# Mac Ultra Overkill



## morgs500 (Nov 6, 2022)

Would it be true after reading many threads that there is no real benefits for music production in purchasing the Mac studio ultra 
apart from the 128 gig of memory. I have my eye on apple refurbished machine and wondering again if this might be the law of diminishing returns.I work with large templates and wondering if the second processor would help?


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## Sergievsky (Nov 6, 2022)

Ya I read that also pretty often, and I think it’s bull. Maybe it was Monterey, maybe it was the daw or plugs they use, but as Ventura matures and the DAWs updates as well as the plugs, I’m sure they’ll eventually take full advantage of the multi-cores. And for now maybe use Vienna Ensemble or Audio Gridder on the same machine to offload to other cores? I’m kinda in the same boat, holding off for the moment on a maxed out Ultra. But I remember watching a vid of someone testing a new (at the time) iMac Pro and saying it could do all the VIs he’ll need. Well, it turns out it wasn’t enough. I think the tougher question is WHEN to buy it, as in, how long can you put it off so you can get the latest cpu version.


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## pranic (Nov 6, 2022)

I suspect the next generation of Mac Studio will support more RAM for lower SKU processors, given that the increase of 16G for M1, and 24G for M2 base SOCs. I really would like to have 128GB of RAM again on my mac (my current has 64G and my old Mac Pro had 128G but was a space heater). Looking forward to seeing what new macs are coming in the new year. As for the number of cores for the cost, the M1 Ultra Studios is a lot of money to spend for a machine that's capable to have more RAM when I know I don't need the additional CPU. I like the suggestion of using AudioGridder or VEP to spread load amongst multiple machines versus the extra thousands for a beefier main computer, fwiw.


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## colony nofi (Nov 7, 2022)

I have the ultra and 128GB ram. One of my colleagues - a much better name composer than me has never even felt close to reaching the limit of his 64GB Max Studio. To each their own - I had reasons for getting 128GB Ram (having being used to it since 2013 with my trash can and having many sessions which exceeded 64. My colleague has never worked in over 64, and doesn't need to with his work flow. 

Interestingly, because I've slightly changed up how I work, I don't think any of my projects from the last 9 months or however long I've had this machine would have any trouble running in 64. Indeed, I've worked a TONNE during this time on a M1Max MBP with 64GB ram, and not run into ram problems. Plenty of other little gremlins (lots more crashing than in the past) but some of that comes down to tools I CHOOSE to use knowing they are a little unstable, and just generally working a little differently to others. 

There is no second processor in the ultra. It is all one processor. 
There is very little difference in our facilities custom benchmarks between the two models - given the realtime needs of DAWS and the first core (so single core performance trumps multi-core in most DAW situations. It can be parallel to a point, but won't scale like much other software. )
I'm personally happy with my ultra - although there are some CPU based things I cannot do on it that I could on my old xeon trash cans (!!) - but they're older tools for object based spacial mixing (64 speakers plus) that for whatever reason do not yet play well with M-based chips.


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## ridgero (Nov 7, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> I have the ultra and 128GB ram. One of my colleagues - a much better name composer than me has never even felt close to reaching the limit of his 64GB Max Studio. To each their own - I had reasons for getting 128GB Ram (having being used to it since 2013 with my trash can and having many sessions which exceeded 64. My colleague has never worked in over 64, and doesn't need to with his work flow.
> 
> Interestingly, because I've slightly changed up how I work, I don't think any of my projects from the last 9 months or however long I've had this machine would have any trouble running in 64. Indeed, I've worked a TONNE during this time on a M1Max MBP with 64GB ram, and not run into ram problems. Plenty of other little gremlins (lots more crashing than in the past) but some of that comes down to tools I CHOOSE to use knowing they are a little unstable, and just generally working a little differently to others.
> 
> ...


The Ultra is 2x M1 Max, so it is actually a second SoC.


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## jblongz (Nov 7, 2022)

It’s overkill, but your renders will be faster.


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## morgs500 (Nov 7, 2022)

ridgero said:


> The Ultra is 2x M1 Max, so it is actually a second SoC.


Hi So what do you think the performance difference would be in logic or Cubase?


