# 2013 Mac Pro "Trashcan" or Mac Studio?



## NKAudio (Apr 26, 2022)

This is inspired by the "2019 Mac Pro or Mac Studio" thread because I am genuinely curious whether it's worth it to make the upgrade myself.

Currently running a Late 2013 Mac Pro, 3.5 GHz 6-core, 32GB memory. I do composing professionally on a daily basis and I still find it quite sturdy and quick for my needs. I also have a second generation BlackMagicDesign SSD Bay (Thunderbolt) where I house my sessions drives, samples drives, backups, etc. This workflow still seems pretty solid and quick, but technology has come a long way it seems.

Has anyone made the jump from such an older Mac Pro up to the Mac Studio? If so, what are the pros/cons you've noticed.

(p.s. screenshot ted my system setup. I haven't updated the OS in a while because I've learned when it's rock solid, don't mess with it until you absolutely have to!)


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## HCMarkus (Apr 26, 2022)

I just moved from a 2010/12 5,1 12 core 3.33 Mac Pro tuning Mojave to a Mac Studio Ultra. The difference is huge from a responsiveness perspective, even though my sessions (Digital Performer 11.1) are hybrid Native/Rosetta2. I moved my current scoring project over to the new Mac Studio mid-project, and the time I'm saving on production (not to mention the HAIR I'm saving) has far outstripped the time I spent setting the new Mac up.


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## gsilbers (May 1, 2022)

yeah, id do what markus did. 

I was looking at the same option and realized via the benchmarks is that the mac mini intel 64gb of ram is a lot faster than either the trashcan or old cheese greater. 
So i got one and its been great. But thats before the studio came out. I think the studio is now the main thing everyone will be buying. 

Also, something i learned after getting the mini last year is that its not 2012 anymore and any current systems just work and are robust. ITs not like before where hard drive failures where common, apps had compatitabilty issues and so on. Still happens of course, but much much less than before. And you dont have to wait for that magic OS vs specific plugin vs specific daw. Stuff just works. 

With that said, if you are in high sierra, then going anywhere past catalina will be hell for you. There are SOOOOO many 32 bit plugins you dont realize they are 32 bit. I lost a ton of plugins going to catalina and decided to go back to majove just for the virus TI. Damn access. 

And the other caveat of course is rossetta which most stuff is already compatible native or via rosetta. for me it was ok when i got the m1 macbook air. Which btw, flies circles around my mac pro 2012 except for the ram. so that ultra m1 will be amazing. 
But there might be some issues with a few plugins. But apple going 64 bit and transition to m1 started in catalina. which is why sucks so bad for audio/muic producers


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## RRBE Sound (Jun 2, 2022)

Very interesting thoughts!  - I am not up-to-date on the next Mac Pro or whatever there is coming... I am, however, also still running a similar Mac Pro 2013 - Which ideally soon should be replaced. 

Mostly because of the great technological changes that have been happening over the past almost 10 years.  

In a perfect world, I think I would buy the Mac Studio Ultra. Due to the possible long lifetime... But I am not sure...


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## ptram (Jun 2, 2022)

NKAudio said:


> (p.s. screenshot ted my system setup. I haven't updated the OS in a while because I've learned when it's rock solid, don't mess with it until you absolutely have to!)


I'm on a 12-core MacPro 2013, and can say that Mojave has been a great increase in stability over High Sierra. Everything seems to be running fine. But this might vary, depending on the installed software, in particular with 32-bit ones.

Paolo


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## gsilbers (Jun 2, 2022)

RRBE Sound said:


> Very interesting thoughts!  - I am not up-to-date on the next Mac Pro or whatever there is coming... I am, however, also still running a similar Mac Pro 2013 - Which ideally soon should be replaced.
> 
> Mostly because of the great technological changes that have been happening over the past almost 10 years.
> 
> In a perfect world, I think I would buy the Mac Studio Ultra. Due to the possible long lifetime... But I am not sure...



Same here. Looking at the benchmarks, its no doubt way more powerfull than anyting out there.

But sadly they also announce a new mac pro update. And they also announced a new M2 chip.

While it might be up to an year before we see these it kinda sucks buying something so expensive and know the new verison is around the corner which might be twice as good. OR not knowing the prodcut cycle on these new studio. Maybe its like the mini where its about 4-5 years with minor increments. we'll see this june 6, 

The ultra mac studio w 128gb of ram and 8tb storage (external( to me looks like something that can last up to 5-9 years for most if not all profesional composers. I know trevor morris uses a mac pro with 256gb of ram so that would be the only case where some guys just like having all in one system and use that much stuff.
Im using more and more turning off tracks to save ram on an 2013 mac pro and its great. A different workflow.


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## WaxTrax (Jun 3, 2022)

Another consideration that might not matter now, but will matter at some point down the road, is that the next version of macOS due out later this year is expected to drop support for the 2013 Mac Pro. Anything newer is going to have a potentially longer useful lifetime.


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## NKAudio (Aug 3, 2022)

gsilbers said:


> With that said, if you are in high sierra, then going anywhere past catalina will be hell for you. There are SOOOOO many 32 bit plugins you dont realize they are 32 bit. I lost a ton of plugins going to catalina and decided to go back to majove just for the virus TI. Damn access.


Sorry for such a late reply. I'm curious what some of the biggest 32 bit plugins you had that you didn't realize at the time? I ask because I want to cross reference with any I may be using.

I have very purposefully been weaning off of any 32 bit plugins and as far as I know, LP X doesn't even have a 32 bit bridge anymore does it? If that's the case, I haven't used any 32 bit plugins in a very, very long time (like 4 years at least). Which alleviates my fears a bit when it comes to upgrading.


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## tmhuud (Aug 3, 2022)

Mac Studio or wait until oct/nov for nMac Pro supposedly to be announced.


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## gsilbers (Aug 3, 2022)

NKAudio said:


> Sorry for such a late reply. I'm curious what some of the biggest 32 bit plugins you had that you didn't realize at the time? I ask because I want to cross reference with any I may be using.
> 
> I have very purposefully been weaning off of any 32 bit plugins and as far as I know, LP X doesn't even have a 32 bit bridge anymore does it? If that's the case, I haven't used any 32 bit plugins in a very, very long time (like 4 years at least). Which alleviates my fears a bit when it comes to upgrading.




Someone created an app to double check vsts .
Its a free app and I forgot the name.

For me it’s the virus ti that’s holding me back. 

But I was surprise how many where 32bit. Some might just need an update while others are a bigger issue.


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## NKAudio (Aug 3, 2022)

gsilbers said:


> Someone created an app to double check vsts .
> Its a free app and I forgot the name.


Ah, I think I may have found it! https://eclecticlight.co/32-bitcheck-archichect/

I ran it to scan in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins and it came back with 0 32-bit results (this scans the Components, HAL, Vst, etc. folders). So I believe that means, at least in the plug-in category, I don't have any 32-bit ones installed, which should simplify migration at least.


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## HCMarkus (Aug 3, 2022)

PlugInfo: Audio Plugin Explorer | Apple Silicon | ThinkerSnacks.com



This is superb. $2.99 at App Store or Free from website. I paid the "outrageous" (jk) App Store price as a small Thank You to the developer, who did a great job. Easy Sorting/Searching. Right click on any Plugin and you can be taken to the Plugin in Finder, which makes it easy to remove unwanted cruft.



https://www.thinkersnacks.com/press/PlugInfo+Press+Release+2022.6.30.pdf


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## jcrosby (Aug 3, 2022)

At some point Apple Silicone will be the only option around for people still riding out old intel MP's...

Better to move to AS while Rosetta 2 is still part of the OS IMO. It's also smart to assume the worst, and expect that Apple will 86 Rosetta a year after they release the final transitionary machine, the AS Mac Pro... (I have no idea if this is true, but given how Apple operates these days I'm expecting that so I don't find myself caught off guard...)

In terms of losing software, I have almost 1000 plugins, I lost almost none of them when I went to Catalina. (Pretty sure the only thing that wouldn't install for me was Reaktor 5, which for unknown reasons would fail when reinstalling. That wasn't an issue though given that I had Reaktor 6. As far as I can recall Reaktor 5 was the only plugin casualty moving fro 10.13 to 10.15 (aside from perhaps freeware like PaulXStretch - which wasn't a deal breaker for me personally). Even Izotope Alloy 2 and Ozone 5 still work on macos 12 and an M1 Max.

With all that said, I went 64 bit years ago. I'm a Logic user, and Logic X killed off the 32 bit bridge in 2014 so I made that transition years ago... If upgrades were necessary I bit the bullet and did it. As a result the transition for me was relatively painless. (Moving to Catalina was more difficult overall than migrating to M1)....

I did lose a few applications (E.g. an older version of Translator, that sort of thing)... But the few things I did lose weren't mission critical, and easy enough to upgrade or replace... If I still owned a Virus TI though I could totally see the pain of losing the plugin option. Not to digress though...

On that note about Catalina, what I would suggest doing is creating a bootable external disk with 10.15 installed, boot from it, and see how things go. Catalina is super naggy, frequent notifications about notarization and/or DAW privileges are something you should expect to be nagged about the 1st few times you run your DAW...

Anything you can update with the latest versions ahead of time you should... Once you work the kinks out in 10.15, migration to macos 12 is a walk in the park by comparison. There were a couple things that needed to be upgraded - Carbon Copy Cloner, Sound Source, a couple other non-essentials, but I expected this as this has kind of the way its been in macos since Mojave...


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 3, 2022)

I personally do not want to ever use Rosetta. I will stay on Intel until 95% of all the software I use and love will be native Apple Silicon and no need for Rosetta. We are not there yet. Thank you to everyone else that is adopting Apple Silicon early and working out the kinks for me!

In addition to that, I am making use of the drivebays, PCI slots and GPU card capabilities in my MacPro that would all involve some hardware changes in order to continue on the new AS hardware. So I will get there eventually, but I see no reason to change until I REALLYU need to change...and then it will be a big project with a big expense and I will see what Apple offers at that time. For now..my Intel Monterey box is still working like a charm and missing nothing. There is no rush as far as I'm concerned, and Apple did a very good job of keeping Intel relevant for now and the foreseeable future. They are still selling intel Macs....intel is not going away tomorrow. In my view, there is still more support for Intel then there is for AS, from both Apple and 3rd parties.

Now that being said, I am also using Monterey on my MacPro, using OpenCore..and it may be more urgent for some others that are stuck on older versions of MacOS and feel they need to buy an AS Mac in order to get Monterey, Ventura or whatever comes next. So be it.. make sure you really need that though. The Trashcan can be upgraded to Monterey, and I highly recommend that before jumping to an AS Mac. Do that, turn with it, get used to no 32bit. get used to a number of things, if you think you just need a bigger computer and can't wait...well go for it and help pave the way for me later!

I was concerned about 32bit when I moved to Catalina, but it turned out to not be that big of a deal, I did lose a few things, but I'm living just fine without them.


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## Wunderhorn (Aug 3, 2022)

I would wait for a new Mac in which you can add more RAM again. That would be my main criteria. 128GB max is not very future proof. That and having PCI slots is always superior. You want that for SSDs (and other things), trust me.
If Apple keeps fucking this up in future I will be recommending Windows machines (and I do like MacOS better).


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## HCMarkus (Aug 3, 2022)

Dewdman, if I wasn't doing audio for video work, I would have used my 12-core Cheesegrater for a while longer, no doubt. I loved that machine, and it served me extremely well for many years. It is still in the machine closet, ready to get back to work in the event of an issue with the Mac Studio that sits adjacent to it.

Having made the move to Apple Silicon with the Mac Studio, I have absolutely no regrets. The new Mac simply flies, and there are only a couple of pieces of software I can't yet use on it. I've not tended to be the early adopter type, but the efficiencies AS provides had already been proven with my live M1 MacBookAir rig... I've been running that for over a year without an issue. and was thus ready to make the move in my studio when Apple introduced the Mac Studio, which looked like the perfect computer for me.

Using small pre-loads in Kontakt (which is the only NI AS-Native plugin to date), I'm not running into limitations with the Mac Studio's 64GB of RAM; I use a ton of VIs but don't use a huge orchestral template. I'm running Digital Performer as Apple Silicon Native, and most of my plugins are Native, too. That said, Rosetta works really well for the couple of plugins I need that are not AS-Native; no need to fear it.

For me, the lack of PCIe slots was an issue only for 1) UAD Duo card and, 2) Storage. 

1) I dealt with UAD by abandoning them. I didn't have a big investment in their plugins, which I always felt were unjustifiably expensive, and had alternates for everything UAD I did own, so that call was easy. The days when the extra computing horsepower UAD offered was essential (or even helpful) are well past us now.

2) Storage took more work, but everything I put together has functioned perfectly. Between Internal SSD, TB NVMe and USB3 SATA, I've got my needs covered, and since I have a machine closet, I don't have to look at the jumble of connected drives and hubs. I do recommend an octopus-style power strip for all the external power supplies if you don't spring for some kind of drive expansion box that replaces the Mac Pro internal drive slots.

I made the move to the Mac Studio in the middle of a significant scoring project. I had both computers running, and planned to remain on the Cheesegrater for the duration of the project, but when I experienced how much better everything ran on the Studio, I made the move, and have not looked back.

PS: I'll mention the PlugInfo App again... great for those with Intel Macs, too, as it will allow you to see what you've got really quickly and easily as you plan for the future.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 3, 2022)

Wunderhorn said:


> I would wait for a new Mac in which you can add more RAM again. That would be my main criteria. 128GB max is not very future proof. That and having PCI slots is always superior. You want that for SSDs (and other things), trust me.
> If Apple keeps fucking this up in future I will be recommending Windows machines (and I do like MacOS better).


agree 1000%. I'm not sure about the ram issue because of the AS architecture, I guess they will have to think of something along those lines. I definitely think we will see PCI slots but there is also a good chance it will be priced like the 2019 macPro...which for me would be a deal breaker also. We shall see. 

Again...AS architecture is great, there is no point in evangelizing it, but the simple truth is there are other considerations such as memory, storage bays, PCI hardware which may have cost thousands of dollars on its own, older DVI display monitors, etc.. For some of us it will be a very expensive transition. We will all get there eventually, but there is simply no rush for it..and there are numerous other considerations....not to mention Rosetta as I already mentioned. For me, that is the litmus test...when I don't need Rosetta anymore then I will consider the jump...and I see that as a few years away. And unless I can get an affordable PCI AS Mac, I might have to begrudgingly switch to windows, it is not out of the question, but still waiting. MacStudio was simply not enough computer for me.

Happy that those of you using it are loving it and paving the way for people like me that will wait until the highway is completely built.


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## Wunderhorn (Aug 3, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> For some of us it will be a very expensive transition.


Agreed. Although I'd rather spend more money on the computer and have it all (PCI, RAM slots etc.). That's because the computer is the foundation of all daily work. If I skimp on that I just shoot myself in the foot. Of course, not everyone can always do that and will have to weigh it out, therefore (and sadly) Windows machines can become are a serious alternative.

One day Apple's M series will mature (I believe it is not there yet) and we won't need this discussion anymore. Til then I look at them as a beta project.


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## colony nofi (Aug 3, 2022)

In our studios we have replaced a 2013 Mac Pro with an M1 mini (!!!!).
a few composers (including me) have replaced 2013 Mac pro's (and iMacs) with Mac studio ultra / max.
I have also replaced my intel MBP with a M1Max MBP (fully kitted out 64GB/8TB) and it is easily the best portable machine I've had (the 2018 MBP being the worst I've used....)

I wanted to bypass rosetta - but not for any rational reason. It works great, and once everything you use is m1 native, its like a bonus "here's 15-20% extra system CPU bonus to play with!"

