So here's something I'm curious about:
When running a full project in Ableton Live (music production), I am (when setting sample rate to the max) getting get drop outs and stuttering. This is as expected and Ableton Live's CPU meter confirms this with values from 80% to 100%.
However, according to MacOS' own Activity Monitor CPU usage never exceeds 60-70%. How can this discrepancy be?
EDIT: This machine has a 2,5 Ghz Quad-Core
Best Answer
The answer to your question is given in an article from the Knowledge Base of Abelton entitled : CPU meter shows a different value than the Activity Monitor/Task Manager.
Here is the main points :
Read the original article for full details.