Originally Posted by kings79 (Post 2629825)

Ok so naturally I'll start. I've ordered the Studio with the M1 Max 10 Core, 64BG RAM, 1TB SSD.

As you can see from my signature I'm moving from a 5,1 with a maxed out PCIe machine. For work, I mix TV for all the streamers, networks here in Australia and also ESPN on ABC America. I also have a full music studio with drum machines & racks of hardware normaled through multiple patchbays to a Midas F32. Tracking and Mixing in Tools obvs

I need for Mixing TV;

1. PCIe Enclosure for Video Hardware and M.2/NVME drive/s - Thinking the Sonnet Echo IIId or the Magma ExpressBox 3T-V3
2. Enclosure for my 3.5" & 2.5" HDD's - Thinking the OWC Thunderbay 4
3. 2x TB3 to HDMI adapters (I run 3 monitor plus the Video hardware monitor)
4. Pretty sure I DON'T need a dock as the Apple Studio has plenty of options.

I need for music multi tracking:

1. 32 I & O. Thinking the Presonus Quantum 4848
2. More DB25 to TRS - Thinking - Planet Waves Modular Snake TRS Breakout
3. Apple's new 3m TB3 cable or the Corning cables (optical cables)
4. Another Patchbay - Which I've bought already.
5. 2 more 16 by 16 looms - Which I've bought already

This music stuff can wait. I need the mixing stuff first.

So what do you all think? Discuss.

Originally Posted by audiolex1 (Post 2629839)

Personally, I am going to wait it out for the Mac Pro. I think in a mobile situation 10 core kills.

But, my feeling with the thought of future and Silicon Native, 10 core is going to be the bare minimum.



I don't want to get stuck in the "damn, its too slow for what I want to do". I don't know how plugins might change or benefit with more power. Honestly, I am hoping they all start adapting over sampling by 4x at least.

And if the power the there hopefully an over sampling switch or preference.



Before going Magma, check this out:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...underbolt.html



Ironically I have the same one, but with a PCIe card for my 5,1. Just worked.



It is the same box. Like Costco here in the US, you can buy 1.5 liters of Grey goose Vodka for 50 bucks, or Kirkland Vodka for 17.99. Which is just Grey Goose in a different bottle.



You mentioned HDX. Another reason to think more cores. I think at the 20 core point you could run at the lowest latency without issue. Of course that is just suspect.



Honestly, I'm looking more and more into Dante. The amount of products that work with Dante is endless. And routing is amazing and you are getting the lowest latency period.



AVID had a Dante box for 16k. The only one that is over 10k from the rest of the pact.



AS far as Displays, I don't know what you have. I run 3 monitors myself. Going start using Duet for a 4th mini monitor.

There are TB hubs with dual display ports. Maybe consider DP to HDMI rather than burn up 2 TB ports?



Music side.

I think this might come with a Dante integration. Again, there are so many options.



Apples 3M TB cable which is just about 10 feet. For me, it would barely make it. I have an Apollo still on FW, so I'd have to go corning. Except they don't make shorter then like 30 feet.

And it 500 dollars.



Also, look into Behringer. I know, but they have Dante as well. I don't think Presonus does though.



AS far as docks go. I don't know your studio, but I have lots of drives and need to plug them in, or network them. Piano is USB, guitar switcher is usb, Camera is USB, etc, etc.

USB hubs. Big ones. iLok, Waves, etc. I have a bare drive mounter as well. Backups, restores.

I have drives for backups, work drives, dailies, transfer drives, SFX drives, music drives.



unplugging and replugging is a pain. Some hubs allow you to turn off the USB port.



Since you are on a MAC, and I can't confirm but read that you can make an aggregate device and combine multiple interfaces. So you might look into some MOTU stuff for doing a digital patch bay.



Flock has an amazing digital patch bay, but it is pricey.



Lastly, the drive enclosure. Get off mechanical drives. I did it last fall and SSD it was a game changer.

The speed alone saved me hours of time.

FYI, a RAID 5 will eat 1/4 of your drive space. 16 gigs becomes 12.



I've built my own SSD drives. The cases aren't available that I used but OWC now has these:

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MEPMTCKIT/



I got 1 TB Samsung 870s. I got 4 of them. I also bought 4 seagate 2tb drives for misc BU and dailies.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1



But I run my shows off the SSDs.



