# New Mac studio - Testing a very heavy orchestral project



## dksellou

Hello,
I am not sure which model of the new mac studio to buy.
How much memory
How many cores


Of course the m1 ULTRA With the most cores and the 128 GB will be ideal.
But do we really need it?
I use only VIs but not effects.
I mean a template with strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, including different tracks for different articulations.
I heard that 64gb memory on the new M1 chip is like 128 GB memory of Intel.

I am thinking to save some money and get the 64 GB memory (leaning more towards the M1 Ultra though that has double amount of cores than the MAX). 
IF ANYONE HAS ALREADY ORDERED THIS MODEL AND DOES HEAVY ORCHESTRAL STUFF COULD HE/SHE POST A REVIEW AND LET US KNOW HOW THE PERFORMANCE IS?

I hate to buy something smaller than my needs but at the same time I hate to buy something much more expensive if it will not make any difference and if it is not really needed for music production.

THANK YOU!


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## cet34f

dksellou said:


> I heard that 64gb memory on the new M1 chip is like 128 GB memory of Intel.


Unified memory is just a nicer way of saying "we don't have dedicated memory for GPUs".


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## davidson

@dksellou I would agree with the '2x the intel ram' comment to an extent, but it's nothing like 2x the amount. I don't know _exactly_ what black magic they're pulling under the hood, but it's pretty impressive.

But yeah, if you have a template thats 80gb don't think you can buy the 64gb model and be done with it.


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## dksellou

cet34f said:


> Unified memory is just a nicer way of saying "we don't have dedicated memory for GPUs".


Senior software developer in a major company?......


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## jcrosby

cet34f said:


> Unified memory is just a nicer way of saying "we don't have dedicated memory for GPUs".


2nd that. There's nothing magical about Apple's RAM, it's just their wording for memory being shared between the entire system. Buy the amount of RAM you actually need.


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## AcousTech

Well, I’d respectfully disagree. There very much _is_ something unique about the way this Apple RAM is configured. From AnandTech:

Meanwhile, doubling the number of M1 Max dies on the chip means that Apple is able to double the number of memory channels on the chip, and thus their overall memory bandwidth. Whereas M1 Max had 16 LPDDR5-6400 channels for a total of 408GB/second of memory bandwidth, M1 Ultra doubles that to 32 LPDDR5 channels and 800GB/second of memory bandwidth. And as with the M1 Max, this is accomplished by soldering the LPDDR5 chips directly to the chip package, for a total of 8 chips on M1 Ultra.

Reference:








Apple Announces M1 Ultra: Combining Two M1 Maxes For Workstation Performance







www.anandtech.com





That’s pretty incredible throughput/access to the memory - even if it is not discrete between CPU & GPU! You should still buy only what you need, of course, but it is kinda “magical”, yeah?


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## Technostica

The biggest overall deal with the memory is that the various process units can access the same data without having to copy it between two physical locations.
If your workflow doesn’t require this feature, then obviously you gain nothing.

As for memory bandwidth, it depends if you are bottlenecked in the first place.
There are plenty of scenarios where doubling it will make zero difference and this when starting from much lower bandwidth than even the base M1 here.
Latency is also very important with memory.
So the massive gains to be had are with video workloads.

The irony here is that the unified memory model is less demanding on bandwidth.


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## jcrosby

AcousTech said:


> Well, I’d respectfully disagree. There very much _is_ something unique about the way this Apple RAM is configured. From AnandTech:
> 
> Meanwhile, doubling the number of M1 Max dies on the chip means that Apple is able to double the number of memory channels on the chip, and thus their overall memory bandwidth. Whereas M1 Max had 16 LPDDR5-6400 channels for a total of 408GB/second of memory bandwidth, M1 Ultra doubles that to 32 LPDDR5 channels and 800GB/second of memory bandwidth. And as with the M1 Max, this is accomplished by soldering the LPDDR5 chips directly to the chip package, for a total of 8 chips on M1 Ultra.
> 
> Reference:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Apple Announces M1 Ultra: Combining Two M1 Maxes For Workstation Performance
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.anandtech.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That’s pretty incredible throughput/access to the memory - even if it is not discrete between CPU & GPU! You should still buy only what you need, of course, but it is kinda “magical”, yeah?


I never said AS memory isn't fast. I quoted a post that responded to a belief that's been getting tossed around that: _"64gb memory on the new M1 chip is like 128 GB memory of Intel."_

Where do these links support the theory that AS memory is somehow is able to double the *physical capacity* of memory?

And no, I personally don't consider it magical I consider it well engineered. But engineering that's still constrained to the same physical limitations RAM has in any other system, but with better throughput.