I want to re-setup these machines knowing more than I did at the time... but will wait till I no longer need rosetta to do that. I also installed a bunch of stuff for a project that I no longer need which seems to be causing some instabilities - but this is far outside the "normal" DAW stuff (and involved a bunch of proof of concept drivers for firing large (128-256) channel counts between apps for object orientated mixing)

The new Mac Pro is likely only going to be useful for a very tiny number of composers. And much will depend on the behaviour of the "zero" core... audio is a real-time app, and it does not parallelise nearly as well as other software in the film/vfx world. Unless the chip uses vastly higher clocks for the base core, it will only be very very specific workflows that see a big difference in performance.

I have a decent custom template in Nuendo now with our own developed Kontakt libs for benchmarking. And the difference between the M1Max and M1Ultra is less than 10% under most circumstances. There are some outliers (immersive mixing) where the extra CPU helps. I cannot see any difference in voice count for Kontakt so far. Nor even with most bussing inside Nuendo (which also shows up CPU differences a lot of the time!). Depending on plugins one can push the ultra harder.

However, on one of our tests (using very large RAM hungry Kontakt patches) it is very easy to hit the ram limit of the Max, and therefore see much higher use possibilities using the ultra.

I was on 128GB on my Mac Pro (not officially supported, but OWC did a kit very early on which worked well) and I see significant differences in performance. But this is almost % for % down to the differences in single core performance. For our personal benchmarks, performance in most cases was 200-250% better than the 6 core 2013 Mac pros. This was for both Kontakt voice based tests, and larger DSP / routing/mixing based tests.

Having said all this, a new M2 Air ran one of my Kontakt tests BETTER than my Ultra. But this was just one specific test for a specific type of Kontakt patch, and doesn't really help much for real world results.

EDIT : Regarding the Mac Pro - I suspect it will be upgradable INSIDE the chassis - which for some people is important. I personally think the apple version of using thunderbolt for external upgradability is fine for composers, but understand those who have already invested in internal PCIE architecture. But it is going to cost you. Massive amounts.


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## ptram (Aug 4, 2022)

My 12-core Trashcan takes just 30% of CPU time when rendering a full orchestral arrangement. Mojave is the most stable OS I’ve had. The computer is ultra-silent. It is also very beautiful. It has a lot of ports to connect the many devices I own. I can still upgrade to Monterey and even to Ventura with a simple and safe hack. I’m fine for now.

Paolo


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## KEM (Aug 4, 2022)

Mac Studio and it’s not even close, I absolutely love mine, went from a 2015 MacBook Pro and the difference is night and day


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 5, 2022)




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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 5, 2022)

gsilbers said:


> With that said, if you are in high sierra, then going anywhere past catalina will be hell for you. There are SOOOOO many 32 bit plugins


Past Mojave, just to clarify.

I was curious and looked at ebay to see what black Mac Pros are selling for. They're now in the same price range as 5,1 Mac Pros.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 5, 2022)

I'm curious what are all the 32bit plugins that people feel they will be missing. In the end I was hard pressed to come up with many that mattered. At this point, any software that hasn't upgraded to 64bit is never going to...and at some point you will have to move to 64bit along with the rest of the apple-sphere...if you want to say Mac that is. At some point, have to let it go...


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## gsilbers (Aug 5, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


>



intresting. It does make sense if its a custom pcie and apple sells these expansion depending on what someone might need. animation 3d or server drive space. but many profesionals relly on their own pcie they like... (i think) so who knows. 

The mac studio is already very powerful and even the most profesinoal cmoposer will be ok with it. Maybe an external pc if its more ram than 128gb is needed. 
I think the studios could even power rerecording mixing stages. At least once pro tools is naticve apple silicon. \

But doing 3d renders animation or working on triple 8k monitors or something in realtime for example might need some serious horsepower where apple could have some video card addons. And since the PC versino of these rigs costs like $50k normally, no doubt the mac pro will be beyond anyones budget once those addons are added. 

knowing apple, there will be a PCIe adapter to their pcie custom slot priced the same as a external gpu pcie card. lol


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 5, 2022)

some of us need PCIe, and not necessarily for GPU. MacStudio is not enough. Some of us want more internal storage options. MacStudio not enough. Some of us want more memory, MacStudio is not evenough.

Also..in a year or two Macstudio owners will be extremely envious for M2 based solution. heheh. 

The Macstudio has powerful CPU, but its RAM and PCI limitations are exactly that...and its expensive for what it is. It is the best solution right now in 2022, no doubt.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 5, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> The Macstudio has powerful CPU, but its RAM and PCI limitations are exactly that...and its expensive for what it is. It is the best solution right now in 2022, no doubt.



PCI and all internal cards seem like they're not long for this world - and as far as I"m concerned their demise is 20 years overdue. That's a separate issue, though.

The Mac Studio's price - the one that isn't 2X the price - seems about right to me, and 64GB is fine. What's expensive is the storage, and of course $400 to go from 32GB to 64GB seems excessive.

But studio computers have always been in the $2500 - $3000 range, until the last few years when the prices went crazy (especially the $50,000 Mac Pro).


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 5, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> PCI and all internal cards seem like they're not long for this world - and as far as I"m concerned their demise is 20 years overdue. That's a separate issue, though.



That is frankly fake news. PC's will be using PCI slots for many years to come, PCI tech is still very much alive and well. Apple...is choosing to ignore it for the most part however.



Nick Batzdorf said:


> The Mac Studio's price - the one that isn't 2X the price - seems about right to me, and 64GB is fine. What's expensive is the storage, and of course $400 to go from 32GB to 64GB seems excessive.



Looking forward to hearing your experience when you get one. For me they are overpriced for what they are.



Nick Batzdorf said:


> But studio computers have always been in the $2500 - $3000 range, until the last few years when the prices went crazy (especially the $50,000 Mac Pro).



Apple has been missing the mid-tier mark for many years. They make a lot of low end consumer solutions and they make an extremely high end expensive solution, but miss the mid tier..which is actually the tier that most of us musicians and producers actually need. PC's on the other hand can provide a mid tier solution and have always been able to, by being able to build a PC from whatever specs you want. In the past that was, as you said, in the $3k range. I would say that today its closer to the MacStudio price point. The only problem with the MacStudio is that its missing PCI slots and other expandability...so in my view its not truly a mid tier solution...its a glorified, high power consumer solution...and still misses the mid tier mark. Its the best mid tier solution, however, that Apple has actually offered in numerous years.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 5, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> That is frankly fake news


Fake news is a right-wing propaganda term for anything that's true. This isn't news, it's just my opinion!

I've hated internal computer cards for more than 20 years. So when I say their demise is 20 years overdue, that's being generous.

Aside from storage, expensive internal cards have a long history of being terrible investments, especially but not only on Macs. And I have the Pro Tools TDM scars to show, as well as some others.

Yes, of course some people will want PCI slots, but I'm fine with not having to pay for them. You can always waste money on an expansion chassis (another item that left scars on my rear end).

Or you can use peripherals - which mainly means audio interfaces in our world - that connect other ways, such as Ethernet.

I'm not saying the Mac Studio is perfect for everyone, of course, but it is the one that's finally inducing me to upgrade form my 5,1.

Having said all that, I do wish it had internal drive slots.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 5, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> Apple has been missing the mid-tier mark for many years.



That's right, and I may have posted a couple or 50 times that it shouldn't be necessary to spend $6K and up for a studio computer.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 5, 2022)

fake news = propaganda.



Nick Batzdorf said:


> I'm not saying the Mac Studio is perfect for everyone, of course, but it is the one that's finally inducing me to upgrade form my 5,1.



Well as I said, its the first time in years that Apple has offered anything closely resembling a mid tier solution, but in my view it still comes short for the reasons I stated which is why I think it is over priced for what it is. I hear you that you personally don't care about PCI slots, but the internal storage and RAM limitations are still there. They tried to fit a higher power CPU into a consumer box and charge a mid tier price for it. I hope it works out for you, but I do think next year Apple will be offering a better mid tier solution. But it will definitely not be $3k. hehe


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 5, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> That's right, and I may have posted a couple or 50 times that it shouldn't be necessary to spend $6K and up for a studio computer.



Yea I agree. $6k is getting into upper tier level.. But I would say today in 2022, its probably is more like 4-5K being the reasonable price for a mid tier solution. By the time you get a loaded up MacStudio and the RAM and external expansion, etc..you will be approaching that range, if not past it close to $6k


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 5, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> Yea I agree. $6k is getting into upper tier level.. But I would say today in 2022, its probably is more like 4-5K being the reasonable price for a mid tier solution. By the time you get a loaded up MacStudio and the RAM and external expansion, etc..you will be approaching that range, if not past it close to $6k


Well, a Mac Studio - the one that doesn't have two processors - with 64GB and 1TB is $2600. That's not so bad.

I'd say that some of the iMacs have been mid-tier as far as price, they're just not ideal studio computers for everyone due to the all-in-one design.



Dewdman42 said:


> I do think next year Apple will be offering a better mid tier solution. But it will definitely not be $3k. hehe



And the year after there will be a better one still.

Whether any of them are mid-tier, who knows.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 5, 2022)

well good luck!


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 5, 2022)

Thanks.

By the way, you can spend $8K on one of these machines if you check all the boxes.


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## AndrewS (Aug 5, 2022)

Refurbished Mac Studios are already popping up on the Apple website, so if you're interested in saving a few hundred bucks it's worth keeping an eye out. I got lucky and nabbed a 128GB Ultra when it popped up, and since it was shipping from LA, it arrived less than 14 hours after I hit the order confirmation button.

Massive upgrade on my Trashcan performance wise, and basically slotted straight into my rig after buying a couple adapters (for my Apollo and two thunderbolt 2 Multidocks). That being said, not having VEPro, Native Instruments, and a handful of other plugins being able to run natively is a bit annoying at the moment.


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## HCMarkus (Aug 5, 2022)

Maybe I didn't need it, but I sprang for the Mac Studio Ultra in the hopes of having a machine that will serve as the heart of my recording studio for many years. 

The Mac Studio Ultra's announcement (when I was really just hoping for a Mac Mini Max or Pro) was just too tempting, and got me to simply go for as much CPU as possible. Power-hungry and struggling with a 5,1 Mac Pro, the Studio looked like a tremendous value proposition. Also, I had just sold a car and picked up a replacement vehicle for $9,000 less, so the cash was on-hand!

Like Andrew S, I've enjoyed a massive improvement in performance and my workflow is smoother and faster than ever.

Like Nick B, I don't need PCIe. And I love the fact I didn't even have to pull my old Mac Pro from its tall shelf in the machine closet... the Mac Studio and peripherals are low-profile, thus resting comfortably on the next shelf down, under the old Pro. 

I'm keeping the Pro around for emergencies, but I have yet to start it up since the Mac Studio moved in.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 5, 2022)

HCMarkus said:


> Like Nick B, I don't need PCIe


To be clear, I actually do have some cards in my 5,1 - of course the display card (swapped for one that lets me run Mojave), a USB 3 card, and a SATA III card that got the better of $40 so I could see whether it made any difference (it doesn't).

But what I don't have is any expensive cards. And all those things are built into the Mac Studio.


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## ZosterX (Aug 6, 2022)

Hey guys,


Currently thinking about takin the MacPro 2013" with 64Go RAM, 1To SSD, 3GhZ to replace my Macbook Pro which has 16GoRAM. My current orchestral template is way to big for my macbook pro

Any Thoughts ? I can have one for about 1200euros, should I go for it or go for the new macstudio ?


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## tmhuud (Aug 6, 2022)

ZosterX said:


> Hey guys,
> 
> 
> Currently thinking about takin the MacPro 2013" with 64Go RAM, 1To SSD, 3GhZ to replace my Macbook Pro which has 16GoRAM. My current orchestral template is way to big for my macbook pro
> ...


Mac Stoo-Dee-Oh.


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## ZosterX (Aug 6, 2022)

tmhuud said:


> Mac Stoo-Dee-Oh.


Which one my dear friend


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## tmhuud (Aug 6, 2022)

Please give me more than ONE PCIe slot....

Must be limited lanes...


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## tmhuud (Aug 6, 2022)

ZosterX said:


> Which one my dear friend


As much as you can afford. I don't know what kind of track count your doing or what your needs are but we composers (generally) don't need excessive GPU's, so keep that in mind.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 6, 2022)

tmhuud said:


> Please give me more than ONE PCIe slot....
> 
> Must be limited lanes...


This appears to be a reasonable solution for people who need PCIe:


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 6, 2022)

tmhuud said:


> As much as you can afford. I don't know what kind of track count your doing or what your needs are but we composers (generally) don't need excessive GPU's, so keep that in mind.



My quasi-educated guess is that the 2x price one for two processors isn't necessary for music unless you're working at high SRs and doing surround mixes.


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## JSTube (Aug 6, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> My quasi-educated guess is that the 2x price one for two processors isn't necessary for music unless you're working at high SRs and doing surround mixes.


*Anyone using modeled instruments* *will want as many cores as possible*. I know in my daw each track takes up one core if using something like Chromaphone for example. Convolution reverbs and guitar pedal/amp sims are also especially CPU-hungry.

Mac users shouldn't even be thinking about PCI-E slots and the like; _that Apple is GONE. Stop trying to save money and expand your machine later-on. Splurge up front and get what you need,*. _

Apple's current release model specifically negates those old-school types of post-purchase user-performed upgrades. (And with the chip shortage today? Nobody's saving money doing anything like that, either way)

As the owner of an M1 apple computer and as someone who was tangentially affiliated with apple** during the time of this transition in their product design -- don't try it, and you shouldn't even be thinking about it.

If you really need to save money or you absolutely need PCI-E for some reason, now's the time for you to become a PC owner, or cozy up to the gilded walls of Apple's ecosystem as they continue to move inward, inch by inch on you.

Me personally, I use both Apple + PC and my PC is where I use PCI-E.

*Or get a weaker model and if it's not enough, trade it in and upgrade to a stronger one. 
**I'm no longer affiliated with Apple and I'm speaking entirely on my own personal behalf

I personally have yet to bottleneck anything on my M1 in a DAW but addmittedly I've yet to really do much serious work on it.

I've been getting closer lately to getting an idea of where the M1 Mini will tap out, running sessions with multiple MODO sessions and other modeled instruments. We'll see if I wind up needing a Mac Studio.

*By the way, anyone wanting to do 4k video editing as well absolutely must go with the newer gen such as the Studio and not an M1. Don't learn this the hard way.* The M1 is absolutely not the machine for that (unless you want to wait).

For saving money with newer Apple machines, the only way to do it, really, is to buy the smallest storage configuration (like I did) and just rely on the fantastic Thunderbolt/USB 4 speeds to bust out your I/O that way. You'll need it either way as Apple's intentionally restricted the I/O (only in the sense of # of ports. The new machines have significantly more I/O bandwidth capable of being used than the older MacBook Pros with lots of ports).



gsilbers said:


> Which btw, flies circles around my mac pro 2012 except for the ram


Actually, it's the other way around. You had more ram in your older machine, but it was *far slower ram*. (Quality vs quantity). (These speeds _are enough_ to notice a difference when loading a Kontakt library on an older machine vs a newer one) And did you really ever max out? With kontakt's purge feature I can't see how anyone can actually max out 32+GB of ram unless they're literally running 100 Kontakt libraries on a single session and don't ever bounce or purge.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 6, 2022)

JSTube said:


> *Anyone using modeled instruments* *will want as many cores as possible*. I know in my daw each track takes up one core if using something like Chromaphone for example. Convolution reverbs and guitar pedal/amp sims are also especially CPU-hungry.



