Avid Pro Audio Community

Avid Pro Audio Community

How to Join & Post  •  Community Terms of Use  •  Help Us Help You

Knowledge Base Search  •  Community Search  •  Learn & Support


Avid Home Page

Go Back   Avid Pro Audio Community > Pro Tools Software > Tips & Tricks

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
  #1  
Old 04-16-2019, 07:02 AM
digifactory digifactory is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Vienna
Posts: 52
Default Apple iMac Pro 8-core or 10-core for PT 2019?

Hello fellows,

As a musician (keyboarder/composer) I am working on an iMac 27 i7 4.0 ghz (late 2015), armed with PT 2018.12.

In my compositions I make heavy use of U-He Diva, Soundtoys, izotope and Omnisphere and I am facing a lot of CPU-overload errors (not surprisingly). Most of the time i freeze or commit the tracks, although, the fan of my imac is regularly running wild (around 2400 rpm). This is annoying.

My idea is to do a major change soon and switch to an imac pro 10-core with 64 gb ram. Despite the fact that pro tools does not officially support mojave yet, is there anyone using such an imac, atm with another daw and willing to share his experiences? what do you suggest, 10-core or 8-core?

Thanks.

Regards
digifactory
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Old 04-16-2019, 07:07 AM
RobertDorn RobertDorn is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Netherlands
Posts: 405
Default Apple iMac Pro 8-core or 10-core for PT 2019?

Quote:
Originally Posted by digifactory View Post
Hello fellows,



As a musician (keyboarder/composer) I am working on an iMac 27 i7 4.0 ghz (late 2015), armed with PT 2018.12.



In my compositions I make heavy use of U-He Diva, Soundtoys, izotope and Omnisphere and I am facing a lot of CPU-overload errors (not surprisingly). Most of the time i freeze or commit the tracks, although, the fan of my imac is regularly running wild (around 2400 rpm). This is annoying.



My idea is to do a major change soon and switch to an imac pro 10-core with 64 gb ram. Despite the fact that pro tools does not officially support mojave yet, is there anyone using such an imac, atm with another daw and willing to share his experiences? what do you suggest, 10-core or 8-core?



Thanks.



Regards

digifactory


Hi, I have a 10 Core iMac Pro with 128GB ram with Pro Tools 2018.12. Doesn’t give a breeze with protools.

However, when using plugins like LFO tool on your Instrument Tracks, it’s still better to freeze them because protools doesn’t handle some parts of delay compensation of MIDI/VI’s correctly.

Aside from that, iMac Pro is a killer machine.



Verzonden vanaf mijn iPhone met Tapatalk
__________________
Apple MacBook Pro M2 Max, 96GB ram | Pro Tools HDX | Avid MTRX | Pro Tools Ultimate 2023.12 | macOS 13.6.3
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Old 04-16-2019, 07:33 AM
coolbass coolbass is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 145
Default Re: Apple iMac Pro 8-core or 10-core for PT 2019?

Quote:
Originally Posted by digifactory View Post
Hello fellows,

As a musician (keyboarder/composer) I am working on an iMac 27 i7 4.0 ghz (late 2015), armed with PT 2018.12.

In my compositions I make heavy use of U-He Diva, Soundtoys, izotope and Omnisphere and I am facing a lot of CPU-overload errors (not surprisingly). Most of the time i freeze or commit the tracks, although, the fan of my imac is regularly running wild (around 2400 rpm). This is annoying.

My idea is to do a major change soon and switch to an imac pro 10-core with 64 gb ram. Despite the fact that pro tools does not officially support mojave yet, is there anyone using such an imac, atm with another daw and willing to share his experiences? what do you suggest, 10-core or 8-core?

Thanks.

Regards
digifactory
Use Reaper.
Reply With Quote
  #4  
Old 04-16-2019, 07:41 AM
Meads Meads is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Germany
Posts: 2,902
Default Re: Apple iMac Pro 8-core or 10-core for PT 2019?

I went for the 8-core because it has a higher clock frequency, which for they way I use PT is more useful than a higher core count.
My Hackintosh however still smokes this machine, even though it's 2 years old and cost me a quarter of the iMac Pro.
__________________

iMac Pro
- MacOS 10.14.6
---
- Pro Tools U HDN 2019.6
- Avid HD Omni + HD I/O 8x8x8
- C|24 | S3 | Dock
Reply With Quote
  #5  
Old 04-16-2019, 07:50 AM
digifactory digifactory is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Vienna
Posts: 52
Default Re: Apple iMac Pro 8-core or 10-core for PT 2019?