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## kenose

AcousTech said:


> Well, I’d respectfully disagree. There very much _is_ something unique about the way this Apple RAM is configured. From AnandTech:
> 
> Meanwhile, doubling the number of M1 Max dies on the chip means that Apple is able to double the number of memory channels on the chip, and thus their overall memory bandwidth. Whereas M1 Max had 16 LPDDR5-6400 channels for a total of 408GB/second of memory bandwidth, M1 Ultra doubles that to 32 LPDDR5 channels and 800GB/second of memory bandwidth. And as with the M1 Max, this is accomplished by soldering the LPDDR5 chips directly to the chip package, for a total of 8 chips on M1 Ultra.
> 
> Reference:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Apple Announces M1 Ultra: Combining Two M1 Maxes For Workstation Performance
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.anandtech.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That’s pretty incredible throughput/access to the memory - even if it is not discrete between CPU & GPU! You should still buy only what you need, of course, but it is kinda “magical”, yeah?



There’s nothing magic going on here that has anything to do with memory capacity. 

The insane bandwidth is great— if you actually have workloads that can saturate it, of which audio is not one. The M1 Max CPU can barely even saturate half the bandwidth, in tests designed specifically to saturate bandwidth.

AnandTech themselves did extensive testing: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performance-review/2

Bandwidth simply does not equal “more samples loaded into RAM.” If you run a 128gb RAM template, you will not be able to run said template on 64gb of Apple Silicon RAM. 

Yes, the engineering on these chips is extremely impressive— but there is nothing magical here, for audio workloads at least.


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## dksellou

kenose said:


> There’s nothing magic going on here that has anything to do with memory capacity.
> 
> The insane bandwidth is great— if you actually have workloads that can saturate it, of which audio is not one. The M1 Max CPU can barely even saturate half the bandwidth, in tests designed specifically to saturate bandwidth.
> 
> AnandTech themselves did extensive testing: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performance-review/2
> 
> Bandwidth simply does not equal “more samples loaded into RAM.” If you run a 128gb RAM template, you will not be able to run said template on 64gb of Apple Silicon RAM.
> 
> Yes, the engineering on these chips is extremely impressive— but there is nothing magical here, for audio workloads at
> 
> 
> kenose said:
> 
> 
> 
> There’s nothing magic going on here that has anything to do with memory capacity.
> 
> The insane bandwidth is great— if you actually have workloads that can saturate it, of which audio is not one. The M1 Max CPU can barely even saturate half the bandwidth, in tests designed specifically to saturate bandwidth.
> 
> AnandTech themselves did extensive testing: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performance-review/2
> 
> Bandwidth simply does not equal “more samples loaded into RAM.” If you run a 128gb RAM template, you will not be able to run said template on 64gb of Apple Silicon RAM.
> 
> Yes, the engineering on these chips is extremely impressive— but there is nothing magical here, for audio workloads at least.
> 
> 
> 
> Therefore, if I understand correctly, this new revolution (Mac studio) is not for a composer who uses mostly tons of VI samples...?
Click to expand...


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## kenose

> Therefore, if I understand correctly, this new revolution (Mac studio) is not for a composer who uses mostly tons of VI samples...?


No, the opposite is probably true: M1 Ultra + 128gb RAM should be great for VI heavy work— for a Mac user it’s likely the best system available. Lots of multicore CPU power, good single core, and now you’re not capped at 64gb of RAM on the M1 Max for building out large templates.

The point I was making is that any claims you read about the RAM in these Apple Silicon machines somehow achieving 1.5x+ their capacity should be taken with a grain of salt, because that is just not how RAM works for Kontakt, etc.

And, almost every time this weird myth is brought up the question of “but what about the huge memory bandwidth” always comes up— but the bandwidth ultimately has very little impact on the workflows/applications composers are using. We just need memory to load samples into— and the bandwidth can be useful to access that data super quickly, but you still have to load the samples into RAM. If you run out of RAM, the bandwidth isn’t much help!


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## jcrosby

kenose said:


> And, almost every time this weird myth is brought up the question of “but what about the huge memory bandwidth” always comes up— but the bandwidth ultimately has very little impact on the workflows/applications composers are using. We just need memory to load samples into— and the bandwidth can be useful to access that data super quickly, but you still have to load the samples into RAM. If you run out of RAM, the bandwidth isn’t much help!


Yeah this is basically my point. While the speed is more than impressive, Kontakt is still the ultimate bottleneck. (More about that below). The other issue with the assumption that the memory bandwidth is a "hack" for having insufficient RAM comes with several caveats that essentially make it a moot point because exceeding a physical RAM limitation means data winds up being paged to disk.

1. Once you start writing page files to disk you're now sacrificing the lifespan and performance of your disk. If you constantly ran a template where you somehow _were_ even able to work from a template that constantly paged very large amounts of data to disk you'd inevitably ruin the longevity of the internal disk. (Which is way more expensive than memory once you get above the 2 TB price point).

Sure SSDs have tons of longevity, but if you're constantly in a state of paging 64GB-ish of data to disk you risk severely kneecapping that longevity.

