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Mac Pro trash can USERS

Hey Babylon,
There is plenty about this online so you'll easily find it. My freezes mean the whole system just corpses and nothing but holding the power button down will sort it. When I re-boot, the screens stay dark until I hit the space bar and everything comes up ok.
I have a magic mouse and the freeze most often occurs when I swipe a window in LogicPro. Weirdly though, if I am playing a track at the time, the audio carries on perfectly! I'd say it happens about 2 maybe 3 times a week here, but everyone's story is different and from what I have read, there are worse scenarios. It is a bummer as I am, as we speak ,considering buying a 2nd used tower as a slave but am hesitant because of this issue. I did read recently that High Sierra seemed to have sorted it out for one, got hopeful and then read the complete opposite elsewhere....oh what to do???
 
Hey Babylon,
There is plenty about this online so you'll easily find it. My freezes mean the whole system just corpses and nothing but holding the power button down will sort it. When I re-boot, the screens stay dark until I hit the space bar and everything comes up ok.
I have a magic mouse and the freeze most often occurs when I swipe a window in LogicPro. Weirdly though, if I am playing a track at the time, the audio carries on perfectly!
wow, i don't have that at all. 2 monitors, logic, 10.12.6 and a magic track pad. you mean swipe as in a gesture to move or zoom the arrangement around?
 
Yes, exactly. I am still on El Cap though and should probably update. Is yours a late2013 6core? if so you are lucky I guess. Anyway, regardless of that GPU annoyance, the OWC ram upgrade works very well and big templates can be had so long as you are on ssd's
edit..sorry BWaves I thought you where the OP for a moment there....:shocked:
 
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Yes, exactly. I am still on El Cap though and should probably update. Is yours a late2013 6core? if so you are lucky I guess. Anyway, regardless of that GPU annoyance, the OWC ram upgrade works very well and big templates can be had so long as you are on ssd's
edit..sorry BWaves I thought you where the OP for a moment there....:shocked:

What kind of polyphony are you seeing before dropouts and on what buffers in a large template?
 
What kind of polyphony are you seeing before dropouts and on what buffers in a large template?

Hey Sami,
I can't really answer the polyphony count precisely as it varies and I don't pay too much attention to it until something crops up - and that doesn't happen often. If things get a bit slow, I bounce in place. The Hans Zimmer piano has caused problems in the past iirc, especially with pedal work when sustaining and sometimes too many mics on other instruments can be a hog as well - I remember some of the extra mics for Mural strings causing dropout, but they where not on SSD at that time and I am about to put the SSS expansion on to SSD so I hope that'll sort out the issue.
Latency can be a pain when programming at times, especially if you are a pianist like me, but I find a sample buffer of 512 in Logic workable. My bus speed is lower due to the OWC Ram and that is more than likely a contributor to any issues but I'd much rather have things to hand immediately hence the 128Gb. Hope that helps....
 
Hi,

Regarding 27" monitors, I've seen LG on Apple website which would be good for iMac or Mac Pro - Are there any others worthy of consideration? - eg - what other options are there?

I did come accross a 24" with all the connections on DP/DVI/VGA/HDMI-not that all are needed btw....
 
Like all others here. I have mine since 2013/2014 too. Zero issues. I initially bought a 6 core for logic. A friend of mine upgraded it and swapped the 6core for a 12xeon cpu.

I’m now running a similar setup to Charlie where one Vader is for logic and the second for PT.

I would buy them again in a minute.
 
My friend wants to buy one, there is a guy selling Mac Pro 2013 at 8core config, 32 GB RAM, 1TB PCIe and D700 graphic cards - it is basically super config and the RAM is upgradable I think, if he needs 64 GB ram let's say. The price is 2900 USD, which I think is very good.
But you still need monitor for that and probably thunderbolt storage or something, which will take the price higher, but I still think it's quite a good deal? (I know 5 year old machine, but they are generally super stable with those server Xeon processors)
 
I've read online it's Mac Pro 2013 made between "February 8, 2015 and April 11, 2015"
 
Hi,

Regarding 27" monitors, I've seen LG on Apple website which would be good for iMac or Mac Pro - Are there any others worthy of consideration? - eg - what other options are there?

I did come accross a 24" with all the connections on DP/DVI/VGA/HDMI-not that all are needed btw....

You could check out the Apple Thunderbolt displays. They're a bit bulky compared to the current offerings but they are of solid build quality and can be vesa-mounted. I have two 27" ones myself and am quite pleased with them.

EDIT: you get some thunderbolt and usb ports as well!
 
But the thunderbolt displays are not available from Apple now are they? so it'd be a used one right?
 
But the thunderbolt displays are not available from Apple now are they? so it'd be a used one right?

Right, you'd have to look at pre-owned. The occasional new-in-box can be found on ebay but they're usually crazy expensive.
 