It doesn't work quite that way in Logic (one track per core)... and I keep forgetting how exactly it does work, but my solution when that happens is to use Vienna Ensemble Pro. It divides everything among the cores, problem solved.

But I don't normally run out of CPU. Okay, my machine has 12 cores rather than 10 regular ones in the base Mac Studio, but it is 13 years old.

And while I don't like Geekbench scores, my processor has a single-core benchmark around 675 and the base model Mac Studio's single-processor score is 1755.


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## JSTube (Aug 6, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> It doesn't work quite that way in Logic (one track per core)... and I keep forgetting how exactly it does work, but my solution when that happens is to use Vienna Ensemble Pro. It divides everything among the cores, problem solved.
> 
> But I don't normally run out of CPU. Okay, my machine has 12 cores rather than 10 regular ones in the base Mac Studio, but it is 13 years old.
> 
> And while I don't like Geekbench scores, my processor has a single-core benchmark around 675 and the base model Mac Studio's single-processor score is 1755.


I had a PC with an i7-3940xm (quite old!) that more or less 1:1 benched with the M1 when I bought the Mini, although to get those benches, it was 2-3 times more power. I bought it expecting it to be more or less equivalent. I'd say it feels as such.

People now shouldn't be expecting something that much more powerful than what they already have. Even a great machine from 2011 is still great, where the companies have improved since then is mainly in the power draw and size of the chips.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 6, 2022)

JSTube said:


> People now shouldn't be expecting something that much more powerful than what they already have. Even a great machine from 2011 is still great, where the companies have improved since then is mainly in the power draw and size of the chips.



You're making very strong statements and sound authoritative in bold type... but to be honest, what you're saying disagrees with every report I've read from anyone who has a Mac Studio - without fail.

There are reports from people having problems with music software on Apple Silicon machines, but I haven't heard anyone say that the main performance improvement is lower power use.

I don't believe in taking benchmarks very seriously, as I said, but a chip that scores 3X higher than another one is going to have a lot more horsepower.


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## JSTube (Aug 6, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> You're making very strong statements and sound authoritative in bold type... but to be honest, what you're saying disagrees with every report I've read from anyone who has a Mac Studio - without fail.


No it doesn't. You misinterpreted my post.

I'm talking about the M1 which I own, compared to an i7 that I also owned, *so I'm capable about talking about from experience. *

Others find the formatting _helpful_.

I literally said "The processor which benched 1:1 matched, perceptively" and then you mentioned the Mac studio, which I don't own. _You're accusing me of saying that the Mac Studio isn't going to be that much better, which I never said. _

Forgive my strong statements. Or not, I really don't care. I know a lot more about the design behind these computers and so I'm qualified to speak on them authoritatively. I'm not talking benchmarks.

*Of course 24 cores feels 3 times more powerful and benches 3 times more powerful. It's 3x more cores. *Most people are still on 8 unless they're running i9's or Xeons* ... *_where do you disagreee with me, exactly? About a newer gen of computers that you don't even own ... ? and are *only* talking about benchmarks in order to make your point despite saying you *don't agree* with relying on them? _

I matched an 8-core i7 (actually 4+HT) with an 8-core chip of similar "HP" in GHz. And said it felt perceptively similar. (Which was actually implicit in the benchmarks but also the design specification) -- Authoritatively. Forgive me!


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## mat1 (Aug 6, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> Apple has been missing the mid-tier mark for many years. They make a lot of low end consumer solutions and they make an extremely high end expensive solution, but miss the mid tier..which is actually the tier that most of us musicians and producers actually need.


There is a massive chunk of the music industry using MacBook Pro’s and iMacs. Not a PCI card in sight.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 6, 2022)

Lower power use was definitely one of the touted benefits of Apple Silicon...and particularly this makes a big difference for iPad's, iPhones and MBP's due to both heat and battery consumption.

The other area the Apple Silicon makes huge gains over previous CPU's is the handling of GPU intensive operations because of a power GPU built in, as well as the memory consolidation in the CPU. Gaming, video handling, etc.. will benefit quite a lot from that. 

I have always been very skeptical about the performance improvements claimed by many in terms of RAW cpu performance in a single core.

But these chips do have a LOT of cores...and that can make a difference if and when you have stuff you're doing that can be parallelized...which is the case with large DAW projects with many tracks. Not so much for smaller projects.

An Ultra is not going to make your single core performance any better, you'll still have a limit of latency you will have to live with before you get audio dropouts...but when mixing larger projects..using all the cores...it will definitely make a difference...

Various videos from people that are following the MacStudio closely state that the Ultra does not have twice the performance of the Max. But in my view this is very dependent on what the task is. Some software is simply not suitable for massively parallelizing the work, so of course it would not be double the output. However, if you work on large projects with a lot of tracks, you quite likely would make use of more cores. But I have not been following the audio MacStudio benchmarking.. I do not know if anyone in the audio community has actually compared large projects on the Max vs the Ultra to see what difference the double-the-price core counts can make to large projects....but that is where I would expect to see a difference. If you don't work on large track counts, you would not notice a difference.

I'm hearing other things also, a completely inconsistent and random number of people are experiencing noisy fans including a 2k Hertz whine... Some people are getting it and some aren't, it has become somewhat of a controversy.

They are also saying that some of the disappointments that some power users have using FCP with MacStudio have to do with the fact that it would have required software devs to do specific optimizations that many did not do, which would have made the Macstudio perform better. And allegedly the next gen Apple Silicon is going to have improvements at the hardware level to make it less necessary for software developers to do those kinds of optimizations. (shrug)

There are quite a lot of videos out now on You Tube, some from people that make videos every day about Apple products and are big fans of Apple, but also not afraid to point out the issues..and you can find out the good and bad of the MacStudio and 1st gen M1 tech. 

Myself, I'm waiting for at least next gen M2. 

I agree with what some people are saying, Apple doesn't care about PCIe. I wish they did, but they don't. PCIe would future proof these boxes a lot better, as it did for my cheese grater, but Apple doesn't want to make that "mistake" again. Probably I will have to sell some other audio gear and switch over to Thunderbolt all the way. MOTU here I come...but not until at least next year..or possibly the next...I really feel Apple is still working out the quirks.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 6, 2022)

mat1 said:


> There is a massive chunk of the music industry using MacBook Pro’s and iMacs. Not a PCI card in sight.


Apple has forced this to be the case in the Apple sphere, but you are just magnifying propaganda for them. PCI is very much alive in computers today, Apple is ignoring it... but that doesn't make the tech bad or wrong in any way whatsoever. Apple has their own reasons..I personally think it will force you and I to spend more money over time, upgrading our hardware more often. But hey what do I know.


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## JSTube (Aug 6, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> Various videos from people that are following the MacStudio closely state that the Ultra does not have twice the performance of the Max. But in my view this is very dependent on what the task is.


Once you lessen the CPU bottleneck, you move the bottleneck elsewhere, and then people start to interpret that as a plateauing of performance when it's not actually the case. Just as you said, it's all very highly situational.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 6, 2022)

as I already said above, the bottleneck is the actual single core speed..and there is nothing breathtakingly fast about the basic core speed of Apple Silicon right now compared to Intels of the past. That is not where the Apple Silicon concept particularly is gaining its impressive gains.. So if you expect some kind of killer single core performance, you are going to be disappointed. It can only shine when that is particularly not the bottleneck.


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## JSTube (Aug 6, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> there is nothing breathtakingly fast about the basic core speed of Apple Silicon right now


As above, so below! (I just got accused of spreading misinformation for saying this). But this is exactly correct.

People saying the 'M2' mini or whatever is going to probably have more memory like 32 GB? I wouldn't be so sure. They're putting all this multi-core HP into a "studio" line for a reason.

Create an artificial scarcity for RAM? Apple would never


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 6, 2022)

Improvements in M2+ are going to be in the basic Apple Silicon architecture and the ways that data are shuttled back and forth across multiple chips....how they can handle some more add on memory and things like that. These will make a difference, but the basic single core performance is not likely to change very much for many years to come for a variety of reasons. These improvements in M2+ will enable us to have 128 and 256gb ram with optimal data transfer between components of the chip, or perhaps some GPU related optimizations. They will fix some architecture bottlenecks that perhaps they didn't figure in the M1 generation, but are coming out now that many software makers are actually developing for it and shipping it out to people and getting lots of real work happening. These changes will make a difference and will eliminate some of the eliminatable bottlenecks...but its true...single core performance is unlikely to change much for years to come.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 6, 2022)

and from the sounds of it, they better fix the whining fan problem...I've seen enough reports of people that returned their macStudio and even tried a second one and returned that one too. Its an issue. What is strange is that there are also a lot of people saying "My macStudio is dead silent and I love it", so who knows what this design flaw is or why it only happens sometimes, but its an issue. I personally couldn't live with that either. Its one reason I never bought a mini, and supposedly for some people the MacStudio is louder then the mini at idle....but not under load..the mini became a loudspeaker under load...but the MacStudio handles its own load better...presumably because its using less power and generating less heat. But apparently it just has a shitty fan design that shows up for some people.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 6, 2022)

JSTube said:


> *Of course 24 cores feels 3 times more powerful and benches 3 times more powerful. It's 3x more cores. *



As I said, I don't take benchmarks very seriously. But I'm not talking about 3X more cores, I'm talking about new 10-core machines vs. my 2009 12-core.



Dewdman42 said:


> as I already said above, the bottleneck is the actual single core speed..and there is nothing breathtakingly fast about the basic core speed of Apple Silicon right now compared to Intels of the past. That is not where the Apple Silicon concept particularly is gaining its impressive gains.. So if you expect some kind of killer single core performance, you are going to be disappointed. It can only shine when that is particularly not the bottleneck.



As I said, I don't take benchmarks very seriously.

But the Mac Studio's single-core score is about 3X our machines' score. That has to mean something.

(This is the regular cores, not the AI or graphics cores - as far as I know.)


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 6, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> But the Mac Studio's single-core score is about 3X our machines' score. That has to mean something.


I was not comparing "our machine's core" which is 12 years old. There have been numerous intels since then that blow away the single core performance of the 5,1. But All cpu's are really reaching a point today where they simply can't go much faster because of simple physics... That is why they are expanding into wide CPU's with many cores, and finding other ways to get blood from the stone, but the old days of watching chips get faster and faster are mostly over until someone invents a completely new kind of microprocessor that uses fundamentally different physics to operate. Instead they will attempt to do things like they did with Apple Silicon, which I already explained above...but you seem to want to ignore in favor of the mythical idea that somehow the M1 is 3x as fast as the last Intels from Apple. it isn't.

Also, benchmarks you are quoting now, compute RESULTS, not actual core speed. So you can say its 3x as fast...but 3x faster doing what? If the test was taking advantage of consolidated memory or the GPU, then it was 3x faster for completely different reasons having nothing to do with the raw core speed.

if and when you do a task that requires raw use of core speed...such as trying to record a channel of the latest awesome physically modeled synth... then you will definitely not see 3x improvement over the last gen Intel. Not even remotely close.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 6, 2022)

JSTube said:


> I'm talking about the M1 which I own, compared to an i7 that I also owned, *so I'm capable about talking about from experience. *


I'm truly not trying to be combative, and again, I don't have one of these machines. My only argument is that the double-price Mac Studio is likely unnecessary for musicians who aren't working at high sample rates or making huge surround mixes.

You did write in bold that people running modeled instruments categorically should buy as many cores as possible.

All I've read is that the CPU meters are barely moving on sessions that either spiked or were high on previous Mac models. That includes a friend who has the very base model Mac Pro, and this is in Logic.

Now, he also said that he was able to run orchestral sessions that went to virtual memory. Even though I understand that Apple made the swapping faster, I am skeptical of that. But he does know Logic.


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## HCMarkus (Aug 6, 2022)

I've never heard my Mac Studio Ultra make a sound.

But then again, it is in a machine closet.

The nice thing is, the new machines run so much cooler, a computer iso cabinet will be much easier to achieve for those who need absolute silence.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 6, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> if and when you do a task that requires raw use of core speed...such as trying to record a channel of the latest awesome physically modeled synth... then you will definitely not see 3x improvement over the last gen Intel. Not even remotely close.


No question.

Did I mention that I'm skeptical of benchmarks?


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 6, 2022)

HCMarkus said:


> But then again, it is in a machine closet.


why is it in the closet?

As I said, there is a big controversy about this... some people are reporting as you and some people are flaming mad. Its not a consistent result apparently or else everyone has a different idea of how much noise they can tolerate..or maybe a little of both. 

Glad to hear you got one of the good units. I did hear that this is most likely only in the Max Line, and not the ultra's for some reason...


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## mat1 (Aug 6, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> Apple has forced this to be the case in the Apple sphere, but you are just magnifying propaganda for them. PCI is very much alive in computers today, Apple is ignoring it... but that doesn't make the tech bad or wrong in any way whatsoever. Apple has their own reasons..I personally think it will force you and I to spend more money over time, upgrading our hardware more often. But hey what do I know.


I wouldn’t be surprised if 90% of PCI slots sat empty in all those pro machines.. same for upgrading laptops - vocal minority

I’m certain Apple would rather a shorter upgrade cycle in general.


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## JSTube (Aug 6, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I'm truly not trying to be combative, and again, I don't have one of these machines. My only argument is that the double-price Mac Studio is likely unnecessary for musicians who aren't working at high sample rates or making huge surround mixes.
> 
> You did write in bold that people running modeled instruments categorically should buy as many cores as possible.
> 
> ...


The comparison is apples and oranges; modeled instruments use _very little ram_, howevery they're extremely CPU intensive. Orchestral libraries, on the other hand, use large amounts of ram, and Kontakt is CPU-light enough to run hundreds of instances, and how many libraries you want to load is largely restricted at that point by only how much ram you have. There are other bottlenecks too, like RAM speed and FSB speed that also come in to play, (that's limiting how much you can actually read from your RAM at once, and that's something I know little about, as I make a point to not use libraries when possible -- but for the sake of simplicity, they're not necessary to illustrate the point.

As you said, how multicore delegation is performed is going to be handled by the DAW. And I know my DAW that I'm using (which is runnning actually under Rosetta 2) has various settings I try not to change for how the multicore stuff is handled. Having said thait, *I doubt what I use is anywhere near as optimized for macOS as Logic* and I believe your friend's anecdote about the drastic performance difference. That's due to the fact that more cores = more FX in general (effects specifically are mainly CPU intensive and we've had more than enough memory (all of us) for quite some time to run as many as we want, with the main bottleneck there still being CPU and ultimately # of cores.

Not just people who use modeled instruments, but they in particular -- but everyone in general can benefit from more cores, *especially* if they use a lot of AU/VST/etc FX!

A folk album with just a lot of PCM recordings, no virtual instruments, but basic EQ/compression/mix plugins, however - I have a _Chromebook_ that has done that kind of stuff [not so] comfortably! I use it as a main audio recording machine (really only when ultimate silence is required) -- because it's entirely passively cooled, and it's the only machine I own which is therefore 100% quiet, no matter the workload. (It's running Windows, not ChromeOS, if that clarifies anything)

I don't use very many libraries, thus I can use my M1 Mini with only 16 GB ram.. in my opinion, for at least the next 10 years, but if I decide to do something huge with lots and lots of modeled instruments and a ton of sample libraries, I know my M1 won't suffice. (But that's not really my approach!)

