Living With Aging Gear

[toddamo]

Hello DUC friends!

I have some questions about living (and updating) with aging gear...

I'm on a Mid 2012 Macbook Pro, 2.6 GHz I7, 8GB running on Yosemite. I run ProTools 11 through my Digi 003 rack. I also run my home audio system off through an MBOX 2.

I'm currently on Yosemite as last I had checked, the drivers for my audio interfaces were not compatible with the newer Mac OS versions. Today I checked and see that Sierra is now compatible with the latest 003 driver. There are also (non-official?) drivers which make the MBOX 2 run with Sierra.

Some questions, please...

1. Is it worth doing this OS upgrade at all? Not sure if it's analogous--I've got an older iPhone and IOS 11 really slowed it down. How will Sierra affect the overall (and specifically ProTools's) performance on my Mid 2012 Macbook Pro?

2. I am trying to milk all the life I can out of my Macbook Pro before I buy a new one. I need to upgrade the RAM. Based on the experience of others, how much increased mileage and performance might I see from doubling the RAM on my computer? I always seem to be using more and more VST's. I get occasional hardware buffer errors--but often a restart gets rid of them. Honestly, I'm impressed with this old computer's ability to handle all I throw at it--but yea, I'm wondering how far increased RAM will go for ProTools. And also--how many more years might you guess I can get out of this old computer?

3. A third and a more philosophical point... I know that companies can't support legacy hardware forever. However, I think part of this is emblematic of the throw-away and replace attitude of our culture. I would hope that a perfectly good quality and functioning 003 doesn't have to go to the landfill because a company really wants us to buy new equipment. I know this is counter-productive to how business operates, but throwing perfectly good equipment away is counter-productive to the health of our planet and wallets. There's gotta be some balance and sanity manifesting here somewhere. Maybe?

I'm so grateful for your input, experience, suggestions on questions 1 & 2. And certainly interested in your thoughts about #3.

Thanks much in advance!

Todd

[albee1952]

My 2 cents; if it all works now, don't change it at all(IOW, if it ain't broke, don't fix it). The studio next door to mine is still on PT9 and Snow Leopard As for RAM, if you feel like your rig is under-powered, adding RAM might not make a huge difference, but(depending on your plugin needs), it could still help(especially on older/slower computers). Re the 003, AFAIK, it is still working on the latest versions of PT and OSX/Windows, so while it may not be supported, that doesn't mean it won't work Heck, I still have a G4 with LE7.4 on it with an Mbox, in case I need to resurrect an old SD II session and convert to wave for use on a current PT rig(SD II is not compatible with PT11/12 or Windows rigs without lots of fussing).

[cwsand]

Hi,

Originally Posted by toddamo

1. Is it worth doing this OS upgrade at all? Not sure if it's analogous--I've got an older iPhone and IOS 11 really slowed it down. How will Sierra affect the overall (and specifically ProTools's) performance on my Mid 2012 Macbook Pro?

2. I am trying to milk all the life I can out of my Macbook Pro before I buy a new one. I need to upgrade the RAM. Based on the experience of others, how much increased mileage and performance might I see from doubling the RAM on my computer? I always seem to be using more and more VST's. I get occasional hardware buffer errors--but often a restart gets rid of them. Honestly, I'm impressed with this old computer's ability to handle all I throw at it--but yea, I'm wondering how far increased RAM will go for ProTools. And also--how many more years might you guess I can get out of this old computer?

IMHO, yes if you can upgrade the MacBook Pro it's worth it to be able to use ProTools 12. I have a 2011 MacBook Pro and upgraded to Sierra and it really slowed down, unusable really. I upgraded the RAM to the max (16GB I believe?), installed an SSD for the OS drive, and use a Lacie Thunderbolt external SSD for sessions and it works almost like new.

Originally Posted by toddamo

3. A third and a more philosophical point... I know that companies can't support legacy hardware forever. However, I think part of this is emblematic of the throw-away and replace attitude of our culture. I would hope that a perfectly good quality and functioning 003 doesn't have to go to the landfill because a company really wants us to buy new equipment. I know this is counter-productive to how business operates, but throwing perfectly good equipment away is counter-productive to the health of our planet and wallets. There's gotta be some balance and sanity manifesting here somewhere. Maybe?

I hear you, but it's just the nature of technology - if you want to use the latest and greatest software, you're eventually going to have to upgrade your hardware. Pro Tools seems to be pretty good being compatible with 3rd party ASIO interfaces. I used to have an 003 Rack+ and it was a good unit, but doing some A/B comparisons I thought the preamps on the Focusrite and Presonus units were a little cleaner sounding - and the ones I have are getting old by tech standards.

[m4tune]

If you have still a spinning drive in your Mac Book the best investment would be to change to an SSD - you'd have an improvement in speed and responsiveness ready for the last Mac OS.

[VRW]

Originally Posted by albee1952

My 2 cents; if it all works now, don't change it at all(IOW, if it ain't broke, don't fix it).

I second that. Still you could upgrade your machines memory to 16GB which would make you compatible with any new/future versions of Pro Tools anyway.
As your MacBook seems to be an I7 Quad Core machine, with 16GB Ram, you then even would be ready for all the latest versions of Pro Tools 12 and macOS.

On considering upgrading to PT12 your MacBook Pro would not be any problem unlike your Mbox 2 and even your 003. In the long run.
I´m aware of that there are still official drivers for the 003 available but actually this is an old piece of gear, made for completely different versions of Mac OSX
and versions of PT.

Even if some people can use their 003s even with Sierra without any issues there have been tons of issue reports from others as for the 003 since El Capitan.
What I wanna say is that sooner or later you will face issues with your old 003 running all the latest versions of macOS and Pro Tools which could mean to have
to buy a more current audio interface (or two if you want to replace your MBox too) at least. Sooner or later.

So any upgrading might be well thought out. Sure PT12 is a very nice piece of software and another step up from 11 (disk cache and many more useful stuff)
but it could take a certain amount of investment to upgrade finally. In the long run at least.

So, again, your MacBook would not be any problem if you do the memory upgrade which is not a big deal actually.
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/1600DDR3S16P/

Yet sooner or later your audio interfaces will stop working/being compatible with all the latest versions of macOS and Pro Tools. You just should be aware of that.


The best of success to you whichever route you decide to go finally.

Cheers.

[DannyB_KY]

While you have the bottom, don't forget to clean the fans and exhaust ports.

Don't spin the fans with compressed air!!!

[toddamo]

Hey folks--I really appreciate all the insightful thoughts in this thread! Thank you. I'd like to hope I'll be able to squeeze a couple of more years out of the MBP. I will double the Ram. I'm not sure if it makes sense to upgrade the OS. It is all working, plugins, synths, etc--although I do get occasional crashes with ProTools. I will look into PT12. Thanks again--this has always been a friendly and helpful group on here. Cheers!