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## morgs500 (Nov 7, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> I have the ultra and 128GB ram. One of my colleagues - a much better name composer than me has never even felt close to reaching the limit of his 64GB Max Studio. To each their own - I had reasons for getting 128GB Ram (having being used to it since 2013 with my trash can and having many sessions which exceeded 64. My colleague has never worked in over 64, and doesn't need to with his work flow.
> 
> Interestingly, because I've slightly changed up how I work, I don't think any of my projects from the last 9 months or however long I've had this machine would have any trouble running in 64. Indeed, I've worked a TONNE during this time on a M1Max MBP with 64GB ram, and not run into ram problems. Plenty of other little gremlins (lots more crashing than in the past) but some of that comes down to tools I CHOOSE to use knowing they are a little unstable, and just generally working a little differently to others.
> 
> ...


Thank you for your response.So you say there are very little differences in your benchmark test .How little are the differences ? i am torn between the max studio 64 gig or the max studio ultra 64 gig.


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## davidson (Nov 7, 2022)

morgs500 said:


> Hi So what do you think the performance difference would be in logic or Cubase?


It's pretty much double the performance as far as overall load goes. The thing is, I'd sacrifice 30% of those cores for better single core performance which is the same no matter which M1 chip you go for.


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## NoamL (Nov 7, 2022)

Right now I've been able to run complicated orchestral mockups all inside a 64GB Studio. It is great fun and so much more sleek than my old MBP+PC setup.

The only hiccup has been that either EastWest Spaces II or MUSIO (or both) _really_ doesn't like running inside an AS Native session of LogicX. No problems at all when those plugins are offloaded to VEPro.

And that's the upshot here IMO. The 64GB Studio is excellent as a DAW machine, and if you need legacy plugins, more instruments, and more RAM/CPU to process them, that's when a greatly cheaper outboard PC comes back into the picture, running VEP and returning a simple audio stream back. The first instruments and plugins to offload would be those that won't become AS Native and any multimic instruments that you are comfortable mixing outside your DAW.

With the Ultra, you are buying a mind melting amount of GPU's that LogicX certainly doesn't use right now, but audio technology might find a use for in the future.


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## colony nofi (Nov 7, 2022)

ridgero said:


> The Ultra is 2x M1 Max, so it is actually a second SoC.


eh....
not *really* - but kinda.
From a physical perspective, the chip is two M1X's dies joined together with a very interesting (novel) interconnect on the one chip. 
But as far as presentation to the system (especially in GPU land) - and this is the bloody clever bit - it presents as a single SOC. You can't really call it two SOC's - but its made up of two SOC's. I mean, its not terribly important for us in DAW land, but the architecture is bloody interesting. I remember Anantech did a comprehensive breakdown back when it was released, and my buddy at Qualcomm were completely blown away / blindsided by the techniques used to have the chip behave as a single SOC.


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## colony nofi (Nov 7, 2022)

jblongz said:


> It’s overkill, but your renders will be faster.


Some renders. So in post, our studio thats running an M1 based machine sees massive improvements, especially when the nuendo based session is running natively. For doing series television, this is a huge win. We did a test with a show posted back on a 2016 6 core Mac Pro (render was 35mins for a 23min episode due to oversampling in the compressors / limiters). On a 2019 Mac Pro, render was 28mins (such a small improvement it has us stumped) and on an M1Max (not ultra) it was 13 minutes - a gob smacking level of improvement. Perhaps its just the *right* set of plugs. Oh - we had to remove 2C audio verbs though, and replaced them with Pro-R and Liquidsonics equivalents. So its not apples to apples - but breeze 2 was never a massive render hog from knowledge.

We have not tried it on an ultra, but my composition machine has all the plugs of that studio, so I might just try it for shits and giggles.

I've had some composition renders be faster on my old trashcan than my ultra - but my ultra is most of the time running over rosetta (although thats usually only a 20% overhead, but who knows for nuendo/cubase renders)

Finally, exporting to video files in nuendo is maybe the one thing that the Ultra absolutely FLIES at. Like, amazing. Perhaps a 300-500% improvement compared to a trashcan.