But if not, I have a 12-core AMD system with 48 GB RAM on standby, but unfortunately that's a PC. (and I'm not so sure it compares to the tier of even an M1, let alone a studio. I'll have to look in to that some time, I've gotten so much just since seeing all the deals after joining here I'll have a lot to install on my Windows computer at some point!



mat1 said:


> I wouldn’t be surprised if 90% of PCI slots sat empty in all those pro machines.. same for upgrading laptops - vocal minority
> 
> I’m certain Apple would rather a shorter upgrade cycle in general.


Maybe you don't realize this, *but the thunderbolt, USB, etc and all the other I/O function as components of the PCI bus. *So they're not empty, they're quite occupied with a whole lot of high-bandwidth I/O no older machine can compete with, imo, even with expansion cards.

For some reason people regard expansions via thunderbolt or USB 4 to be somehow lesser-than, which is silly and unfounded. Something's only legitimate in some people's eyes if they put it in to their computer after the fact rather than went to the store, took it out of the box, and plugged it in to their computer via an easily accessible port. I don't see the difference, so long as it all Just Works.*

*and it usually will with Apple, I say somewhat begrudgingly


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## tmhuud (Aug 6, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> No question.
> 
> Did I mention that I'm skeptical of benchmarks?


You did. Benchmarks are pretty much absurd.


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## robgb (Aug 6, 2022)

I don't have either, but I can say this. I have a 2013 iMac with maxed out memory and my 16gb RAM M1 Macbook Air smokes it in just about every way. And please forgive me if I'm repeating myself.


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## Tronam (Aug 6, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> why is it in the closet?
> 
> As I said, there is a big controversy about this... some people are reporting as you and some people are flaming mad. Its not a consistent result apparently or else everyone has a different idea of how much noise they can tolerate..or maybe a little of both.
> 
> Glad to hear you got one of the good units. I did hear that this is most likely only in the Max Line, and not the ultra's for some reason...


I wouldn't call it a "big controversy", but I guess everything is these days through the power of Internet amplification. My Mac Studio (M1 Ultra) sits front and center on my desk about 24" away from my ears and the default fan speed of 1300rpm is definitely audible, but it isn't loud. It's like low decibel pink noise. Maybe we've all gotten spoiled by the recent crop of Macbooks being essentially silent that this seems weird now. The CPU temperature is so ridiculously low though, even when pushed, that it barely ever exceeds 38-40ºC. So, I used TG Pro to reduce the fan speed to 1100rpm and it is almost completely inaudible now without having much, if any, effect on the CPU temperature. Considering how overspecced the cooling system seems to be, I'm a little surprised by Apple's factory default fan speed.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 6, 2022)

Actually some people are complaining about an actual 2 kHz "whine", so you might not have one of the bad ones.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 6, 2022)

JSTube said:


> For some reason people regard expansions via thunderbolt or USB 4 to be somehow lesser-than, which is silly and unfounded. Something's only legitimate in some people's eyes if they put it in to their computer after the fact rather than went to the store, took it out of the box, and plugged it in to their computer via an easily accessible port. I don't see the difference, so long as it all Just Works.*



The main reason PCI has been helpful is that it future proofs things. Its like if our older computers only had USB2 ports on them and no PCI...later on when USB3 and faster ethernet and other new technologies came out....without slots, you'd be SOL. With PCI slots, they could be used to update the computer to some of the newer stuff... PC's will still be able to do that. That is part of why the cheese grater could be maintained for as long as some people did...PCI slots allowed it to be upgraded in some ways. If the computer has only TB4 ports on it...at some point in the future, new tech will come out, it will not be upgradable....you will throw it away for peanuts and buy a new one. That's why Apple doesn't want to put PCI slots, it has nothing to do with them saving money or any such thing...its them getting you to buy a new computer more often.

PCI slots are about future proofing your computer so that you can roll with unknown future changes that might come. That is certainly what many of us have done in the past with our PC's and with the cheese graters too. It is only good for Apple to eliminate that upgradability factor. it is not good for us. But that is what Apple is committed to doing, and have been so for quite some time...so...it is what it is..if you want to use MacOS...Then that's what we have to work with. It seemed like they learned their lesson and revived PCI again with the 2019 MacPro. I personally think they will yet release a Mac with PCI slots and it will be their most expensive Mac ever...but they will do it... but I also think that they mostly sell to lower end consumers...none of which care one iota about PCI slots...so..its definitely not a priority for them.


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## HCMarkus (Aug 6, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> why is it in the closet?


It is in the machine closet because my studio has an air-conditioned machine closet I built for my older Mac Pros.

Seemed like a good place for the Mac Studio. ; )


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## ZosterX (Aug 7, 2022)

tmhuud said:


> As much as you can afford. I don't know what kind of track count your doing or what your needs are but we composers (generally) don't need excessive GPU's, so keep that in mind.


I'm using the classical orchestral big template with all sections with one track for each instrument, so i'm about 100 tracks


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## tmhuud (Aug 7, 2022)

ZosterX said:


> I'm using the classical orchestral big template with all sections with one track for each instrument, so i'm about 100 tracks


How many cores and RAM and processor on your 2013? 100 tracks is reasonable but obviously not for big templates. I don't now what "the" Classical Big Template is or if your Keyswitching (I would guess you are) Or using third party expression mapping?

I have no doubt you would see a tremendous speed increase in updating your Mac hardware to one of the newer ones. Question is which one? How much do you want to future proof. And how much do you want to shed tears once they release something new. I can only imagine the folks that jumped at the New Mac Pro and are pulling their hair out now after spending So much money.

I think it will be VErY interesting to see what major (MAC) studios are using in terms of hardware in a few years. Choices were few a few years back and now...

Well. As long as the they still remain to get updated I guess there will always be dinosaurs in the studios. I remember walking into a place and they had a few G4's running everything (at THAT time I think I had the Cheese grater and was surprised at seeing the older Macs in this well known studio). But it worked for them. Upgrading everything took time and money so they held out for as long as they could. I think ProTools hadn't made the leap yet or it was in beta for the new Macs so that made them a little woried about investing in new hardware as well.

For ME, the trash can is really obsolete. If I didn't have slave computers (I'm sorry I meant 'followers'- not sure if that's the correct PC term), I would be royally screwed. The future is as Zoltar says, "Filled with Clouds of Uncertainty").

Don't let all this scare you off though. Buy what you need NOW. You should be Ok for 5 years. Maybe.... Just. Maybe....

I'm in the middle of a film project and can't really upgrade yet but I have so much to consider , especially with MS abandoning 8.1 and a lot of developers software not working now on older systems. (I get it, it gets expensive to maintain every OS)


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 7, 2022)

JSTube said:


> The comparison is apples and oranges; modeled instruments use _very little ram_, howevery they're extremely CPU intensive. Orchestral libraries, on the other hand, use large amounts of ram, and Kontakt


I didn't make that comparison, I added RAM use as a separate issue!

However, there are Kontakt libraries with extensive scripting that do use some CPU.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 7, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> why is it in the closet?
> 
> As I said, there is a big controversy about this... some people are reporting as you and some people are flaming mad. Its not a consistent result apparently or else everyone has a different idea of how much noise they can tolerate..or maybe a little of both.
> 
> Glad to hear you got one of the good units. I did hear that this is most likely only in the Max Line, and not the ultra's for some reason...



My main reason for putting the Mac Studio in my machine room (aka the garage on the other side of my office/studio) will be that I use spinning drives for back-up.

The other reason is just that I've already run cables into my room, and it's easier just to leave them there.

But I"m probably a special case.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 7, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> The main reason PCI has been helpful is that it future proofs things


The flip side of that is when you have expensive PCI cards that don't work in your next computer. That's what happened multiple times with $10,000 Pro Tools TDM systems, MOTU cards, and others such as UAD.

To be fair, most of that was in the days when computers were 2-1/2-year investments and when digital audio on a computer meant Digidesign (before MOTU and others, and before native audio became viable).

But I still won't buy any expensive PCI cards anymore.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 7, 2022)

The only reason it doesn't work in the next computer is because Apple refuses to support PCI. And by the way, that can happen with thunderbolt too if they completely change away from that in the future too. Sorry that is a bunk argument.

Another advantage of PCI is that 3rd parties make various devices that can run on both Macs and PC's via the PCI bus. 

By the way, this video came up today and I thought of you Nick, good one:


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## ZosterX (Aug 7, 2022)

tmhuud said:


> How many cores and RAM and processor on your 2013? 100 tracks is reasonable but obviously not for big templates. I don't now what "the" Classical Big Template is or if your Keyswitching (I would guess you are) Or using third party expression mapping?
> 
> I have no doubt you would see a tremendous speed increase in updating your Mac hardware to one of the newer ones. Question is which one? How much do you want to future proof. And how much do you want to shed tears once they release something new. I can only imagine the folks that jumped at the New Mac Pro and are pulling their hair out now after spending So much money.
> 
> ...


I don't have the 2013 mac pro yet. I was planning to get one with 64Go RAM and 8 cores, for about 1200e.
With my current macbook pro (16GoRAM and 4 cores) I get to the point where Logic shows the "too much ram used" message, which really slow down my work process, despite that I purge all the samples of each instrument, freeze tracks etc etc
And yeah, I know there's a a way more big template that the one i'm used too, but I know in the future my template will grown so that's why I need a good setup.
Problem is : the new macstudio are way to expansive for me now, but I guess I can afford to finance it with the x24 payment that Apple propose. Or maybe someone knows some cheaper stores (I doubpt so lol)
So the dilemma is : Should I go to a macpro 2013 which has 64GoRAM which is way more cheaper, or Should I go to the newest and be sure to have a monster truck ?


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## mat1 (Aug 8, 2022)

ZosterX said:


> So the dilemma is : Should I go to a macpro 2013 which has 64GoRAM which is way more cheaper, or Should I go to the newest and be sure to have a monster truck ?


I would get an i9 iMac. You can upgrade them to 128gb ram so it should be good for another 5yrs or so. After 5 years there should be plenty of suitable used Studios on the market.


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## tmhuud (Aug 8, 2022)

I think Apple still has 'B' stock and I believe folks here are saying they're finding the studio on the used market already.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 8, 2022)




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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 8, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> The only reason it doesn't work in the next computer is because Apple refuses to support PCI. And by the way, that can happen with thunderbolt too if they completely change away from that in the future too. Sorry that is a bunk argument.


NuBus, PCI, faster PCI, PCI with faster lanes and higher voltage, PCIe, Expresscards... I'm not making bunk arguments, I'm telling you what my experience has been multiple times.

Of course anything can and eventually will become obsolete. Internal cards have a history of doing that much more quickly than, say, Class-Compliant USB devices.

And whether it's because Apple "refuses" to support PCI, because they change the format, because my aunt has moles... it all comes down to the same thing: computer cards are for other people.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 8, 2022)

is that why you have a USB3 card in your current mac's PCI slot?


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 8, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> And whether it's because Apple "refuses" to support PCI, because they change the format, because my aunt has moles... it all comes down to the same thing: computer cards are for other people.


And yet their premier model....the MacPro...has PCI slots...and likely the next MacPro will also. Those aren't moles...another bunk argument Nick. 

Kinda tired of this argument...think as you wish...


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## jbuhler (Aug 8, 2022)

mat1 said:


> I would get an i9 iMac. You can upgrade them to 128gb ram so it should be good for another 5yrs or so. After 5 years there should be plenty of suitable used Studios on the market.


Depending on cost of course. I’m not sure what these machines are currently going for on the used market, and for music the 2020 8 core i7 iMac is likely equally good. (I have the i9 and like it very much.) I am also still on Catalina and am not having any issues other than Logic and Final Cut Pro are no longer current. But no other music software or plugins I’m using yet require anything higher than Catalina. And everything is VERY stable other than occasional beachballing in Logic and FCP.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 8, 2022)

So poking around the past couple days watching MacStudio videos from folks that are a few months in to testing them out... I will make the following observations in no particular order...

M1Max and M1Ultra cost a lot more than the M1Pro, and most of the advantage seems to be related to high end video production features in the GPU side of the M1


M1Pro appears to be very good and probably good enough for audio production. Is that even an option with the MacStudio?


32GB is probably the sweet spot for memory on these boxes. Going Max in order to have 64+ gb of ram leads to substantially higher prices. Its unclear about whether music producers need more than 32gb, some might. Many probably don't.


The internal SSD on the MacStudio is very fast, so fast that allegedly this makes virtual memory swapping much more efficient than we are used to from years past, which means less memory is needed to do many tasks that used to require more RAM to avoid memory swapping. This basically makes it much less necessary to have so much physical ram. Most test reviewers, however, are not dealing with large orchestral templates.


Almost across the board people are saying the Ultra is not good value. It is way expensive and only achieves marginally better performance then the Max (and some people say for audio, even the M1Max might be overkill). 


Reports are also that the M1Max is being throttled even when there is very low power consumption. its throttling appears to match the throttling of the MBP's, which might need to be for thermal reasons. Hard to say, but its left to be seen whether Apple will upgrade the MacStudio to avoid throttling down the M1's in them. One reviewer speculated that Apple is doing this so that when they release the M2 it will be so much faster for everyone and sell more. That's just one guy's theory obviously. 


audio reviewers are all unanimously impressed overall with the performance of the M1, at least in logicPro. 


They are less impressed when they are forced to use Intel plugins and Rosetta, etc.. Results vary a lot depending on what you're actually trying to use.


The question about how many cores is interesting, but see the comments above about people being plenty impressed with M1Pro even though less cores perhaps then Max or Ultra. Truth is most people aren't able to take full advantage of so many cores. If you are mixing really large projects with a lot of tracks playing at the same time, then you might. If money is no object, then why not, more cores is better. But if cost value is important, then getting so many cores may be overkill and unnecessary expense.


I also saw reports where some PC laptops for the same price or less were blowing away the performance of the top end M1 notebook...so...FWIW.. On the other hand, the lower end M1Pro based MBP are really nice value when considering all the factors of form factor, power consumption, heat and performance combined for a lower price. They might be enough for many audio tasks?


Apple still sells Intel Macs, so Intel software will be completely supported for years to come.

Myself, I am still waiting for as long as my 5,1 continues to serve me well. Its easy to get a little Mac envy and want to have the latest newest thing, but at least for now, my 5,1 is still more then enough power for everything I have been doing, everything works, I'm running the latest version of MacOS, and the fact that I don't have to use Rosetta at all is definitely preferable. I see no rush. I think probably 2023 will be the year I jump to Apple Silicon, but we shall see. Might be 2024. 

Now if you are in a situation where you have a smaller older Mac that is not keeping up and you simply MUST get something new now....whether its a MacStudio, or a MBP, or a used iMac or trashcan, etc.. What to do right now in 2022? I personally would get Apple Silicon at this point unless you can get a very powerful Trashcan or cheese grater for under $1k. Anything more than that, get the Apple Silicon one. Personally I would not buy the MacStudio ultra right now, its too expensive for what it is. I'm even on the fence about an M1Max MacStudio. The M1Pro MBP looks to be good value, and later on if a better desktop comes out, you'll still have a great laptop for the road or sell it. That would probably be my choice. If the 2019 MacPro's were not so expensive that would actually be my choice today in 2022, because I don't want to deal with Rosetta issues. But they are just too much money right now, even on the used market.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 8, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> is that why you have a USB3 card in your current mac's PCI slot?


That's a cheap card, not one that cost several thousand dollars.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 8, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> And yet their premier model....the MacPro...has PCI slots...and likely the next MacPro will also. Those aren't moles...another bunk argument Nick.
> 
> Kinda tired of this argument...think as you wish...


If you're tired of the argument - which isn't an argument, just you insulting me by calling what I'm saying about having spent thousands of dollars on PCI cards that became obsolete bunk - then don't call my arguments bunk!

In the art world it's considered quite rude.


