# MacBook Pro - How to achieve optimisation of inputs and outputs across FOUR physical Thunderbolt 3 Ports?



## Hywel (Jan 17, 2020)

Hi folks, thanks for your advice.

I have purchased a late 2019 MacBook Pro 16” which I intend to use for music and photography. I will be using it with a desktop 4k Thunderbolt 3 monitor which should be capable of also charging the laptop (just about).

Like most people I have an assortment of legacy peripherals which I have listed below

USB things include
3 x USB3 docks with SSDs/HDs
2 x USB3 hubs which I currently use for attaching a Wacom tablet, cameras, iPhones, iPads, Steinberg eLicenser, NI Maschine Jam
Computer Keyboard
Mouse
NI Komplete Kontrol S88
Audient iD4

I also have a Thunderbolt 2 hard disc which is used for photo storage and also has it’s own dedicated T2 port in my current setup though being a spinning HD using a T2 connection for this is perhaps overkill. It does have a USB 3 option to connect.

On my current setup (a Mac Mini) most of the above are daisy chained in no particular organised way and probably through ignorance rather than knowledge, I have dedicated a single USB port to each of 1. NI Komplete Kontrol S88 and 2. Audient iD4 audio I/O device. I have accepted any audio and idiosyncratic glitches I get currently as a factor of either computer system inadequacies or data bottlenecks in the peripheral chain.

So, eventually to MY QUESTION…

The MacPro has 4 physical Thunderbolt 3 ports - IF I dedicate one port to the external 4K monitor, what is the best solution and distribution of the peripherals across the remaining 3 Thunderbolt ports so as to optimise audio, sample access, MIDI I/O information etc OR should everything be fast enough that I won’t need to worry about it? By the way, I realise that I will need a handful of various adapters.


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## SupremeFist (Jan 17, 2020)

I don't quite have that much stuff hanging off my mbP but you can definitely plug the S88 (or any USB-MIDI device) into a (decent USB-C) hub rather than dedicating a port to it.


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## gst98 (Jan 17, 2020)

I'm in a very similar situation myself. I had it all sorted until I upgraded from a 2016 to the new 16 inch macbook, and because it requires so much power, my USB-C monitor no longer could provide as much power as I was using when running logic and powering my Arrow. As far as I'm aware only the new £6000 pro monitor, and a razer monitor can do this. (look to see if your mointor outputs 100w.) Even my apple designed LG usb-c monitor is now useless thanks to the high demand of the new laptop.

Here my advice: USB-C/tb3 is incredible and prioritze inputs that take advantage of this the most. TB3 has a conncetion speed of 40Gbps compare to 5Gbps of USB3.0. You'll be amazed at how much stuff can plug into 1 port of the macbook.

So for me the first thing I think of is to have my UBC-C UAD arrow plugged in directly for the lowest latency. 

Next is external SSDs. I prevoisuly tried to save ports and my SSDs through a hub, but they were trasnsfer data at 1/10th of the rate, and amde investing in fast NVME SSDs pointelss. So choose the SSD with your most commonly used samples and use a port for that. Also, put the most important stuff you have on your macbook SSD. Apple's SSDs are SOOOO much faster than anyone else on the market, and the fact that it is soldered to the motherborad makes it even faster. 

Then obviously your scrren will take up one port too. Don't what you're using, but my monitor has a two port usb hub built into which is really helpful. 

As far as keyboard and other peripherals/iloks - stick them in a usb hub. These are the least imoprtant thing, and the they can all go down 1 USB-C port. I stick this hub into my monitor which saves me a port. The 4th port for me is a USB-C hub that allows me to plug in SD cards, more SSDs, adn crucailly lets me plug in the powe cable and supports 100w pass through.

I still have to juggle if I want to plug in my UAD Octo or anything else. I got excited when there were rumors that the new 16inch was going to have 6 ports. shame that didn't come true.


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## Hywel (Jan 17, 2020)

gst98 said:


> I'm in a very similar situation myself. I had it all sorted until I upgraded from a 2016 to the new 16 inch macbook, and because it requires so much power, my USB-C monitor no longer could provide as much power as I was using when running logic and powering my Arrow. As far as I'm aware only the new £6000 pro monitor, and a razer monitor can do this. (look to see if your mointor outputs 100w.) Even my apple designed LG usb-c monitor is now useless thanks to the high demand of the new laptop.
> 
> Here my advice: USB-C/tb3 is incredible and prioritze inputs that take advantage of this the most. TB3 has a conncetion speed of 40Gbps compare to 5Gbps of USB3.0. You'll be amazed at how much stuff can plug into 1 port of the macbook.
> 
> ...