I'll pause on this for now but another question - :)

For the Mac Pro connection of monitors is via the mini display port (physical connector type) to - VGA/DVI/HDMI/DP (Apple) -there are other brands too which are quite a bit cheaper - benfei/StarTech/Ivanky/Ugreen/Rankie/

Are there any makes to avoid?
 
I use Samsung displays, but I have also tried LG and they worked fine. None of them have Mini-DisplayPort; I connected them all using a Mini-DisplayPort > DisplayPort cable ($15) and that worked just fine at full 4k resolution.
 
I use Samsung displays, but I have also tried LG and they worked fine. None of them have Mini-DisplayPort; I connected them all using a Mini-DisplayPort > DisplayPort cable ($15) and that worked just fine at full 4k resolution.

Yes I did see that Apple don't have a mini-display port > display port cable - but other sites do have! -thanks
 
For the thunderbolt 2 on Mac Pro 2013 @ 20 Gb/s - Is this shared across all six mini-display port inputs?

Daisy chaining of up to 6 thunderbolt devices per port = 36 thunderbolt devices (theoretical) - But this is based on the assumption that each mini-display port will operate @ 20 Gb/s - Surely this is not the case is it?

It's more like the 20 Gb/s is shared across all six inputs - this is correct isn't it?

It's not like I'd want to connect 36 thunderbolt devices btw!!! - It's a query on the bandwidth.

On a PC if a thunderbolt PCI-e card is added it's usually 1 thunderbolt input (sometimes 2 as in Asus EX II Dual)-but even then it still shares the 20 Gb/s bandwidth from the PCI-e buss which is either PCI-e GEN 2 @ x4 or GEN 3 @ x4 which would be the difference between 20 Gb/s and 40 Gb/s

Back to the 36 thunderbolt devices analogy into the Mac Pro 2013 - 36 devices / 20 Gb/s = 1.8 Gb/s per device which would be slower than SATA III 6 Gb/s!!!-that is if all 6 inputs share the 20 Gb/s-Anyhow just some confirmation on this would be handy to keep an eye on the bandwidth calculation
 
It's 20 Gb/sec on each pair of ports on the Mac Pro cylinder. Each pair of ports is called a "Thunderbolt Bus" and each is roughly equivalent to a single PCIe slot, so the architecture is similar to the 3-slot arrangement on the silver Mac Pro towers. See attached picture for an explanation.

Mac Pro 203 TB busses.png



I have a 4k display on one TB Bus, two fully-loaded MultiDocks and a 2560x1440 display on the second TB Bus, and on the third TB Bus I have a UAD2-Octo Thunderbolt DSP box and a MOTU 112d+1248 setup. The MOTU setup is configured to provide 128 channels of audio i/o to the host, and even with that and the UAD box maxed out there have been no problems. I think for a while I had the 4k display and the 2560x1440 display on the same TB Bus by accident but everything worked fine. I basically just plug stuff in wherever I want and it always works.

The only restrictions on this setup in terms of being in danger of saturating any one of the TB Busses is if you're trying to use two 4k displays on the same TB Bus. I was told that a single 4k display can use more than 50% of a TB2 Bus depending on refresh rate, but I haven't tested this. The guy who wrote the TB drivers and firmware for the MOTU AVB audio interfaces told me that for audio use I could put my 128 i/o MOTU rig and as many UAD boxes as I wanted on the same TB2 Bus and not be in any danger of saturation. He actually kind of chuckled when I asked if I was in danger of saturating the bus when using it for audio. He was like, "not a chance".

That said, TB3 via USB-C is potentially double the bandwidth of TB2 - so 40 Gb/sec. If there is a successor to the Mac Pro cylinder it will undoubtedly use TB3 on USB-C connectors. It would be a very Apple-like decision to have nothing on the back but a row of identical connectors.
 
omg that is straight out of the manual, how did you manage that?:2thumbs:-thank you!

So the six ports are split into pairs (understood) - and it's like having 3 Asus TH EX II cards in the system (equivalent)-On a Windows machine I built, 1 PCI-e card goes into the PCI-e slot-and then a cable from the card to the thunderbolt header OR on some Intel motherboards the USB-c/thunderbolt 3 goes straight into the back panel without the need for an add in card.

So, there is clearly more thunderbolt bandwidth than on a Windows machine but a Windows machine would have other PCI-e slots but not thunderbolt compatible.

60 Gb/s full bandwidth.

So your UAD DSP box is the Satellite is it?-And good to gear the maximum allowable UAD devices, 4 interfaces & 2 dsp expanders won't saturate 1 of the thunderbolt busses.

So for using a display for audio it may be a better idea to use a non 4k monitor then both could be put on the same thunderbolt buss without risk of running out of bandwidth.??? - just an idea

Anyway thanks for an excellent explanation
 
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