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Old 11-24-2022, 03:52 AM
dominicperry dominicperry is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2019
Location: UK
Posts: 907
Default Re: Mac Studio config - help needed

The page you need is:
https://www.apple.com/uk/mac-studio/specs/

The CPU power of either Max or Ultra is way more than you presently have.
The GPU power is harder to compare, but check that page for display resolutions - you have one HDMI port on the Studio and multiple TB ports which can be used for displays or adapters. There is support for maximum of 4 displays. I would be very surprised if the base config was unable to support your existing screens.
The three biggest concerns are:

1) Upgradeability. No upgradeability of CPU/GPU/RAM/SDD on a Studio. Never. Once you've bought it, that's what you have. So, if you start doing complex high-res video production or Atmos mixes or something different from what you've been doing up until now, it will either cope or it won't.
2) Expandability - no room for cards in a Studio of any type, HDX, BlackMagic, UAD, etc etc. Everything you buy has to go on the outside. For this reason, the Ultra wins out, because it has 6 Thunderbolt ports and the Max has only 4 Thunderbolt ports (the other two are just USB on the Max). I personally like to limit myself to one device per port, except for unimportant things. So displays, audio interfaces, AVB connectors, active disk drives (i.e. sample drives, session drives, video drives) get their own port. I'm happy to put iLoks and backup drives and keyboards and stuff on a great long string or hub, but anything critical benefits from a dedicated port.
3) software updates - the more powerful machines get, the more developers write software which uses the power. So what you buy now might not accommodate the latest and greatest versions of PT or plugins etc in 5-10 years. That's the same for any computer purchase, there's nothing special about the Studio from that perspective, other than the two points above.

Buy at least as much memory as you currently use. Ignore people who tell you that M1 memory is twice the goodness of Intel memory. It's guff. If you need 64GB now, you need 64GB tomorrow, and you'll need even more next year.

Buy a big internal SSD if you can afford it, and use it for everything. Backup externally.
The internal SSD is super-fast, and more reliable than any external drive even if it's just because you can't bump or knock or damage a cable. But you can't upgrade it once you've bought it, as already mentioned.

As a final point, in my personal experience my MBP 16" M1 Max with 64GB RAM and 10 CPU cores, 32GPU cores is just as fast as my Mac Pro 7.1 16 core 48GB RAM with Radeon 580. But three Thunderbolt ports on the MBP is a bit restrictive - more would be nice.

Dominic
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MacBookPro M1Max 16" 10/32 64GB 2TB, Ventura 13.6.4, Pro Tools 2023.12.1, Carbon.
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