2. No matter how much memory you have, only part of your sample is loaded into RAM. The rest has to be streamed from disk. So basically, longevity aside, you're now working under a scenario where the disk isn't just being used to swap data from memory, but the remaining data from those samples also has to be streamed from disk. So basically you'd basically be nulling out the gains from AS's fast memory bandwidth. And this is simplified at best. I reality all kinds of other stuff would be getting paged to disk in that, not just samples... At some point you'll probably hit a wall where see your DAW or system start to freeze up.

3. Regardless of how much disk IO you have to handle a page file, a page file will still always be orders of magnitude slower. A disk may have theoretically fast IO, but disks still have more latency than RAM. For now RAM will still be orders of magnitude faster.


But about Kontakt being the bottleneck... The thread below has tons of info based on tests @colony nofi has done that show that Kontakt simply cannot take advantage of these disk or memory speeds. Well worth reading... The abridge, (quoted) version is: 

_..... for instance a 800MB/s drive will actually read at an equivalent 120MB/s for kontakt preload. And a 3000MB/s drive will actually read in at approx 185MB/s_





__





Mac Studio (New Hardware Mac Computer)!!!!


I’m saving up for the Apple silicon Mac Pro for sure, with 256GB of RAM. I agree 100% with Charlie that I don’t think it will have old fashioned RAM stick slots, because of the way the RAM is integrated on the silicon I don’t see how they pull it off. If they put those slots in there it seems...




vi-control.net





So basically while the engineering is impressive, Kontakt's dusty old code is still years behind where the hardware currently is.


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## jblongz

The 128GB Ultra won't be shipping until late May or early June. Wait until the popular Apple blogs get the base model and test the thermal throttling. Im extremely curious how a faster machine can handle heat in a smaller package. Surely the ultra won't retain the advertised clock speed at peak temperatures, but I hope to be proven wrong. Hold on to your money for a bit. Don't be a beta tester unless you have time and cash to burn.


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## AcousTech

@jcrosby & @kenose - I agree with you both about the fact that 64GB != 128GB. No question. And I never claimed it was. Perhaps I misunderstood the original intent. My point was simply that this is not routine memory in terms of bandwidth to access it. The comment of mine being that double the bandwidth does seem somewhat “magical”, but I’d also go with impressive engineering. I certainly didn’t intend to contradict you‘re accurate conclusions about quantity. Apologies if that’s how it came across. I was just trying to point out the fact that there is some new engineering tech here.


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## jcrosby

AcousTech said:


> @jcrosby & @kenose - I agree with you both about the fact that 64GB != 128GB. No question. And I never claimed it was. Perhaps I misunderstood the original intent. My point was simply that this is not routine memory in terms of bandwidth to access it. The comment of mine being that double the bandwidth does seem somewhat “magical”, but I’d also go with impressive engineering. I certainly didn’t intend to contradict you‘re accurate conclusions about quantity. Apologies if that’s how it came across. I was just trying to point out the fact that there is some new engineering tech here.


No worries. Sorry If I misinterpreted... I just see a lot of comments where people assume AS offers some kind of _hack_ that lets you bypass a physical memory limit. (And I can understand why. The memory is undoubtedly super fast... Apple isn't exactly cheap, making it persuasive to buy into the belief that it does.)

I just wanted to chime in and offer some insight why - (i.e. not your perspective per se...) - this is basically like seeing a glass that is half full, when in reality the glass might genuinely lean toward it actually being half empty, simply because memory does have some hard physical limits...
All good....


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## colony nofi

jcrosby said:


> No worries. Sorry If I misinterpreted... I just see a lot of comments where people assume AS offers some kind of _hack_ that lets you bypass a physical memory limit. (And I can understand why. The memory is undoubtedly super fast... Apple isn't exactly cheap, making it persuasive to buy into the belief that it does.)
> 
> I just wanted to chime in and offer some insight why - (i.e. not your perspective per se...) - this is basically like seeing a glass that is half full, when in reality the glass might genuinely lean toward it actually being half empty, simply because memory does have some hard physical limits...
> All good....


An interesting test that I haven't yet done is to look at relative memory use between say a 64GB Ram Mac Pro cylinder (we have a few) and the 64GB MBP. I suspect we will not see any substantial difference if preload amounts are set the same (which is what one would expect). The general architecture means that the M1Max model will be at a slight disadvantage as it shares memory with the graphics (although that is a small amount when just running a DAW) but 10.12 seems to use ever so slightly less ram for OS tasks than say 10.14 or 10.15 which other machines of ours are still running.

Time will tell.

But yeah, there's nothing magical in what apple are doing with their ram - its just the ram can be accessed extremely fast, and where necessary, the bandwidth is bonkers (I'm looking at you m1-ultra!)

This does mean that I'm leaning towards dropping preload buffers even further (if possible - I recall being able to push our older systems almost to the lowest level already - but I'm not in front of them now (am travelling) so will have to wait till I'm back at the studios.

One more thing regarding the file read speeds for Kontakt.