Hmmm, interesting about the monitor and power output to the MBP... I haven't purchased a monitor for it yet but I was looking at the BenQ PD3220U 32" 4K which outputs 87 watts apparently. Now I'm not sure from what you've said whether that will be enough.


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## gst98 (Jan 17, 2020)

make sure that the 87 watts is accurate. sometimes they won't constantly always put out what they say due to meeting efficiency regulations. I was wrong its a 100watt hour battery, the charger is 87w, so maybe it will work. trouble is no one exepcted anyone to make a laptop with such a big battery.

btw I use an LG 27uk850. when the usb c was new, most brands wouldn't do usb-c, and I thought one deisgned by apple would be the best use. (the internals are frome the apple ultrafine). It does annoy me that its only be 3 years and already the monitor lost one of the main reason to spend the extra on a usb c monitor. 

Most use is fine, but logic destroys battery and then the monitor cant keep up. I'd try searching for a monitor which people recomend specifically for your laptop. otherwise the BenQ monitor looks great. if you're not in a rush to get a monitor, lots of them will come out soon amde to work with it.

if you're doing photography work it looks like it has good colour accuracy. despite it saying HDR it only has 300 cd/㎡ of brightness. HDR is 500+. All the brands lie in the same way, but if you're doing any colour correction you'd be better off doing on the latop screen.


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## SupremeFist (Jan 17, 2020)

I use this Anker hub (their stuff is great) with my 13" and it is rated for 100W power delivery for charging as well so maybe worth a look? https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07HMLTCPL/ (Anker USB-C hub)


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## whinecellar (Jan 17, 2020)

I was in this exact dilemma when I bought a new MBP back in March (2018 model, but same idea). In short: buy the Caldigit TS3+ Dock and you’re good to go. It’s the only reliable TB/USB-C Dock out there, it drives 4k effortlessly, supplies ample power, and even has a ridiculously fast card reader for photo/video guys. I love mine. 

I have a 55” 4k Samsung TV running off of it, 2 daisy-chained Apollo interfaces via Apple USB-C > TB adapter, loads of USB peripherals, external SSD chassis, etc. 

Go for it.


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## gst98 (Jan 17, 2020)

SupremeFist said:


> I use this Anker hub (their stuff is great) with my 13" and it is rated for 100W power delivery for charging as well so maybe worth a look? https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07HMLTCPL/ (Anker USB-C hub)



Yeah that's similar to what I use now. the thing is its nice having a monitor do the charging and video all in one if possible. simpler and cleaner set up


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## gst98 (Jan 17, 2020)

whinecellar said:


> I was in this exact dilemma when I bought a new MBP back in March (2018 model, but same idea). In short: buy the Caldigit TS3+ Dock and you’re good to go. It’s the only reliable TB/USB-C Dock out there, it drives 4k effortlessly, supplies ample power, and even has a ridiculously fast card reader for photo/video guys. I love mine.
> 
> I have a 55” 4k Samsung TV running off of it, 2 daisy-chained Apollo interfaces via Apple USB-C > TB adapter, loads of USB peripherals, external SSD chassis, etc.
> 
> Go for it.



Even at £285 that doesn't quite power the new 16 inch though. I mean I'm sure it would be fine, but i've neve been able to bring myself to spend so much on those hubs. 

Also fitting muplitple SSDs, power, HDMI isn't the optimal set up for performance.


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## Loïc D (Jan 17, 2020)

whinecellar said:


> I was in this exact dilemma when I bought a new MBP back in March (2018 model, but same idea). In short: buy the Caldigit TS3+ Dock and you’re good to go. It’s the only reliable TB/USB-C Dock out there, it drives 4k effortlessly, supplies ample power, and even has a ridiculously fast card reader for photo/video guys. I love mine.
> 
> I have a 55” 4k Samsung TV running off of it, 2 daisy-chained Apollo interfaces via Apple USB-C > TB adapter, loads of USB peripherals, external SSD chassis, etc.
> 
> Go for it.


