Just got my new Mac Pro 2019, 16 Core Review: worth upgrading?

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Lockemusic

Darryl Ramm:

Yes the "Restore tracks" is once Im in Pro Tools and click "Open Project".

I've asked here and never really got a concrete answer on what's going on when PT is restoring tracks. To me the time it takes doesn't make sense as I've had sessions that are 4 tracks of piano rendered from a sample vi with 3 plugins on my 2-bus take like 4 times or more as long as a session with 50+ tracks of audio. Note that in all cases I'm talking about all audio. This is irrespective of PT version. All sessions on an internal drive separate from my sample and system drives.

[Lockemusic]

Marsday thanks for the links and all the information appreciate it very much! I actually bought my RAM from Scan on Monday and it arrived yesterday, great service.

Im assuming with the Aqua Computer I won't get those 8000Mb/s speeds, though it looks awesome and great value! Debating whether to fork out about £400 on the Sonnet from your link right now, plus 2 x 1TB Samsung EVos comes to about £1K but its def something Im considering. BTW Apple just released their 2 TB upgrade kit for £1K (granted you won't get the Sonnet speeds):

https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/produc...D3783%252B464d

musicman691: The restoring tracks is the slowest part of my setup. Its the bane of my life (1st world problems lol) .

PT loading screen can be fixed by moving unused plugins to the unused plugin folder (Ive got mine down to 11 seconds ). From the feedback on here, once you are in PT and click open your project, the "restoring tracks" should improve with a faster internal SSD and you can use something like Black Magic Test to test your disk performance.

[Lockemusic]

installed and ran Black Magic Test:

Internal Mac Pro 2019 1TB Apple HD Read/ Write Speeds around 2959 MB/S

External Samsung SSDs Read/ Write Speeds around 401 MB/S

On my last MacBook Pro 2018 i9 6 core, I had all samples libraries and sessions on the 2TB internal SSD. It was quite sluggish also when restoring tracks, not a night and day difference from the new Mac Pro IMO.

[Marsdy]

Originally Posted by Lockemusic

installed and ran Black Magic Test:

Internal Mac Pro 2019 1TB Apple HD Read/ Write Speeds around 2959 MB/S

External Samsung SSDs Read/ Write Speeds around 401 MB/S

On my last MacBook Pro 2018 i9 6 core, I had all samples libraries and sessions on the 2TB internal SSD. It was quite sluggish also when restoring tracks, not a night and day difference from the new Mac Pro IMO.

If you’re loading samples off the external SSD it won’t be any faster on a 2019 Mac Pro.

The Aqua computer card will give read speeds of over 3000MB/s with a Samsung Evo 970 m.2. It’s exactly the same as you get from a single drive on the Sonnet card. Two drives in a RAID 0 configuration on the Sonnet would give Over 4000MB/s. If I had two m.2 drives I probably wouldn’t RAID them because you would get two times 3000MB/s. The catch is, you need to make sure you spread the load of your sample libraries evenly across the two drives and that can get complicated very quickly.

One thing to be aware of is the Sonnet card will only take single sided m.2 drives without tricky modification although I’m not sure about the new fanless version. Fortunately current Samsung m.2 sticks are single sided. Most other manufacturers are double sided.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by musicman691

I've asked here and never really got a concrete answer on what's going on when PT is restoring tracks. To me the time it takes doesn't make sense as I've had sessions that are 4 tracks of piano rendered from a sample vi with 3 plugins on my 2-bus take like 4 times or more as long as a session with 50+ tracks of audio. Note that in all cases I'm talking about all audio. This is irrespective of PT version. All sessions on an internal drive separate from my sample and system drives.

It can be a mystery, I have seen small sessions take forever, consolidating, reimporting to a new session fixed it. In cases like the OP has with apparently very large sessions the obvious thing is to look at where all that size is and try to reduce it.

[metalmixer]

an $8000.00 upgrade or freeze my tracks gee let me think .....

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by metalmixer

an $8000.00 upgrade or freeze my tracks gee let me think .....

Hmmh, it is not so straight forward.

Think of content creators who need to have dozens of tracks open for their workflow. They need tons of RAM to make it happen. Even if the CPU power of 2013 Power Mac was enough, those boxes have absolute limit of 128GB memory which is going to be eaten for breakfast. Let alone when they are traveling with 16/32GB laptops, there are not so many tracks open which limits creativity.

Sure the 2019 Mac Pro are pricey but if you do that for living you also can write it off as expense. It all comes down to what you need, not what you want.

[Lockemusic]

Hi guys, just a quick update I didn’t get around to buying dedicated M.2 drives yet however I have noted that when I hold down shift when loading up a pro tools session it bypasses/ inactivates all the plugins and the session loads up lightning fast! Can anyone shed some light on this as it makes me think that investing in the faster Ssds won’t solve the session loading times. All my plugins and vi instruments are installed on the Mac hard drive. Thanks!