It is NOT unusual to see real work read speeds be VERY different than synthetic benchmarks. There was likely good reasons Kontakt coded things the way they did (back in the day) - likely due to people relying on spinning rust back then or some-such. Or it was just an efficient way of getting something done at the expense of loading speed which back when it was made (what, 10+ years ago) didn't matter as much as libraries were generally no where near the size they are now.

A simple black magic speed test really doesn't show you very much about the performance of a drive anyway. Drives act very differently under different loads. Block sizes. Cue depth. This is normal - and the speeds are generally always less than BM's synthetic benchmark. I don't bemoan BM for this, but it is just one number and its kinda *almost* irrelevant for most workloads. It is good for showing the relative speed between drives under certain conditions.

So its all a little complicated. And that's cool. Kontakt definitely COULD re-write its loading routines to be far more efficient and at greater speeds. (there are also a number of different variables between different libraries that mean some load faster than others, but that's another confusing story)

Where does this leave us? Well, drives today are incredibly fast. Kontakt is inefficient in how it loads data. The scaling between drives seen with synthetic benchmarks is not reflected 1:1 (far from it in most cases) when looking at load speeds for Kontakt on those same drives.


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## colony nofi

dksellou said:


> I heard that 64gb memory on the new M1 chip is like 128 GB memory of Intel.





dksellou said:


> IF ANYONE HAS ALREADY ORDERED THIS MODEL AND DOES HEAVY ORCHESTRAL STUFF COULD HE/SHE POST A REVIEW AND LET US KNOW HOW THE PERFORMANCE IS?


So this is just a rumour which is not true (see my above post for a little more details)
I'll try get round to doing some tests in the next few weeks. Do consider that for us to benchmark a computer completely takes a good couple of days, and I'm completely booked for the next 3 months on different jobs.

We have the 128GB studio coming - ordered hours after the keynote in Aus and due for delivery last week April at this stage. I believe this will be the computer that replaces 8 year old Mac Pro trash cans, so you can bet your bottom dollar I'll be running benches on it at some stage. I know they're going to handle things with aplomb (considering that the M1 mini handles about 80% of what the Mac pro's can do - even some pretty big 5.1 TV mixes ran fine!)

I can't wait to see how they handle our own Kontakt benches. Nuendo native is not out yet but I'm expecting it soon. There's still a tonne of tools we use that are not M1 native, but I think we just ticked over 50% being native, and more are coming online daily. I'm also holding my breath for Dante Virtual Soundcard to run on M1's... I've had to install one of our studio i7 mini's into a museum installation because they couldn't get an RME Dante box in time, and DVS won't work on their new M1minis. Am expecting that one in the next two weeks.

(As an aside - can you tell I like a good aside) The transition to m1 has actually been much much smoother than we had planned for. I'm quite impressed with how the industry has reacted. I'm also impressed generally with performance. We had expected things to be much bumpier / require investment in new intel Macs. That's not the case.

I'm also slightly disappointed in a new Mac-pro purchase that I spec'd for a brand new university immersive audio research lab. Not disappointed in the Mac Pro itself - it is its own version of beefy if not overkill in a number of areas. It had to be purchased / received by 31 December last year, so was a fairly low level pro, but still double the price of a studio - which look to be EXACTLY the kind of computer which would work well for that scenario. 24.4 channels through AVB (RME AVB card + M32 + 12mic)

Uni's don't have huge amounts of money to splash around on things like this - but they also needed a machine that would last 5+ years, so we went with the pro. This would have saved $6k which could have gone into a bunch of interesting software for the kids to play with!)


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## molemac

Sorry for a non technical question But is it just kontakt ? I find for example Vsl synchron player to load much slower.


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## colony nofi

molemac said:


> Sorry for a non technical question But is it just kontakt ? I find for example Vsl synchron player to load much slower.


Kontakt came out the worst. It has a rather unique way of loading (constantly opening and closing files) - and other samplers definitely use different techniques that are faster. You're still unlikely to see figures like you do on black magic speed test. However, it might indeed scale in a similar way. We haven't gone into it that far as our workflows don't rely on these samplers (except spitfire sampler, and we've not designed something for that yet - too many other things to do.)


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## kenose

AcousTech said:


> @jcrosby & @kenose - I agree with you both about the fact that 64GB != 128GB. No question. And I never claimed it was. Perhaps I misunderstood the original intent. My point was simply that this is not routine memory in terms of bandwidth to access it. The comment of mine being that double the bandwidth does seem somewhat “magical”, but I’d also go with impressive engineering. I certainly didn’t intend to contradict you‘re accurate conclusions about quantity. Apologies if that’s how it came across. I was just trying to point out the fact that there is some new engineering tech here.


Sorry man— didn’t mean to pile on ya.  

It is some exciting tech for sure. It’s tough, I feel there’s a lot of confusion over what exactly these different specs mean when applied to composers and their needs.


