# Anyone Holding out for a 2019 Mac Pro?



## Breitenbach (Nov 28, 2018)

Who around here is still holding out hope for a new Mac Pro next year?

My first machine was a PC, then Apple cast a spell on me. For ten years, I've been exclusively in their ecosystem. At this point, I'm starting to feel burned. With the stifling iMac Pro, and delayed release of a proper successor, I've been seduced by the monster PC I could custom build for $3k-4k. IF... Apple releases a new Mac Pro in 2019, would that $3k-$4k machine even be comparable? I highly doubt it.

Second question... who has gone through the Apple divorce, and how did it go?
I know all you PC lifers are shaking your heads, but there really needs to be a support group for leaving Apple haha.


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## Jeremy Spencer (Nov 28, 2018)

Well, I'm still on my first Mac. It's a 2013 MB Pro (top spec'd) that I bought as part of a big project I was working on at the time. Six years later, it has remained my primary DAW machine (with and without my Windows slave) and has been a real pleasure to work with. I will never go back. Why? Because it has been rock solid and I know I can depend on it, which is critical with deadlines looming. I will gladly shell out for a new Mac when it's time; I mean really, all I need is a good paying gig and it pays for itself. So once these mythical Mac Pro's are released, I will most likely buy one. I realize Mac's seem pricey, but in the big scheme of things, it's a small price to pay if you are a professional who needs a solid, no-frills workhorse (peace of mind is priceless). I'm sure new Windows machines are reliable too, but I'll just stick with what has proven itself to me personally.


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## Soundhound (Nov 28, 2018)

Hi my name is Doug and I'm an Appleholic. Been using continually since 1985. One day at a time, man, one day at a time.

Hilarity aside, I've been on a 2012 iMac for several years now and am in the camp trying to decide btwn 1) a 2018 Mac Mini (w/32 gigs until the insane ram prices drop then go to 64, use it with my current iMac via VEP till then) and 2) a 2013 MP 8 or 10 core. I'm wanting to wait to see what the 2019 (fingers crossed) Mac Pro is, but if I'm chaffing at spending $3k (w/ram, monitor etc) now I can't imagine I'll feel like spending what that thing is going to cost.

Thanks for starting this thread! I'm interested in the life after Mac aspect here, should that get discussed. Not interested in Apple bashing, more in how did you adapt, was it painful, did the pain go away, was there therapy involved, etc.

Edit: I was at the Apple Store in SM the other day, been out of state for quite a while and hadn't been there since they put the ferns in. There was one table for desktops. One. Everything else was laptops and iOS stuff. The store is basically a giant genius bar now.


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## Wunderhorn (Nov 28, 2018)

While still chugging along with the trash can I am seeing if anything will happen next year regarding the Mac Pro. I definitely want something faster for a variety of reasons. It will also decide over whether I will jump the Apple ship after 28+ years. Since Apple is proving again and again that Emojis are more important than pushing the creative edge forward into the future I will be mentally preparing for a potential Apple-exit.


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## Olfirf (Nov 28, 2018)

Wunderhorn said:


> While still chugging along with the trash can I am seeing if anything will happen next year regarding the Mac Pro. I definitely want something faster for a variety of reasons. It will also decide over whether I will jump the Apple ship after 28+ years. Since Apple is proving again and again that Emojis are more important than pushing the creative edge forward into the future I will be mentally preparing for a potential Apple-exit.



Haha! Let's call it a Macsit! Or Maxit? Maybe we should have a poll on that?


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## revlam (Nov 28, 2018)

If your question is : for $ 4000, would I have a mac more powerful than a PC ?
The answer is no for decades 

A computer is not only hardware, for me Mac = macOS + Logic Pro X. Casually, Logic cost only $229 for life, PC doesn't have a price like that, Cubase is expensive with paid upgrades , Studio One is cheaper but have paid upgrades. Do not underestimate either the time (so money) you'll lose migrating to a new environment.

About Mac Pro, the only rumors said it will be very modular. About the price most of new Apple products have increased their price by 20%, so maybe something like $4999. Wait and see

Well I means Mac or PC, with $4000 you have an amazing machine


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## gamma-ut (Nov 28, 2018)

I think I can wait for a new Mac Pro but might wind up going for the Mac Mini depending on how the configurations work out - assuming the new Mac Pro does actually appear in 2019.


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## ZenFaced (Nov 28, 2018)

Wolfie2112 said:


> Well, I'm still on my first Mac. It's a 2013 MB Pro (top spec'd) that I bought as part of a big project I was working on at the time. Six years later, it has remained my primary DAW machine (with and without my Windows slave) and has been a real pleasure to work with. I will never go back. Why? Because it has been rock solid and I know I can depend on it, which is critical with deadlines looming. I will gladly shell out for a new Mac when it's time; I mean really, all I need is a good paying gig and it pays for itself. So once these mythical Mac Pro's are released, I will most likely buy one. I realize Mac's seem pricey, but in the big scheme of things, it's a small price to pay if you are a professional who needs a solid, no-frills workhorse (peace of mind is priceless). I'm sure new Windows machines are reliable too, but I'll just stick with what has proven itself to me personally.



Me too - Running late model 2013 imac i7 with thunderbolt SSD drives for my DAW and have PC slave with VE pro for the heavy samples. Still works great


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## tmhuud (Nov 28, 2018)

I’m pretty happy with my 2013 MacPro and it’s slaves but sure, I’ll buy the new one, when, if it’s available.


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## goalie composer (Nov 28, 2018)

tmhuud said:


> I’m pretty happy with my 2013 MacPro and it’s slaves but sure, I’ll buy the new one, when, if it’s available.


ditto


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## gsilbers (Nov 28, 2018)

im really thinking that when the mac pro comes out it will not be an intel cpu mac pro. it will be ARM on steroids and thus, a new OS transition thing like universal binary. apple has let mac os go into upkeep mode, not coming up with new things like it is with the iOS. and based on the amount of time they are taking and also the amount of news about the iOSification of Mac os.
And its also not hard to know and produce what we all want on a mac pro: being able to upgrade and have the options to go up to 256 of ram and 200tb storage if the user wants to as well as removable graphics cards. so basically what PCs have been doing for years now. but if everyone buys one mac pro, they will keep it for 10+ years (like me) so not much incentive for apple. on the other hand if they can get users to be on the 2 year iphone like life cycle then thats a winner. and there is waayy more iphone apps and users who buy phones every 2-3 years while there is very little amount of pro users who need a mac pro. we all could be easily using mac mini now which seems to be up to par with 2013 mac pros at a much smaller size.
we all really want this












but apple doesn't seem wont make a lot of money out of making a prodcut that would make it have a very long product cycle. imac is imposible to change parts and therefore more likely to have to update sooner.
so its painfully obvious that apple is now more about making money with tim on the healm. steve was no saint but he seemed to have a better sense about consumers and better way of making a good prodcut that can also be profitablr with the simple notion of giving them what they want... or what they dont know they relaly want.
i wasnt able to wheen off logic pro and mac os. i tried but coudnt get into cubases never ending popup menus and Window's- two millions ways of doing things and needing an IT digree for simple stuff. too bad cuz mac os is really good (used to be better before imo) .


