New "Mac Studio" from Apple

[TimNielsen]

I just got my Ultra on Friday, 128 gigs of ram, 2TB storage and 48 graphics cores. I'll share my initial thoughts.

Firstly the machine is a beast, very fast, boots in 5 seconds, the internal SSD reads and writes at a staggering 6gb/sec, it's dead silent (have not yet the fan once, can't hear it even right next to it).

But here's the thing. IF the ProTools CPU meters are to be believed (and I know there is reason to think maybe they are not). But if they ARE, then my decade old Mac Pro 5.1 outperforms the Mac Studio. Running the Netflix demo session, about 250 voices with tons of plugins, the CPU usage on the Studio is noticeably MORE percentage-wise the the 5.1. I even get a full red 100% CPU usage indicator on the Studio that I never got on the 5.1.

That SAID, ProTools never actually errored, even with 'ignore cpu errors' unchecked. So I'm not sure what is going on. The machine played back flawlessly, I could move around the video and resize it, all meters were liquid smooth, no stuttering, playback was instant etc. So it SEEMS like it works great. BUT I think it's also clear that Rosetta is an issue, that we really need native support.

Also still plugins that won't work, names Exponential Audio's R4, Stratus and Symphony. But most plugins appear to be working OK.

I got this knowing that PT wouldn't be amazing out of the gate, and I do think it'll be fast enough for anything I'm currently doing on it, but only time will tell as I really get into it. The thing wasn't cheap, but I went with the Ultra assuming and hoping it'll last me for years. The M1 Mini is just not powerful enough for Pro work. It can't even handle the Netflix demo session in tests that I've seen, it just crashes and errors out.

I don't expect we'll see native ProTOols support for ARM for years sadly. Between Avid's massive ineptitude in general and the terrible situation in Ukraine, I just don't see it happening anytime soon. But in everything else I'm doing, this machine is such a nice improvement over the 5.1 Just 'snappy' in everything really. Overkill maybe, but still a fun machine!

I hope to have some more thoughts as I start to 'use' it. This weekend is really just about getting it set up, installing the hundreds of plugins and software and slowly getting it all ready to swap out the space heater. I mean cheese grater.

[kings79]

Originally Posted by TimNielsen

I just got my Ultra on Friday, 128 gigs of ram, 2TB storage and 48 graphics cores. I'll share my initial thoughts.

Firstly the machine is a beast, very fast, boots in 5 seconds, the internal SSD reads and writes at a staggering 6gb/sec, it's dead silent (have not yet the fan once, can't hear it even right next to it).

But here's the thing. IF the ProTools CPU meters are to be believed (and I know there is reason to think maybe they are not). But if they ARE, then my decade old Mac Pro 5.1 outperforms the Mac Studio. Running the Netflix demo session, about 250 voices with tons of plugins, the CPU usage on the Studio is noticeably MORE percentage-wise the the 5.1. I even get a full red 100% CPU usage indicator on the Studio that I never got on the 5.1.

That SAID, ProTools never actually errored, even with 'ignore cpu errors' unchecked. So I'm not sure what is going on. The machine played back flawlessly, I could move around the video and resize it, all meters were liquid smooth, no stuttering, playback was instant etc. So it SEEMS like it works great. BUT I think it's also clear that Rosetta is an issue, that we really need native support.

Also still plugins that won't work, names Exponential Audio's R4, Stratus and Symphony. But most plugins appear to be working OK.

I got this knowing that PT wouldn't be amazing out of the gate, and I do think it'll be fast enough for anything I'm currently doing on it, but only time will tell as I really get into it. The thing wasn't cheap, but I went with the Ultra assuming and hoping it'll last me for years. The M1 Mini is just not powerful enough for Pro work. It can't even handle the Netflix demo session in tests that I've seen, it just crashes and errors out.

I don't expect we'll see native ProTOols support for ARM for years sadly. Between Avid's massive ineptitude in general and the terrible situation in Ukraine, I just don't see it happening anytime soon. But in everything else I'm doing, this machine is such a nice improvement over the 5.1 Just 'snappy' in everything really. Overkill maybe, but still a fun machine!