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## aeliron

I may have missed it, but I don't think anyone actually said AS is doing something literally magical; I think they have this quote from Arthur C. Clarke in mind: 

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

To anyone who was hobbling along on a 64 Gb computer and is now finding their 16 or 32 Gb laptop whizzing speedily along on the same projects, it would certainly seem like magic. No further need for us to clarify that it's not *actual* magic


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## colony nofi

aeliron said:


> I may have missed it, but I don't think anyone actually said AS is doing something literally magical; I think they have this quote from Arthur C. Clarke in mind:
> 
> Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
> 
> To anyone who was hobbling along on a 64 Gb computer and is now finding their 16 or 32 Gb laptop whizzing speedily along on the same projects, it would certainly seem like magic. No further need for us to clarify that it's not *actual* magic


I get what you’re saying completely. And appreciate the spirit. 

I don’t *think* anyone has seen that “hobbling on 64Gb but working in 32 or 16” when it comes to sample instruments and it being about the ram amount. 

I’d be extremely interested to read those reports. I guess any such reports would be cpu related or drive related or….?! It just doesn’t make sense. Kontakt uses exactly (kinda sorta) the same amount of ram in m1 as on intel. 

Now if you happen for other reasons to be able to load your preload buffers by more than half, then I can see a situation where that might occur. But again, apples and oranges… it’s not the ram being magical.


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## Shad0wLandsUK

jcrosby said:


> I never said AS memory isn't fast. I quoted a post that responded to a belief that's been getting tossed around that: _"64gb memory on the new M1 chip is like 128 GB memory of Intel."_
> 
> Where do these links support the theory that AS memory is somehow is able to double the *physical capacity* of memory?
> 
> And no, I personally don't consider it magical I consider it well engineered. But engineering that's still constrained to the same physical limitations RAM has in any other system, but with better throughput.


You beat me to it @jcrosby 

I was going to go a little with shorter with: Bandwidth is not equal to capacity
Faster sure, higher volume.... show me


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## Shad0wLandsUK

jcrosby said:


> So basically while the engineering is impressive, Kontakt's dusty old code is still years behind where the hardware currently is.


Yeah this...

I am finding the tech rocks, but the software code is holding things back now

I wonder how they moved Cubase 12 to AS, is it light and clean and performant, or ported
I don't know much about AS and therefore this is simply unverified opinion on my part


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## kenose

colony nofi said:


> I get what you’re saying completely. And appreciate the spirit.
> 
> I don’t *think* anyone has seen that “hobbling on 64Gb but working in 32 or 16” when it comes to sample instruments and it being about the ram amount.
> 
> I’d be extremely interested to read those reports. I guess any such reports would be cpu related or drive related or….?! It just doesn’t make sense. Kontakt uses exactly (kinda sorta) the same amount of ram in m1 as on intel.
> 
> Now if you happen for other reasons to be able to load your preload buffers by more than half, then I can see a situation where that might occur. But again, apples and oranges… it’s not the ram being magical.


Exactly, if someone was having a terrible time on a 64gb system and then switched to a new 32gb system that is running their projects without a hitch then RAM was clearly not the actual bottleneck in the first place.


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## LatinXCombo

Bottom line is: IF you want to upgrade to Apple silicon, and IF you're on a budget, the Studio M1 Max with 64GB might be the cost-effective way to go for music producers, and if you have the budget, the Ultra with 128GB is fine, but more for the RAM and not for the raw computational power. (At some point it may be more, but given the state of current software, it's not optimized to use the CPU improvements at this time.

And, really, the true budget solution at this point, as far as raw 'ability to load a bunch of schisse into my DAW' problem-solving, would be a used 2018 Intel i7 Mac Mini with 64GB, which given the above, would basically achieve the same thing.

(All else is never equal, and there's the hassle of switching computers in two years as opposed to five, may be other advantages to being in Apple Silicon, future proofing your hardware, etc. But if the concern is: I need it now and I need it cheap, you're more than covered with older hardware at this moment.)

Is that basically it?

Anyway, I wrote the above to make sure I understood and also a way to make me look halfways competent prior to throwing out this half-remembered one-liner, which was triggered by one of the earlier posts:


_Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology_.
-Brian Moriarty, Trinity


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## Shad0wLandsUK

LatinXCombo said:


> And, really, the true budget solution at this point, as far as raw 'ability to load a bunch of schisse into my DAW' problem-solving, would be a used 2018 Intel i7 Mac Mini with 64GB, which given the above, would basically achieve the same thing.


I am curious as to why this is your answer?