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## LondonMike (Nov 28, 2018)

On a black cylinder 6-core with 32gb now and will consider getting a new Mac pro when the details are available. 
I often think about switching to PC + Cubase but I guess I never will as I’ve been Mac + Logic for sooooo long! G3, G4, old Macpro 1,1 to late 2013 machine.


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## wbacer (Nov 28, 2018)

I'm in, unless fully loaded, they're hitting the $20k mark which could very easily happen.


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## Dewdman42 (Nov 29, 2018)

I’m still spending money on my 5,1 macpro and don’t intend to switch to anything else until Apple and apps force me to through unsupported OS X updates, and even then I will hold out as long as I can because I expect any new macpro to be way beyond what I can justify in my budget. I passed on the 2013 Model and quite likely will pass on the next one.


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## Alex Fraser (Nov 29, 2018)

I’ve got my VI control popcorn ready for the day Apple announce the pricing on the new Mac Pro’s.


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## gjelul (Nov 29, 2018)

I am still on a 2009 Mac Pro (completely upgraded inside) and am still very happy with it. Did add a custom PC computer to run all libraries via VEPro. The PC cost me about $8.5K, but having the same specs on a Mac would have been at least double the cost. With all SSD drives, super fast chip and huge amounts of memory, this PC is a monster that will serve its purpose for some time.

However, I am looking forward to seeing what the new Mac Pro will be. I am anticipating the base model to be in the $4K - $5K bracket, add all the upgrades, it will probably reach $15K and up. Not sure it makes any financial sense. I hope I am proven wrong on the $ topic though, as I can't see myself working on a Windows machine...

My plan B is get a MacMini to run OSX and LogicPro and then add a couple of monster PCs to run everything else.


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## Dewdman42 (Nov 29, 2018)

I'm getting my next gen mac pro refurbished in 2025


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## Michael Antrum (Nov 29, 2018)

I've run my 2009 Mac Pro for nearly ten years. I've flashed it from 4,1 to 5,1, upgraded the graphics, the RAM to 64gb, etc and it is stuffed full of drives and cards holding SSD drives. It cost me £ 2.5k in 2009, and has probably been the best value machine I've ever owned. 

In 2015 I bought an iMac 5k with 1Tb, and used Crucial to up the RAM to to 64gb too. I now use the Mac Pro with VEP as a slave connected to the iMac. I can do a tremendous amount with those two machines, and its a really solid system.

When the 2013 Mac Pro was launched my heart sank, what a mis-step. I look forward to seeing the new Mac Pro - and I pray that it is user expandable. I think it's their last chance for the Pro creative market - if they balls this up, then I think that many pro's will leave the Apple platform in droves.

I want a powerful, flexible, and upgradable Mac Pro, not a f***ing art installation.

Sort it Tim. I really don't want to use Windows, and I'm a Cubase user.


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## Alex Fraser (Nov 29, 2018)

As @gsilbers suggested above, it's likely that the expandable, long-life, swap-all-the-bits-out days are over for the Mac Pro. I really can't see Apple making such a machine - one payment per pro, per decade simply isn't great business.

I can't wait to see what Apple brings to the table, but I think it'll be a completely different philosophy to what most forum folk would want. I kinda get the impression that Apple prioritises different use cases for a pro machine other than running instances of Kontakt.


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## Dewdman42 (Nov 29, 2018)

https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/4/15175994/apple-mac-pro-failure-admission


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## RandomComposer (Nov 29, 2018)

I'd like to see what the 2019 iMac (non-pro) has in store, it could be enough for me when combined with a slave and I need to stop overspending


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## sostenuto (Nov 29, 2018)

Lost me loooong ago with deletion of mid-range 'desktop' vs Pro. I have looked inside iMac(s) … after decades of great times in USAF, Aerojet-General, Hewlett-Packard …… amazing electronics.

Sure …. many iMac Users have very positive experiences. Congrats !

My (3) current, home-built Win 10 Pro PC(s) __ i5 Quad /i7 _ just keep hummin' year after year. ( Antec server cases, xtra fans, 800w PS, ASUS MB, 24GB Ram, nVidia graphic cards, …. ALL (3) (total cost) waaay less than any MAC Pro 

MAC Pro is unfathomable ……… _ but only imho _…… jus' sayin'


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## kitekrazy (Nov 29, 2018)

sostenuto said:


> Lost me loooong ago with deletion of mid-range 'desktop' vs Pro. I have looked inside iMac(s) … after decades of great times in USAF, Aerojet-General, Hewlett-Packard …… amazing electronics.
> 
> Sure …. many iMac Users have very positive experiences. Congrats !
> 
> ...



That is the beauty of the PC. The only upgrades are the CPU, motherboard, and RAM. I still keep the drives, power supply and case.
I don't like laptops but I was serious about one it would be a Mac. I think PCs got a bad reputation at one time because of companies putting out terrible laptops. 
As for PC hardware I still have parts to build legacy systems. I could build a P4 or an Athlon XP 3200 socket A system. Companies have built quality hardware for all price ranges. Unfortunately those have existed past it's usefulness.


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## sostenuto (Nov 29, 2018)

I realize many cannot build personal PC(s) for many reasons (e.g. time limitations; not just technical). 
Over years, some really decent deals at Costco, BB, etc. but dang .... almost all have puny PwrSupp !  That is major reason I felt need to build my own sys.
Must admit, a very cool, local PC dealer /repair store nearby and lots of guidance when needed ... 
Key point (_as you noted_) is capability to repair /replace fairly easily. Dunno what I would do if only (1) MAC Pro and it pooped ....


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## gsilbers (Nov 30, 2018)

kitekrazy said:


> That is the beauty of the PC. The only upgrades are the CPU, motherboard, and RAM. I still keep the drives, power supply and case.
> I don't like laptops but I was serious about one it would be a Mac. I think PCs got a bad reputation at one time because of companies putting out terrible laptops.
> As for PC hardware I still have parts to build legacy systems. I could build a P4 or an Athlon XP 3200 socket A system. Companies have built quality hardware for all price ranges. Unfortunately those have existed past it's usefulness.



pcs got a bad reputation becuase it seemed creative folks needed a IT degree to deal with windows XP and 7. Way too many menus, and ways to do something. which is cool since it accomodates so many different hardware and industries but for people just trying to make music or audio work, get simple solutions etc it was a nightmare. that, in addition to dealing with hardware. those bloatware HP and dell and gateway computers where also a mess. Musicians are not into tech and looking up drivers and
troubleshoot stuff. we of course are into it since we are in a forum talking about it, but a jazz guitarist or a orchestrator should say, screw that./ buy a mac and install one program and its done. 
now things are much better. windows 10 seems more user friendly (since they copy almost everything from mac os) and also mac OS had gotten worst. simple tasks and apps like itunes became a mess etc. i think rick beatos most popular video about why apple sucks is spot on. so windows getting better and mac os gettings worst (and apple not updating mac pros), plus cubase being cross platform has made a lot of composers turn to PC and cubase. Back then it was hans zimmer of course who started using cubase (and cubase listening to user requests on composers rather than apple just telling users how they should composer their next EDM or trap album). and ever since he started appearing in youtube video interviews showing cubase and showing big budget films being done with cubase , it gave a huge breath of relief for pc users who had to deal with DP and Logic which back then was mac only. (DP became windows as well later but with many issues seems like).
that dudeman42 article saying how apple was apologetic for the mac pro trash can seems to point out, again, that mac pros are on to the video market. and since apple also mentioned it will drop avid video file formats, plus apple making its own tv shows, and disney buying fox and having pro res files be the main distribution file for movies, seems apple is preparing to go big on the mac pro.. and maybe close it off with its new ARM chips. or not.. who knows.