Quote:
Originally Posted by RobertDorn View Post
Hi, I have a 10 Core iMac Pro with 128GB ram with Pro Tools 2018.12. Doesn’t give a breeze with protools.

However, when using plugins like LFO tool on your Instrument Tracks, it’s still better to freeze them because protools doesn’t handle some parts of delay compensation of MIDI/VI’s correctly.

Aside from that, iMac Pro is a killer machine.



Verzonden vanaf mijn iPhone met Tapatalk

Great machine indeed. I thought the imac pro has to run mojave as os? did not know that a "downgrade" is possible.

Regards
Reply With Quote
  #6  
Old 04-16-2019, 07:55 AM
RobertDorn RobertDorn is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Netherlands
Posts: 405
Default Re: Apple iMac Pro 8-core or 10-core for PT 2019?

Quote:
Originally Posted by digifactory View Post
Great machine indeed. I thought the imac pro has to run mojave as os? did not know that a "downgrade" is possible.



Regards


But I bought it december 2017 when high Sierra was the most current OS still.

I don’t have experience with running pro tools 2018.12 on Mojave on my iMac Pro. But a Mojave compatible release should be out within some weeks from now.
I do run 2018.12 on my MacBook Pro 2018 i9 which is running okay apart from some GUI glitches. But I don’t use it heavily like on my iMac Pro so can’t tell how it performs with big sessions under Mojave. Definitely the lower than 256 sample buffer is still an issue on Mojave, like with 10.13.6 till pro tools 2018.12 fixed it.


Verzonden vanaf mijn iPhone met Tapatalk
__________________
Apple MacBook Pro M2 Max, 96GB ram | Pro Tools HDX | Avid MTRX | Pro Tools Ultimate 2023.12 | macOS 13.6.3
Reply With Quote
  #7  
Old 04-16-2019, 08:05 AM
digifactory digifactory is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Vienna
Posts: 52
Default Re: Apple iMac Pro 8-core or 10-core for PT 2019?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Meads View Post
I went for the 8-core because it has a higher clock frequency, which for they way I use PT is more useful than a higher core count.
My Hackintosh however still smokes this machine, even though it's 2 years old and cost me a quarter of the iMac Pro.
Correct, the 8-core has a base clock of 3.2 ghz with turbo boost up to 4.2 ghz, whereas the 10-core has 3.0 ghz and turbo boost up to 4.5 ghz BUT pro tools benefits from every core, and so plugins, especially diva with multi-threading option.

To my understanding this will have the effect that 10 cores, although at a lower base clock but with higher turbo boost, will speed up realtime processing and "relax" the overall cpu-load because of a higher count of cores?

Is there a big misunderstanding on my side?

Thanks

Regards
Reply With Quote
  #8  
Old 04-16-2019, 08:20 AM
Meads Meads is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Germany
Posts: 2,902
Default Re: Apple iMac Pro 8-core or 10-core for PT 2019?

Quote:
Originally Posted by digifactory View Post
Correct, the 8-core has a base clock of 3.2 ghz with turbo boost up to 4.2 ghz, whereas the 10-core has 3.0 ghz and turbo boost up to 4.5 ghz BUT pro tools benefits from every core, and so plugins, especially diva with multi-threading option.

To my understanding this will have the effect that 10 cores, although at a lower base clock but with higher turbo boost, will speed up realtime processing and "relax" the overall cpu-load because of a higher count of cores?

Is there a big misunderstanding on my side?

Thanks

Regards
Depends on your sessions. If you have longer bus chains load isn't distributed among several cores, because it's not possible. Each link of the chain has to be processed before audio can get passed further down, so not much can be parallelized, at least for me. If you work with lots of VIs and other stuff a higher core count is beneficial.
For me even with 8 cores I see a lot of boredom in the CPU meter across cores and not a great amount of distribution. One core does most of the work.
It's very different from working with video for example, where every core is maxed out when rendering.
The $ I saved not getting the 10-core I invested in the Vega 64 and more RAM, since you're stuck with whatever you're choosing forever. And I figured I rather have headroom in that regard, than two more cores that chill on the couch most of the time.
__________________

