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Would Like Some Opinions on Computer Refresh

khollister

Senior Member
My current rig is a MP 5.1 6 core/24GB ram for Logic, UAD, VSL MIR & Aether with a VEP PC slave (4930K/64GB/SSD) for all of my instruments (Kontakt, Omnisphere & HW/PLAY). Works fine but I have one problem and one annoyance:
  1. I only have a UAD Duo PCI card and desperately need an Octo
  2. I would love to eliminate (or at least minimize) the use of VEP and a slave and get everything back into a single box
I could obviously get a PCI Octo, which would then require a TB/PCI chassis down the road when I move off of the 5.1 MP due to either HW failures or OS updates being no longer supported on the cMP. If I'm going to spend the cash on an Octo, it seems a shame to not go the TB Satellite route - same price as the card & no fan. I'm also a bit concerned about future PCIe support at all over TB given Apple's philosophy.

So I've started to think about a used/refurb 8-core nMP iTrashcan w 64GB and SSD's via the BM Multidock. I know Charlie, Daniel and a few others are running 8 & 12 core nMP's without slaves (as do some of the folks on the Spitfire videos), but I'm not convinced that even PLAY 5 would allow me to get there with the HWS/HWB/HWOW/HWP Diamond libs. And Omnisphere can be a pig at times too. Then there is MIR ...

I think I might have a pretty good chance of getting everything in a 8-core box except the Hollywood Diamond stuff, assuming I was using a bit of everything at once. Aside from HWO and Omni, I use Galaxy Pianos, Albion 1/2/3, SD3, BWW, CineBrass & Symphobia on a somewhat regular basis (probably forgetting some things).

A related future concern is eventually having to migrate from Win7 on the slave to Win10 with the background updates du jour that I apparently can't disable. I hate fooling with Windows and would no be looking forward to having to reconfigure the PC slave.

The other elephant in the room is a 5K iMac i7 (would certainly still need the slave to some degree), but I'm concerned about the single TB bus with both sample SSD's and the UAD Octo sitting on it. A new iMac with TB3 might solve that.

What I'm looking for are experiences/opinions on whether a 8-core nMP could eliminate my slave.
 
I use a 6 core vader helmet. I have some lighter Play5 libraries running (SD2/3, Silk) and it runs fine on the newest Play that E/W should be very proud of. Hopefully someone will chime in that is running the symphonic stuff which I do not on whether a salve is needed.

And hopefully someone with a new Imac can comment on the single TB bandwidth. If it helps I use all 3 TB busses on my vader helmet machine 1) Apollo Quad/Satellite quad 2) 2 Blackmagic docks 3) 3 screens.

There are TB docks but Im not sure that helps bandwidth at all.
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/Dock/OWC/Thunderbolt2-Dock/

Also I believe the imac can only go up to 32G Ram ?
 
Also I believe the imac can only go up to 32G Ram ?

The latest 27' iMac can go to 64GB (not from Apple, though) - OWC sells kits but it is more expensive than 64GB for the nMP ($700 vs $400)

Did a little more investigation on UAD TB bandwidth - the UAD PCI cards are PCIe 2.0 single lane (500MB/s) so I would expect a TB Octo Satellite to be about the same. Given that the BMM controllers are not full SATA 3 capable, a BMM with 4 SSD's and a single Octo would probably "fit" within the bandwidth of a single TB2 buss without too much compromise. My audio interface is a RME UCX, so it's on USB - no issues there.

I think an iMac would be great as a DAW "front end" with some light-to moderate VI usage for composing, but I still have serious concerns about it's suitability as a single platform for heavy conventional orchestral arranging - too tight on I/O bandwidth and probably not enough cores. Cool display though :)

It comes down to whether I need the slave. If so, there isn't much point to the nMP as opposed to an iMac for Logic/MIR/UAD and maybe Albion and a piano for "sketchpad" use. Wouldn't need 64GB either.

It will be interesting to see what might be announced next week as far as iMac updates. Two USB-C/TB3 busses would solve the I/O concerns and make the iMac a stronger consideration. Still short of cores perhaps for total replacement though.
 
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