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## Simon Ravn (Nov 30, 2018)

I am still hoping Apple will come to their senses with the new Mac Pro.


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## Breitenbach (Dec 10, 2018)

Thanks for everyone submitting their info. This has all been helpful in me forming my decisions, and I think I've made up my mind. 

I'm going to switch to PC. I'll always be in the Apple ecosystem. I'll have a Mac Pro Tools rig, an apple laptop, and for the foreseeable future an iPhone. However, at this point, for my musical computing needs, the money I have to meet those needs, and Apple's treatment of pro users over the past decade, I need to look at my DAW solely as a musical tool. I can't see a world in which I'll prefer Windows over OS X for the beauty and simplicity of the operating system, but my DAW will basically just be running Cubase and Vienna.... nothing else. I used to fall back on the stability argument for Apple, but the '13 Mac Pros killed that argument. I've used about half a dozen of them for lots of different purposes from composing to photoshop and video editing, and they are the least stable Apple product I've ever used. Apple excels greatly on their sleek mid-range products. My favorite I've ever owned are mid-cycle iPhones (4s,5s,8), iMacs, and MacBook air. They have a knack for perfecting certain product lines, but I'm done with the abuse in the Pro line. 

I hope to post an update later with my PC transition.

My predictions with the Mac Pro... Apple will announce their 2019 pros in March, available for pre-orders in October '19, delivering starting November. My prediction is that we'll see a entry level powerful 10-core, 32GB, 1TB for $5k. Prices going up exponentially. 18+Core Machines well over $10k. 

Me... I'm going to grab a 14 core i9, 64GB, 2 TB machine sometime next month for around $3k. Perhaps I'm a fool. Time will tell.


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## Quasar (Dec 10, 2018)

If I absolutely needed Logic and MacOS I would do the homework and go Hackintosh. However much hassle that might be, it couldn't begin to approach the insanity of buying a locked-down, glued-down machine with no end-user freedom for maintenance, customization and expansion.

This is especially true given Apple's obscene pricing that made them the first trillion dollar corporation on the planet, thanks to their astonishingly successful ad campaigns over the years to breed a zombie-like cult following...

...But when they drop Intel, I suppose that will end the Hackintosh era. I'm glad I'm used to Windows and Reaper. I do like OSX/MacOS. I just wish the OS was owned by a company that was slightly less intoxicated by sheer, unmitigated greed.


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## ag75 (Dec 10, 2018)

I am very happy with my current 2013 trash can Mac Pro. I travel a lot and can easily take it with me. That a huge plus for my work flow. Plus it’s a beast.


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## dflood (Dec 10, 2018)

gsilbers said:


> pcs got a bad reputation becuase it seemed creative folks needed a IT degree to deal with windows XP and 7. Way too many menus, and ways to do something. which is cool since it accomodates so many different hardware and industries but for people just trying to make music or audio work, get simple solutions etc it was a nightmare. that, in addition to dealing with hardware. those bloatware HP and dell and gateway computers where also a mess. Musicians are not into tech and looking up drivers and
> troubleshoot stuff. we of course are into it since we are in a forum talking about it, but a jazz guitarist or a orchestrator should say, screw that./ buy a mac and install one program and its done.
> now things are much better. windows 10 seems more user friendly (since they copy almost everything from mac os) and also mac OS had gotten worst. simple tasks and apps like itunes became a mess etc. i think rick beatos most popular video about why apple sucks is spot on. so windows getting better and mac os gettings worst (and apple not updating mac pros), plus cubase being cross platform has made a lot of composers turn to PC and cubase. Back then it was hans zimmer of course who started using cubase (and cubase listening to user requests on composers rather than apple just telling users how they should composer their next EDM or trap album). and ever since he started appearing in youtube video interviews showing cubase and showing big budget films being done with cubase , it gave a huge breath of relief for pc users who had to deal with DP and Logic which back then was mac only. (DP became windows as well later but with many issues seems like).
> that dudeman42 article saying how apple was apologetic for the mac pro trash can seems to point out, again, that mac pros are on to the video market. and since apple also mentioned it will drop avid video file formats, plus apple making its own tv shows, and disney buying fox and having pro res files be the main distribution file for movies, seems apple is preparing to go big on the mac pro.. and maybe close it off with its new ARM chips. or not.. who knows.


When I watched Rick Beatos Apple rant, all I could think about was the mountain of windows PCs and peripherals that were basically trash before I even bought them and are now littering the planet somewhere. And don’t get me started on the hours I put in trying to keep them running. Yes, Apple does seem to be getting worse and Windows seems to be getting better, but I don’t think they have traded places yet.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 10, 2018)

Quasar said:


> This is especially true given Apple's obscene pricing that made them the first trillion dollar corporation on the planet, thanks to their astonishingly successful ad campaigns over the years to breed a zombie-like cult following...



So that wasn't you I saw camping outside the Apple Store four days before the new iPhone came out?


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## Quasar (Dec 10, 2018)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> So that wasn't you I saw camping outside the Apple Store four days before the new iPhone came out?


LMFAO! Must have been my doppelganger...

When I encounter (as I do) older people with a lot of money who are computer illiterate and want to join the Information Age, I recommend iMacs with the Apple Care package.

1) MacOS is much easier to learn than Windows for basic, light home/office use.
2) The elegant design of the iMac appeals to the American_ haute bourgoise_ aesthetic, fitting nicely in the dream home den or whatever.
3) You almost never have to look under the hood. They do (usually) "just work", at least relative to Windows.
4) Security is better by some order of magnitude.
5) There is no Windows program, free or for-pay, that holds a candle to Time Machine for set-&-forget backup.

But Apple for a serious workstation? Sadly, this has become a joke in the last 5 years.


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## charlieclouser (Dec 11, 2018)

I'm definitely on board for the next Mac Pro, whatever form it might take. The form factor of the iMac (Pro or not) doesn't work for me really - I prefer flexibility in my choice of display. The new Mac Mini is kind of a beast for its size; a friend who is a film and tv composer at a pretty high level just got one to replace a silver Mac Pro tower as his main DAW machine and he loves it. He reports that it's a LOT more powerful than old faithful.