Thanks for this feedback !
I was thinking getting one and I’m really waiting for a discount bow.
Caldigit did nothing for BF/XMas time.


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## SupremeFist (Jan 17, 2020)

gst98 said:


> Even at £285 that doesn't quite power the new 16 inch though. I mean I'm sure it would be fine, but i've neve been able to bring myself to spend so much on those hubs.
> 
> Also fitting muplitple SSDs, power, HDMI isn't the optimal set up for performance.


Fwiw these are weirdly much cheaper from Apple UK (£220ish iirc) than anywhere else, and certainly the throughput of TB3 is such that you'll lose zero performance running T5-level USB-C SSDs through one. (I already have two Samsung T5s hanging off an Anker hub each and according to a disk speed utility they run at very near the advertised max bandwidth for both reads and writes.)


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## gst98 (Jan 17, 2020)

SupremeFist said:


> Fwiw these are weirdly much cheaper from Apple UK (£220ish iirc) than anywhere else, and certainly the throughput of TB3 is such that you'll lose zero performance running T5-level USB-C SSDs through one. (I already have two Samsung T5s hanging off an Anker hub each and according to a disk speed utility they run at very near the advertised max bandwidth for both reads and writes.)



Good to hear you're having such success with them. Is that tested when they are loading samples though? I'm sure if you run a normal disk test they would be fine, but if you're reading from both SSDs (streaming samples from disk for example) and got a 4k feed with power, surely that would start to bottleneck?


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## SupremeFist (Jan 17, 2020)

gst98 said:


> Good to hear you're having such success with them. Is that tested when they are loading samples though? I'm sure if you run a normal disk test they would be fine, but if you're reading from both SSDs (streaming samples from disk for example) and got a 4k feed with power, surely that would start to bottleneck?


Ah well I don't run an external monitor so I can't speak to that, but I certainly have no problem streaming samples from them...


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## jbuhler (Jan 17, 2020)

gst98 said:


> Good to hear you're having such success with them. Is that tested when they are loading samples though? I'm sure if you run a normal disk test they would be fine, but if you're reading from both SSDs (streaming samples from disk for example) and got a 4k feed with power, surely that would start to bottleneck?


I have not had any problems running 4 SSDs (USB3) and a 2K monitor through a Thunderbolt 2 dock of this sort. TB2 has considerably less bandwidth than Thunderbolt 3. These hubs themselves, even the Thunderbolt 3 versions, all require external power I believe. (My old TB 2 dock in fact died and I had to replace it with a TB 3 dock, though my computer is still TB2 so I don't get the bandwidth gains.) But I've never had an issue with a bottleneck from streaming samples from SSDs. Maybe I would if I had a better audio interface where I could run with a lower buffer.


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## Hywel (Jan 18, 2020)

FYI - I did a bit of research into the Caldigit TS3+ Dock and this is a response Caldigit made on the Amazon UK site with regard to charging the new 16" MBP which requires 96W of power.

"Thanks for contacting us. We are working diligently to determine the best solution that will fit all Mac-based computer systems, including the new 16” MacBook Pro and its 96W power supply. While it is not difficult to increase the wattage on our current docking solution, to do so reliably is another task entirely.
In the meantime, the TS3 Plus and USB-C Pro dock are going to provide 85W of charging and are still the best possible solutions for current and future Mac machines."

Their response was dated 19th November 2019.


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## gst98 (Jan 18, 2020)

Hywel said:


> FYI - I did a bit of research into the Caldigit TS3+ Dock and this is a response Caldigit made on the Amazon UK site with regard to charging the new 16" MBP which requires 96W of power.
> 
> "Thanks for contacting us. We are working diligently to determine the best solution that will fit all Mac-based computer systems, including the new 16” MacBook Pro and its 96W power supply. While it is not difficult to increase the wattage on our current docking solution, to do so reliably is another task entirely.
> In the meantime, the TS3 Plus and USB-C Pro dock are going to provide 85W of charging and are still the best possible solutions for current and future Mac machines."
> ...



yeah maybe best to wait a bit - it's not to mess with power supplies. Designing high-power power supplies is not easy to do and make it safe and reliable.


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## gsilbers (Jan 18, 2020)

sorry for the dumb question but I haven’t upgraded like in 10 years...

you guys keep mentioning power for the monitor... or to poweran external monitor.