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## HCMarkus (Aug 8, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> M1Pro even though less cores perhaps then Max or Ultra.


Just to confirm: Same number of CPU Cores Pro and Max. Ultra doubles CPU Cores. Pro has a less powerful GPU, which for strictly audio folk is not an issue at this time.

At this point, all I can say is the Mac Studio has made my life better. I may have spent more than I needed, going with the Ultra and all that (ordered it the day it was announced), but I earn my living working with this machine and it has already paid for itself in tangible and intangible terms.

Glad your 5,1 is still good for you. I loved mine long time


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 8, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> If you're tired of the argument - which isn't an argument, just you insulting me by calling what I'm saying about having spent thousands of dollars on PCI cards that became obsolete bunk - then don't call my arguments bunk!
> 
> In the art world it's considered quite rude.


Yes Nick, several of your arguments were extremely flawed bunk. That is not an insult to you personally by the way, its just an observation about your flawed arguments at this time which also seemed by design to attempt to disparage my desire for PCI slots. Sorry if you don't like being called out on it....


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 8, 2022)

HCMarkus said:


> Just to confirm: Same number of CPU Cores Pro and Max. Ultra doubles CPU Cores. Pro has a less powerful GPU, which for strictly audio folk is not an issue at this time.



More specifically, the Max has Video related codecs that are not needed by most of us. And to repeat, reviewers did not get double the performance out of Ultra. its a lot more money for a small gain. The presumption is that their tests were not taking advantage of so many cores, nor of the GPU codecs.

The only point is that M1Max may be overkill for what we do and spending money on tech we don't actually need. That is why perhaps one of the MBP's is coming out by many reviewers as potentially a better option as of this moment. There is no hard and fast rule about anything being absolutely the right wrong way to go, we are just discussing options.


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## Simon Ravn (Aug 9, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> More specifically, the Max has Video related codecs that are not needed by most of us. And to repeat, reviewers did not get double the performance out of Ultra. its a lot more money for a small gain. The presumption is that their tests were not taking advantage of so many cores, nor of the GPU codecs.
> 
> The only point is that M1Max may be overkill for what we do and spending money on tech we don't actually need. That is why perhaps one of the MBP's is coming out by many reviewers as potentially a better option as of this moment. There is no hard and fast rule about anything being absolutely the right wrong way to go, we are just discussing options.


...but you need the Max to get 128GB RAM. I would never go lower than 128GB RAM. In fact I will hold on to my Hackintosh (which has 160GB RAM) until the Studio gets 256GB. Or the new Mac Pro comes out and it isn't as expensive as the 2019 one.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 9, 2022)

One of the things I mentioned above that I have seen mentioned in a few places...is that the internal SSD storage on the M1 machines is extremely fast. Because it is so fast...virtual memory can be used much more liberally without the kinds of negative consequences that have been true for us in past years. In the past we would have turned off virtual memory altogether or tried to have enough physical ram that the system would never dip into virtual memory if at all possible. But with such fast storage, apparently, this means, 32gb of RAM can handle what we normally in the past would have needed somewhere like 64-96gb of physical ram to do. This is what people are saying, I have no actual personal experience. So in truth, 32gb will actually be enough memory for an awful lot of music producers using Apple Silicon machines due to that faster internal SSD storage. That is what they are saying anyway.

But I'm kind of like you, I would prefer more physical storage, I just keep thinking it can't be good to rely on virtual memory, but anyway that's what the reports are saying. You simply will not need as much memory as has been required in the past. 

That is not even taking into consideration that if you get the 8TB internal drive, you could put your sample library on the internal drive and reduce the pre buffering to super tiny size....reducing even more how much memory would actually be required.

This is what they are saying.... but... Most of the reviewers are not orchestrators working with huge orchestra templates...so really we need to hear more from actual orchestrators to find out how big their templates can be with a meager 32gb of RAM...or perhaps at most 64gb. I think 128gb is overkill quite honestly, especially considering the premium price you have to pay for it in the MacStudio. And I'm betting you don't need it.

Regarding the new MacPro...we shall see what they do. I'm kind of holding out for that one also..but we'll just have to wait until next year to find out.


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## mat1 (Aug 9, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> M1Max and M1Ultra cost a lot more than the M1Pro, and most of the advantage seems to be related to high end video production features in the GPU side of the M1
> 
> 
> M1Pro appears to be very good and probably good enough for audio production. Is that even an option with the MacStudio?
> ...



Audio is one place where the scaling between the Max and the Ultra is fairly linear. Double the price for 90% more performance. If you actually need that power I wouldn’t say that is bad value. 

The price difference between the 10c+14c Pro and the lowest Max is only $300 on the 14” pro. Less on the 16” where the lowest gpu pro isn’t available. Best case you would save $300 if this pro was available on the studio (it isn’t).

I agree it is slightly annoying in terms of fully optimising the purchase but over 5yr+ lifecycle as a pro machine it isn’t a dealbreaker. The next mini might fill that spot for people that want 32gb ram but then again it might not. Hardly seems worth the wait if we’re only talking about $300!


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 9, 2022)

mat1 said:


> Audio is one place where the scaling between the Max and the Ultra is fairly linear. Double the price for 90% more performance. If you actually need that power I wouldn’t say that is bad value.



Where do you get your data from? Please share actual numbers if you have done testing....or refer to others who have. I do not think it will achieve 90% more performance unless you truly are using all those cores...which many people are not. People running various benchmarks with Video jobs are saying its only 15% more performance for double the price. So anyway, I'd like to hear more if you are truly getting 90% more with it compared to Max and how you tested that.



mat1 said:


> The price difference between the 10c+14c Pro and the lowest Max is only $300 on the 14” pro. Less on the 16” where the lowest gpu pro isn’t available. Best case you would save $300 if this pro was available on the studio (it isn’t).



yes but the MBP comes with a beautiful display and can be used as a laptop.


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## mat1 (Aug 9, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> Where do you get your data from? Please share actual numbers if you have done testing....or refer to others who have. I do not think it will achieve 90% more performance unless you truly are using all those cores...which many people are not. People running various benchmarks with Video jobs are saying its only 15% more performance for double the price. So anyway, I'd like to hear more if you are truly getting 90% more with it compared to Max and how you tested that.
> 
> 
> 
> yes but the MBP comes with a beautiful display and can be used as a laptop.



This vid. Cinebench scales almost perfectly and is typically accurate for cpu bound DAW use, the Logic test also scaled almost perfectly.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 9, 2022)

I don't have time to watch that right now its past my bedtime, but I'll just say, the exact same dude has more recent videos out showing that that Ultra is NOT good value and that it does NOT linearly scale. Anyway, I would like to hear more details..but its 3am here now, I'm off to bed.


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## mat1 (Aug 9, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> I don't have time to watch that right now its past my bedtime, but I'll just say, the exact same dude has more recent videos out showing that that Ultra is NOT good value and that it does NOT linearly scale. Anyway, I would like to hear more details..but its 3am here now, I'm off to bed.



We can ignore just about everything outside of Cinebench scores. Different story for video editors I’m sure.


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## Simon Ravn (Aug 9, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> One of the things I mentioned above that I have seen mentioned in a few places...is that the internal SSD storage on the M1 machines is extremely fast. Because it is so fast...virtual memory can be used much more liberally without the kinds of negative consequences that have been true for us in past years. In the past we would have turned off virtual memory altogether or tried to have enough physical ram that the system would never dip into virtual memory if at all possible. But with such fast storage, apparently, this means, 32gb of RAM can handle what we normally in the past would have needed somewhere like 64-96gb of physical ram to do. This is what people are saying, I have no actual personal experience. So in truth, 32gb will actually be enough memory for an awful lot of music producers using Apple Silicon machines due to that faster internal SSD storage. That is what they are saying anyway.


I don't even want to try loading up a template that takes 90GB of RAM (or more) on a 32 GB machine. I don't even know if the system will allow that. And I am sure that even with virtual memory swapping to the internal SSD that is not gonna work very well... I need something that works. Not something that "sort of" works.

Please show me some proof/tests where people load anything bigger than the actual physical memory available - say 64GB (total Kontakt/VE Pro memory use) setup into a 32GB Mac Studio and it works as if you have 64-96GB of RAM. Until that happens it's just heresay.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 9, 2022)

I’m only reporting what I read it saw reported by others, as I already said I have no experience with apple silicon yet. I don’t have a saved reference on that point that I can refer you too either unfortunately. If I come across it again I will post it here. People are reporting that the m1 macs seem to run well many different apps with less memeory. As I already said, I haven’t seen an actual report with an orchestrator using a large template using say a 64gb m1, so how can we know for sure until someone tries it?

Virtual memory is a standard part of macos, windows and all modern operating systems for decades already. It’s just that memory swapping had always been an expensive operation due to slow hard drive speeds. The m1 macs have a very fast internal drive. It makes sense what these people are saying that the m1’s seem to make better use of less memory then what we have been used to in the past. The only way to know for sure is to build up some large templates on m1 macs that only have 32 or 64 gb’s and see how far you get. 128gb of memory is probably overkill for the vast majority of people using the Mac studio especially considering the cost for it. But hey, let us know if are able to try any of this or if you also know some specific test cases. And if money is no object then by all means get the best!


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 9, 2022)

mat1 said:


> This vid. Cinebench scales almost perfectly and is typically accurate for cpu bound DAW use, the Logic test also scaled almost perfectly.



A couple points to make. 

First, the single core performance is the same on all macstudio models.

Secondly the cinebench test is a very targeted benchmark tool which shows what the machine is capable of only under ideal conditions where the cpu utilization is perfect at 100%, which doesn’t happen in real life software situations, particularly when there are many cores involved. So it’s nice to know that all those cores work as intended but that is still not a complete picture of how the machine will scale under real life practical scenarios. A daw is most definitely not cpu bound like cinebench.

He went on to show a number of examples where in fact it was not scaling very well.

The logicpro example he gave is flawed because nobody mixes even 172 tracks at once much less double that amount. A better test would be to use a realistic track count scenario and add more plugins to those tracks until audio dropouts start happening. Then the question will be about whether it will make full utilization of all those cores in order to scale as was not the case with some of the other real world examples. The fact you can mix 300+ Tracks is useless as nobody does that. We do however use plugins which sometimes tax the cpu on their own and that is where the single core speed is more relevant and it contributes to leveling the playing field between the various macstudio models.

So again I say there is a severely diminishing return on the ultra and somewhat of a diminishing return in the max, but I’d like to see comparison tests with realistic track counts to see how they compare. If money is no issue then of course get the ultra. But I tend to think right now that is throwing money away.

On the other hand the ultra supposedly doesn’t “whine” and there is still an open ended question about whether the virtual memory performs as well as some have reported, particularly in a large daw project.


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## ZosterX (Aug 9, 2022)

So basically, the M1MAX with 32Go RAM is widely enough for orchestral mockups production ?


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 9, 2022)

someone with a 32gb M1max needs to do a test and tell us.

Also, "orchestral productions" can be different things to different people.


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## Simon Ravn (Aug 9, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> I’m only reporting what I read it saw reported by others, as I already said I have no experience with apple silicon yet. I don’t have a saved reference on that point that I can refer you too either unfortunately. If I come across it again I will post it here. People are reporting that the m1 macs seem to run well many different apps with less memeory. As I already said, I haven’t seen an actual report with an orchestrator using a large template using say a 64gb m1, so how can we know for sure until someone tries it?
> 
> Virtual memory is a standard part of macos, windows and all modern operating systems for decades already. It’s just that memory swapping had always been an expensive operation due to slow hard drive speeds. The m1 macs have a very fast internal drive. It makes sense what these people are saying that the m1’s seem to make better use of less memory then what we have been used to in the past. The only way to know for sure is to build up some large templates on m1 macs that only have 32 or 64 gb’s and see how far you get. 128gb of memory is probably overkill for the vast majority of people using the Mac studio especially considering the cost for it. But hey, let us know if are able to try any of this or if you also know some specific test cases. And if money is no object then by all means get the best!


Seems like you adressing me towards the end. If you read my two posts you would know that I am not buying a Mac Studio now. Waiting for 256GB version or new Mac Pro.

So someone else will have to do those tests...


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## ZosterX (Aug 9, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> someone with a 32gb M1max needs to do a test and tell us.
> 
> Also, "orchestral productions" can be different things to different people.


If I plan to work for films or so, same if I make big scores with each track having his own instrument (or even articulation if for example I want to go further), that's my case here


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 9, 2022)

Simon Ravn said:


> Seems like you adressing me towards the end. If you read my two posts you would know that I am not buying a Mac Studio now. Waiting for 256GB version or new Mac Pro.
> 
> So someone else will have to do those tests...



I wasn't addressing you per say. Just writing down the tests we need to see. In order to really know for sure the answer to this question, someone that has access to all the MacStudio line, as well as the MBP line..would need to run a standardized and controlled test on all of them, using tests that make sense for DAW usage. That's the only way to know for sure.

Mostly what I have seen so far are a lot of video tests, as I think there are probably a lot of Video producers using MacStudios and making a living by making video podcasts, so of course their tests are biased towards video production tasks. How long it takes to render stuff, etc..

But we have unique needs and our results may not match up theirs. But the problem I see in the audio community so far is there is very little published test results that are truly standardized that way to find out. I have posted a couple above that are related to audio production that are close and they tend to say the Ultra is overkill. But even those were not doing large orchestral templates, they were doing more typical music production that typically involves much fewer tracks and often times hardly any real synth work either.

But anyway, check those out, but otherwise... the only way to find out the answers to these questions is to do a very controlled and standardized test across all the machines in question and compare the results. And simply making as many tracks as possible is not the right standardized test because that distorts the results towards full multi-core utilization beyond what would actually be the case in a real world DAW project.

Same thing goes for whether 32gb is enough for orch or 64 is enough or do you really need 128gb. My gut says 64gb is the right number but that means already M1Pro is out of the running. On the other hand, someone with an M1Pro might be able to do a standardized test with say 150 tracks of orchestra mixing just fine on a 32gb Mac and that would be the answer...but I don't know of any such test so far... The memory consideration also relates to how big you want to make your template, regardless of how many tracks will be mixed at once. You want 1000's of tracks? Then you play the enable/disable game or need more ram or depend on virtual memory, but again, we need test results on the virtual memory.

If you can't wait then just spend 8 grand for the Ultra 128. But I have a feeling that is generally throwing money down the toilet for most of us.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 9, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> Yes Nick, several of your arguments were extremely flawed bunk. That is not an insult to you personally by the way, its just an observation about your flawed arguments at this time which also seemed by design to attempt to disparage my desire for PCI slots. Sorry if you don't like being called out on it....



"Called out?"

Oy gevalt.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 9, 2022)

Simon Ravn said:


> I don't even want to try loading up a template that takes 90GB of RAM (or more) on a 32 GB machine. I don't even know if the system will allow that. And I am sure that even with virtual memory swapping to the internal SSD that is not gonna work very well... I need something that works. Not something that "sort of" works.
> 
> Please show me some proof/tests where people load anything bigger than the actual physical memory available - say 64GB (total Kontakt/VE Pro memory use) setup into a 32GB Mac Studio and it works as if you have 64-96GB of RAM. Until that happens it's just heresay.



The following *is* just hearsay and should not be taken as anything more:

First, it seems hard to imagine that you could come close to doubling tripling your RAM with virtual memory.

Storage isn't a substitute for RAM, at least not today. If it were, why even have any RAM?

Having said that: a friend was able to play a 50-track Hollywood Orchestra session that used well more than the 32GB he had installed. It isn't an especially dense session, his Logic buffer was set at 256 samples, and I'm sure there are other qualifications - for example, I don't know how far beyond his 32GB he went.