The Hackintosh door is going to slam shut at some point, so that's a non-starter for me. I was around for the Mac Clone era, and actually had a Power Computing machine for a hot minute (it sucked, rattly cheap plastic P.O.S.). When that door slams shut it will come without warning and will likely be final, so Hack users will struggle along until they just can't take it anymore and then they'll either wipe their machines and turn them into Windows slaves - or just toss 'em. So I'll skip that adventure.

I moved to the cylinder Mac Pros a few years ago, mainly because I had every slot and port on my 2010 Mac Pro tower full and I was hitting the wall in terms of expansion. Ironically, the argument you often hear is that the cylinder was less expandable than the towers, but for me the opposite was true. I was at the point where the only option to add storage was to either use FireWire drives (too slow and a dead format) or sacrifice a PCIe card that I needed for DSP accelerators and audio interfaces, and try to jam an eSATA card or some other equally janky dead-end solution in there. (At one point I had a FiberChannel card driving a 14-drive X-Raid, so don't talk to me about exotic enterprise-level storage solutions please! I just dropped that thing off at the e-waste recyclers a couple of weeks ago when the resale value was less than the cost of shipping. Oof.)

But with the cylinder I can just keep on daisy-chaining stuff off the Thunderbolt ports. With TB, peripherals that would use up a physical PCIe slot but don't use all of that slot's bandwidth can be daisy-chained, whereas on the silver machine if a device used up a slot, well... that's all you could do with that slot, even if that device didn't use up all of that slot's bandwidth. Even though each pair of TB ports on the cylinder is actually grouped together as if they were a single PCIe slot, you can do things like stick a display AND a UAD box AND an audio interface "into the same slot", and this makes expansion so much easier and more flexible - for me anyway. I've got the equivalent of five or six "slot's worth" of gear hanging off the thing, and I've still got empty ports. So the switch to Thunderbolt vs PCIe worked out great for me, and the speed of the cylinder has been just fine. 

As to reliability from the hardware and software, I've had zero issues and spent zero time configuring anything really. I'm still using the version of MacOS that came pre-installed on the thing, and I've installed every plugin and app known to mankind and it all works fine. I've never had to wipe and restore, never spent a moment tweaking any settings "under the hood", I just jam things onto the USB and TB ports without a care in the world.

Is my 4k display on the same TB bus as my 8-SSD storage array? Is my UAD2 Octo on the same TB bus as my 128-channel MOTU audio interfaces? Maybe. Probably. I haven't checked.

That's why I don't care if there are PCIe slots on the next Mac Pro - I won't even use them except for video cards I guess. I just want the choice of a bonkers CPU (or two) and hopefully a couple of user-swappable m2 slots for the boot drive. The rest can hang off the back as usual, as it has done for the last couple of decades. In my world there's never been such a thing as a totally self-contained unit and I wouldn't want there to be - there's always going to be a car load of stuff hanging off the box. 

All the arguments about not wanting a bunch of stuff "hanging off the back" don't really make sense to me. What about MIDI interfaces, keyboard controllers, audio interfaces, extra displays, outboard gear, consoles, guitar pedals, heck... what about a guitar? What about a pair of speakers? Don't those all count as things "hanging off the back"? How the hell are you going to have a studio setup with nothing plugged into anything else? I think that's a dumb argument.

It's not like I'm going to rock a laptop with a pair of headphones plugged in... but wait, don't headphones count as something "hanging off the back"?

So yeah... for me it's Hack = no, laptop = no, iMac = no, Mac Mini = maybe, next Mac Pro = yes please.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 11, 2018)

charlieclouser said:


> form factor of the iMac (Pro or not) doesn't work for me really - I prefer flexibility in my choice of display.



Exactly, and for me it's more than that, it's that I have my computers on the other side of a wall.

I don't care how quiet a computer is - I don't want it in the room with me, or I should say I don't want a single spinning hard drive in here.



> The new Mac Mini is kind of a beast for its size; a friend who is a film and tv composer at a pretty high level just got one to replace a silver Mac Pro tower as his main DAW machine and he loves it. He reports that it's a LOT more powerful than old faithful.



Which old faithful?


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 11, 2018)

Quasar said:


> 1) MacOS is much easier to learn than Windows for basic, light home/office use.



It's more than that, it's that Macs are often much easier to get back up and running when something goes wrong.

And it's that I'd much rather work on it. I have both.


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## Dewdman42 (Dec 11, 2018)

I have NEVER had to reinstall OS X from scratch on any mac I've ever owned. I have had to do that countless times with Windows OS. The Windows Registry is the lousiest thing ever invented in computer operating system design as far as I'm concerned.

I recently installed windows10 on a PC I had laying around to try it out. Works ok, but already within a month I've had to go through the Registry and manually remove and correct some stuff in there, which is like taking your life in your own hands. In addition to that, the search bar stopped working and googling around shows many people having the same problem and unable to correct it without reinstalling windows, which I haven't done yet, so no search bar functionality for me.

Over the years I was using Windows in the past I would routinely end up reinstalling windows because it would start to get slow and bogged down for no apparent reason and although I would attempt to remove services and do every trick known to figure out why its now running slower then before, I could not ever get it to run fast again without reinstalling windows from scratch cleanly. There are just too many ways for hidden little things to creep into windows, adware and everything else...which these days can usually be blocked better then it used to be, granted, but still...windows has a lot of nooks and crannies to hide stuff like that, slow down your machine, in some cases compromise security as well.

I used to keep my windows install ghosted, so that once a year I could reinstall a fresh windows install and start clean with the ghosted image. I have never ever needed to do that with OS X. Not once.

Windows is fine, when it works and the features are all there, audio stuff works, when its configured right, etc... but.... UNIX and OSX are just fundamentally better designs, end of story...

Now... Apple hardware and the ridiculous decisions Apple has been making? Rick Beato is not entirely wrong about that...


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## Symfoniq (Dec 11, 2018)

charlieclouser said:


> I'm definitely on board for the next Mac Pro, whatever form it might take. The form factor of the iMac (Pro or not) doesn't work for me really - I prefer flexibility in my choice of display. The new Mac Mini is kind of a beast for its size; a friend who is a film and tv composer at a pretty high level just got one to replace a silver Mac Pro tower as his main DAW machine and he loves it. He reports that it's a LOT more powerful than old faithful.
> 
> The Hackintosh door is going to slam shut at some point, so that's a non-starter for me. I was around for the Mac Clone era, and actually had a Power Computing machine for a hot minute (it sucked, rattly cheap plastic P.O.S.). When that door slams shut it will come without warning and will likely be final, so Hack users will struggle along until they just can't take it anymore and then they'll either wipe their machines and turn them into Windows slaves - or just toss 'em. So I'll skip that adventure.
> 
> ...