Is that just the video signal out of the computer to the external monitor?

and why would power be an issue in this context? Are these external monitors 4K or something above normal Logic Pro sort of thing?


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## gst98 (Jan 18, 2020)

gsilbers said:


> sorry for the dumb question but I haven’t upgraded like in 10 years...
> 
> you guys keep mentioning power for the monitor... or to poweran external monitor.
> 
> ...




So the new macbooks only have 4 USB type C connectors - and nothing else. 
lots of people complained about losing ports etc, but the USB-C connectros, let apple use there thunderbolt 3 cables, have so much bandwidth and speed that they can transfer pretty much anything.

So they beauty of this is that you can have one cable coming out of your mac, which connects to your external 4k monitors for example & you plug everything into your monitor. So that 1 single cable will provide power to the laptop, connect the video feed (which can then be split to up to 4 screens), connect you mouse and keyboard, your SSDs, audio singal for heaphones etc... literally everything. But it does come at a compromise, such as your SSD and audio interface will be faster plugged directly to its own port than all down one cable.

However, you have to have a monitor that was designed to work with these new laptops, because USB-C is very complicated and requires expensive chips to do all of this. Thats why even 3rd party dongles are very expensive. It also needs to be able to provide power to the laptop. 

The issue we have now, is if you bought the new 2020 16 inch macbook, Apple designed it to way more power hugry than anyone expected to go any times soon so that they could make it a faster machine. That now means that most of these clever monitors are not able to send enough power to the latop to keep it charged. The only reason logic is mentioned, is that running any DAW, or final cut, adobe porgram etc.. uses so much power that the power coming from the monitor isn't enough to keep it charged. I get about 2-3 hours of use out of mine.


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## gsilbers (Jan 18, 2020)

gst98 said:


> So the new macbooks only have 4 USB type C connectors - and nothing else.
> lots of people complained about losing ports etc, but the USB-C connectros, let apple use there thunderbolt 3 cables, have so much bandwidth and speed that they can transfer pretty much anything.
> 
> So they beauty of this is that you can have one cable coming out of your mac, which connects to your external 4k monitors for example & you plug everything into your monitor. So that 1 single cable will provide power to the laptop, connect the video feed (which can then be split to up to 4 screens), connect you mouse and keyboard, your SSDs, audio singal for heaphones etc... literally everything. But it does come at a compromise, such as your SSD and audio interface will be faster plugged directly to its own port than all down one cable.
> ...



thanks for the info.

So from what I’m understanding the issue is that a cable has to power a monitor and from there it goes to the laptop as both power and video and it doesn’t power the battery fast enough to stay on/run ok.

and with a dock it should be fine, correct?


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## gst98 (Jan 18, 2020)

gsilbers said:


> thanks for the info.
> 
> So from what I’m understanding the issue is that a cable has to power a monitor and from there it goes to the laptop as both power and video and it doesn’t power the battery fast enough to stay on/run ok.
> 
> and with a dock it should be fine, correct?




yes and no. the monitor (and its power supply) has been designed for this purpose. The power from the latop comes from the same power supply that powers the monitor.

The dock is not a necessary part of the setup. I don't seem one, but others here seem to like how it can simplir the number of cables you might need. But liek the monitors, the docks will need to be redesigned to work with the new latops.

the workaround is we have to have the apple power supply plugged in for now (as a supplement really). the dock listed here also can provide power and hence would then mean you don't need your apple power supply. But thats an expensive way to go when you could just buy a monitor once it has been redesigned to supply enough power.


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## gsilbers (Jan 18, 2020)

gst98 said:


> yes and no. the monitor (and its power supply) has been designed for this purpose. The power from the latop comes from the same power supply that powers the monitor.
> 
> The dock is not a necessary part of the setup. I don't seem one, but others here seem to like how it can simplir the number of cables you might need. But liek the monitors, the docks will need to be redesigned to work with the new latops.
> 
> the workaround is we have to have the apple power supply plugged in for now (as a supplement really). the dock listed here also can provide power and hence would then mean you don't need your apple power supply. But thats an expensive way to go when you could just buy a monitor once it has been redesigned to supply enough power.



Interesting.

