New "Mac Studio" from Apple

[melodydetective]

OffTheWall covered it. No PCIe slots isn’t the tragedy it might be. Though there are a few issues there:

if you want to use a very fast SSD, i.e. a 7000 MB/second PCIe 4.0 SSD, that would saturate a Thunderbolt 4 bus entirely. Considering the balancing act in composing between streaming buffer sizes and RAM, one wants the absolute fastest SSD one can get. And since PCIe 5.0 exists and 6.0 has already been announced, it’s a shame that we are limited by TB4 in this respect; and no TB bus is as fast as 4 lanes of PCIe is currently. And we may not get that in the Mac Pro that comes out - we may have to deal with that another way.

I haven’t seen how the SoC talks to the outside world off the chip, but I don’t know if there are PCIe options or if it’s just going to be drivers that do it over TB4. And that rules out GPU’s, and expansion chassis for full-speed use of the fastest nvme drives. Do I absolutely need that kind of performance? Maybe not right now, and an HDX card or two will be just fine; but as long as we do traditional sample libraries, the only way to get them better is to have lots more samples in them. (I’m preferring modeling instruments these days, which have their own requirements.) So fast access to lots of streamed samples at sufficient bandwidth so that 128 GB RAM isn’t an issue (because we don’t yet know how that will play out over multiple CPU’s as in Ultra) seems like something we would want.

Not everyone would want to pay for it; but consider that when we buy an Ultra (or any M1) we are getting DDR5-6400 RAM, which you might not ordinarily buy.

Also it’s important to consider that the M1 Ultra has a clock speed of 3.2 GHz - not insane by today’s standards. I haven’t yet tested what kind of performance one can expect from using hungry physical-modeling instruments on the only M1 I have access to, my daughter’s iMac - but I see that latency is generally pretty low, and it doesn’t seem to care what else is going on - you can always run at a small buffer size, like 64 or 128. But that’s not science - I haven’t tried to stress it. More tests in that arena are needed.

Bottom line is that there are unknowns here as you rightly point out - but it’s not going to be a blogger that resolves this, or any conjecture, but broad usage and real-world applications.

Originally Posted by JBlongz

M1 and PC user here. A few concerns.

1) Likely no external PCIe connections, especially since they didn't announce it. Sorry HDX guys

2) Thermal envelope is unknown until tested by some blogger or vlogger. In other words, if the machine can't move heat as good as a larger, spacious machine, the many cores and clock speed won't perform near theoretical.

3) Logic will get the best performance of course because its all native with ATMOS baked in now.

I'm definitely going to sit this one out while paying close attention. The is Max or Ultra, its still M1. If you have a good enough system already, wait until M2 and full migration from Intel. Developers are still trying to catch up. Don't settle for Rosetta on these newer, expensive machines. Just my thoughts.

[JoeTools1963]

Originally Posted by melodydetective

OffTheWall covered it. No PCIe slots isn’t the tragedy it might be. Though there are a few issues there:

if you want to use a very fast SSD, i.e. a 7000 MB/second PCIe 4.0 SSD, that would saturate a Thunderbolt 4 bus entirely. Considering the balancing act in composing between streaming buffer sizes and RAM, one wants the absolute fastest SSD one can get. And since PCIe 5.0 exists and 6.0 has already been announced, it’s a shame that we are limited by TB4 in this respect; and no TB bus is as fast as 4 lanes of PCIe is currently. And we may not get that in the Mac Pro that comes out - we may have to deal with that another way.

I haven’t seen how the SoC talks to the outside world off the chip, but I don’t know if there are PCIe options or if it’s just going to be drivers that do it over TB4. And that rules out GPU’s, and expansion chassis for full-speed use of the fastest nvme drives. Do I absolutely need that kind of performance? Maybe not right now, and an HDX card or two will be just fine; but as long as we do traditional sample libraries, the only way to get them better is to have lots more samples in them. (I’m preferring modeling instruments these days, which have their own requirements.) So fast access to lots of streamed samples at sufficient bandwidth so that 128 GB RAM isn’t an issue (because we don’t yet know how that will play out over multiple CPU’s as in Ultra) seems like something we would want.

Not everyone would want to pay for it; but consider that when we buy an Ultra (or any M1) we are getting DDR5-6400 RAM, which you might not ordinarily buy.

Also it’s important to consider that the M1 Ultra has a clock speed of 3.2 GHz - not insane by today’s standards. I haven’t yet tested what kind of performance one can expect from using hungry physical-modeling instruments on the only M1 I have access to, my daughter’s iMac - but I see that latency is generally pretty low, and it doesn’t seem to care what else is going on - you can always run at a small buffer size, like 64 or 128. But that’s not science - I haven’t tried to stress it. More tests in that arena are needed.

Bottom line is that there are unknowns here as you rightly point out - but it’s not going to be a blogger that resolves this, or any conjecture, but broad usage and real-world applications.