You and I remember Power Computing very differently. My PowerTower Pro 225 was a beast, and I loved it. Evidently it was a little _too _good, since Apple had to kill them off to ensure their own survival.

Agreed that the Hackintosh's days are numbered. The T2 chip is the beginning of the end.

I also agree that a composer is always going to have a million things hanging off the computer.

However, in my situation, that's exactly why I prefer to be able to put as much as possible into the box. I really don't want to use up even more room on my desk for an external storage array or eGPU, nor do I want to deal with the extra noise and cabling that usually involves. My Windows workstation is super-quiet while accommodating nearly a dozen storage drives and a powerful GPU.

If you can throw all that stuff into an isolated server closet, that's great, but not all of us can. My admittedly anecdotal observation is that the cylinder Mac Pro was the ideal form factor for an extremely small cross-section of the professional market.

As for whether I think the 2019 Mac Pro is worth holding out for, well...it depends. Is your current equipment working fine? Then sure, why not wait?

But if you need something right now, then no, I wouldn't wait. It could be 6, 9, or even 12 months until the 2019 Mac Pro arrives. How much work do you need to get done between now and then?


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## charlieclouser (Dec 11, 2018)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Exactly, and for me it's more than that, it's that I have my computers on the other side of a wall.
> 
> I don't care how quiet a computer is - I don't want it in the room with me, or I should say I don't want a single spinning hard drive in here.
> 
> ...



I don't have any spinning hard drives anymore. I still use them for off-line backup, but they don't spin while I'm working. I've never heard my Mac Pro cylinder, even though it's sitting behind my main displays, four feet from my ears. Two cylinders and a 2012 Mac Mini (for VideoSlave) and those are the only three fans in the room, and I've never heard them - no 192 interfaces or anything else with a fan anymore. I don't miss 'em. Enjoy the silence!

Old faithful refers to the 2010 12-core silver Mac Pro tower that my friend was using. It was a 12-core (dual 6-core Xeons) but I don't think he did the tray swap so it was the 2.66 or whatever speed those had in them. Weird to think that a single 6-core i7 at 3.2 would feel faster than dual Xeons at 2.66, but maybe it's the i7's "turbo boost" to 4.2? Maybe it's because he does very electronic scores with lots of Zebra, Diva, etc. and not as much in the way of big orchestral libraries. With cpu-heavy synth plugins and Logic's single-core issue, I can see how a fewer cores / faster clock might "feel" faster or more powerful. He said, "It feels faster" and I went, "Whaaaaat?" and he was quick to say that he hadn't done precise testing or benchmarks, but that it just "feels" better than the silver 12-core. But he's a big user of hardware still - big EuroRack setup, some choice vintage stuff like Matrix-12 and OBX, and he has one of the first Waldorf Quantums already. He even has a VP-1, the polyphonic VL synth that Yamaha made like five of before deciding not to mass produce - but it doesn't work at the moment...

I forgot to mention that he is using some sort of external GPU or some bad ass video card. He had some sort of external Thunderbolt chassis on there, but no audio or DSP cards in it. It looked like the Sonnet three-slot box but might have been something else - it might have been just a dedicated eGPU and not actual PCIe slots - not sure but I can check. It was not that slick-looking BlackMagic eGPU that Apple sells, so I'm not sure what was in it. He definitely runs a 43" 4k display and two smaller displays, as well as a 75" 4k display for picture. Not sure whether picture is playing from within Logic or on a separate computer using VideoSlave, but if all four displays are connected to his DAW computer then that might be part of the reason he got the eGPU and why the Mini feels faster than the silver tower, which might have strained under the load of pushing all those pixels?

He's keeping the silver tower and going to experiment with using it as a VEPro slave. He runs no slaves at the moment since his orchestral needs are very light - but he does run in full surround at all times, and wants to experiment with leaving a small orchestra ready at all times on a slave. So the silver tower will fill that role for the moment, just to see if he can tolerate the clunky workflow of using VEPro with Logic. He did opt for the faster Ethernet option on the Mini just in case he loves VEPro - then down the road he can deploy another fast-Ethernet Mini as a slave and maybe the 10gb Ethernet will be of some benefit.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 11, 2018)

He has a VP1! That must be cool (I have a VL1).

Interesting about the Mini. He would have sounded like a candidate for Vienna Ensemble Pro and 3.46GHz processor upgrades.



charlieclouser said:


> I don't have any spinning hard drives anymore. I still use them for off-line backup, but they don't spin while I'm working.



Until recently it wouldn't have paid to move all my libraries onto SSDs, just the ones I normally use. Plus I have a redundant Time Machine spinning drive inside the case.

But I also have a few PCs in the garage (aka machine room). Their spinning drive and fan noise would really annoy me the one time a year I turn any of them on.


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## Dewdman42 (Dec 11, 2018)

refurbished 2012 MacPro's can be obtained now for under $2k with upgraded CPU's and will work just fine for years to come. Mine has 12 cores x3.33ghz and 64gb ram. 

That would be my recommendation for anyone needing a mac pro today while waiting for next gen.

I have upgraded mine since buying it, it has numerous SSD drives in it, might bump it up to 128gb ram. Has the RX580 video card, so ready for mojave. Planning to add a SATA3 card for my SSD storage. No its not the be all end all, as soon as Apple comes out with the next gen...it will likely antiquate the 5,1 architecture finally...but we shall see. The 2013 Mac Pro, though faster, did not antiquate the 5,1 architecture at all. Even though thunderbolt is faster all that, there is still plenty of use to get out of these 2012 beasts and that is what I heartily recommend while we wait for Apple to show us the future for power users on the OS X platform.


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## charlieclouser (Dec 11, 2018)

Symfoniq said:


> You and I remember Power Computing very differently. My PowerTower Pro 225 was a beast, and I loved it. Evidently it was a little _too _good, since Apple had to kill them off to ensure their own survival.
> 
> Agreed that the Hackintosh's days are numbered. The T2 chip is the beginning of the end.
> 
> ...



Yeah, my Power Computing box "worked" but it just felt kind of cheap and rattly. I think my next computer after that was a Quadra 950 maybe? Can't remember the order in which they came. At any rate the Power box got re-purposed as a server or a video edit station or something and I was secretly glad for an excuse to buy another beige Apple box. I drove those Quadra machines hard for a long time.

I don't have a server closet anymore. I still have my old silver-tower rig intact, powered down and frozen in time, in one of those "soundproof" racks with the glass door, the eight quiet fans, and the convoluted air path. That basically worked but the fans weren't up to the task so if both computers were on then the back door needed to be open. Two silver towers and two 192s can make some heat! But my current rig just sits on the deck of my main desk, behind my displays. Maybe the displays are blocking some of the fan noise? Whatever it is I can't hear them at all. One bonus is that I can use 6-foot cables that cost like $15 for all the displays and USB stuff, and I don't need to spend thousands at the Gefen website on exotic 50-foot DVI-DL cables, extender boxes, etc., so that's a bit of a relief because I had a couple grand into extender tech on that old rig.