iMac Pro
- MacOS 10.14.6
---
- Pro Tools U HDN 2019.6
- Avid HD Omni + HD I/O 8x8x8
- C|24 | S3 | Dock
Reply With Quote
  #9  
Old 04-16-2019, 01:11 PM
digifactory digifactory is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Vienna
Posts: 52
Default Re: Apple iMac Pro 8-core or 10-core for PT 2019?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Meads View Post
Depends on your sessions. If you have longer bus chains load isn't distributed among several cores, because it's not possible. Each link of the chain has to be processed before audio can get passed further down, so not much can be parallelized, at least for me. If you work with lots of VIs and other stuff a higher core count is beneficial.
For me even with 8 cores I see a lot of boredom in the CPU meter across cores and not a great amount of distribution. One core does most of the work.
It's very different from working with video for example, where every core is maxed out when rendering.
The $ I saved not getting the 10-core I invested in the Vega 64 and more RAM, since you're stuck with whatever you're choosing forever. And I figured I rather have headroom in that regard, than two more cores that chill on the couch most of the time.
I did a quick test with my i7 late 2015 imac and opened a blank 24bit/44.1khz session with dozen tracks of u-he diva loaded. The system usage shows that all 8 available units of my quad-core i7 have been used equally until reaching the total red zone. No core was in chill mode :)

So, having a 10-core (20 available units for math tasks) make sense in such a scenario or is the xeon-architecture something different with respect to pro tools?
All in all, you are true, if your session does not need many cores, more ram and a better gpu make more sense than a 10-core.

Regards
Reply With Quote
  #10  
Old 04-25-2019, 11:29 PM
Becharax's Avatar
Becharax Becharax is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Lebanon
Posts: 2,349
Default Re: Apple iMac Pro 8-core or 10-core for PT 2019?

Hello,

I am currently using the iMac Pro 8 core with Pro Tools 2018.12 and SUPER heavy on plugins you can check my list here:

https://equipboard.com/becharasaliba


Honestly, I was a fan of always updating the OS to the latest one and running into bugs back since 2001 ....

It's the first time I am running a super stable System knock on wood but thin is I am running High Sierra 10.13.6 and I will never ever update ?

Think again ... why would you wanna update to Mojave ?

Quote:
Originally Posted by digifactory View Post
Hello fellows,

As a musician (keyboarder/composer) I am working on an iMac 27 i7 4.0 ghz (late 2015), armed with PT 2018.12.

In my compositions I make heavy use of U-He Diva, Soundtoys, izotope and Omnisphere and I am facing a lot of CPU-overload errors (not surprisingly). Most of the time i freeze or commit the tracks, although, the fan of my imac is regularly running wild (around 2400 rpm). This is annoying.

My idea is to do a major change soon and switch to an imac pro 10-core with 64 gb ram. Despite the fact that pro tools does not officially support mojave yet, is there anyone using such an imac, atm with another daw and willing to share his experiences? what do you suggest, 10-core or 8-core?

Thanks.

Regards
digifactory
__________________
System Details:
iMac Pro 2017 8 Core Intel Xeon 3.2 Ghz
Macbook M2 Pro
macOS 14.3
Pro Tools 2024.3
Logic Pro X
Reason 12

UA Apollo 8p
Apogee Thunderbridge/Apogee Symphony I/O 2x6
Eleven Rack/Focusrite ISA Two/Onyx 1640i
UAD Satellite Quad
MOOG Mother 32
Nektar Panorama P1
Axiom AIR 49/Axiom 49/Yamaha P35
Fender Mustang/Marshall Amp/Ibanez Pedals/Fender Strat/Yamaha FG820L/Martin DJr10e
Genelec 8040b/Yamaha HS80s/M-Audio BX5a
Beats Solo/Shure SRH1840/Slate VMS

https://open.spotify.com/artist/7KfV..._branch=1&nd=1
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Questions about deciding between 3.0ghz 10-core and 2.ghz 14-core iMac Pro Esteban De La Noche Pro Tools 2018 6 09-03-2018 04:06 PM
Macbook Air 2014 (1.4ghz Dual-core Intel core i5 Vs. Mid 2010 MBP i7 Quad-Core and PT TheGoodhusbands Virtual Instruments 2 09-11-2015 10:49 AM
Apple Mac Mini Core i7 2GHz QUAD CORE - 4GB RAM - 2 x 500GB gsilbers Buy & Sell 3 05-18-2013 05:17 PM
Apple Imac Intel Core i3 TheBinnaries Pro Tools M-Powered (Mac) 2 11-30-2010 05:37 AM
iMac Core Duo or Quad Core? mixaudio 003, Mbox 2, Digi 002, original Mbox, Digi 001 (Mac) 13 11-12-2009 10:02 AM


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 11:57 PM.


Powered by: vBulletin, Copyright ©2000 - 2008, Jelsoft Enterprises Limited. Forum Hosted By: URLJet.com