But it does say that there's a little wiggle room if you're maxing out a Mac Studio.

Would I want to rely on that? No. Will I order mine with 32GB? No. Do I like to ask rhetorical questions? Yes.


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## mat1 (Aug 9, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> A couple points to make.
> 
> First, the single core performance is the same on all macstudio models.
> 
> ...



I’m not really sure what you’re saying here. Cinebench is the best thing we have to simulate a fully pegged audio system. Anything else then you are really measuring driver and software performance and it really isn’t useful anymore since the variables are endless. “Content” benchmarks not scaling is not really relevant to audio. Of course single core performance doesn’t increase but I think that is fairly widely understood at this point.

If you doubled the load of each individual track in Logic it would still scale roughly the same. Using a high number of low cpu tracks just let’s us overload each core and track performance easier.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 9, 2022)

what I am saying is that a DAW is not a cpu bound process. memory and data is being moved all over the place. Not all cores are going to be operating at full 100%. Just try to run a DAW project and try to get all your cores to 100%.....you won't be able to. But Cinebench easily can because it removes as many things a possible to truly isolate and crunch just the CPU and GPU alone. This is mainly only useful when you are comparing different CPU's for their raw abilities....but most usually has very little reflection on the overall performance of the software.

Don't tell me what something "WOULD" do, you don't know until you test it.

I've already explained above why the logicPro test on that video was flawed and why cinebench on its own is not a true reflection of DAW performance, and particularly this is true if you have an Ultra with many cores that reduce the likelihood even further of full 100% cpu utilitization.

If you would rather spend $8k on the Ultra anyway because you believe otherwise, that is of course your perogotive.

a better test is a realistic track count project and load up the plugins and try to use a couple plugins also that are cpu hungry in order to get closer to 100%, but also bear in mind, that will also not be reflective of a real world scenario, typically we have a few CPU hungry plugins and many that are not so hungry.


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## colony nofi (Aug 9, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> The logicpro example he gave is flawed because nobody mixes even 172 tracks at once


Just playing... but I've mixed a bunch of film scores with way more than 172 tracks at once.
While not all the mics will be on all the time, its quick to get up WAY above that.
How about 3 passes on a 54 piece orchestra.
Recorded in 4 sessions (strings, brass, ww, percussion) in a hall with everything close mic'd, 5 channel tree, outriggers, ambience mics etc)
With just two passes (which is not uncommon - even 3 for strings sometimes) 300 tracks happens super easily.

And on a smaller scale, I just finished composing a project where the tracks OUT of the recording session numbered 200+ for what was under 20 players.
Small ensemble recording (and LOTS of separate recording sessions) can lead to some pretty insane track counts and a big job for the engineer (thankfully it wasn't me doing the mixes)

On this project - for 40 mins of music.
6 passes x 9 mics for string quintet (recorded everything 3 times - and in some places there were two sets of quintet writing). Close mics for all instruments, an overhead pair and a pair of ribbons in the back of the studio.
12 x 4 mics for vocal passes (two vocalists being recorded at the same time)
6 x 3 mics for french horn
6 x 4 mics for clarinets (two at a time then bass clarinet)
3 x 3 for flute
2 x 12 for drumset
3 x 2 for gloc
3 x 2 for marimba
3 x 1 for guitar
3 x 4 for piano
12 stereo tracks for pre-rendered synths out of the original composition session

Total tracks
54 : Strings
48 : Vocals
18 : French Horn
24 : Clarinets
9 : Flutes
24 : Drumset
6 : Gloc
6 : Marimba
3 : Guitar
12 : Piano
12 : Synths

216 tracks, before bussing etc. The engineer uses a complete mixing template where everything is down through parallel processing and tonnes of vca's. This mix was all in the box - the studio has more than enough outboard, but flexibility and speed was needed for fixups / printing options etc.

Quite amazing to see the setup - but aux's were another 68 stereo tracks for outputs, 34 for verb processing, 34 for paralell processing of each stem plus a tonne of other little bits and pieces along the way. We were finishing (a second mix stage) for immersive, as well as the required stereo mix.

Those types of sessions are bread and butter for scoring stages. 

Anyway - I digress.

(Mac studios can easily handle this kind of thing no sweat. I ran a test session with 800 different 60 minute mono 24 bit audio files inside nuendo and it wasn't even blinking. The above session was part of an immersive installation where qlab was running outputs... on one of the audio servers, it was serving up 64 speakers out using rme digiface dante, and at any given moment, there were 500+ audio channels playing back. (Separate stems on the install for music, atmos, sfx, interactive sounds etc). Running off a base model mac mini with 8GB ram.)


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## HCMarkus (Aug 9, 2022)

I was waiting for someone to speak up with regard to that statement, colony 

PS: Running off a Mini, no less!

PPS: No matter the computer we choose, we are all siblings in music. I feel so lucky to be part of it all.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 9, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> Just playing... but I've mixed a bunch of film scores with way more than 172 tracks at once.
> While not all the mics will be on all the time, its quick to get up WAY above that.
> How about 3 passes on a 54 piece orchestra.
> Recorded in 4 sessions (strings, brass, ww, percussion) in a hall with everything close mic'd, 5 channel tree, outriggers, ambience mics etc)
> ...



Yes I agree, the m1max can, the ultra is not needed for 350 tracks. But still the vast majority are not actually mixing 172 tracks all happening with audio at the same time. Maybe you are, It’s not common. I’m not talking about how many idle tracks are in the project I’m talking about 172 tracks all playing audio at the same time, which is the flawed test we are talking about. I stand by that. 172 tracks all playing at once is unusual and most people will not need even that much power much less the expensive ultra. That is the point.

Further more a daw benchmark needs to test realistic scenarios of tracks simultaneously playing at once with more plugins, more so then extreme scenarios of mr hollands opus for 172 piece orchestra tutti


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 9, 2022)

Unless of course you are mr holland, then better get the ultra


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 9, 2022)

The last comment about running that large project off an 8gb mini is also relevant. That lends credibility to the idea that 128gb macstudio is just wildly overkill.


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## Simon Ravn (Aug 10, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> The last comment about running that large project off an 8gb mini is also relevant. That lends credibility to the idea that 128gb macstudio is just wildly overkill.


Not at all. We are comparing apples and oranges here.

Having a 200 tracks project running 200 AUDIO tracks "just" streaming audio files will require some CPU + fast disk speeds. But it won't require much memory.

Having 200 MIDI tracks playing, all referring to a Kontakt instrument, each containing hundreds to thousands of samples which have to be loaded into memory (before streaming the rest from disk) is something entirely different.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2022)

yea true, I didn't read all of his long post that carefully and confused it with his earlier statements about big instrument track counts.

Nonetheless I am still of the opinion that 128gb will be overkill on the MacStudio, especially for the price. I could easily be talked into 64gb though.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2022)

The main problem with the MacStudio, regarding memory, is that you have to purchase the very expensive Ultra model, with the extra RAM installed, you are getting hit with a double whammy price increase...and as far as I can see...the Ultra is a severe diminishing return in terms of the CPU...So really its a very premium price in order to have 128gb. 

Perhaps the MacPro next year will be more flexible to have more memory without having to buy a double or triple Apple Silicon CPU setup for extreme high price, we shall see. If so, then I say why not. But enough people are reporting great virtual memory results that I am also skeptical this is really going to be necessary.


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## Simon Ravn (Aug 10, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> The main problem with the MacStudio, regarding memory, is that you have to purchase the very expensive Ultra model, with the extra RAM installed, you are getting hit with a double whammy price increase...and as far as I can see...the Ultra is a severe diminishing return in terms of the CPU...So really its a very premium price in order to have 128gb.
> 
> Perhaps the MacPro next year will be more flexible to have more memory without having to buy a double or triple Apple Silicon CPU setup for extreme high price, we shall see. If so, then I say why not. But enough people are reporting great virtual memory results that I am also skeptical this is really going to be necessary.


Yes, true. If there existed a Max version of the Studio that could have 128GB or more, that would be plenty for most of us. The Ultra is overkill CPU-wise. But hey, Apple know what they are doing. They want to make money, so they make sure that if you want 128GB RAM, you need to buy the most expensive CPU/machine... It's not a coincidence.

The next Mac Pro will undoubtedly be more expensive that the Mac Studio with Ultra CPU.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> First, it seems hard to imagine that you could come close to doubling tripling your RAM with virtual memory.



The word on the street is that doubling it is fine. Tripling it has eventually led to crash from those reporting it.



Nick Batzdorf said:


> Storage isn't a substitute for RAM, at least not today. If it were, why even have any RAM?



I understand what you are asking, but with virtual memory, the storage does not substitute for ram. That's not how it works. data is swapped in and out of physical memory. The cpu and GPU still operate on the physical memory. But stuff that isn't currently being used because something else is running, will swap a "page" out to a "pagefile", and swap it back into regular Ram when its more likely to be needed.

So yes we still need regular RAM for the CPU to be any good at doing what its doing. We can't (yet) just have the CPU operate directly on the SSD storage. 

Virtual memory makes it so that your machine can have 4GB of memory, for example, but all the software running, each program thinks it has 4GB (or more) of its own... but really they are swapping these pagefiles in and out of physical ram. Which sounds like a lot of work and it is. With HDD, it was so slow that we did everything we could do to avoid it, unless we had an older computer for mom to run web browser on and nothing more, perhaps on that we'd be happy to let virtual memory swap away. But for audio, we'd load it up with memory and turn off virtual memory entirely in the old days to avoid it.

However, the internal drive on the M1 is WAY WAY WAY faster then HDD...and so....people saying...this is fast enough that we can really do a lot of stuff and the page file swapping is not so terrible. (knock on wood). I am just reporting what I have read. Until we try it in order to see, we can't say more about it. But I understand completely your skepticism.

You can check out how MacOS is currently using virtual memory on your MacPro in the Activity Manager, go to the memory tab and look at the bottom section. see where it says "Swap used". That tells you if any virtual memory is currently being swapped around. In my case, its not because I have a lot of Ram for the reasons we have been discussing.






You can look at the Memory Pressure graph to see how its working. as you use more and more memory, eventually virtual memory will also kick in. When the graph turns red, that is when its telling you that you should probably get more physical ram, as I understand it. Could be wrong about the meaning of the graph, but that is what I saw on a video recently.



Nick Batzdorf said:


> Having said that: a friend was able to play a 50-track Hollywood Orchestra session that used well more than the 32GB he had installed. It isn't an especially dense session, his Logic buffer was set at 256 samples, and I'm sure there are other qualifications - for example, I don't know how far beyond his 32GB he went.



He can use the above next time to find out if virtual memory is being used and how much its being used. And you can certainly try some tests on your MacPro, but the speed of our storage sucks compared to the new M1 internal storage, so virtual memory swapping on our MacPros will have a bigger impact on performance.





Nick Batzdorf said:


> Would I want to rely on that? No. Will I order mine with 32GB? No. Do I like to ask rhetorical questions? Yes.



I personally would not get less than 32gb on any new Mac I buy, that's just me. The open question in my mind is whether it might be worth it to get the 64gb Max to be on the safe side. It might be overkill and there is no way to know without more testing on 32gb M1 systems.

From this discussion I already know if I were going to buy a MacStudio, it would definitely not be an Ultra. Its either 32 or 64gb Max for me. From all I've read, I expect a 64gb MacStudio to more than meet all my memory needs. I would personally rather just turn my Cheesegrater into a 96gb VePro server, then to buy an overpriced Ultra.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2022)

Interesting article: https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/pr...-the-apple-m1-m1-pro-and-m1-max-chips-so-fast



> Finally, the M1 does use virtual memory. VM is where the CPU uses hard disk space as RAM when it runs out of proper RAM. When we were using spinning rust drives that was so slow, hence the push to have as much RAM as you could afford. Now with NVMe drives you have hard drives that are pretty well as fast as RAM, so in an M1 system, although the virtual memory use is significant, it can be considered as fast as RAM in Intel machines.


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## colony nofi (Aug 10, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> Yes I agree, the m1max can, the ultra is not needed for 350 tracks. But still the vast majority are not actually mixing 172 tracks all happening with audio at the same time. Maybe you are, It’s not common. I’m not talking about how many idle tracks are in the project I’m talking about 172 tracks all playing audio at the same time, whicheas the flawed test we are talking about. I stand by that. 172 tracks all playing at once is unusual and most people will not need even that much power much less the expensive ultra. That is the point.
> 
> Further more a daw benchmark needs to test realistic scenarios of tracks simultaneously playing at once with more plugins. , more so then extreme scenarios of mr hollands opus for 172 piece orchestra tutti


It comes down to what you are doing.
There's no such thing as "usual" as far as I'm concerned - you'd be surprised at how different a session @ Air vs say clockwork recordings in Glasgow vs 301 or Trackdown in Sydney vs a local rock and roll studio will go for a score for a film or game. Are those sessions unusual for any of the engineers involved? I'm just playing - but its kinda important.

I've also been on 128GB ram since 2014 when OWC brought out their kits for the Mac Pro trash cans. I had run out of ram then for doing various mockups - especially if working in surround and using tonnes of multiple mics. 

I HAVE tested running my MBP 64GB M1Max machine where I'm loading >58GB worth of preload samples into memory and it hits a wall / chugs / stops working (and sometimes crashes). Virtual memory doesn't help that situation. This machine will not load a few projects that I run on the ultra because of the ram ceiling (ditto to some old projects from the trashcan). I am though mightily impressed with what I CAN do on it. And if I was ok with the constraints it brings, I could almost do all my writing on this machine. There's still lots to test between the different machines, but for me (on tight deadlines with a Mac Pro that was giving up) it made sense to go with the ram amount my previous machine had. So 128GB. 

But it is AMAZING at how much more this MacBook Pro can do compared to my previous (32GB Ram) i9 2018 piece of junk. I finished a massive job interstate just recently where I'd normally have taken down a full Mac Pro studio in the past. The laptop (plus about 20kg of peripherals ha!) did an amazing job for what was needed.

What is interesting is that the m1's enable one to run much lower preload amounts than the trashcans - even when using the same sample drive (tests were done running an external 8TB NVME drive thru thunderbolt - not the worlds fastest drive (Sabrent Rocket - PCIE 3) but still fast! I don't really get that - and have not had a tonne of time to run tests to figure out why. Yet. I'm also generally running lower buffers than I used to, but I also don't subscribe to running tiny buffers. I'm not a good enough player to need better than 256. And I am comfortable working at 512 (@48k)

Now, I hate that I'm having to run different sample drives for the laptop than my ultra due to the way spitfire (and now others as well) are doing their DRM / not allowing one sample drive to be plugged at different times into different machines. It does mean that I've just rebuilt this laptop to run all samples off the 8tb internal drive - which is magic fast. Doesn't make much real world difference to the feel of the session, but I'd be surprised if I couldn't go lower again with preload buffers in Kontakt - meaning the 64GB ram will go further. Just not due to virtual memory / swap. I've got a cool Nuendo test running some private samples created to SLAM a system which really demonstrate it well. Its easy to do yourself with a bunch of LONG samples (making sure they are different files) loaded into a new Kontakt instance, mapped between keys, and just keep adding more notes (1 per beat or 1 per bar) up to a point. And then run more Kontakt instances with more of your own samples (we even make DIFFERENT sets of identical samples for each instance, just to stop Kontakt saving memory) etc etc. Its a fun project if anyone really wants to get into seeing where RAM limits are on different composing systems using contact.

Back to track numbers. A full orchestra is just one version of normal - as is having two passes in the session playing back at the same time - and having all the mockup tracks playing back and often added into the mix. It would be a rare session of that type not to have 200 tracks playing back at once at one point in the film. 