I must have been dead-center in that small cross-section of the pro market you refer to. Is the cylinder absolutely perfect for me? Maybe not. But it's been better for me than the silver towers, and I have few complaints and no deal-breaking issues. 

I agree with you that if I needed a new rig right now I'd be chomping at the bit and a little nervous about when and if a next Mac Pro would arrive, and what it would be like. So if I had to buy today I'd probably get a bricked-out Mini and hope that it could be used as some sort of slave if I upgraded to the next Mac Pro. But I waited almost two years after the cylinder came out to jump on board, so I'm fine with limping along on my current rig until we see what, and when, Apple comes up with next. It might be great, it might be just a different-looking cylinder. 

I have little faith but lots of hope.


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## charlieclouser (Dec 11, 2018)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> He has a VP1! That must be cool (I have a VL1).



I know! I want to hear the thing but it won't boot up, and the custom Yamaha VLSI chips that are specific to that model only were never really mass-produced and therefore not available. He said that Yamaha Japan can't / won't fix it, but that Yamaha Germany (where he got it) might be able to fix it but he'd have to send it over there - and it is BIG. He was a little dismissive of the thing, saying it's not the same as eight (or however many voices it has) of a VL1, and that the VL1 can do things that the VP1 cannot, so it's not like "the synth to end all synths". Crazy amount of r&d and tooling up for the custom chips, only for Yamaha to pull the plug.

Supposedly there were five or ten made, and a couple are in Yamaha corporate museums, and those are the ones that would need to be pillaged for parts to swap into his, which would require all sorts of expensive travel, shipping, and butt-kissing to make that happen, so for various reasons he's not in a rush to go down that road. I think he said that one of the units in the field is used by a wealthy German as sort of a home organ! Weird.


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## charlieclouser (Dec 11, 2018)

Dewdman42 said:


> refurbished 2012 MacPro's can be obtained now for under $2k with upgraded CPU's and will work just fine for years to come. Mine has 12 cores x3.33ghz and 64gb ram.
> 
> That would be my recommendation for anyone needing a mac pro today while waiting for next gen.
> 
> I have upgraded mine since buying it, it has numerous SSD drives in it, might bump it up to 128gb ram. Has the RX580 video card, so ready for mojave. Planning to add a SATA3 card for my SSD storage. No its not the be all end all, as soon as Apple comes out with the next gen...it will likely antiquate the 5,1 architecture finally...but we shall see. The 2013 Mac Pro, though faster, did not antiquate the 5,1 architecture at all. Even though thunderbolt is faster all that, there is still plenty of use to get out of these 2012 beasts and that is what I heartily recommend while we wait for Apple to show us the future for power users on the OS X platform.



Sounds like your machine is a beast! And I agree that the refurb-ed and upgraded silver towers are a steal at today's prices, and the hardware is built to last so no worries there. I just gave away a couple of non-upgradable Mac Pro 1.1 and 2.1 machines that were a dead-end as far as upgradability but still functioned perfectly.

I do sort of wish they'd just kept the silver tower box and kept tweaking it. It would have been fantastic. Imagine if they'd kept the silver box, but with more recent CPU choices and the same PCIe card layout, ditch FireWire and add TB3 and USB3 front and back, add four or eight m2 slots for internal blade-style SSDs, some sort of "bay doubling" so that each of the four internal bays could hold either one 3.5" spinning hard drive or two 2.5" SSDs, and convert each of the front panel optical bays to dual 2.5" SSD bays to give you four hot-swap 2.5" SSDs on the front. With 12x SATA and 4x or 8x m2 slots that would be much better than my current rig, and.... yeah, it would have less cabling.


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## Symfoniq (Dec 11, 2018)

charlieclouser said:


> Yeah, my Power Computing box "worked" but it just felt kind of cheap and rattly. I think my next computer after that was a Quadra 950 maybe? Can't remember the order in which they came. At any rate the Power box got re-purposed as a server or a video edit station or something and I was secretly glad for an excuse to buy another beige Apple box. I drove those Quadra machines hard for a long time.
> 
> I don't have a server closet anymore. I still have my old silver-tower rig intact, powered down and frozen in time, in one of those "soundproof" racks with the glass door, the eight quiet fans, and the convoluted air path. That basically worked but the fans weren't up to the task so if both computers were on then the back door needed to be open. Two silver towers and two 192s can make some heat! But my current rig just sits on the deck of my main desk, behind my displays. Maybe the displays are blocking some of the fan noise? Whatever it is I can't hear them at all. One bonus is that I can use 6-foot cables that cost like $15 for all the displays and USB stuff, and I don't need to spend thousands at the Gefen website on exotic 50-foot DVI-DL cables, extender boxes, etc., so that's a bit of a relief because I had a couple grand into extender tech on that old rig.
> 
> ...



Nothing wrong with hope! I'm hoping Apple hits the 2019 Mac Pro out of the park, too.

The Quadra 950 was a 68040 while the PowerTower Pro was a more powerful 604e, so maybe you're thinking of a Power Mac 9600? That was a great workhorse machine, too.

You're certainly right that the cylinder Mac Pros are very quiet, and I didn't mean to imply otherwise. It's all the other peripherals that, for me, are potential sources of unwanted noise (and cables...and expense).

There's a thread being bumped on VIC right now about how noisy the OWC ThunderBay can be. In my own experience, some of the Lacie and Promise stuff can make some noise, too. Video editors don't seem to care, but musicians might.

Curious what you are using for external storage?


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## Symfoniq (Dec 11, 2018)

charlieclouser said:


> Sounds like your machine is a beast! And I agree that the refurb-ed and upgraded silver towers are a steal at today's prices, and the hardware is built to last so no worries there. I just gave away a couple of non-upgradable Mac Pro 1.1 and 2.1 machines that were a dead-end as far as upgradability but still functioned perfectly.
> 
> I do sort of wish they'd just kept the silver tower box and kept tweaking it. It would have been fantastic. Imagine if they'd kept the silver box, but with more recent CPU choices and the same PCIe card layout, ditch FireWire and add TB3 and USB3 front and back, add four or eight m2 slots for internal blade-style SSDs, some sort of "bay doubling" so that each of the four internal bays could hold either one 3.5" spinning hard drive or two 2.5" SSDs, and convert each of the front panel optical bays to dual 2.5" SSD bays to give you four hot-swap 2.5" SSDs on the front. With 12x SATA and 4x or 8x m2 slots that would be much better than my current rig, and.... yeah, it would have less cabling.



I would buy this. Even if it cost $10K.


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## Dewdman42 (Dec 11, 2018)

charlieclouser said:


> Sounds like your machine is a beast! And I agree that the refurb-ed and upgraded silver towers are a steal at today's prices, and the hardware is built to last so no worries there.


You can get up to 3.46ghz I believe, so its actually not the very fastest from that era. But I can mix a full orch mockup on it, without a VEP slave, barely hits 20% cpu, even playing from midi tracks through VSL instruments and MIRPRO. Totally good enough until Apple shows us the direction they are going to go.