My question, is this. Regarding the M1, are we waiting for developers PT etc to recode and negate the need for Rosetta as an intermediary?


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[Sardi]

Originally Posted by JoeTools1963

My question, is this. Regarding the M1, are we waiting for developers PT etc to recode and negate the need for Rosetta as an intermediary?


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Considering there is no native Apple Silicon version of Pro Tools, then yes… we are definitely waiting.

Is it hindering peoples ability to use PT? For the post part, no.


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[JoeTools1963]

Very true.


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[off the wall]

Originally Posted by melodydetective

OffTheWall covered it. No PCIe slots isn’t the tragedy it might be. Though there are a few issues there:

if you want to use a very fast SSD, i.e. a 7000 MB/second PCIe 4.0 SSD, that would saturate a Thunderbolt 4 bus entirely. Considering the balancing act in composing between streaming buffer sizes and RAM, one wants the absolute fastest SSD one can get. And since PCIe 5.0 exists and 6.0 has already been announced, it’s a shame that we are limited by TB4 in this respect; and no TB bus is as fast as 4 lanes of PCIe is currently. And we may not get that in the Mac Pro that comes out - we may have to deal with that another way.

I haven’t seen how the SoC talks to the outside world off the chip, but I don’t know if there are PCIe options or if it’s just going to be drivers that do it over TB4. And that rules out GPU’s, and expansion chassis for full-speed use of the fastest nvme drives. Do I absolutely need that kind of performance? Maybe not right now, and an HDX card or two will be just fine; but as long as we do traditional sample libraries, the only way to get them better is to have lots more samples in them. (I’m preferring modeling instruments these days, which have their own requirements.) So fast access to lots of streamed samples at sufficient bandwidth so that 128 GB RAM isn’t an issue (because we don’t yet know how that will play out over multiple CPU’s as in Ultra) seems like something we would want.

Not everyone would want to pay for it; but consider that when we buy an Ultra (or any M1) we are getting DDR5-6400 RAM, which you might not ordinarily buy.

Also it’s important to consider that the M1 Ultra has a clock speed of 3.2 GHz - not insane by today’s standards. I haven’t yet tested what kind of performance one can expect from using hungry physical-modeling instruments on the only M1 I have access to, my daughter’s iMac - but I see that latency is generally pretty low, and it doesn’t seem to care what else is going on - you can always run at a small buffer size, like 64 or 128. But that’s not science - I haven’t tried to stress it. More tests in that arena are needed.

Bottom line is that there are unknowns here as you rightly point out - but it’s not going to be a blogger that resolves this, or any conjecture, but broad usage and real-world applications.

Your high performance SSD/PCIe comments are one reason why I believe Apple will still come out with an ARM Mac Pro with PCIe. That small percentage of users who need that kind of performance will pay the high price of such a machine. Most general users (including PT HDX users) will be able to more than get by with a Mac Studio/Thunderbolt 3/4 PCI chassis for far far less money.

[kings79]

Originally Posted by off the wall

1) Thunderbolt PCIe chassises are a proven technology. The Sonnets are approved and proven to work with three HDX cards.

2) The M1 ARM architecture is a different ballgame re thermals. The MBP M1|Max laptops are already proven to NOT throttle with heat or battery level. The Studio will only be better.

3) Pro Tools in Rosetta is already running better on M1|Max chips than on everything but the fastest 28 core xenon chips.

The upcoming M2 is actually rumored to be a lower end, lower power chip to replace the standard M1.

https://www.macrumors.com/guide/m2/

The M1|Pro, M1|Max, M1|ultra and their incremental iterations will be Apple’s power chips for the next year at least.

Again I'ma agree 100% here.

[kings79]

So I've started a new thread discussing "what bits we need" for this new Apple Studio/Mac Mini setup with Tools.

I would love it if you all got involved with what you plan to do or if you have any ideas on what we've posted.

Check it out here: https://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=419238

[Rectifried]

Maybe this is been answered but you could get a longer thunderbolt 4 cable it just needs to be “active”… A 6 foot one is $70

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by JoeTools1963

My question, is this. Regarding the M1, are we waiting for developers PT etc to recode and negate the need for Rosetta as an intermediary?


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Not exactly waiting, since Rosetta performs quite well, but everyone would feel better with a completely native configuration.

I think this machine (the Ultra in particular) will be fast enough that I won't care so much about specs, at least initially, so my concern is about plugins that will not operate at all. Whether it's Monterey or the CPU which prevents this is irrelevant since both must work in tandem. From what I gather, there are only a few plugins that are in this category. So what I'm waiting for is an entire plugin folder that opens safely. If they open natively, that's just added gravy.

[hugoleitao]

Originally Posted by kings79

for PCIe is the Magma Express Box 3T 3 Slot or Sonnet Echo III 3-Slot the only option for more than 1 slot?

Also have this same doubt. Not sure if I put the HDX and BM intensity pro together in a sonnet echo III or buy 2 separate avid boxes and get them both each one with one port, any clues?