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New Mac Pro and New M2 Ultra Mac Studio!!! (Yeah!)

GrapeBotherhood said:
I don't have the drives problem, so far. Do you unmount them before turning off the machine? I don't.
I'm using ACASIS to put nvme drives in. BUT, one of them kind of failed (a brand new 4 Tb crucial). I heard they are less reliable than Samsungs, so that could be the cause.
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Not when I shut down, since the shutdown dismounts drives automatically.

I have one USB3 SATA SSD that is very flaky on the new machine. (It has no issues on my other three macs, and the Studio has no issues with any other USB3 drive.) My dual enclosure TB3 NVMe drive gave me some issues early on, requiring powering off and on to get it to mount, though it seems stable now. I've not had the issues some have had of drives spontaneously dismounting. Another issue I have is that one of my monitors won't connect via USB-C, though it connects via HDMI. (The monitor supports USB-C.) I don't know if the problem there is the monitor or the Studio.
 
Sounds from this thread like there's quite a bit of "it just (mostly) works" with the Studio's....I hope they mature and will at least be holding out for the next generation before I dare jump into that. I need something that is really stable, like all my former Macs and my current Hackintosh has been. It seems all this relying on everything being done through USB and TB is what causes problems. Internal storage is still king.

But thanks for all for sharing their experience!
 
Simon Ravn said:
Sounds from this thread like there's quite a bit of "it just (mostly) works" with the Studio's....I hope they mature and will at least be holding out for the next generation before I dare jump into that. I need something that is really stable, like all my former Macs and my current Hackintosh has been. It seems all this relying on everything being done through USB and TB is what causes problems. Internal storage is still king.

But thanks for all for sharing their experience!
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I would say my Studio Ultra is very solid, and I have many fewer issues with the Studio than I had with my 2020 i9 iMac, where I had more USB3 drives that required turning off and back on to get them to mount, and where one monitor occasionally refused to wake from sleep. (I had to put everything back to sleep and then wake it up again to get the monitor to respond.) That monitor works reliably with the Studio Ultra. The Ultra also has six TB4 ports and 2 USB 3 (A style) ports, as well as a card reader and an HDMI out. So it feels rather luxurious in terms of ports. The internal drive is beyond fast, and if I'd fully realized just how fast it was, and why that might be useful, I might have been more tempted to max out that even at the ridiculous price Apple charges for internal drives. I still think I made the right call in choosing to economize by getting a smaller internal drive (2TB) but the speed difference is such that it's not an easy decision, and if I was looking at a laptop instead of a desktop, I'd be very tempted to get the largest internal drive offered.
 
Simon Ravn said:
Internal storage is still king.
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I mostly agree with you, Simon, and I have (mostly) followed your advice. On my main DAW I have an OCZ 8TB drive for samples and projects, and it is very fast. Were it not for the (legacy) satellite PCs also serving up samples, I expect I could reduce my buffer settings on the DAW.

There is some additional nuance, though when it comes to recording. For my Pro Tools computer, I am using external storage via Thunderbolt, which attaches a ThunderBay enclosure. While I'm having no problems with that, I do raise the buffer within PT to the max when recording a lot of audio tracks, especially if there are effects stacked up into it.

With a setup like that, there's a big difference between the round trip latency while composing, compared with recording, but for the latter it doesn't matter since I'm just printing to audio prior to adding live players or mixing.

Kind regards,

John
 
My Mac Studio M2 Ultra has been rock solid since I purchased it back in September. I have three displays connected to it, Slate Raven via HDMI, Samsung G9 Odyssey via TB4 to Display port and an LG 42" which is also connected TB4 to display port. Both the Samsung and LG are plugged into OWC's 4 port Thunderbolt Hub. I then have 3 OWC Express 1M2's each plugged into their own individual ports on the mac. 2 Apollos and a UAD Satellite and a 14 port USB hub that has every USB peripheral connected to it. My setup has been rock solid and has been performing wonderfully. Not a single complaint.
 
octave music said:
My setup has been rock solid and has been performing wonderfully. Not a single complaint.
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Congratulations -- I'm envious! Can you add a bit of colour to help others discern whether, for them, a similar setup would work well?

1. What DAW / notation program are you using?

2. What kind of music (string quartets, guitar-bass-drums-vocals rock, huge hybrid orchestra with lots of effects -- something in between)?