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## colony nofi (Nov 7, 2022)

morgs500 said:


> Thank you for your response.So you say there are very little differences in your benchmark test .How little are the differences ? i am torn between the max studio 64 gig or the max studio ultra 64 gig.


< 10% for # voices in kontakt using our custom Kontakt stress (both massive #'s of tiny samples, and smaller numbers of massively long samples).
< 20% for other samplers (spitfire, sine. Results were lumpy and weird and we never got to the bottom of it).
No difference in load times discernible 

But I suspect we see massive improvements for exporting to video (although I have not benchmarked it. If I somehow get a day of time I will though!).

Def see big differences when doing things like encoding all the videos that come in to Prores LT 1920x1080 25p


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## thevisi0nary (Nov 7, 2022)

pranic said:


> I suspect the next generation of Mac Studio will support more RAM for lower SKU processors, given that the increase of 16G for M1, and 24G for M2 base SOCs. I really would like to have 128GB of RAM again on my mac


Thoroughly doubt this.


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## pranic (Nov 8, 2022)

thevisi0nary said:


> Thoroughly doubt this.


Eventually, I think the new Mac Studio will be where we see an M2 Max allow for like 92G of RAM and maybe the M2 Ultra at 256GB of RAM (If they create similar SoC designs)

As for the new Mac Mini M2, from the rumours I think it'll be maxxed out at 24G of RAM, similar to the Macbook Air M2.

I'm just hopeful there will be a Mac Studio in the M2 range that offers more memory than just 64GB without having to do the $2.5K jump in price to get the Ultra. I could just have my head in the clouds. Until then, I'll just keep chugging away on my old rig (It still feels like it has a lot of life left in it)


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## thevisi0nary (Nov 8, 2022)

pranic said:


> Eventually, I think the new Mac Studio will be where we see an M2 Max allow for like 92G of RAM and maybe the M2 Ultra at 256GB of RAM (If they create similar SoC designs)
> 
> As for the new Mac Mini M2, from the rumours I think it'll be maxxed out at 24G of RAM, similar to the Macbook Air M2.
> 
> I'm just hopeful there will be a Mac Studio in the M2 range that offers more memory than just 64GB without having to do the $2.5K jump in price to get the Ultra. I could just have my head in the clouds. Until then, I'll just keep chugging away on my old rig (It still feels like it has a lot of life left in it)


I don't think it's impossible just very unlikely IMO. The Apple Silicon machines being non serviceable means they are built to stock, and the number of overall people who would buy a Mac Studio with an M1x chip but also need 128gb of ram is likely very small. Similar reason you need to jump from the M1 Pro to M1x to get 64gb on the Macbooks.

Maybe this will be different with the Mac Pro.


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## sherief83 (Nov 8, 2022)

I've went from a Mac Pro 5,1 with 96GB of ram to the 16" macbook pro with m1 max and 64gb. 

I thought at first id have trouble with the ram and i do get my logic template to 51gb of ram but i've never swapped ram at all and my logic templates are super messy and not organized with 165 instances open and many doubled instruments. 

is it nice to get more than 64gb? yes. will it change how anything sounds or operate? nope on my end. 

the Cpu m1 Max is plenty so far and has not hiccuped at all. then again the 12core on my 5,1 was plenty too and never have been pushed. 

i run macbook pro in clamshell mode with one 34" ultra wide and one 27" monitors and 4 external thunderbolt drives and a RME Aio in a PCIX enclosure.


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## Emanuel Fróes (Dec 6, 2022)

Hallo!

I would like to know if anyone use these computers in sync, and to which extent is possible to sync both computers for different tasks? Is there any additional app or setting that gives the most out of it?

Can I share for example the screen of macbook into the screen of mac studio?


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## Emanuel Fróes (Dec 6, 2022)

morgs500 said:


> Would it be true after reading many threads that there is no real benefits for music production in purchasing the Mac studio ultra
> apart from the 128 gig of memory. I have my eye on apple refurbished machine and wondering again if this might be the law of diminishing returns.I work with large templates and wondering if the second processor would help?


why the better is not the best? it is a matter of money and priority for long term setup, in my opnion


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