I currently have that Mac mini...
Though, looking at my templates I need more than 64GB to load the whole EW OPUS Diamond Orchestra

One thing I will miss is the opportunity to put Windows on my Mac mini. Which is a factor stopping me from moving to AS
The other is the optimisations and current lack of Silicon-native plugins (Waves I am looking at you)
SoundGrid on AS is looking like 2025


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## ennbr

Shad0wLandsUK said:


> The other is the optimisations and current lack of Silicon-native plugins (Waves I am looking at you)


I would check Waves again there V13 plugins now have native M1 support









Apple Silicon Support for Waves Plugins | Waves


With the release of Waves V13, we announce full support with Apple Silicon processors for the following host applications. In addition, we announce full official Apple Silicon support for V13 SoundGrid applications.




www.waves.com


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## LatinXCombo

Shad0wLandsUK said:


> I am curious as to why this is your answer?
> 
> I currently have that Mac mini...
> Though, looking at my templates I need more than 64GB to load the whole EW OPUS Diamond Orchestra



To be clear, that was me summarizing what was discussed above, by people with more wisdom and gray hair than I, to make sure *I* understood what THEY were saying.

I threw out the Mac Mini just b/c it seemed like a cheap option. But, really, substitute any Intel Mac that can handle as much memory as you need, and the point remains the same, no? 



Shad0wLandsUK said:


> One thing I will miss is the opportunity to put Windows on my Mac mini. Which is a factor stopping me from moving to AS
> The other is the optimisations and current lack of Silicon-native plugins (Waves I am looking at you)
> SoundGrid on AS is looking like 2025



Yes, as usual, all else is _not _equal.


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## Shad0wLandsUK

ennbr said:


> I would check Waves again there V13 plugins now have native M1 support
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Apple Silicon Support for Waves Plugins | Waves
> 
> 
> With the release of Waves V13, we announce full support with Apple Silicon processors for the following host applications. In addition, we announce full official Apple Silicon support for V13 SoundGrid applications.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.waves.com


Yes I know those are already native-but as an owner of the DigiGrid D interface I need SoundGridStudio to be native too. Otherwise I cannot drive my Audio Interface

It is still on v12 and does not even have Monterey Support, hence the sarcastic remark


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## aeliron

Shad0wLandsUK said:


> I am curious as to why this is your answer?
> 
> I currently have that Mac mini...
> Though, looking at my templates I need more than 64GB to load the whole EW OPUS Diamond Orchestra
> 
> One thing I will miss is the opportunity to put Windows on my Mac mini. Which is a factor stopping me from moving to AS
> The other is the optimisations and current lack of Silicon-native plugins (Waves I am looking at you)
> SoundGrid on AS is looking like 2025


Does the Mac mini not allow Windows installation? Parallels, etc.


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## Guavadude

Sorry if this has been asked before but I haven’t seen whether I can get a 64gb Ultra and later replaced ram to 128? Is modifying under the hood even an option with these?


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## kenose

Guavadude said:


> Sorry if this has been asked before but I haven’t seen whether I can get a 64gb Ultra and later replaced ram to 128? Is modifying under the hood even an option with these?


Nope.


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## LatinXCombo

aeliron said:


> Does the Mac mini not allow Windows installation? Parallels, etc.


Intel Mac Mini = Allows installation of Windows.
Apple Silicon Mac Mini (or Mac Studio) = Doesn't allow installation of Windows.


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## aeliron

LatinXCombo said:


> Intel Mac Mini = Allows installation of Windows.
> Apple Silicon Mac Mini (or Mac Studio) = Doesn't allow installation of Windows.


Hmmm ... looks like you can use Parallels, at least, but not Boot Camp:









I ran Windows 11 on an M1 Mac: Here’s my experience


We put Parallels’ Windows 11 virtual machine to the test on an M1 Mac Mini to see if it’s worth your money.




www.laptopmag.com


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## GeoMax

Shad0wLandsUK said:


> Yes I know those are already native-but as an owner of the DigiGrid D interface I need SoundGridStudio to be native too. Otherwise I cannot drive my Audio Interface
> 
> It is still on v12 and does not even have Monterey Support, hence the sarcastic remark


Whew! Glad I read this thread and your post. I didnt even think about v12 limitations
when I was contemplating the Mac Studio. 
I run Waves LV1 on my MacBook Pro. Good thing I didnt upgrade to Monterey with the nag happening the other day.
Using Waves QREC on my DAW.


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## LatinXCombo

aeliron said:


> Hmmm ... looks like you can use Parallels, at least, but not Boot Camp:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I ran Windows 11 on an M1 Mac: Here’s my experience
> 
> 
> We put Parallels’ Windows 11 virtual machine to the test on an M1 Mac Mini to see if it’s worth your money.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.laptopmag.com


Good to know. I hadn't heard that Parallels had gone official with this.


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## JonS

dksellou said:


> Hello,
> I am not sure which model of the new mac studio to buy.
> How much memory
> How many cores
> 
> 
> Of course the m1 ULTRA With the most cores and the 128 GB will be ideal.
> But do we really need it?
> I use only VIs but not effects.
> I mean a template with strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, including different tracks for different articulations.
> I heard that 64gb memory on the new M1 chip is like 128 GB memory of Intel.
> 
> I am thinking to save some money and get the 64 GB memory (leaning more towards the M1 Ultra though that has double amount of cores than the MAX).
> IF ANYONE HAS ALREADY ORDERED THIS MODEL AND DOES HEAVY ORCHESTRAL STUFF COULD HE/SHE POST A REVIEW AND LET US KNOW HOW THE PERFORMANCE IS?
> 
> I hate to buy something smaller than my needs but at the same time I hate to buy something much more expensive if it will not make any difference and if it is not really needed for music production.
> 
> THANK YOU!