AS well, for doing backups I have multiples of this:

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Newe...ard_Drive_Dock



I use Western Digital 4TB blue drives to backup to. Considering they are used so infrequently, restores or rewrites aren't really an issue.

I've considered moving to 2.5 versions of these as well for smaller storage space.



Check this out. 4 Channels analog over ethernet. Analog the whole way.



https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076QK6TWH...v_ov_lig_dp_it



80 bucks for 4 channels. 320 for 16. 4 ethernet cables. I know those looms are pricey.



The only thing that concerns me with the Planet Wave is the potential tension on the cable. Its thin.



Just my thoughts

Originally Posted by protoolsuserman (Post 2629841)

I agree with you Audiolex1
The Mac studio looks great but if a single chip dies on that logic board, you are stuffed just like with the laptops, nothing is removable or upgradable so can see there being issues further down the line.
l

Originally Posted by protoolsuserman (Post 2629846)

I didn't know it went up to £8k?

I heard figures around £4k but even then I thought that was a little extreme for an aluminium chassis, some copper heat pipes, fans and a logic board with chips soldered to it [emoji29]

l

Originally Posted by protoolsuserman (Post 2629841)

plus I'd like to think we'll be able to upgrade the ram and SSD in that unit too

Originally Posted by glasswing (Post 2629872)

Has anyone noticed a great speed difference with NVMe for VI libraries as opposed to standard SSD's?

Originally Posted by glasswing (Post 2629885)

Dave - you abandoned Vienna Ensemble Pro? I'm hoping to do that with the new Mac Studio Ultra. Are your NVMe's hosted on an internal PCIe board or external expansion box? I'm learning that the Sonnet Echo TB3 expansion chassis and its PCIe card are very limited by Thunderbolt's speed limit. So it doesn't make sense for me to go that route. At 2700 mbps it makes sense to have one or two NVMe's via thunderbolt but definitely not more.
I use Spifire libraries, Omnisphere, Arturia's V Collection or whatever it's called now, Ivory, Trillian and others. I've heard Kontakt doesn't do well with NVMe's.

Originally Posted by glasswing (Post 2629872)

And that the Mac Studio Ultra will be about as fast as a 2019MacPro 28 core.

Originally Posted by glasswing (Post 2629872)

This is what I've heard - particularly that RAM is totally different in the Apple Silicon machines. You don't need as much.

Originally Posted by glasswing (Post 2629967)

Yeah Dominic - This is what I've been hearing too. That NVMe makes reliance on RAM much less of an issue. Either way, I'll take the improvement. Figuring that my old 5.1 'drunken bull in a china closet' worked sometimes with 48g ram I'm feeling positive about my choice. I'm not sure that I care so much about why it works as I do that it works. But knowledge is power in the future with tech.
Still wading through learning about NVMe, the limits of Thuderbolt speed etc. It's just astounding to me how fast NVMe is - when TBolt used to be considered greased lightning.

Originally Posted by protoolsuserman (Post 2629841)

Dante is a fabulous protocol, there are plenty of studios using a combination of Dante and avid I/O together which is brilliant! l

Originally Posted by audiolex1 (Post 2629839)

As far as Displays, I don't know what you have. I run 3 monitors myself. Going start using Duet for a 4th mini monitor.
There are TB hubs with dual display ports. Maybe consider DP to HDMI rather than burn up 2 TB ports?

Lastly, the drive enclosure. Get off mechanical drives. I did it last fall and SSD it was a game changer.
The speed alone saved me hours of time.
FYI, a RAID 5 will eat 1/4 of your drive space. 16 gigs becomes 12.

Originally Posted by glasswing (Post 2629872)

The folks at Sonnet say the TB3/4 spec isn't fast enough to handle the very high speed NVMe's. They can do 2600 mbps max. And that I don't need the super fast NVMe's for VI libraries (Spitfire, Omnisphere, Arturia etc). I see they have a two NVMe box that might be smarter for me. I'm talking with Sonnet about the option of two or more of these. Thoughts?

Originally Posted by glasswing (Post 2629885)

I'm learning that the Sonnet Echo TB3 expansion chassis and its PCIe card are very limited by Thunderbolt's speed limit. So it doesn't make sense for me to go that route. At 2700 mbps it makes sense to have one or two NVMe's via thunderbolt but definitely not more.