But I’m guessing it’s fine to use an Old normal hdmi monitor with one of those docks that has hdmi out and still be ok. It’s just more cables and adapters that don’t seem cheap (compared to usb hubs at least). And the adapter would also have to have a port for the power adapter... and then ssd and se card and usb etc.


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## gst98 (Jan 18, 2020)

gsilbers said:


> Interesting.
> 
> But I’m guessing it’s fine to use an Old normal hdmi monitor with one of those docks that has hdmi out and still be ok. It’s just more cables and adapters that don’t seem cheap (compared to usb hubs at least). And the adapter would also have to have a port for the power adapter... and then ssd and se card and usb etc.



yeah you'd have to have a hub plugged in to your laptop to get everything else plugged in, and the ones HDMI are still £80-100 for a high quality one (i've been through loads of cheap ones). they look a bit messy too, and its easy to get cables to unplug by accident. The monitor solution is less hassle


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## chimuelo (Jan 28, 2020)

I had to share this musical genius’s review.....











Musician Neil Young Calls the MacBook Pro ‘a Piece of Crap’; Says Steve Jobs Was Focused on Consumers, Not Quality


Canadian born singer Neil Young says the MacBook Pro lacks quality, even stating that Steve Jobs wasn’t focused on quality, but consumers




wccftech.com


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## chimuelo (Jan 31, 2020)

Neil Young slams MacBook Pro for its "Fisher Price" audio quality


Legendary musician, Neil Young, has sparked controversy this week following his vitriolic tirade against the MacBook Pro laptop computer.




www.gearnews.com


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## Hywel (Feb 11, 2020)

I thought I would post an update of my MBP 16" experience.
I think it is an excellent computer, but then I am coming from a five year old Mac Mini. I am running Cubase and have had no audio dropouts or problems as yet but my musical demands are not great. I have EVERYTHING external plugged into a CalDigit Thunderbolt 3 Dock as suggested by @whinecellar with no issues whatsoever as far as I can tell, and it is charging the MBP perfectly adequately.
My 32” 4k Thunderbolt 3 monitor from BenQ will also adequately charge the MBP independently if I so wish it.
My only gripe with Apple is that the 2m charging cable that came with the computer is only USB-C so I had to purchase an additional £69 2m Thunderbolt 3 cable to connect the Caldigit Dock to be able to charge the MBP.


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## gst98 (Feb 11, 2020)

Hywel said:


> I thought I would post an update of my MBP 16" experience.
> I think it is an excellent computer, but then I am coming from a five year old Mac Mini. I am running Cubase and have had no audio dropouts or problems as yet but my musical demands are not great. I have EVERYTHING external plugged into a CalDigit Thunderbolt 3 Dock as suggested by @whinecellar with no issues whatsoever as far as I can tell, and it is charging the MBP perfectly adequately.
> My 32” 4k Thunderbolt 3 monitor from BenQ will also adequately charge the MBP independently if I so wish it.
> My only gripe with Apple is that the 2m charging cable that came with the computer is only USB-C so I had to purchase an additional £69 2m Thunderbolt 3 cable to connect the Caldigit Dock to be able to charge the MBP.



That's good to hear. Was that an apple cable? you can buy 3rd party tb3 cables for £25. And its kinda crap that Caldigit don't included a cable anyway. or, you could use the cable that comes with your macbook charger too.


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## Hywel (Feb 11, 2020)

gst98 said:


> That's good to hear. Was that an apple cable? you can buy 3rd party tb3 cables for £25. And its kinda crap that Caldigit don't included a cable anyway. or, you could use the cable that comes with your macbook charger too.


To be fair Caldigit and BenQ both provided TB 3 cables but they were quite short ones. I needed a 2m one and thought the one that came with the MBP would do. How wrong I was! Couldn’t find a cheaper 2m one.


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## SupremeFist (Feb 11, 2020)

Hywel said:


> I thought I would post an update of my MBP 16" experience.
> I think it is an excellent computer, but then I am coming from a five year old Mac Mini. I am running Cubase and have had no audio dropouts or problems as yet but my musical demands are not great. I have EVERYTHING external plugged into a CalDigit Thunderbolt 3 Dock as suggested by @whinecellar with no issues whatsoever as far as I can tell, and it is charging the MBP perfectly adequately.
> My 32” 4k Thunderbolt 3 monitor from BenQ will also adequately charge the MBP independently if I so wish it.
> My only gripe with Apple is that the 2m charging cable that came with the computer is only USB-C so I had to purchase an additional £69 2m Thunderbolt 3 cable to connect the Caldigit Dock to be able to charge the MBP.