I do get what you are saying, but even in my little experience, I need to have a system that allows pretty massive sessions these days - far more than 10 years ago. If I'm doing the editing / revisions myself after a record (which often happens) then I have all the recorded tracks plus all my tracks (mostly still as midi but there'll be tracks in the session still there with the audio outputs - which have been generated for the recording session. Plus when then prepping to send off to the music mix, you have an equal number of tracks in record to make the tracks that go off to the engineer. Its all templated these days, but 150+ tracks heading back to the mix engineer is not unusual. They need to have all the close mics just in case. I don't listen to them when playing back, but they're there - and playing back off the drive - ready for someone to turn one on to "just bring the violin 2's up on that phrase can you?"

My composition sessions have a bunch of sections all active within my template.

The midi mockup
Own recordings of instruments (me or soloists)
Audio files for ALL midi (to allow for very quick editing by others if needed who might not have my instruments - and to mitigate risks when things break - so one stereo track per midi instrument, and I have separate instruments per articulation)
audio tracks which are stems for score prep (send instruments with click embedded for score prep to better check the scores - one per part to be recorded)
audio tracks which are stems for recording (usually 16 stereo outputs - don't always use them all but thats how many different "sections" I use)
tracks back from recording
tracks of audio sent to mix stage. For midi mockup parts, each section (16 sections) has 4 stereo parts that are sent to the mix stage. And recordings are as above - so often 200+ tracks.

And I have everything there, on, all the time. Not always playing back, but as far as nuendo is concerned, it is. I just choose which bus I'm listening to. Makes flipping between all sorts of mixes / sets of files super quick. (Use various monitor sources). On big sessions, turning tracks on / off slows one down - although I turn off score prep and record prep tracks most of the time (disable the tracks)

The ultra is working pretty well - though I have run into limits already. I *can* work around them. I don't want to - and look forward to the day I don't have to. I want to get all nerdy testing / problem solving while I do tech. Then I want to leave it and never think about it again. 

Its the same reason I run a full big file server for [email protected] our studios, and have an identical one at my home setup (which syncs pretty much in real time ish) - and then that is also sync'd to the cloud. Each server has a all ZFS raid 6 SSD drive pool for working off, and a large spinning rust snapshot pool which in itself is mirrored. It is a BIG $ investment, but it means I can tolerate entire pools going down, or even complete hardware failure, and be going in about an hour again. And I don't think about it once its made - and neither do any of the folks working for us. For me, the peace that comes with technology getting out of the way during creative time is incredibly valuable.


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## colony nofi (Aug 10, 2022)

Re M1Ultra and CPU. All the processing I have going in my sessions is also going most of the time (with the caveat that Steinberg does a great job with VST 3 of turning off processing that isn't being used - and I think logic also does this under the hood too). 
This is where the ultra is different to the Max. My colleague has a max which will not run the pre-mix state of my session from the last project I just finished, yet the ultra will. Seventh Heaven verbs do seem to scale across cores decently - as do some of the surround eq/dynamics used (I do try not to use too many plugins, but they still add up!)

I have a really interesting nuendo bussing test here - which is one thing that really does push CPU's. It helps evaluate systems for how I like to run my own composition rig. However, I still saturate core 0 before I use the rest of the cores more than 50% on the ultra. YMMV.

You can imagine the number of busses in a typical template of mine where everything is able to be used at any time. This is a no "instruments" template. (no kontakt / samplers loaded). Just bussing / record tracks ready. The template I'm using right now for stereo has 192 bussess (with about 30 of them unused but there just in case) and I have an "orchestra output" set of busses which adds another 60 odd busses when needed). I have not asked my collegue to run that test it on the M1Max Studio yet. This thread has me thinking I might. Of course I could just run it on this MacBook Pro once everything is 100% installed on this machine again....

And even though a tonne of composers won't be needing this kind of rig, theres still many working on films / games / etc that do. And thats just another version of normal - and at least to people I know, its not unusual to want to have systems of that size. I know friends in Melb who are waiting for the new Mac pro's rather than getting an ultra since they want it to be able to do MORE! Ha.

Oh - as mentioned elsewhere on this board, I also run a dual nuendo system (so two copies of nuendo running at the same time) with the second running vision and having ALL the WIPS of all the tracks I've made for any cue - just more tracks running at the same time...

Long story - I'm rambling I know. But this all means massive flexibility and ability to do super quick changes / massive edits on the fly at any stage of a project. So no - maybe not 200 tracks all outputting audio at the same time - but certainly sometimes, and for those sometimes, the computer just has to work.

Fun and games....


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## mat1 (Aug 10, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> Re M1Ultra and CPU. All the processing I have going in my sessions is also going most of the time (with the caveat that Steinberg does a great job with VST 3 of turning off processing that isn't being used - and I think logic also does this under the hood too).
> This is where the ultra is different to the Max. My colleague has a max which will not run the pre-mix state of my session from the last project I just finished, yet the ultra will. Seventh Heaven verbs do seem to scale across cores decently - as do some of the surround eq/dynamics used (I do try not to use too many plugins, but they still add up!)
> 
> I have a really interesting nuendo bussing test here - which is one thing that really does push CPU's. It helps evaluate systems for how I like to run my own composition rig. However, I still saturate core 0 before I use the rest of the cores more than 50% on the ultra. YMMV.
> ...



Gut feeling as someone that owns both - how much more powerful is the Ultra than the Max in a balanced session?


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 10, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> The word on the street is that doubling it is fine. Tripling it has eventually led to crash from those reporting it.
> 
> I understand what you are asking, but with virtual memory, the storage does not substitute for ram. That's not how it works. data is swapped in and out of physical memory.



Right. You wrote a lot of things I didn't really know in your post - thanks - but on this... well, first of all it was a rhetorical question, which is one you know the answer to. 

It still comes down to RAM being faster than storage. When you load more samples than your head start RAM buffer has room for, the system is going to use virtual memory.

And if you push that too hard - you say 2X, which would be nice but it would surprise me if that really worked for music - you run into the problems the Colonel described.



Dewdman42 said:


> I personally would not get less than 32gb on any new Mac I buy, that's just me. The open question in my mind is whether it might be worth it to get the 64gb Max to be on the safe side. It might be overkill and there is no way to know without more testing on 32gb M1 systems.
> 
> From this discussion I already know if I were going to buy a MacStudio, it would definitely not be an Ultra. Its either 32 or 64gb Max for me. From all I've read, I expect a 64gb MacStudio to more than meet all my memory needs. I would personally rather just turn my Cheesegrater into a 96gb VePro server, then to buy an overpriced Ultra.


I wouldn't get less than 64GB on any new Mac I buy. For me the only question is whether to spend the extra money for 2TB of storage rather than 1.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> I HAVE tested running my MBP 64GB M1Max machine where I'm loading >58GB worth of preload samples into memory and it hits a wall / chugs / stops working (and sometimes crashes). Virtual memory doesn't help that situation. This machine will not load a few projects that I run on the ultra because of the ram ceiling (ditto to some old projects from the trashcan). I am though mightily impressed with what I CAN do on it. And if I was ok with the constraints it brings, I could almost do all my writing on this machine.



That's great info thank you. Can you describe the project you were working with that hit the wall? How many tracks and how many plugins on the tracks, what kind of plugins? How many tracks were playing audio at the same time when it hits the wall? When it "hits the wall" how did that manifest itself? It hit the wall because you couldn't load any more or it hit the wall because of audio dropouts...or what exactly was happening? How did you calculate that you were using 58gb worth of preload samples? Is there any chance you checked out the Activity Manager's memory pressure graph at that time? At any given moment, the memory usage is a factor of all the apps that happening to be running at that moment and whatever they are doing...which is a lot more then just the samples you loaded...so when you say you loaded 58gb of preload samples...that still could have been approaching a lot more memory usage than that over all...which would be......virtual memory. And eventually you "hit the wall", but we need more information about what all was loaded up on the machine and what kind of virtual memory it attempted to use and at what point it broke, and HOW it broke. You are a good person to provide this kind of information as you appear to have access to different M1 machines as well as very large projects to push it.




colony nofi said:


> What is interesting is that the m1's enable one to run much lower preload amounts than the trashcans - even when using the same sample drive (tests were done running an external 8TB NVME drive thru thunderbolt



That is interesting, but keep in mind there are two factors that contribute to shuttling data from storage to RAM. There is the SSD speed, and there is also the memory speed...and the M1's have really really fast RAM memory too. Also the M1's memory is "unified" memory...which just lowers even more how and where data needs to be shuttled around through the motherboard less to get from SSD to RAM and back again. This is the main reason Apple Silicon is faster...not the raw CPU clock speed.

It makes sense this would improve the streaming capacity for lowering the preload amounts...but it should also be improving virtual memory capability, as many other reviewers have noted, unlike your experience apparently.



colony nofi said:


> It would be a rare session of that type not to have 200 tracks playing back at once at one point in the film.



No question if I were you I would be getting the Ultra and probably a macPro when it comes out.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> It still comes down to RAM being faster than storage. When you load more samples than your head start RAM buffer has room for, the system is going to use virtual memory.
> 
> And if you push that too hard - you say 2X, which would be nice but it would surprise me if that really worked for music - you run into the problems the Colonel described.



yes. Well I think with 200 tracks playing together at the same time....you will run into CPU problems also I would surmise depending whats on those tracks....that kind of usage does in fact need an Ultra or a MacPro.




Nick Batzdorf said:


> I wouldn't get less than 64GB on any new Mac I buy. For me the only question is whether to spend the extra money for 2TB of storage rather than 1.



I would definitely recommend 2TB


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 10, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> I would definitely recommend 2TB



That's where I'm leaning. And then the next questions will be how much to leave free and what to put on it.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2022)

I would use it for all my apps. My MacPro currently uses 1TB for macOS and all the apps. Some of the apps have factory sounds and stuff, it ends up using that much space. I have just about all my sample libraries on completely seperate drives. In the future, I expect my Boot drive to need more than 1TB. I think 2TB is future proof.

But also I would personally use the internal drive for recording audio tracks in the DAW, and then move the projects to a different external drive when I'm done working on them. If you have some of these super fast external drive solutions then that may not be as necessary.

At first I was thinking about getting even the 8TB internal, because its so fast, etc. But in terms of backup strategies...that can be problematic. One backup that I like to have is an exact imaged backup of my entire boot drive, that I can boot from in a pinch. I always do a bootable backup of my boot drive before every major MacOS update. But if my boot drive were filled with 8TB of samples and crap...that would be a very large backup to make...not only would I need another expensive 8TB to back it up, but also it would take a really long time to do the backup. 

anyway, at the moment I'm leaning more towards the strategy generally of putting MacOS + Apps + DAW project work area, on the boot drive...which I think is something more than 1TB I need, and probably less than 2TB.


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## tmhuud (Aug 10, 2022)

I'm wondering how my projects are going to respond to be recorded internally on these new machines. Im having a tech look into this. Just have to run speed tests but theres other issues to keep mindful of. 

I guess no one will know until we get the machine. I am just sooooo used to running projects externally.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2022)

I think you will still be happy running them externally...it will still be better than before. There are practical advantages to doing that.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 10, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> I would use it for all my apps.



Oh, that goes without saying. I mean in addition to using it as a system drive.

I'm also a fine artist, and I'll use it for that.

And for video editing, if I can't avoid doing that (I truly hate dealing with video).



Dewdman42 said:


> My MacPro currently uses 1TB for macOS and all the apps. Some of the apps have factory sounds and stuff, it ends up using that much space. I have just about all my sample libraries on completely seperate drives. In the future, I expect my Boot drive to need more than 1TB. I think 2TB is future proof.



My system drive is 512GB, but I only have 25GB free at the moment. That includes cruft going back to the contents of my G3 when it was the current machine. 




Dewdman42 said:


> At first I was thinking about getting even the 8TB internal, because its so fast, etc. But in terms of backup strategies...that can be problematic.


You can get 16TB spinning drives for that. They're not horribly expensive, unlike 8TB of storage from Apple.

You just tell it to copy, go to bed, and in the morning it'll be done.

Now, if like me you also have cloud backup (iDrive), that will take a few days - or nights. But with Fios the uploading speed is as fast as downloading.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2022)

in my opinion, SSD's do not need to be kept half empty for performance reasons nearly as much as HDD. Hard drives were dealing with platters and defragmentation, etc, etc, etc.. I really have no problem running my SSD right to the bloody limit of how much space it has. You do need to leave some room for dynamic things the OS and your apps will be creating cache files, log files, etc.. and there is virtual memory paging, etc... so you need to make sure there is some empty space always available for that sort of stuff...but its not like the old days where they would tell us not to let the drive become more than 2/3 full or whatever... There is a lot more leeway with SSD....IMHO.

But its more of a practical concern...future proofing it. Especially the M1, you won't be able to upgrade it later. Whatever you get now is what you will use for the life of the computer (unless you sell it).


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## JohnG (Aug 10, 2022)

Simon Ravn said:


> Waiting for 256GB version or new Mac Pro.


yes -- I couldn't wait for the new Mac Pro, Simon, alas. Bought a 2019 with oodles of RAM and it's fine.

Returning to the original post, why except for someone who's really broke would anyone consider a 2013 computer anyway? Is that still even being discussed?? 

*Why do that to yourself?*

There is no prize for composing with an underpowered computer -- directors are not going to slap you on the back and congratulate you for your 2014 MBP production, simply because it's on a 2014 MBP.

IDK why people think it's a good idea, even virtuous, to squeeze the last 5% out of a machine, or try to conquer full-orchestra mockups with synths and FX etc. on some laptop. 

*Spend The Money*

I get poverty -- that is a reason. But unless you are really hurting, composing is hard enough without juggling computer parts. Why try to fight with one hand (finger?) tied behind one's back? Get a monster computer and crush the problem. Spend time visiting with people who might hire you instead.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2022)

I can say for my part, that I am not upgrading to Apple Silicon until the need for Rosetta goes away, which is still a year or two out. I just don't want to deal with any potential software incompatibilities.

It comes down to three basic choices right now, all are a compromise to some degree and it depends on each individual which approach would be the best compromise that makes the most sense.


Keep using a cheese grater or Trashcan for another year or two. They still work perfectly fine for a lot of us. Mine is not holding me back at all right now. It will be in a year or two, but its not right now. The audio software world has still not gotten in line completely with Apple Silicon and Intel is still, IMHO, the preferred binary format to be using to avoid Rosetta-city, which doesn't always work.


if the TrashCan or Cheesegrater is not keeping up with your huge DAW projects or whatever, then first option is get 2019 MacPro, as you did, which will work under Intel and I expect Apple to support it at least another 5 years. How long 3rd party developers continue to build and distribute intel binaries along with newer Apple Silicon binaries...is yet to be seen. I suspect many will do so for quite a while because Apple has made it easy. But only time will tell. Main downside of this option is the price. In my opinion, in 2022, that is the most reliable, strongest platform to use for audio production today. Its just bloody expensive.


If you can't do your work with the first option and can't afford the second option, then you need option three, which is Apple Silicon something-er-other. Main downside here, for now, would be rosetta-city.
I am really not being held back by my 2010 Mac Pro at all. It is absolutely doing everything I want to do, and still amazes me how powerful and fast and smooth it is compared to every other computer I ever owned in the past. Other then gear-envy...what reason is there to run out right now and change to either an expensive 2019 Mac Pro...or a rosetta-city situation that is changing rapidly on a monthly basis? There is no rush. We'll all get there eventually.

