Need more power/speed

[JoeLouis]

Hi folks. Technology is Chinese to me. Please excuse my clumsiness.
I'm working on Pro Tools 2020.12.1 - Focusrite Scarlett 616 (interface). I am working on 24 bit.
At the bottom is my Mac setup.
I just did an OS update. From Catalina to Ventura (I think it's a lot).
What I need is to improve power/speed. I want to use plugins that my current equipment does not support.
Maybe change Intel core i5 to i7 or i9? 6 core to 8 core?
I appreciate any advice/suggestions. Thanks
joelouis

[Darryl Ramm]

The time to ask important questions might be before deciding to do brain surgery on your computer.

Ventura is not officially supported with any current version of Pro Tools, let alone one as old as yours. Some of us are running 2022.10 OK on Ventura, but I would not be surprised if you run into problems with 2020.12.

And especially on such a large jump hopefully you did a full clean install not an in-situ upgrade. And while doing that hopefully you kept your existing boot volume intact so you can just reboot to get back to where you were if needed.

You don't say what any of the issues are you are running into with plugins "not being supported"? You mean you needed to upgrade macOS to get software compatibility to run the new plugins? What plugins? Or you have other problems running them? Have you have done any troubleshooting? Are you running a lot of VIs? Are you getting AAE errors? What exact errors? Are sessions/plugins slow to start up? What *exactly* are the problems you run into? How do you reproduce them?

What H/W buffer size are you running at? Can you increase that/max out to reduce CPU load? Can you use freeze/commit to reduce load? Hopefully you do not have a fusion drive in the Mac and are working with sessions on a fast internal SSD drive. If using sample based VIs where are the samples stored what make/model/spec drive.

If you are having AAE CPU related errors may need to do standard troubleshooting to exclude potential problems with plugins, start at "help us help you" up the top of each DUC web page. You might well be running out of memory. What does macOS Activity Monitor show for the memory pressure chart? If it's going out of the green a lot you may have a problem. Ignore other memory metrics.

The hassle of swapping processors in an iMac, even with them being socketed is probably not worth it. Apple is near the end of it's transition to Apple Silicon. And it would not surprise me to see that the next macOS release is the last one to support Intel Macs. If (and we have no idea if that's a correct assumption) your Mac is running out of processor power then I suspect your are likely better off thinking about getting off a dying platform and onto an Apple Silicon powered Mac Studio.

[huzzam]

First, I just want to say you're a prince, Darryl, for (often) taking the time to answer questions in detail & helpfully.


OP, all the advice here is good. Before throwing money at the problem, do the troubleshooting steps Darryl described. That processor (I think it's an i5-9600k) is pretty quick, and you have enough RAM. I'd guess raising your buffer size & freezing/consolidating tracks can get you more use out of your setup. And using a supported OS-PT combo will help as well — either upgrade your PT, or downgrade your OS (Big Sur should be ok for PT 2020).


And if you *do* decide the way forward is by spending money, you'd likely be better off springing for an Apple Silicon Mac, rather than trying to upgrade your (not-officially-upgradable) iMac.

[Darryl Ramm]

^^^ I'd look at upgrading Pro Tools to 2022.10 (and be ready for the next release supposedly coming in a few weeks). Many of us are working OK on 2022.10 on Ventura (with one cursor graphics glitch that hits some users and a workaround if you run into that... findable on DUC.. and you'll likely be exposed to that bug and much more if not on 2022.10) and it's likely that the Pro Tools update coming soon adds official support for Ventura.

[JoeLouis]

Darryl & HUZZAM I really appreciate the time you have taken to help me. Thanks.
When I want to get a new plugin, some requirements are: 64bits (I'm working on 24bits), i7 or i9, VST...
I'm trying to update PT to 2022.10, but Avid won't let me update/upgrade.
The Buffer is 1024 and the Cache is 4GB.
Is it worth the effort to buy an Apple Silicon Mac?
Would the most basic be enough? What would I need to change?
Apple M1 Max with 10-core CPU, 24-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
32GB unified memory 512GB SSD storage
As interface is it OK Focusrite Scarlett 616?
Thanks again for your valuable help.

https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/m...duct-MJMV3LL/A

[Carl Lie]

Joe-

24 bit is the depth of the sampling. It has nothing to do with 64 bit plugins.

Two very separate things.

C

[bradch00]

Originally Posted by JoeLouis

Darryl & HUZZAM I really appreciate the time you have taken to help me. Thanks.
When I want to get a new plugin, some requirements are: 64bits (I'm working on 24bits), i7 or i9, VST...
I'm trying to update PT to 2022.10, but Avid won't let me update/upgrade.
The Buffer is 1024 and the Cache is 4GB.
Is it worth the effort to buy an Apple Silicon Mac?
Would the most basic be enough? What would I need to change?
Apple M1 Max with 10-core CPU, 24-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
32GB unified memory 512GB SSD storage
As interface is it OK Focusrite Scarlett 616?
Thanks again for your valuable help.