How is the fan noise?


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## Hywel (Feb 11, 2020)

SupremeFist said:


> How is the fan noise?


It doesn’t bother me but it is noticeable at times.


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## gsilbers (Feb 11, 2020)

Hywel said:


> To be fair Caldigit and BenQ both provided TB 3 cables but they were quite short ones. I needed a 2m one and thought the one that came with the MBP would do. How wrong I was! Couldn’t find a cheaper 2m one.



theres like a thousand docks in amazon. what made u choose the cal digit?


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## gsilbers (Feb 11, 2020)

gst98 said:


> That's good to hear. Was that an apple cable? you can buy 3rd party tb3 cables for £25. And its kinda crap that Caldigit don't included a cable anyway. or, you could use the cable that comes with your macbook charger too.



how long did it take to get it? for me its a month wait but i think its due to the coronavrius thing in china.


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## gst98 (Feb 11, 2020)

gsilbers said:


> how long did it take to get it? for me its a month wait but i think its due to the coronavrius thing in china.


to get which, laptop or cables?


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## gsilbers (Feb 11, 2020)

gst98 said:


> to get which, laptop or cables?


Laptop.


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## gst98 (Feb 11, 2020)

gsilbers said:


> Laptop.


I ordered the day it was annaounced an it came in 1 day after they got stock which was about 2 weeks in the UK. Avoided the whole thing luckily.


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## whinecellar (Feb 11, 2020)

gsilbers said:


> theres like a thousand docks in amazon. what made u choose the cal digit?



Speaking for myself, it’s the only Thunderbolt/USB-C dock that reliably works. I tried many over the years and every single one had random issues, dropouts, drive & monitor disconnects, etc. I don’t know if it’s a chipset issue or what, but the Caldigit consistently gets the highest reviews, and it just plain works and supports the widest array of peripherals at full bandwidth.


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## Hywel (Feb 11, 2020)

gsilbers said:


> Laptop.


I've had the laptop a couple of weeks now, I think it took around 10-14 days from ordering to arriving. The Caldigit Dock was mentioned by @whinecellar AND is the only one sold on the Apple Uk website which Apple specifically mention is suitable for charging the 16" MBP. I don't think there are lots of Thunderbolt 3 docks at present and if you search for Thunderbolt you get a lot of USB-C docks come up which AREN"T the same.
The 2m T3 cable I got was from Belkin, and I couldn't find a longer one than 2m.


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## gst98 (Feb 11, 2020)

Hywel said:


> I've had the laptop a couple of weeks now, I think it took around 10-14 days from ordering to arriving. The Caldigit Dock was mentioned by @whinecellar AND is the only one sold on the Apple Uk website which Apple specifically mention is suitable for charging the 16" MBP. I don't think there are lots of Thunderbolt 3 docks at present and if you search for Thunderbolt you get a lot of USB-C docks come up which AREN"T the same.
> The 2m T3 cable I got was from Belkin, and I couldn't find a longer one than 2m.



Yes, one of the resrictions of thunderbolt is that it cannot be made longer than 2m. Be careful, because most 2m tb3 cables have half of the speed of a 1m or 1/2 meter tb3 cable, so you might not be taking full advantage of the 40gbps. if you want to go fruther than 2m, you have to do it actively.


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## gsilbers (Feb 11, 2020)

whinecellar said:


> Speaking for myself, it’s the only Thunderbolt/USB-C dock that reliably works. I tried many over the years and every single one had random issues, dropouts, drive & monitor disconnects, etc. I don’t know if it’s a chipset issue or what, but the Caldigit consistently gets the highest reviews, and it just plain works and supports the widest array of peripherals at full bandwidth.



same thing happened with normal usb hubs. i bought like 4 different ones that had 12 ports and all had something. issue here or there. until i bought the amazon basic one which was more expensive but it worked. so many dongles and usb peripherals! 

so good to know about the issues on thunderbolt. and as charlie pointed out on the other thread, i didnt know that TB3 hubs dont work like usb hubs where one port can handle several tb3 ports and its more of a daisy chanin thing. wierd.