3. What is your buffer setting?

4. How many stereo tracks (if you know) can you record simultaneously? (and -- related -- do you raise your buffer setting either while recording or after you generate a lot of audio?)

5. Do you record audio into your DAW or into Pro Tools?

6. You have two Apollos -- do those introduce meaningful latency?

Thanks @octave music
 
JohnG said:
Congratulations -- I'm envious! Can you add a bit of colour to help others discern whether, for them, a similar setup would work well?

1. What DAW / notation program are you using?

2. What kind of music (string quartets, guitar-bass-drums-vocals rock, huge hybrid orchestra with lots of effects -- something in between)?

3. What is your buffer setting?

4. How many stereo tracks (if you know) can you record simultaneously? (and -- related -- do you raise your buffer setting either while recording or after you generate a lot of audio?)

5. Do you record audio into your DAW or into Pro Tools?

6. You have two Apollos -- do those introduce meaningful latency?

Thanks @octave music
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1] I use Digital Performer, VEPro and Video Sync 5 Pro-- all hosted in the same single computer

2] huge hybrid orchestra with a 98GB of RAM startup template. Also, keep in mind that where applicable like with Kontakt and Spitfire Players, I have the pre-load buffer on the Kontakt stuff set at the minimum 6KB and in the Spitfire stuff, I have it set at 2000, the default in Spitfire I think is up around 12,800 or something like that. Not sure what there numbering scheme is but I don't think it's KB's. I did this about 2 months ago when I started using the OWC Express 1m2 hard drive enclosures.

3] Typically 256 buffer while composing. If there are a lot of time synced plugins etc towards the end of a project or when I'm mixing, I will increase it to 512, but that is the exception not the rule. I have also used 128 without much issue, but don't see the need as certain plugins or VI's when you don't expect it will cause noises to happen. At some point I will track down where in my template, 128 buffer isn't useful.

4] The most audio tracks I record are 16 STEREO stem tracks all in one pass at 48kHz 24bit. I've never stressed tested it to see how many simultaneous tracks I could print.

5] I record all of my Audio into Digital Performer

6] The ONLY latency that I'm aware of with my Apollos is this: I route the audio of each audio track associated with the Film from within Video Sync 5, and they get routed to muted Virtual Channels in the Apollo Console Mixer. The Audio then passes through the Apollo Console and then comes in on 3 separate stereo Aux's in Digital Performer where i have those 3 channels assigned to hardware faders to have easy control of dialog/sfx/temp or whatever else I need. There is a slight latency in that signal that you can hear if you were to unmute the tracks in the Apollo Console there would be a slight flam. It's not latency that you can see with your eyes with the dialog etc. I love my setup with my Apollo's. I also think this latency would occur with any audio passing from external apps outside of the DAW. Of course I could bring the audio from the Film I'm scoring and put it on tracks in DP, but I like having it all live outside of the Session so that I don't accidentally edit the production sound when editing my music etc. Yes, I could hide those tracks, but I simply like working this way LOL.
When I record vocals or guitars etc into the Apollo, there is no latency that I'm aware of. Using the Apollo as the front end and direct recording to DP, it bypasses the Digital Performer Buffers.

Hope this helps.
 
I also got the new Mac Studio with 192 GB of RAM and I've had a bunch of issues with it making me think if i should send it back. Although what I think is that it is the new Sonoma OS that had to came with it and it had only been around for a month when I got mine. I haven't seen any of the current libraries say they are compatible with 14.3. Kontakt 7 says it is compatible with 11, 12, and 13 but doesn't mention the 14 Sonoma. Along with many non-MIDI but general OS interface issues I had, my Logic would crash saying System Overload with the audio engine unable to process so I changed Kontakt 7 engine setting to have the Multiprocessor support be 16cores and the memory preload buffer size to 18kbs and it hasn't crashed again since yet.
 
Simon Ravn said:
Sounds from this thread like there's quite a bit of "it just (mostly) works" with the Studio's....I hope they mature and will at least be holding out for the next generation before I dare jump into that. I need something that is really stable, like all my former Macs and my current Hackintosh has been. It seems all this relying on everything being done through USB and TB is what causes problems. Internal storage is still king.

But thanks for all for sharing their experience!
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That hasn't been my experience, Simon. The Mac Studio is fantastic, and it's as stable as any of the 25 Macs I've bought.

Disclaimer: I haven't installed Sonoma.
 