> I do sort of wish they'd just kept the silver tower box and kept tweaking it.



I personally hope the next gen mac pro will be something along those lines. More like a PC, with PCIe slots, current sata and M2, current speed memory buss, USB3 and/or USB-c, thunderbolt, etc.. basically , an upgraded motherboard, but the same overall form factor as the cheese grater from 2012. 

I am not too hopeful about that though. They have people that work at apple that care more about aesthetics and they will want something new to look at. Wouldn't surprise me if they do away with internal sata connectors and make something with a small fanless footprint that takes like 6 M2 cards or something like that. I do not think they will go back to a PCIe form factor. who knows though. 

I also think they will introduce some kind of new data transmission standard or 8k video or something, as standard with this computer and the grunt to handle it. It will cost $10k, but it will be really awesome technology that can't be replicated on the 5,1 box. We shall see though...


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## charlieclouser (Dec 11, 2018)

Symfoniq said:


> Nothing wrong with hope! I'm hoping Apple hits the 2019 Mac Pro out of the park, too.
> 
> The Quadra 950 was a 68040 while the PowerTower Pro was a more powerful 604e, so maybe you're thinking of a Power Mac 9600? That was a great workhorse machine, too.
> 
> ...



Yeah, my recollection of which model came when is a little foggy after a couple of decades. There was everything from Mac IIfx, IIci, IIcx, 950 and 9500 to colorful gummy-bear iMacs scattered around our studio in New Orleans. When we edited NIN's Closure long-form video in-house we had, I think, 26 FireWire drives to hold all the footage. What a mess.

I encourage everyone I meet to try to swap whatever fans are in their rooms to Noctua models with equivalent size, voltage, and CFM ratings. Another buddy still uses 6 or more 192 interfaces and he did the Noctua fan swap on all of them and says it makes a HUGE difference. I think a similar approach can be taken with the various OWC boxes but don't quote me on that.

For external storage I use 2x BlackMagic MultiDocks, daisy-chained on the same TB2 bus, with Samsung 2.5" SATA SSDs - a mixture of 850evo 4tb, 860pro 4tb, and 850pro 1tb and 2tb. There are four 4tb drives for sample storage, and the smaller ones are for project drives. I buy whatever the biggest size is at the time I need them, and try to use Pro drives when possible, but when I got the first pair of 4tb drives only 850evo was available in that size. I have had no failures. The only issue I had was when I borked one of the 1tb 850pro drives by pulling it out of the dock without unmounting it, like an idiot, but Disc Warrior resurrected it. I pulled the files, reformatted the drive, and it's been fine since then.

For off-line backup I use a pair of the OWC dual-drive Thunderbolt docks - the ones that you stick a bare drive into like a toaster. I have a stack of 4tb and 10tb HGST spinning drives, and I keep a quadruple set of backups - two sets on 4tb drives and two sets on 10tb drives, with one batch of 4tb and 10tb drives in the safe deposit box at the bank across town, and the other batch here in the house. So I'm protected. If somehow all HGST 10tb drives in the world decide to fail at some point, I have the 4tb sets. Two of each.

The only backup utility I use is Synchronize ProX. I manually back up by using it to show me the differences between two folders / drives, and either copy the needed files manually in the Finder (if it's something like copying 200gb of newly purchased Kontakt libraries) or let Sync ProX move the files (if it's a zillion little files inside a zillion folders).

I don't use Time Machine or Retrospect or any of that kind of thing - since some issues with Mezzo, Retrospect, and DLT tape drives a couple of decades ago I am still gun-shy about dedicated / proprietary backup utilities / archive formats. The only thing I use Carbon Copy Cloner for is to make bootable clones of my startup drives onto identically-sized 1tb 850pro 2.5" SSDs as well as Samsung T5 1tb SSDs - two of each. That way I have all my serial numbers, plugin settings, patches, installers and all that stuff, times four, one of each format in the house and one of each at the bank. For my laptop I have two T5 backups and four disc images. For the ProTools machine and VideoSlave Mac Mini I just back up to disc images using CCC, and put those on my 10tb and 4tb "archives" spinning drives. Those machines have nothing but the OS and either ProTools or VideoSlave, no plugins or any other complex stuff, so I can rebuild instead of restore if it ever comes to that - and it never has. While working on a project I make a double backup every night, and keep four rotating copies in the building and usually only go to the bank every week or so. For sample library drives I swap my house sets with the bank sets every few weeks and then make the sets that just came from the bank match the "live" set on the SSDs, and keep them as the house sets until I make a bank run.

I'm a little paranoid about that stuff even though I haven't suffered data loss in decades, but the two times it did happen it was a royal pain. One was in 1999, trying to recover files that only existed on DLT tapes made with a SCSI tape drive using Mezzo or Retrospect or something. We dug up an old tape drive, but couldn't get the software to boot or install or something, and never got the data back off those tapes (but I found the files a little later on a CD-ROM set I had made and forgotten about). The other was a mechanical drive failure in 2002 or so, and I spent the big bucks and sent the drive to DriveSavers. They thought they succeeded and sent back my stuff, but the files were garbage. Since there were lots of SD2 format audio files as well as PT sessions they had no way to test the files. Resource or Data Forks were trashed or something. The sessions came back okay but the SD2 audio files were white noise. Cost me more than a grand to learn that lesson. Would have been worth it had it worked! All I lost was a couple of weeks of Beat Detective-ing and comping on some live drums - no recordings were actually lost, only the work I put into the edits and comps. Now that file formats like WAV and AIFF no longer have the same delicate file structure as the old SD2 format, maybe that wouldn't happen these days, but still I never want to go down that road again!


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 11, 2018)

charlieclouser said:


> I do sort of wish they'd just kept the silver tower box and kept tweaking it.



I've been saying they should have offered a Mac Pro Classic all along.

Too bad those losers at Apple don't know that one should always listen to me, or they'd have made a lot of money.


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## samphony (Dec 11, 2018)

Whenever I want to say something @charlieclouser is faster and says nearly all the things I was going to post. So from now on i can only say „what he said“. 
Oh and I had a similar conversation with that friend Charlie is talking about yesterday! It was very insightful. 

I never understood the „to much stuff is hanging out the cylinder” anyways. I don’t see a difference to my silver towers from the past. Only that the Vader is mich more silent and faster. 

I’ll get the new Mac Pro as well and the Mini is on the way too!


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## tmhuud (Dec 11, 2018)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I've been saying they should have offered a Mac Pro Classic all along.
> 
> Too bad those losers at Apple don't know that one should always listen to me, or they'd have made a lot of money.


I miss the ‘ole cheesgrater. Great machine. If I’d added anything more to I’d have to get a dolly to push it around.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 11, 2018)

By the way, my answer to the original question is that I'll replace my 2009 12 x 3.46 when I bump into its limitations.

So far I haven't, no matter how hard I try.

Whether the next Mac Pro is the right machine is unknown. But if it's as much as the iMac Pro, no way.