Originally Posted by Marsdy (Post 2629889)

This is interesting:
https://www.sonnettech.com/product/e.../overview.html but still less than half the speed of internal PCIe NVMe.

Originally Posted by Phil O'Keefe (Post 2629940)

I’ve been experimenting with an M1 Mac mini (512GB/16GB running Monterey) since December, and ordered a Mac Studio (Max, 1TB/32GB) on the 8th. I’ve been pairing the Mac mini with PT Ultimate 2021.12, an Avid Carbon, a few external SSDs for extra storage, and a UA Thunderbolt Octo. Even with the mini, the new system easily outperforms my old quad i7 / 32GB HD4 Accel rig, so I think with the addition of the Mac Studio, it should more than meet my needs for the next few (or maybe even several) years. I self-record and record/edit/mix bands in a variety of genres. I'm not a huge VI user or film composer or anything like that, so again, this should meet my needs just fine.

Originally Posted by kings79 (Post 2630040)

Guys this is a tread about what you need/want/want to discuss because you're getting a Mac Studio. Not about if you're going to buy a Mac Pro or how you think the RAM or isn't is going to work.

Originally Posted by dominicperry (Post 2630043)

Well, the comments are relevant because they expose the differences and potential pitfalls and limitations of any given choice. It's just intended to be useful information, not an argument.

This is worth getting right.

Mb - Megabits
MB - Megabytes

Storage speeds (and memory bus speed) is measured in MB/s.
i/o - network, interfaces, parallel and serial comms is measured in Mb/s

So TB3/4 is 40Gb/s which is 5GB/s.
In practise, you won't get anything like 5GB/s from a TB attached disk, due to a whole number of overheads - protocol translation etc.
[This is further confused by the fact that things like SATA interface speed is Gb/s, but disk transfer rates are in GB/s. The maths is easy, but it's easy to get confused as there is not always consistency in how the information is presented.]

The fact remains that TB is a bottleneck for external disk enclosures - it doesn't matter if the enclosure has a PCIe card slot in it, the maximum speed is already reduced by it being connected by TB. Whether this matters or not depends entirely on how you use it. For video, it matters. For audio, you'd have to work it out. If you can cache enough of your sample data in RAM, then the overall speed of the external storage won't make much or any difference in practise. If, however, you don't have enough RAM for all your samples to be pre-loaded, then you might choke massive orchestral sessions. Note that M1/Pro/Max/Ultra internal disk runs at super-high speeds and is unconstrained by a TB bottleneck, which is why lots of people recommend buying huge internal disks in these machines, despite the offensive Apple-tax.
As always, today's machines are absurdly fast compared with things from 5-10 years ago. The problem is that people keep wanting to do more with what they're given!

Dominic

Originally Posted by dominicperry (Post 2630043)

Well, the comments are relevant because they expose the differences and potential pitfalls and limitations of any given choice. It's just intended to be useful information, not an argument.

Originally Posted by dominicperry (Post 2630043)

This is worth getting right.

Mb - Megabits
MB - Megabytes

Storage speeds (and memory bus speed) is measured in MB/s.
i/o - network, interfaces, parallel and serial comms is measured in Mb/s

So TB3/4 is 40Gb/s which is 5GB/s.
In practise, you won't get anything like 5GB/s from a TB attached disk, due to a whole number of overheads - protocol translation etc.
[This is further confused by the fact that things like SATA interface speed is Gb/s, but disk transfer rates are in GB/s. The maths is easy, but it's easy to get confused as there is not always consistency in how the information is presented.]

The fact remains that TB is a bottleneck for external disk enclosures - it doesn't matter if the enclosure has a PCIe card slot in it, the maximum speed is already reduced by it being connected by TB. Whether this matters or not depends entirely on how you use it. For video, it matters. For audio, you'd have to work it out. If you can cache enough of your sample data in RAM, then the overall speed of the external storage won't make much or any difference in practise. If, however, you don't have enough RAM for all your samples to be pre-loaded, then you might choke massive orchestral sessions. Note that M1/Pro/Max/Ultra internal disk runs at super-high speeds and is unconstrained by a TB bottleneck, which is why lots of people recommend buying huge internal disks in these machines, despite the offensive Apple-tax.
As always, today's machines are absurdly fast compared with things from 5-10 years ago. The problem is that people keep wanting to do more with what they're given!

