[Dudiester]

Hi guys it’s true that with 2X 8P quad Apollos you can do a lot with them as a stand alone live mixer with just Console and we do this on occasion for simpler mixes but the limitations are:

-No plugins can be placed on the master outputs such as corrective room EQing, master compressors, limiters, multibands, etc. We also run 5 stereo headphone mixes and 4 wedges with plugs on their assigned master outs.
-No 3rd party non-UAD plugins can be run on the Apollos. UAD plugs are awesome but we need use of several other manufacturers as well. Would be great if we could run Console with a Waves server inside Console. We sometimes run Vienna Enemble pro for audio networking which Console doesn’t support.
-Console doesn’t host Virtual Instruments, we could try to run them in stand alone mode but some don’t fully support this very well.
-By the time we use our favourite preamps with Unison on 16 channels and a few more favourite UAD plugs, our 8 DSP chips are maxed out, way too soon! I’ve been waiting for them to come out with 8 DSP chip versions of the Apollos for years.
-We require multitrack recordings for archiving and playback mixing.
-There are more lengthy reasons to go into such as what we find to be the most efficient for our setup and such but I’ll spare them.

However to get back on track, our Late 2013 MacBook Pro 15” w 16GBs @ 2.3Ghz i7 w Yosemite is running circles around our new MacBook Pro 15” i9 2.9Ghz, 32GB with regards to CPU stability, not overheating, not throttling and not getting any dropouts and or buffer under runs. I’ll also note I ran a Core2 Quad w 4GB, 3.2GHz PC for 6 years that ran much more reliably live than my new i9 MBP. We are currently now trying PTs 12.5.1 on the 2018 MBP with somewhat better results as 2018 7 is not useable. Also our 2013 is also on PTs 12.5.1 as we find its rocksolid.

I have spent months of my life optimizing PC and Macs to get then to run reliably for live tracking and live mixing. There’s a long laundry list of optimizations and sorting through best sounding, most reliable native plugs to run at low buffer sizes. Really disappointed in this new i9 Mac thus far and I really don’t feel confident that other OS or Pro Tools patches are going to help it significantly. High Sierra just doesn’t seem to be good OS for doing higher track counts for low latency live inputs. We’re keeping a long log of things we’ve optimized and such which I can share with you all.

We’ve also tried Logic, Studio One and Reaper with lots of different settings and all Reaper, Logic, Studio One and Pro Tools are showing the same random CPU spikes, the “best” results are with Pro Tools and Logic so far. We will soon be posting a video showing the performance differences between different MacBook Pros and DAWs!