Get the 20-core CPU and 128GB RAM, in the long run you will always be so much happier and the Mac Studio is reasonably priced unlike the absurd 2019 Mac Pro, which was Apple thinking its making Rolls Royce when its just a computer in the end. Apple must have not made nearly as many sales with the 2019 Mac Pro to justify that obscene price tag so now they are back to a much more reasonable and traditional price model. Thank goodness for that. But the marketplace clearly spoke and told Apple, we are not going to buy you absurdly overpriced machine so stop price gouging us.


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## rnb_2

aeliron said:


> Hmmm ... looks like you can use Parallels, at least, but not Boot Camp:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I ran Windows 11 on an M1 Mac: Here’s my experience
> 
> 
> We put Parallels’ Windows 11 virtual machine to the test on an M1 Mac Mini to see if it’s worth your money.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.laptopmag.com


To my great surprise, the ARM version of Windows 11 actually runs shockingly well via Parallels on M1 MacBook Air. It's an ARM OS running a fair bit of emulated x86 code inside a virtual machine on another ARM OS, and it's very, very smooth.


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## LatinXCombo

rnb_2 said:


> To my great surprise, the ARM version of Windows 11 actually runs shockingly well via Parallels on M1 MacBook Air. It's an ARM OS running a fair bit of emulated x86 code inside a virtual machine on another ARM OS, and it's very, very smooth.


Now that I know that, it's kind of tempting. Whenever my Mac Studio comes in I might give parallels a shot....


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## rnb_2

LatinXCombo said:


> Now that I know that, it's kind of tempting. Whenever my Mac Studio comes in I might give parallels a shot....


I think you have to be in the Windows Insider program to get the ARM builds of Windows still, just FYI.


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## colony nofi

LatinXCombo said:


> Bottom line is: IF you want to upgrade to Apple silicon, and IF you're on a budget, the Studio M1 Max with 64GB might be the cost-effective way to go for music producers, and if you have the budget, the Ultra with 128GB is fine, but more for the RAM and not for the raw computational power. (At some point it may be more, but given the state of current software, it's not optimized to use the CPU improvements at this time.
> 
> And, really, the true budget solution at this point, as far as raw 'ability to load a bunch of schisse into my DAW' problem-solving, would be a used 2018 Intel i7 Mac Mini with 64GB, which given the above, would basically achieve the same thing.
> 
> (All else is never equal, and there's the hassle of switching computers in two years as opposed to five, may be other advantages to being in Apple Silicon, future proofing your hardware, etc. But if the concern is: I need it now and I need it cheap, you're more than covered with older hardware at this moment.)
> 
> Is that basically it?
> 
> Anyway, I wrote the above to make sure I understood and also a way to make me look halfways competent prior to throwing out this half-remembered one-liner, which was triggered by one of the earlier posts:
> 
> 
> _Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology_.
> -Brian Moriarty, Trinity


So the last intel i7 mac mini is a 2018 model - and we got another of them late last year. They're great computers, but for FULL DAW use - so mixing as well as composition, you're going to see a large performance delta between it and an m1. Of course, m1 mini only does 16GB ram, so you're going to have a bad time if your project needs more ram. intel i7 mini sits WAY below 2013 mac pro 6 core for general mixing / composition duties for the sessions we've tried. We do run lots of busses and plugins.

I guess what I'm also trying to let you know is that the single core performance for general audio DAW use on the M1's is surprisingly good. Our M1 mini runs projects with about 20% more CPU use than the 6 core trash-can mac pro's. It handles some pretty big TV surround mixes.

Now, it CAN'T handle some of my composition projects that are mixed in 5.1 which work fine on my trashcan - even when I slim it down to run in 16GB ram.

Happily however, my M1Max laptop kicks the butt out of my old mac pro from what I can see. Ignoring ram (so same project with <16GB ram use) it uses around 65% of the CPU of the macpro on the nuendo meter - and those meters are specific for real-time audio use. That % is going to change a bunch depending on the plugs you use. I'm on rosetta at the moment as well, which makes that figure even more surprising. It was a HEAVY project that only worked at 2048 buffers on the mac pro. It works fine at 512 on the new laptop. Lots of spatialisation stuff / convolution etc etc.

My very initial tests on this new M1Max shows it can POTENTIALLY run kontakt patches at the lowest preload settings when using the internal drive for your libraries. This has only been off our synthetic patches (ie, I have built my own kontakt patches for testing, they're not real world at all, and really just show performance deltas between machines). I have not had the time to load libraries fully yet. I have 8TB internal drive - JUST in case it works, so i can load the majority of my freq used libs without external connected drives.