Dominic

Originally Posted by kings79 (Post 2630092)

Do you have the equation you explained above?

Originally Posted by Sardi (Post 2630096)

Just divide it by 8.

Originally Posted by protoolsuserman (Post 2630120)

I think the Mac studio is perfect for project studios and the entry market but for the stuff I rely on with my Mac, I'd be terrified if something broke on the logic board. It's a potential not a definite of course. Ok right to be concerned because we've seen Mac minis go pop suddenly.

Then what, wait for warranty repair and replacement with a poorly refurbished logic board?

I guess we could say the price isn't exactly entry level and the specs are very good but eventually like everything it will become obsolete. I can't even upgrade it :(

I couldn't even swap the boot drive SSD out to continue working in pro tools again from a cloned disk. The worry would be too much for me.

Perhaps I'm overreacting but for me the risk is too great.

The financial impact this could cause is almost unthinkable.

As much as I'd love to commit to one of these, it does look gorgeous, I would prefer a Mac pro that can be upgraded and repaired if needed. (Hopefully the new one will be upgradable) [emoji51]

l

Originally Posted by kindkind (Post 2630151)

For me, coming from a 5,1, I need the following:

• TB PCIe chassis for my HDN card
• TB NVME enclosure - 1 or 2 m.2
• TB3/USBC - HDMI adapter

I have read somewhere recommending NOT to keep the HDX/N cards in the same enclosure/TB port as NVME drive. So that would mean no Echo express enclosure, instead the AVID HDX TB3 enclosure. Curious on thoughts if its better to separate external drives from the avid hardware.

Any thoughts on a good TB3 NVME enclosure with either 1 or 2 slots?

Also, didnt one of the well regarded posters here, Darren perhaps, post an exhaustive explanation saying PT session on system drive is OK, and to NOT BOTHER running PT sessions off a separate drive?

Originally Posted by kindkind (Post 2630151)

For me, coming from a 5,1, I need the following:

• TB PCIe chassis for my HDN card
• TB NVME enclosure - 1 or 2 m.2
• TB3/USBC - HDMI adapter

I have read somewhere recommending NOT to keep the HDX/N cards in the same enclosure/TB port as NVME drive. So that would mean no Echo express enclosure, instead the AVID HDX TB3 enclosure. Curious on thoughts if its better to separate external drives from the avid hardware.

Any thoughts on a good TB3 NVME enclosure with either 1 or 2 slots?

Also, didnt one of the well regarded posters here, Darren perhaps, post an exhaustive explanation saying PT session on system drive is OK, and to NOT BOTHER running PT sessions off a separate drive?

Originally Posted by Marsdy (Post 2630215)

Yes I think Darren has said that. The Mac Studio’s internal drive has read speeds up to an obscenely fast 7400MB/s. Compare that with a Sonnet NVMe PCIe card with four drives in a RAID 0 configuration with read speeds at just over 8000MB/s.

With that kind of speed, I’m going to put my neck on the line and say there isn’t a Pro Tools session in the known universe that won’t run like butter off the internal drive. Most people will find they can stream samples off it too, unless they are doing stupidly epic, hybrid cinematic orchestral arrangements.

Originally Posted by protoolsuserman (Post 2630120)

I think the Mac studio is perfect for project studios and the entry market but for the stuff I rely on with my Mac, I'd be terrified if something broke on the logic board. It's a potential not a definite of course. Ok right to be concerned because we've seen Mac minis go pop suddenly.

Then what, wait for warranty repair and replacement with a poorly refurbished logic board?

I guess we could say the price isn't exactly entry level and the specs are very good but eventually like everything it will become obsolete. I can't even upgrade it :(

I couldn't even swap the boot drive SSD out to continue working in pro tools again from a cloned disk. The worry would be too much for me.

Perhaps I'm overreacting but for me the risk is too great.

The financial impact this could cause is almost unthinkable.