I got a a similar model, with the exception of 64GB RAM and 1TB internal drive.
I actually use the internal drive for PT sessions because it's SO fast.

[Ben Jenssen]

Joe, I can recommend the mac in my signature. It works great for the things I use it for; typically Pro Tools sessions with a large number of tracks, channelstrip plugin on every track, maybe 3 heavy reverbs or more, lots of other plugins and FX, and a few Virtual Instrument plugins. No sweat.

I also use it for things like Photoshop and Lightroom, very graphics heavy, and it's faster than any other mac I've used.

I like to have lots of applications and stuff running at the same time, so the 16GB RAM is perhaps its biggest limitation, and since the basic M1 Mini model comes with either 8 or 16, I would have to go for a apple silicon laptop or Studio model to have more than 16. I can run a big PT session and a big Lightroom catalog simultaneously, but it's then pushing the memory a bit.

Remember, for a typical DAW user, the single-core performance is the parameter that generally tells you what kind of cpu power you're getting. The difference between the M1 variations and M2 variations is pretty much the number of cores and how much memory (RAM) it can have, and will not mean so much in DAW usage. (OK, this is very much simplified.) You can see what I mean here: Geekbench. (Check single-core vs multicore.)

I'm just saying; a 2020 M1 Mini is fully capable of running PT sessions within reasonable size and cpu pressure, and can be gotten for maybe less than half the price of its bigger brothers. Just get 16 GB ram and the biggest internal drive you can afford.

The 6i6 interface is fine. I've used it with both intel macs and with this M1 Mini.

[gives]

I agree totally with Darryl here on this HOWEVER.. This processor may be getting out of date.
I would move to an M1 device of some kind. Ex. I have two MB Airs I purchased for my wife for her clinic. One was a 2018 MB Air, which I now use at home. It is so much slower than the first Gen M1 MacBook Air that is really shocking. The 2018 MB Air has the same i5 processor you have I think and even has 16GB of Ram, which is the max I believe. I know many people in my world that have just found a good refurbed Mac on Apple's site for a great price and they seem to have even more of selection now. I pal of mine, who is an editor got a great deal recently even with the entry level Mac Studio at a discount with like a 2TB HD and more memory than the entry unit was. SO, there are options for you. I had a Lt 2013 Mac Pro Trash Can that ran my room for 9 years and now I just replaced it with a Mac Studio Ultra Fully loaded and could not be happier. I had to move because Ventura was not being supported and I new that Native was on the horizon, which is another good reason to get ahead of things.
That's my take and good luck to you! BTW I WOULD HIDE that SN in your thumbnail you posted of your computer.
G

[Darryl Ramm]

Let me dig in and answer the plugin and problems upgrading Pro Tools question, especially as that may be separate than you needing to upgrade and I'll touch on the upgrade question in another post.

Originally Posted by JoeLouis

Darryl & HUZZAM I really appreciate the time you have taken to help me. Thanks.When I want to get a new plugin, some requirements are: 64bits (I'm working on 24bits), i7 or i9, VST...

First the issue here is likely just the "VST" part. Pro Tools only directly support AAX format plugins. If you want to run a VST format plugin you have to either use a DAW that supports that plugin format or use something like Blue Cat Patchwork (https://www.bluecataudio.com/Products/Product_PatchWork) which allows VST (and AU) plugins to run with Pro Tools.

And we nee to be careful when folks say "VST" they actually mean VST (or say VST3) format plugins, since "VST" is also used sometimes as imprecise slang for any plugin even if it might not be VST format.

Now to explain the other non-issues...

The 64-bit requirement of a plugin is referring to you needing to use a DAW with 64-bit memory addressing, and that in turn requires 64-bit memory support in the operating system and computer hardware... all of which you have. Pro Tools has been 64-bit and required/only supported 64-bit plugins since Pro Tools 11. All macOS releases over the last several years have been 64-bit only, meaning they will no longer even run older 32-bit programs.

The 24-bits you are referring to is the 24-bit fixed precision that Pro Tools is using for storing audio in sessions. You might want to think about changing to 32-bit float format to allow more overhead/dynamic range in those audio files. Typically the only downside there is a 33% increase in audio file size (and maybe a chance of confusion if folks think that then gives them carte blanche to go crazy with wrong levels).