But that is excellent. It speeds up loading times a little, and uses ram a little less to boot. The laptop only has 64GB and I'm used to having 128 on the trashcans, but I've never really run ram hungry sessions. I don't mind workflows that help me work under 64. 

So - all in all - the laptop feels like its going to be amazing come m1 native all round. I have 2 large composition projects that need to be done super quickly starting kinda now. I'm of mind to try build a system that is ONLY m1 native from the things we own (I have a spreadsheet showing the status of all the different plugins and bundles we use) - and see if I can compose the whole lot on this laptop with very little external periferals. Kinda fun. And means I can work anywhere / anytime. Could really be a game changer. I'll miss 2CAudio the most. izotope RX is m1 now... fabfilter is... soundtoys is VERY SOON... slate - eh, I can do without for this project. I can use logic if nuendo m1 native isn't out in time. melda is native (massive win!) and plugin alliance update is VERY close to ready (next few days). I think I'll have enough there...

And an m1ultra 128GB is on the way intended to replace my trashcan as my daily-driver. Arrives end of april, but that'll be in the middle of sessions / about when I'm going into major orchestral recording mode. So doubt I'll use it this time round.

Not sure how much this helps - but I am very hopeful these new machines are very useful tools indeed for creativity.


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## LatinXCombo

colony nofi said:


> I guess what I'm also trying to let you know is that the single core performance for general audio DAW use on the M1's is surprisingly good. Our M1 mini runs projects with about 20% more CPU use than the 6 core trash-can mac pro's. It handles some pretty big TV surround mixes.


Sure, like I said, 'being on a budget' was where I was coming from with that off-the-cuff spec -- we can argue over which older (cheaper) Mac fits the bill better (and there's a discussion to be had about whether a 2013 Pro or a 2018 Mini is better on the amortization table,) but I think we generally agree that the RAM ceiling is the problem to solve first, no? 



colony nofi said:


> Happily however, my M1Max laptop kicks the butt out of my old mac pro from what I can see. Ignoring ram (so same project with <16GB ram use) it uses around 65% of the CPU of the macpro on the nuendo meter - and those meters are specific for real-time audio use. That % is going to change a bunch depending on the plugs you use. *I'm on rosetta at the moment as well, which makes that figure even more surprising.* It was a HEAVY project that only worked at 2048 buffers on the mac pro. It works fine at 512 on the new laptop. Lots of spatialisation stuff / convolution etc etc.


That is good to know, especially the bit about Rosetta!



colony nofi said:


> And an m1ultra 128GB is on the way intended to replace my trashcan as my daily-driver. Arrives end of april, but that'll be in the middle of sessions / about when I'm going into major orchestral recording mode. So doubt I'll use it this time round.
> 
> Not sure how much this helps - but I am very hopeful these new machines are very useful tools indeed for creativity.


That's cool - what's the ETA for your Studio? Did you manage to sneak one in early, or are you on the "May/June" plan with me?


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## LatinXCombo

rnb_2 said:


> I think you have to be in the Windows Insider program to get the ARM builds of Windows still, just FYI.


Not what Parallels indicates: https://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/


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## rnb_2

LatinXCombo said:


> Not what Parallels indicates: https://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/


Ah, it looks like newer versions of Parallels have eliminated the need to be on the Insider program, and will download and install the ARM version automatically.


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## Flyo

So basically everyone he could go with Max 64gb configuration. Anyone success with heavy orchestral sample sessions on a M1Pro with 32gb ram?


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## colony nofi

LatinXCombo said:


> That's cool - what's the ETA for your Studio? Did you manage to sneak one in early, or are you on the "May/June" plan with me?


I was on a flight when I got the info from the apple event. Ordered using slow in flight wifi. But being in Australia (maybe?) it gave April 25-May3 as my delivery window. I have a friend who ordered the MOMENT it appeared on the website. All ultra's with 128GB ram here were delivering after April 18 for him.


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## colony nofi

Flyo said:


> So basically everyone he could go with Max 64gb configuration. Anyone success with heavy orchestral sample sessions on a M1Pro with 32gb ram?


I'm sure it could be done depending on how low you can run your pre-load buffers (which greatly effects ram use) and how comfy you are with rendering tracks when you fly too close to the sun. A composer I work with regularly has been on 32GB for years and makes soundtracks heard around the world. It just comes down to the comfort of a workflow, and what compromises you are willing to take. I am almost ok with saying I'll stick to 64GB now for composing jobs, JUST so I can always know they'll load on my laptop. Time will tell if I stick to that given I'll have 128 on the new computer, and its what I'm used to with my trashcan.

So its something that no-one except the user can answer. But USE that 14day grace period given by apple. And - if they're SUPER serious about "trying things out" go have a talk to apple business and they can work out ways to test things as well. At least I've been treated very well by them in the past.


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