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## charlieclouser (Dec 11, 2018)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> By the way, my answer to the original question is that I'll replace my 2009 12 x 3.46 when I bump into its limitations.
> 
> So far I haven't, no matter how hard I try.
> 
> Whether the next Mac Pro is the right machine is unknown. But if it's as much as the iMac Pro, no way.



Yeah, it wasn't the raw speed of my 2010 12-core that held me back - it was all the other stuff "hanging off the back" that I wanted to upgrade.

And I do have to say that in terms of raw CPU power, between my old silver 12-core and the cylinder 12-core it's pretty much a wash.


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## Soundhound (Dec 11, 2018)

And I thought I was paranoid! Well I am, but just cause you're paranoid don't mean they're not after ya...

Charlie I've been using Chronosync to do my local offline backups, but in the case of sample libraries it can be a pain. I also have 2 blackmagic docks for samples, and whenever I move things around and reorganize, I wind up doing that on my two sets of HDD backups as well, and then I check it with Chronosync. (I also have everything up on Backblaze (offsite), keep Time Machine on my main mac and try to keep a bootable internal drive copy current with Copy Disk Cloner.)

I'd spoken to someone at Chronosync a while ago and he said for that large a number of individual files etc. it would be better to do that rather than have Chronosync copy/rework it all. That's just one guy saying that, but since then I've moved the files around on the HDD backups myself.

When I've got a bunch of new big sample libraries and moved stuff around I'd much rather be able to just hit a button and have the HDDs get resynched overnight. Do you do that with Synchronize ProX?


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## charlieclouser (Dec 11, 2018)

Soundhound said:


> And I thought I was paranoid! Well I am, but just cause you're paranoid don't mean they're not after ya...
> 
> Charlie I've been using Chronosync to do my local offline backups, but in the case of sample libraries it can be a pain. I also have 2 blackmagic docks for samples, and whenever I move things around and reorganize, I wind up doing that on my two sets of HDD backups as well, and then I check it with Chronosync. (I also have everything up on Backblaze (offsite), keep Time Machine on my main mac and try to keep a bootable internal drive copy current with Copy Disk Cloner.)
> 
> ...



Well, Synchronize ProX is pretty dumb. If you've changed the name of a folder on the primary drive but not on the backup drive, it will report that the renamed folder needs to be copied from the primary to the backup, and the original-named folder needs to be copied in the other direction, which would result in both drives having two copies of the data inside differently-named folders. If you've done a full re-arrange of folder layouts, you're up the creek. It does NOT intelligently ignore with folder names and just look at the contents - it's strictly doing what you would do "by eye" if you were looking at two folders next to each other. 

But that's kind of what I like about it. It has an option (which I always use) to "show details before copying" (can't remember exactly what it's called) which displays two columns of file/folder names, with the source on one side and the destination on the other, and there are blue arrows facing right to indicate files that need to go that way, and orange arrows facing left to indicate files that need to go in the other direction. You can tell it to ignore dates, sizes, etc. in the comparison process, and there's an option to fix (fudge) the file modification dates so it will ignore them if they are within a specified interval.

I mostly use it as a folder comparison utility - like, "show me what's different about these two folders and I'll deal with the big stuff myself". 

I'm sure there are more recent, slick, or just plain better synchronization utilities, but I've been using this one for years and years and I am just accustomed to it. I really want to see that "results of comparison" list before I blindly let it start copying stuff.

But my reasoning stems from a desire to have all backup drives be a completely ordinary duplicate of the primary - not some time-machine archive or whatever. Just a copy. So that I could mount any backup drive on a new computer and just start working right away.

Now that I've fixed my internet and have a solid 150 up and down, I might have to look into BackBlaze or something similar. But my "full set" is around 30tb and growing, so.... maybe I'll wait until I have 300 or 1,000 speed before I begin that upload. At that point I'll probably need to find a replacement for Sync ProX.

EDIT = I just watched a short video on ChronoSync and it's basically a better, more sophisticated version of Synchronize ProX. It has the "trial sync" option which shows what will happen when you push the button, and many more options for determining what gets copied and when, as well as stated compatibility with BackBlaze and AWS. So that looks pretty good.


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## Soundhound (Dec 11, 2018)

I've used Trial Sync only once in a while, but using it to see what needs to be changed is good idea. I'm not sure whether with a lot of changes it might take a long time, or how handy the report would be, it might be an endless list of files rather than an easily read list of folders and locations. I'll give that a try and report back.

Chronosync is supposed to make a one to one copy (they said with large numbers of files it's better to use the 'mirror' option, which I do). I use it to make the copies just in one direction so haven't had that doubling folder problem with name changes etc.

Backblaze seems pretty good so far, I imagine there are more heavy duty industrial options. I had Crashplan for a long time, and always found it a little hard to see what was going on but luckily never needed to retrieve anything. I switched to Backblaze earlier this year and just recently had a Drobo die (good riddance I have to say) and was able to download the 300 gigs i needed from Backblaze relatively quickly and painlessly. You chose the stuff you want to download and it has to prepare a download file which can take a while, and they send you an alert when it's ready.

I've got about 12tb up there which I uploaded when we were back in LA for a few months earlier this year. I have 150/150 there and it went pretty smoothly. Where we are now is 150 download and 10 upload, if I had to upload it all again I might just wait till I'm back to do it.


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## Shad0wLandsUK (Dec 12, 2018)

I am a bit of both since I have a Windows machine also
For Cubase I am going to stick to Windows and the Mac will be for software testing/coding/scripting and Logic Pro X 

I am fortunate that I work in computers, so I can work with whatever is available... well just about
New to Linux, but one day I will be familiar with it!


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## keyman_sam (Dec 15, 2018)

Shad0wLandsUK said:


> I am a bit of both since I have a Windows machine also
> For Cubase I am going to stick to Windows and the Mac will be for software testing/coding/scripting and Logic Pro X
> 
> I am fortunate that I work in computers, so I can work with whatever is available... well just about
> New to Linux, but one day I will be familiar with it!



Have you tried the latest Cubase on a Mac? I thought "Cubase better on a PC" has been ironed out by now. What about Cubase runs worse on a Mac?


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## Shad0wLandsUK (Dec 15, 2018)

keyman_sam said:


> Have you tried the latest Cubase on a Mac? I thought "Cubase better on a PC" has been ironed out by now. What about Cubase runs worse on a Mac?


I have shown in another thread:
Logic Pro X - 10.4.3 released


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## Soundhound (Dec 16, 2018)

@charlieclouser Chronosync does let you see what folders are different, and you don't need to run the Trial Sync to see it. You can't see it on a whole set of disks though but rather one at a time. Each drive needs to be its own process and they are grouped as sets. Still, pretty helpful. I still want something that is more set up for this kind of thing though. Someday it will arrive on a shining white horse.

@everybody. Sorry for the hijack and now back to regularly scheduled programming. Anybody else with more orchestral vi performance news on the 2018 mac mini?


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