MrBuck said:
I also got the new Mac Studio with 192 GB of RAM and I've had a bunch of issues with it making me think if i should send it back. Although what I think is that it is the new Sonoma OS that had to came with it and it had only been around for a month when I got mine. I haven't seen any of the current libraries say they are compatible with 14.3. Kontakt 7 says it is compatible with 11, 12, and 13 but doesn't mention the 14 Sonoma. Along with many non-MIDI but general OS interface issues I had, my Logic would crash saying System Overload with the audio engine unable to process so I changed Kontakt 7 engine setting to have the Multiprocessor support be 16cores and the memory preload buffer size to 18kbs and it hasn't crashed again since yet.
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Sonoma is a mess. The updates Apple is making are improving some of the issues, but there's a lot that got "broken" by Sonoma.
 
rAC said:
Such as? Sonoma has for me been flawless.
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As Al said, there are a lot of issues with Pro Tools. A lot of what seems to be hanging on is the Graphics and UI changes in Sonoma. FWIW Apple changes the graphics protocols with pretty much every update (according to the head of EuCon development), and I've read several reports of problems with fast-scrolling on Sonoma. Keyboard Maestro functionality also got borked. But some people seem to have few to no problems with Sonoma. I'd expect it depends on what you're using, what features, and your personal workflow. Here's what Avid says is problematic (and also somewhat fixed, as the 14.x versions roll out). Known Issues with Mac OS 14 (Sonoma) and Pro Tools
 
I bought a new M2 and was forced to use Sonoma even though it is not yet compatible with many things ( some still unknown! ) It took me 2 days to get my Apogee Symphony converters working because the Maestro software to run it is all screwed up now (worked fine in Ventura) My feeling is that Apple should release new computers with the previous software available (mostly bug free) and let users decide if they want to upgrade to the newer software yet. Or at least make it super easy to roll back to the previous version without jumping through hoops.
 
KerrySmith said:
As Al said, there are a lot of issues with Pro Tools
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Okay, but Pro Tools has historically been a special case. Digidesign and now Avid always publish compatibility requirements, and they assume that you're using almost nothing but Pro Tools (and 50 billion third-party plug-ins) on the machine.

I'm not dissing Pro Tools for that, because the idea makes sense if you're using it, say, to record an orchestra. And they started out being the program you used if you wanted to run digital audio on a computer.

But I am saying that whether or not Pro Tools has issues with Sonoma is a totally separate subject.
 
Apropos Sonoma, IDK if it's an urban legend but in the olden days (like 2-3 years ago) people assured me that you could roll back one OS if you bought a new Apple Mac Pro.

Maybe that's no longer the case? Or maybe it was a myth.
 
JohnG said:
Apropos Sonoma, IDK if it's an urban legend but in the olden days (like 2-3 years ago) people assured me that you could roll back one OS if you bought a new Apple Mac Pro.

Maybe that's no longer the case? Or maybe it was a myth.
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I may have been fed (or digested) the wrong info somewhere along the line.

I just now went to the App store to try to download Ventura - and it let me. I stopped the download because I'm not going to erase my M 2 now that I've spent all this time setting it up (clean installs - no migration)

But I am really a Dufuss for not checking this out for myself regarding rolling back to Ventura in the first place and just assuming and letting hearsay lead me forward.
 
Nick Batzdorf said:
Okay, but Pro Tools has historically been a special case. Digidesign and now Avid always publish compatibility requirements, and they assume that you're using almost nothing but Pro Tools (and 50 billion third-party plug-ins) on the machine.

I'm not dissing Pro Tools for that, because the idea makes sense if you're using it, say, to record an orchestra. And they started out being the program you used if you wanted to run digital audio on a computer.

But I am saying that whether or not Pro Tools has issues with Sonoma is a totally separate subject.
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Maybe, but they've been very up-front with this OS about the known issues that it has created, and why some things are better suited to being fixed by Apple than each dev. Moreso than with prior releases that I can recall.

I do have Logic, Cubase and Live installed as well. I don't run them as often (and am still resolutely on Vetura), but I have heard collaborators who use them complain about some similar issues with Sonoma.

I did used to like using Pro Tools as a benchmark, because they would extensively test systems before publishing compatibility reqs to ensure that they'd work, but that's not as reliable now, since you can use 3rd-party I/O, which can have separate driver issues.
 
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