Regardless of what precision audio you select for your session files the actual internal math processing of the audio samples in the Pro Tools mixer uses 64-bit floating point precision and Pro Tools AAX plugins internally use 32-bit or 64-bit floating point precision. This is how large/precise the internal numbers representing audio samples are and is separate from the 64-bit memory space. So you might hear things like "Pro Tools 9 LE had a 64-bit floating point mixer" (true) and "Pro Tools 11 was the first version of Pro Tools with 64-bit support" (also true, but talking about totally different 64-bit things). The signal processing within Pro Tools (with the exception of the old TDM/DSP 48-bit fixed precision) has been this 32-bit/64-bit floating point since eternity, so any time you see "64-bit" mentioned nowadays it's typically going to be referring to the totally different 64-bit memory address space unless it's called out specifically as say in 64-bit floating point mixer, or 64-bit DSP processing in HDX.

All AAX plugins have needed to have 64-bit memory addressing since Pro Tools 11. Any AAX plugin you buy today will support 64-bit memory. There was 32-bit memory addressing in AAX plugins which was only used in Pro Tools 10. And AAX plugins could support 32- and 64-bit support in the same plugin packaging/executables which helped in transitioning from Pro Tools 10 to later versions, but vendors have largely given up on 32-bit AAX support so new plugins are likely to be AAX 64-bit only, and when you see that it's always referring to memory address space.

---
A vendor recommendation that you have an i7 or i9 processor is typically fairly meaningless, it might be a useful hint that the application can be CPU hungry, but still somewhat meaningless. These are just marketing names that Intel uses and they have become somewhat useless, especially as Intel tries to change around its' product line and positioning under increasing pressure from AMD. A lot depends on how the processor is used, and how it's packaged (esp. for thermal performance/cooling. A modern i5 processor might be more powerful than some preceding i7 processors, depending on the processor generation there might be a significant or not difference in the practical power available between say the i5 and i7 processors. And amusingly these are all the same silicon, the lower end spec models will have had CPU cores deliberately disabled during manufacturing, maybe taking out cores that failed testing or had poor thermal performance. And again, much of modern computer performance, especially sustained performance in iMac like densely packed computers is limited by CPU cooling and CPU thermal throttling.

An i7 or i9 might very well not deliver the actual increase in performance over an i5 because of this. The awful thermal performance of Intel processors, and how thermals are a real barrier to performance, is one reason Apple moved to Arm based processors in Macs (and Intel's current response to AMD in the high end desktop space is to go all in and ship processors with even more terrible overall thermal performance. Intel has been and still is in serious trouble...). If a plugin or DAW vendor has a specific hard need for a processor family I expect them to spell it out with things like "requires a processor with AVX2 instruction support". Otherwise every time you see some vendor say "i7 or i9" treat it like they are either lost and confused or they are just trying to provide a simplistic hint that their application might have demanding CPU use.

Pro Tools will tell you when it is having CPU problems with an AAE error related to CPU. If you are not getting AAE CPU errors then by definition Pro Tools does not have a serious problem running on your computer. And if it does the first things to look at are systems optimization, and troubleshooting (especially errant/incompatible plugins) and whether you can change workflow to be more efficient, especially using freeze and commit to reduce CPU load. If Pro Tools has other issues like is slow to start up, that's separate things that can be looked at, often not directly CPU performance related. Same with if the overall computer appears slow, try to understand why that is happening, don't' just assume it's CPU, it's often a software problems, or slow disk or a shortage of memory.

I'm trying to update PT to 2022.10, but Avid won't let me update/upgrade.

Upgrading to Pro Tools 2022.10 should be possible if you are on Ventura, even though Ventura is not officially supported with Pro Tools 2020.10. Had you asked ahead of time I would have suggested you do an in situ upgrade, maybe only to Monterey, but it seems that happened, so just try to see if it work OK or not. And it's unlikely stuff here stop an install, it's more about operating stability. As long as you have a current support plan or subscription that gives you rights to upgrade. So is that working or now?

What *exactly* do you mean by "Avid won't let me update/upgrade" what exactly are you doing? what exactly happens/what exactly do you see on the screen? One thing to be careful of with such a large macOS jump and doing an in situ install it's likely a good idea to move all .aaxplugin files out of the plugin folder (/Library/Application Support/Avid/Audio/Plugins) to the Unused folder and just get Pro Tools working first with its core plugins before you inflict your possibly creaky old plugin collection on the new Pro Tools install. Remember your old plugins are left on disk and seen by the new version.

You may have Avid and third party plugins that you *need* to update to work with the latest versions of Pro Tools... there were code signing issues that required Avid and others to release new plugin updates that might have happened since your last plugin updates, but you always should be checking plugin version compatibility info before upgrading.

And if you have Avid Link installed and am hoping that makes things easier, I think it's just better to manage installs and plugins yourself. So uninstall Avid Link, the uninstaller is in /Applications.