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## gsilbers (Feb 11, 2020)

gst98 said:


> Yes, one of the resrictions of thunderbolt is that it cannot be made longer than 2m. Be careful, because most 2m tb3 cables have half of the speed of a 1m or 1/2 meter tb3 cable, so you might not be taking full advantage of the 40gbps. if you want to go fruther than 2m, you have to do it actively.



another thing i didnt know. damn, this thunderbolt things is kinda of a pita.


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## gst98 (Feb 11, 2020)

gsilbers said:


> another thing i didnt know. damn, this thunderbolt things is kinda of a pita.



Well it's fine, you can still use usb c cables for 10m things etc, but you cant do it at tb3 speed.


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## Hywel (Feb 11, 2020)

The other important thing with the MBP is that although there are 4 physical Thunderbolt 3 ports on the machine, they are paired up and each pair share the same bus so the total maximum potential bandwidth is 80gbps and NOT 160gbps as you might expect. Probably not a major problem in real life though!


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## musicalweather (Feb 22, 2020)

FWIW, I have a 2016 MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar. I'm using a Plugable Thunderbolt 3 dock plugged into a single thunderbolt port on my Mac. I've got quite a lot going into that dock: two external monitors, my Yamaha keyboard, a Focusrite audio interface, an ethernet cable and various midi controllers and dongles (plugged in at different times). It's worked just fine for several years now. https://plugable.com/products/tbt3-udv/
A have a Samsung Portable SSD drive plugged into one of the other Thunderbolt ports on the Mac.


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## JaikumarS (Jul 16, 2020)

whinecellar said:


> I was in this exact dilemma when I bought a new MBP back in March (2018 model, but same idea). In short: buy the Caldigit TS3+ Dock and you’re good to go. It’s the only reliable TB/USB-C Dock out there, it drives 4k effortlessly, supplies ample power, and even has a ridiculously fast card reader for photo/video guys. I love mine.
> 
> I have a 55” 4k Samsung TV running off of it, 2 daisy-chained Apollo interfaces via Apple USB-C > TB adapter, loads of USB peripherals, external SSD chassis, etc.
> 
> Go for it.



Thanks for the update. I have a few questions:

Since the MBP has four thunderbolt ports may I know — Is there any specific port you connect your charger, Hub, Blackmagic Multi-dock ? 

I'm looking for a diagram to optimise for a better realtime performance for film scoring. Would be very helpful if you could share it!

Thank you,
JS


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## whinecellar (Jul 16, 2020)

JaikumarS said:


> Thanks for the update. I have a few questions:
> 
> Since the MBP has four thunderbolt ports may I know — Is there any specific port you connect your charger, Hub, Blackmagic Multi-dock ?
> 
> ...



I use the top left one for my Caldigit TS3+ since that’s where I’d typically plug in the AC adaptor. I can’t remember offhand what differences there are between ports, but I do know a security update disabled the front left one for a lot of people, so there are definitely different busses. Worth investigating!


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## gst98 (Jul 16, 2020)

JaikumarS said:


> Thanks for the update. I have a few questions:
> 
> Since the MBP has four thunderbolt ports may I know — Is there any specific port you connect your charger, Hub, Blackmagic Multi-dock ?
> 
> ...



The macbook ports are paired together (the left two, and the right two). So it is possible that you may bottleneck if you put two _really_ demanding things in the left two ports for instance. _But_... ...the bandwidth is so high with tb3 I'm not sure that you'd do that. But to be safe, I put the two most demanding things on opposing sides (for me thats my audio interface and monitor out)


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## whinecellar (Jul 16, 2020)

gst98 said:


> The macbook ports are paired together (the left two, and the right two). So it is possible that you may bottleneck if you put two _really_ demanding things in the left two ports for instance. _But_... ...the bandwidth is so high with tb3 I'm not sure that you'd do that. But to be safe, I put the two most demanding things on opposing sides (for me thats my audio interface and monitor out)



Yeah, whatever the bus allocation is, it's good to spread things out. That said, my Calgidit TB dock AND my dual UA Apollo > 4 SSD drive array are both on the left ports. The Caldigit has most of its ports occupied, including separate 7 and 10 port USB 3 hubs, ethernet, and a 4k display. It's a busy rig to say the least - and I've never had so much as a hiccup!


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