Hello,
I don't know if this is a documented set of problems or not:
I have tested this on both ppc and intel machines running OSX (10.4 only, and most extensively on intel). Running "top" in a terminal or looking at the OSX activity monitor, it looks like both Pd vanilla (0.41) and extended (0.39 -- I haven't yet tested any new autobuilds) run two processes -- in vanilla, the names of the processes are pd and Pd, and in extended they are pd and Pd-extended.
If I am having PD run through coreaudio, either built-in or through a firewire interface, the cpu usage jumps to a consistently high 25% to 50% just by clicking "compute audio." It's accounted for in the pd cpu loadmeter, and for both vanilla and extended it's the "pd" process that shows the corresponding cpu usage in "top." It goes back down to between 0% and 5% when I stop audio.
Then, if I connect to jack (using jackpilot), computing audio shows no huge jump in cpu, so that problem disappears.
The other problem is that any vu meters connected to [env~] -- even running at 16384 -- will make the "Pd" or "Pd-extended" processes (not the "pd" process as before) jump to between 15% and 30%, but the corresponding jump does not show up in pd's cpu loadmeter. I haven't seen this problem in linux or windows unless I'm running the env~ very fast (and surprisingly it seems to be more efficient in windows?).... it wouldn't bother me so much, but I'm traveling soon and I have to use OSX in a concert.
Is all of this normal? I've talked to other mac users and they have seen the same issues.
Thanks,
Matt