely answer this but one big difference is that in max you can use the poly~ object multithreading capabilities to spread the processing over different cores. in live this will not work as the parallel attribute to poly is ignored.

vichug's icon

oh, didn't know about that difference of treatment. thanks for the info ! still wish i could get more info on that topic though...

Roman Thilenius's icon


most VST hosts handle it as follows: when 2 plug-ins are in the same signal chain (before its routed to a bus or a master channel), they are processed on the same core (unless it is too busy already)

maybe live devices are under a similar legal situation?