I have Musicbee working on my M1 MBP via Crossover — everything functions seamlessly. I was even able to import my library and settings from my Windows backups with no issue. It's a testament to both Steven and the Crossover (and WINE) developers that something like this is even possible!
However, there are a few items I'd like to cover (some ongoing issues and some solutions that may help other people):
1.
CPU Usage & Battery DrainMusicBee has been draining my battery like crazy (it drains way more than Firefox, Dropbox, Plex, etc). I investigated and did some benchmarking:
When music is playing and the main window UI is hidden: ~30% CPU usage
When music is playing and the UI is shown: ~130%+ CPU usage
When music is
paused and the UI is hidden: ~6% CPU usage
When music is
paused and the UI is shown: ~100% CPU usage
(For comparison, Firefox with many tabs and several windows is maxing out at 25% CPU usage, and Dropbox [not a lighweight application] is at 0.7%).
As for memory, Musicbee hovers around 300 MB used (while Crossover is about the same).
a. UI CPU Usage - SolutionWhen it comes to the UI creating high CPU usage, it took me a while to solve this — until I realized there was on animated element in the UI: the Now Playing marquee scroll. Disabling this brought UI CPU usage way down. Now, when music is paused and the UI is shown, the CPU usage is ~3% (down from ~100%). Key insight here: remove all animated UI elements.
b. Playback CPU Usage - Ongoing InvestigationHowever, playback CPU usage (measured with UI hidden and music playing) is still around 30–40% CPU usage.
I tried changing the following settings:
- `use 32 bit output` to `off` = no impact
- load entire file to memory (or increase buffer size) = no impact
- Output methods WASAPI Shared & Exclusive (default: DirectSound) = no impact
- Disabling last.fm plugin (only one used) = no impact
- Equalizer, DSP, and Gain settings are off
Steven, do you have any suggestions for settings/features I can change/disable to reduce CPU usage during playback?2.
Minimizing Player WindowWhen I minimize the MusicBee window, the minimized window completely disappears. I was able to fix this by changing `General > minimise to` to `Taskbar`. (I originally had it set to `Notification Tray`). With this setting updated, minimizing the window works like one would expect on a Mac.
3.
File Converters - CrashI don't use this feature, but want to note that clicking `File Converters` in the Preferences menu causes a crash.
4.
Media Keys Don't Work - Kludge SolutionOut of the box, Mac's play-pause/skip forward/skip back media keys won't control MusicBee. I was able to create a solution with the help of Karabiner Elements, a FOSS app that can intercept and remap keystrokes on Mac. I am using a "complex modification" in Karabiner to remap the media keys to hotkeys that can be used in Musicbee. Here is an example:
"from": {
"key_code": "play_or_pause",
"modifiers": {
"optional": [
"any"
]
}
},
"to": [
{
"key_code": "f4"
}
]
And, to make the above example work, I also remapped my MusicBee play/pause hotkey to F4. A lot more than this can be done (especially if pairing Karabiner with Keyboard Maestro), but I'll leave that up to the reader.
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