I hope to have some more thoughts as I start to 'use' it. This weekend is really just about getting it set up, installing the hundreds of plugins and software and slowly getting it all ready to swap out the space heater. I mean cheese grater.

That's great news man. Ignore that usage window. We all know it's garbage.

From what I've seen and heard the Ultra isn't really all that better than the Max. And I would imagine this is even more so for the average PT sesh.

I really don't think PT Native is years away. That would not be a thing the board at Avid would want for sales. Think of it like a Business man.

Stoked you're happy with the machine and it's working great for you. It's awesome when you outlay heaps of cash on a piece of kit and it just works out of the gate. Even more so when you know it's going to get even better.

[caseystone]

Originally Posted by TimNielsen

Running the Netflix demo session, about 250 voices with tons of plugins, the CPU usage on the Studio is noticeably MORE percentage-wise the the 5.1. I even get a full red 100% CPU usage indicator on the Studio that I never got on the 5.1.

Hi Tim! Thanks for the report. I was a little late ordering my Mac Studio (Ultra) so it will be a month or two. Can you confirm what buffer size you were running in the Netflix demo test? If it was less than 1024, would you mind testing it with that buffer size and letting us know how the CPU looks in Pro Tools and also in Activity Monitor?


(edit) Oh, and does it make much difference if you turn off the video track? I run video from a separate machine.

[JoeTools1963]

Just a quick observation regarding the CPU usage window. On my M1 Mac Mini, I can confirm that if it goes red, the computer will give errors and or lock up. So, with regards to the M1 Mini it seems accurate enough. Beyond that, I have no first hand experience.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[audiolex1]

Originally Posted by TimNielsen

I just got my Ultra on Friday, 128 gigs of ram, 2TB storage and 48 graphics cores. I'll share my initial thoughts.

Firstly the machine is a beast, very fast, boots in 5 seconds, the internal SSD reads and writes at a staggering 6gb/sec, it's dead silent (have not yet the fan once, can't hear it even right next to it).

But here's the thing. IF the ProTools CPU meters are to be believed (and I know there is reason to think maybe they are not). But if they ARE, then my decade old Mac Pro 5.1 outperforms the Mac Studio. Running the Netflix demo session, about 250 voices with tons of plugins, the CPU usage on the Studio is noticeably MORE percentage-wise the the 5.1. I even get a full red 100% CPU usage indicator on the Studio that I never got on the 5.1.

That SAID, ProTools never actually errored, even with 'ignore cpu errors' unchecked. So I'm not sure what is going on. The machine played back flawlessly, I could move around the video and resize it, all meters were liquid smooth, no stuttering, playback was instant etc. So it SEEMS like it works great. BUT I think it's also clear that Rosetta is an issue, that we really need native support.

Also still plugins that won't work, names Exponential Audio's R4, Stratus and Symphony. But most plugins appear to be working OK.

I got this knowing that PT wouldn't be amazing out of the gate, and I do think it'll be fast enough for anything I'm currently doing on it, but only time will tell as I really get into it. The thing wasn't cheap, but I went with the Ultra assuming and hoping it'll last me for years. The M1 Mini is just not powerful enough for Pro work. It can't even handle the Netflix demo session in tests that I've seen, it just crashes and errors out.

I don't expect we'll see native ProTOols support for ARM for years sadly. Between Avid's massive ineptitude in general and the terrible situation in Ukraine, I just don't see it happening anytime soon. But in everything else I'm doing, this machine is such a nice improvement over the 5.1 Just 'snappy' in everything really. Overkill maybe, but still a fun machine!

I hope to have some more thoughts as I start to 'use' it. This weekend is really just about getting it set up, installing the hundreds of plugins and software and slowly getting it all ready to swap out the space heater. I mean cheese grater.

I think the issue with the errors are to do with the cores but if you are getting around it that is good news.

I think you are right. Native support for PT is easily 18-24 months out now since Ukraine.
It will be 6 months or more to get their programmers to a more permanent place that is safe and getting everyone feeling up to the task I don't think is something like, "we are moving offices" kind of thing that takes the teams down for a week.