As much as I'd love to commit to one of these, it does look gorgeous, I would prefer a Mac pro that can be upgraded and repaired if needed. (Hopefully the new one will be upgradable) [emoji51]

l

Originally Posted by K Roche (Post 2630710)

So this is my experience and of course everybody has a different situation

Mine is that #1 I don't do a lot of tracks --generally for as little as 8 or 10 to max of 20 to 30 ...and I usually do not use a lot of VI' tracks again 1 to 4 max

So I was considering the M1 Max

That said my concern is noise , and over on the Mac Rumors forum there is a thread specifically about the fan noise and some are saying the fan noise is more noticeable on the M1 Max machines than the Ultra machines .

Originally Posted by K Roche (Post 2630710)

So this is my experience and of course everybody has a different situation

Mine is that #1 I don't do a lot of tracks --generally for as little as 8 or 10 to max of 20 to 30 ...and I usually do not use a lot of VI' tracks again 1 to 4 max

So I was considering the M1 Max

That said my concern is noise , and over on the Mac Rumors forum there is a thread specifically about the fan noise and some are saying the fan noise is more noticeable on the M1 Max machines than the Ultra machines .

with my system in my sig line with an intel iMac the fan noise is indeed noticeable Also 2 TB storage is the minimum I would choose because I have now started doing Music Videos I found I used up most of the 2 TB SSD pretty quickly and had to off load videos on to external drives .
I use the OWC Express 4M2 four PCIe slot enclosure and some HHD drives from my old 5.1 Mac Pro

Originally Posted by Phil O'Keefe (Post 2630799)

From the teardown videos, it looks like the ssd is socketed. There are two ssd sockets on both the M1 Max and M1 Ultra Mac Studios.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uI3iJFPQca0

They look like a real PITB to get to, but based on what I saw in the videos, at least they’re replaceable. They should be upgradeable, too.

The RAM can’t be upgraded - it’s soldered in. I don’t see how they can do otherwise with the SoC design, so I suspect that the RAM and SSD upgrade situation will be similar on the next generation of Mac Pros. You’ll be able to replace the SSD(s), but whatever amount of RAM you select when you buy it, that will be what the computer will be stuck with for the life of the machine.

That may be an issue for some people, but the trade off / improvement in terms of speed is significant. Whether you decide on a Mac Studio or the next-gen Mac Pro when they launch later this year, just make sure you get enough ram for your current and future needs.

Originally Posted by kings79 (Post 2630805)

From what I've see the fan noise is zero worry

That OWC Express 4M2 four PCIe slot enclosure looks cool. SO you get around 2750MB/s over TB3?



The new Mac Pro is going to be unobtanium to most people so...

I'm even more amped about this thing now I know you can upgrade the SSD's. You can fit up to 8TB in them so that's alot. If you have a few TB SSD docks around if you need to shuttle files on and off I think you're ok.


------

My idea of my setup has changed a bit now I know you can upgrade SSD's

I'm going to get something like the Startech 4-Bay Hard Drive Docking Station
so I cam move projects on and off the internal storage.

If I decide to go PCIe for some reason I'll raid 4 NVME drives together probably with the High Point gear. Not not even sure I'ma need that as you only get 2700MB/s anyway.
SSD7101A-1 4x M.2 NVMe RAID Controller
RocketStor 6661A - PCIe enclosure

I think for me having drives on hand connected via USB3 or TB3 and moving projects over as I need them is how I will work. 2TB is enough for me to do a couple of TV series at a time.

Originally Posted by Marsdy (Post 2630813)

I looked at those Highpoint cards when I got my 7.1 Mac Pro. The Sonnet card was difficult to get hold of at the time. I read they are VERY noisy. The Sonnet and OWC cards don’t have fans. Either way, I’m not sure there’s much point connecting a PCIe card that really needs a x16 PCIe slot (x4 lanes per NVME stick) to a TB bus that can only manage x4 speed at best. .

Originally Posted by Marsdy (Post 2630813)

According to that video, the spare socket in the Mac Studio appears to be for configurations with 4 or 8 TB of storage. The speeds up to 7400MB/sec Apple is quoting are for the the 8TB version of the Mac Studio. I’m guessing it gets that speed because there are two drives in a RAID configuration so the second socket is used up.

There’s no guarantee that the empty socket will be upgradable. It’s not a standard NVME m.2 socket and doesn’t even fit the NVMe storage modules Apple sell for the 7.1 Mac Pro.

Originally Posted by kings79 (Post 2630805)

That OWC Express 4M2 four PCIe slot enclosure looks cool. SO you get around 2750MB/s over TB3?