MacOS updates are another reason, if someone just can't keep going on High Sierra for whatever the reason, then either have to become an OpenCore hacker....or consider options #2 or #3. But I think an awful lot of people could in fact keep going on High Sierra or whatever for another year or two just fine... and the reason would be...to avoid rosetta-city for now and to see what new offerings Apple comes out with in a year or two, after the point at which Apple Silicon binaries are as common as Intel binaries.. Its not there yet. at that point, we can all go full Apple Silicon and never look back, but right now in 2022...it is still not that cut and dried.

If someone is in the unfortunate situation that they are using an older macPro, older then 5,1...or perhaps a mini or iMac that simply isn't keeping up anymore, then the question would be do you spend a lot for a 2019 machine...do you suffer through Rosetta, or do you perhaps considering buying a Trashcan or even a maxed out cheese grater, in the $1k price range...as a stop gap measure until M2, or M3...or whatever...but mainly until Rosetta becomes a thing of the past? I see that as a perfectly acceptable alternative also...same reason I am still perfectly happy using my 2010 MacPro right now and will be for another year or two.


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## mat1 (Aug 10, 2022)

tmhuud said:


> I'm wondering how my projects are going to respond to be recorded internally on these new machines. Im having a tech look into this. Just have to run speed tests but theres other issues to keep mindful of.
> 
> I guess no one will know until we get the machine. I am just sooooo used to running projects externally.


The main downside is cost.. if you can afford it then go for it.


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## mat1 (Aug 10, 2022)

@Dewdman42 one more option.

4. Move to silicon and give up/avoid Rosetta plugs wherever possible. Enjoy a massive increase in single core speed allowing lower buffers, much more intense plug-in chains and the latest DAW updates.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2022)

That still falls under Rosetta-city as far as I'm concerned...being constrained in what software you are able or willing to use...is a compromise... But no doubt... a pure AS binary path on the new machines will be very smooth and if you fall in that camp then Option #3 is all for you!


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## Mike Greene (Aug 10, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> I would definitely recommend 2TB





Nick Batzdorf said:


> That's where I'm leaning. And then the next questions will be how much to leave free and what to put on it.


For me, one nice thing about merging my trash can and Mac Mini into the Mac Studio was that the "main stuff" on both didn't actually take up that much space. Way less than a terabyte, plus this was a good time to do some cleanup of projects I'll never need again (which realistically is pretty much _all_ projects I've ever worked on), so I could relegate those to backup drives.

I got the 4TB internal drive, so I could keep my favorite sample libraries internally and not deal with externals at all. Lean and mean, baby! Surprisingly, those took less space than I anticipated, because I realized I'm never going to actually use these libraries. (Sonic Implants Strings? Sure, they sound great, but ... really?) It was like yet another opportunity to do some cleanup. So even now, where I have everything I care about on this single 4TB SSD, I have about 1.5TB free.

You have way more libraries than I do, but still, I'll bet it will be pretty easy to select the "need" libraries.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 10, 2022)

Mike Greene said:


> You have way more libraries than I do, but still, I'll bet it will be pretty easy to select the "need" libraries


That would be just the Realitone ones, of course.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 10, 2022)

Oops. And Spectrasonics.


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## HCMarkus (Aug 10, 2022)

Went for 2TB Internal SSD and am using APFS Volume 1 for OS and Apps and APFS Volume 2 for Working Projects. VI Data is on an External TB Drive. Working Project Backups to External USB SSD, Time Machine 8TB HD, and BackBlaze.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2022)

The main problem related to backing up a super large drive is if you need or care about making a bootable backup, which under newer versions of MacOS, requires the entire drive to be imaged using lower level cloning...regardless of APFS volumes you might be using. separating the drive into several logical volumes can be handy for other reasons...certainly the TimeMachine style backup will then only have to backup the actual boot volume, etc.. but if you want a bootable backup...you have to image the entire hardware drive...


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## NYC Composer (Aug 10, 2022)

mat1 said:


> I would get an i9 iMac. You can upgrade them to 128gb ram so it should be good for another 5yrs or so. After 5 years there should be plenty of suitable used Studios on the market.


I bought mine in 2019. Very nice machine. Now it’s “old”! Sheesh.

I don’t have a need for more power but when/if I do I think all this Rosetta crap will be sorted.


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## colony nofi (Aug 10, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> I think you will still be happy running them externally...it will still be better than before. There are practical advantages to doing that.


Yes - external PROJECT sessions work amazingly well.
The ultra has 10GBE ethernet. Take advantage of that. A NAS is absolutely perfect for running projects, and allows you to design in drive failure mitigation, and also allows you to build something that does auto snapshots to a backup, and auto upload of those backups to the cloud. All in one little server. I personally would recommend Truenas - but for set it and forget it, QNAP and Synology both do really interesting systems. For super fast response look to use multiple 2.5" SSD's. The wear on them from projects is not high. We've been using samsung SSD's as project drives in ZFS arrays for years, and only had one failture (and running Raid 6 this meant we didn't even need to get data off of backups). I've had way more spinning rust go down in the past.

We get around 7Gb/s - so roughly 700MB/s to each studio off our nas over 10GBE. Our nas has 40GBE out - WAY WAY overkill for a single person, but I'd look at 10GBE for your own use. Building a little 10GBE server isn't that hard these days if you want to save $ over QNAP or Synolody.

Final note : All our spinning rust snapshots are now 14TB-18TB drives - and its important to make sure you get the right drive for the NAS in this regard. 

This is off topic, but its still worth thinking about. Its one of the reasons I no longer think about internal storage for desktop machines. Sample libs are on external NVME where possible (makes it much easier to manage) and the NAS has project files, backups of samples (images), backups of OS's, sound fx databases etc etc. Our tech would LOVE it if samples could run off nas's, but nothing has worked in that regard....yet. We've got much closer in the last 6 months though. Especially for kontakt.


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## colony nofi (Aug 10, 2022)

NYC Composer said:


> I bought mine in 2019. Very nice machine. Now it’s “old”! Sheesh.
> 
> I don’t have a need for more power but when/if I do I think all this Rosetta crap will be sorted.


Rosetta isn't crap - I think what apple have done with Rosetta is actually mind boggling. And is one of the main reason their switch from x86 to arm is going so smoothly.


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## NYC Composer (Aug 10, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> Rosetta isn't crap - I think what apple have done with Rosetta is actually mind boggling. And is one of the main reason their switch from x86 to arm is going so smoothly.


Either you’d like to have everything (or 99%) native or you wouldn’t. I’d prefer to.

“Crap“ was used generically. Far be it from me to criticize our Apple Overlords 😉


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> The ultra has 10GBE ethernet. Take advantage of that.



Slight correction, all the MacStudio's have 10GBE. Presuming the NAS also has that...and you use the right switch, etc.. that is an interesting concept to run projects right off the NAS... I'd have to see some success stories and numbers before I could commit to that approach myself. It is interesting though. 

If nothing else, you could work projects on the internal drive and then quickly move them on/off a NAS with super fast networking available. I'm a little skeptical about actually running a DAW project directly off a NAS remote drive...but hey...everything is getting better and faster these days..so who knows..


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## colony nofi (Aug 10, 2022)

NYC Composer said:


> Either you’d like to have everything (or 99%) native or you wouldn’t. I’d prefer to.
> 
> “Crap“ was used generically. Far be it from me to criticize our Apple Overlords 😉


oh I get that sentiment for sure. 
I REALLY wanted to try make my system 100% native. But backwards compatibility to older projects is super important, and - er - soundtoys is about the last to keep me using nuendo under rosetta. I'm looking forward to the 20% performance uptick when I go native (and if thats a real thing when using a DAW...)


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## colony nofi (Aug 10, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> Slight correction, all the MacStudio's have 10GBE. Presuming the NAS also has that...and you use the right switch, etc.. that is an interesting concept to run projects right off the NAS... I'd have to see some success stories and numbers before I could commit to that approach myself. It is interesting though.
> 
> If nothing else, you could work projects on the internal drive and then quickly move them on/off a NAS with super fast networking available. I'm a little skeptical about actually running a DAW project directly off a NAS remote drive...but hey...everything is getting better and faster these days..so who knows..


We run 3 post mix rooms off a single 10GBE NAS port on the QNAP server (recent xeon with 64GB ram and a 8x4TB raid 6 array for "live" projects), and also have others remoting into it to "check in/out sessions". Post slams the drives way more than composers do. Think film/television mixes. No more SAS / iSCSI here. Thank goodness. 40GBE is currently not even plugged into the switch now I'm looking at it! (And there are some amazingly good value switches for not a lot of $ for 10GBE (thanks melanox) - and most 10GBE NAS are completely fine for direct connection if its for home use. Use a separate network port for internet.

I run all my personal composition projects (including some playing back way more than 300 tracks) off an identical NAS that I have at home (and the two sync together). We've been doing it for YEARS. Back in the day, we even ran 3 rooms off 1GBE (each with a dedicated direct connection) after abandoning protools. No issues for track numbers (do some calculations and you'll see just GbE can do a shed load of audio) but it did cause issues for snappiness of the DAW. 10GbE feels like you are running internally, but with ALL the advantages of a server.

Now if I had more time - and if our tech had the experience, I would have def gone truenas, since we had to jump through serious hoops to lock down the QNAPS but still allow remote access via a custom VPN we run externally on bare metal (which is necessary when working on network shows... becomming tech ready to work with a network is a massive thing these days. We are not setup for netflix currently (have not needed to) but their tech rider is pretty full on. You basically need a full time tech at your studios to be able to deal with them.).

The QNAPS have security issues if you are running them vanilla without a decent firewall setup + exposing them to the internet.


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## colony nofi (Aug 10, 2022)

For reference, this is the model of the server we use.








TVS-h1688X | Intel® Xeon® W desktop QuTS hero NAS, ideal for high-speed media collaboration over Thunderbolt™ 3 and 10GbE virtual machine applications


The high-capacity TVS-h1688X features a powerful Intel® Xeon® W processor and allows for installing two QNAP QXP-T32P Thunderbolt™ 3 PCIe expansion cards (sold separately) to attain four Thunderbolt™ 3 ports, making it a perfect match for Thunderbolt™-equipped Mac® and Windows® users for...




www.qnap.com




An extra NIC is installed in one of the PCIE slots. We don't use thunderbolt on them (its not standard thunderbolt connectivity - its network over thunderbolt as far as I understand - but I am talking with VERY little knowledge of that ... its not needed for us, but could be cool for home use.)

We use 8 x 4TB Samsung QVO's as the live pool. Then have 8 x 14TB spinning rust drives in two separate raid 5 arrays that mirror each other (raid 50) for backup snapshots. And that is sync'd to the cloud, and to an identical server offsite. The server doesn't even raise a sweat.

Also has 2 x Samsung 980 1TB NVME drives - but not as a cache (which it can be) as it didn't provide ANY performance benefit on the SATA SSD pool, so just mirror them for the OS. Overkill.

The lower end QNAP systems would be fine if we didn't want to have our main pool AND 2 backup pools on the same unit (so we utilise all 16 drive bays)

All sits in a cabinet with an additional 2 x 200mm fans (one for air intake, one for air exhaust) but since its not in a studio, the sound isn't a problem. Fans wouldn't be needed if we didn't put it in a cabinet.

Its certainly whisper quiet compared to a lot of rack mount NAS's which need to be installed in rooms with massive heat + sound allowances when using in a studio environment. Cool for working on a laptop near (not for studio - just general busy-work)


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## Tronam (Aug 11, 2022)

NYC Composer said:


> Either you’d like to have everything (or 99%) native or you wouldn’t. I’d prefer to.
> 
> “Crap“ was used generically. Far be it from me to criticize our Apple Overlords 😉


There just seems to be a lot of misconceptions about Rosetta 2. It isn't anything like Rosetta 1. Instead of a slow emulation layer running in the background, R2 compiles an actual ARM64 binary the first time an x86 application is run and from that point forward the app is technically "native". That's why the first launch takes longer than normal and becomes much quicker with subsequent launches. Apple even engineered Apple Silicon with Rosetta in mind to accelerate x86 application code, which is why the performance hit is so low. Obviously a natively built binary by the developers can be better optimized, but in numerous cases the performance difference is minimal.


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## ZosterX (Aug 12, 2022)

Still thinkin.. Should I go with the 32GB RAM since I work with minimum 100 midi tracks ? Is it enough or should I go with the 64GB RAM ? 
My main goal is to work on movies at some point..


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## NYC Composer (Aug 12, 2022)

Tronam said:


> There just seems to be a lot of misconceptions about Rosetta 2. It isn't anything like Rosetta 1. Instead of a slow emulation layer running in the background, R2 compiles an actual ARM64 binary the first time an x86 application is run and from that point forward the app is technically "native". That's why the first launch takes longer than normal and becomes much quicker with subsequent launches. Apple even engineered Apple Silicon with Rosetta in mind to accelerate x86 application code, which is why the performance hit is so low. Obviously a natively built binary by the developers can be better optimized, but in numerous cases the performance difference is minimal.


Interesting.

Technically speaking it's one misconception shared by a lot of people, but still good information. Thanks.


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## mat1 (Aug 12, 2022)

NYC Composer said:


> I bought mine in 2019. Very nice machine. Now it’s “old”! Sheesh.
> 
> I don’t have a need for more power but when/if I do I think all this Rosetta crap will be sorted.



I’m still using a 2015. Now that is old! Pretty sure my M1 will smoke it.

If Apple silicon didn’t happen I’d have upgraded to the same iMac as you. Great machines 👍


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## JohnG (Aug 12, 2022)

ZosterX said:


> Still thinkin.. Should I go with the 32GB RAM since I work with minimum 100 midi tracks ? Is it enough or should I go with the 64GB RAM ?
> My main goal is to work on movies at some point..


I'm a fan of getting 'more than you need.' These days, I think 64 GB is not at all overkill. Particularly those wanting to 'do it all,' with full orchestra and synths, FX and everything, 32 GB is getting mighty thin. 

That said, if you end up working on projects that are too demanding, it's not that hard to add a satellite PC to house extra samples. I would probably push for 64 if you can afford it, but if you can't and land a big job, you can always bulk up quickly.


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## patekswiss (Aug 17, 2022)

NKAudio said:


> Has anyone made the jump from such an older Mac Pro up to the Mac Studio? If so, what are the pros/cons you've noticed.


I have a 2013-14 era trashcan. It just keeps going. I've had to replace non-Apple peripherals but the rig itself is solid. I knew the Mac Pro 2019 was a non-starter for me because, after some price-induced dawdling on my part, Apple introduced M1 and it was obvious the 2019-20 Mac Pros were going to quickly be orphans. The Studio is the first Mac in a while that made me sit up and take notice. At this point I'm going to try to give it another year or so and see what develops with an M2 Mac Pro or the like. For now the trashcan is doing just fine. Sometimes the fan is a bit too loud, and I sometimes pine for Thunderbolt 3, but I can't find anything else to criticize. Using Mojave.

PS


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## ZosterX (Aug 18, 2022)

https://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00493291.html 

Planning to take this one. I think it is a good mix overall between ram, ssd and core, and mostly price


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## SupremeFist (Aug 18, 2022)

JohnG said:


> I'm a fan of getting 'more than you need.' These days, I think 64 GB is not at all overkill. Particularly those wanting to 'do it all,' with full orchestra and synths, FX and everything, 32 GB is getting mighty thin.


I have 64Gb in an i7 Mac Mini and can easily get into 50Gb+ usage, and these are not huuuuuuuuge hybrid-orchestral pieces (50-60 sample tracks maybe). I could probably get it lower by purging/trashing articulations or whatever but I don't want to waste time doing that kind of housekeeping. So my next machine (probably a Studio) will definitely have 128Gb minimum.


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