Keep us up to date in terms of new discoveries good or bad.

Thanks

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by TimNielsen

IF the ProTools CPU meters are to be believed...

That's likely the weak element in assessing performance. I'd had the impression from your other post that the machine was choking, but by the way you describe session peppiness here it seems safe to say that the CPU meters can be ignored and that the Studio is breezing through session demands.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Eric Lambert

That's likely the weak element in assessing performance. I'd had the impression from your other post that the machine was choking, but by the way you describe session peppiness here it seems safe to say that the CPU meters can be ignored and that the Studio is breezing through session demands.

Yep. CPU meters are fairly useless to start with, and with Rosetta 2 magic going on it will not surprise me they mean even less than usual. (I've not looked at that, and just don't' want to waste time with Pro Tools CPU meters).

[TimNielsen]

I was running the session at 1024 buffer which is what all the other people running it that I saw were using. Just for fun I just set my buffer to some different speeds, and here's what I can report:

And this is pretty insane. So I'm using the Netflix Sol Levante Find Mix Session, that is available on their open content. The session is quite thick.

But... I can run this session at ALL buffer sizes.

At 1024, 512, 256 and 128 I get no red CPU errors at all. (meaning in system usage window, the 'total' CPU never hits 100% and lights up red.

In 64 and 32, I start to see the CPU usage going up and I start to get a few places where total cpu does go to 100% and hit red. But playback does not stop, I get no error. I have 'ignore cpu errors' off, so this SHOULD, if accurate, trigger an error. I get none. Even at buffer 32 this session plays back 100% smoothly, all counters, meters, video never stutter or lag or freeze once. Just to check, while playing at 32 I can resize the video while playing and it's like GLASS. Entirely smooth....

It's pretty astonishing. So I think it's clear there is a lot more going on than just the CPU meter, which clearly is off, or not really reflective of the power of this machine.

Here, actually just for fun, I just screen recorded it while playing back the entire thing at 32 buffer. And moved the screen around, did anything I could to get it to hiccup and could not. You'll see the first time I hit play, it was still buffering, so was a bit stutter. So I just stopped, started again. Also at the end, when it appears to beachball, it's me turning on 'fat meters' for fun. But playback kept going and sound was never interrupted even while that was going on. And then the second beachball is me turning off fat meters.

And don't forget that WHILE this was playing back, I was screen recording my 5120x1440 widescreen monitor as well. And I can say, my monitor is actually running at 120hz so this video doesn't begin to show how entirely and utterly smooth all this was. When zooming that video around it's like butter! Again any jitter you see at all is just from the frame rate of my screen capture software.

You can see my CPU cores up in the menu bar, I'm using iState Menus to show the cores, so they WERE working quite hard, but you can see there was still even some room, none of them were maxing out. The bit of lag scrolling horizontally in the mix window is just ProTools, it's always done that.

Anyway, fun stuff. Hope this is useful.

https://timnielsen.filemail.com/d/ykntabuufalxmek

[TimNielsen]

So the more I play with this machine the more blown away I am. If anyone has some other tests or something let me know. Again I'm only just getting started with it.

And everything on this machine is just snappy as hell. Boots nearly instantly, Soundminer searches, even in a database of 1 million records, are instantaneous. Video exports that took minutes on the old machine seem to take seconds on this.

I'm still in the process of building it out with all the stuff I need so I can make the final swap out for the cheese grater, but PT is now totally up and running.

But this is kinda fun!

[kings79]

That's impressive!

Do you have any plugs that use machine learning like iZotope's 'Dialogue Isolate'? If so see how long it takes to clean 20min of dialogue. If not Isolate, use de-crackle on 20min of dialogue

Also you could try bouncing out that Netflix mix and all the stems. How long does it take?

Would love you to share what bits and bobs you try and settle with/what works and what doesnt on this thread dedicated to what we need for PT with the Mac Studio https://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=419238

Stoked it's what you hoped for. I can't wait to get mine even more now!