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  #1  
Old 05-19-2023, 08:28 AM
Zak7 Zak7 is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2013
Location: Ft Lauderdale, FL USA
Posts: 82
Default Please advise for New Mac Studio Rig and Pro Tools HDX (coming from a Mac Pro User)

Hello,

Soon I am going to change my system and it will be all around a Mac Studio.

I have always used a Mac Pro and this way:

MacOS SSD
SSD sampler
Pro Tools Session SSD
and my HDX card

Now that I'm moving to a Mac Studio, how do I set up my Rig?

Do you keep your current professional tools sessions on your Mac Studio MacOS hard drive?
Is an external SSD still recommended for your samples?

Is it still better or highly recommended to have 2 external SDDs for samples and a current Pro Tools session? or a single external SSD is enough (for Samples and current Pro Tools Sessions?

Any recommended Thunderbolt 3/PCIe Chassis for my HDX card?
I heard that the Avid ones are noisy...any other solid alternatives that are as good or better?
Any chassis that can put my HDX card and also NVMe Drives (which ones are the best NVme Drives?

Any other tips or recommendations? anything else to consider?

Thank you

Last edited by Zak7; 05-21-2023 at 09:05 AM.
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  #2  
Old 05-20-2023, 08:15 PM
Zak7 Zak7 is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2013
Location: Ft Lauderdale, FL USA
Posts: 82
Default Re: Please advise for New Mac Mini Rig and Pro Tools HDX (coming from a Mac Pro User)

Anyone?

Thanks
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  #3  
Old 05-20-2023, 09:05 PM
Darryl Ramm Darryl Ramm is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2010
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Posts: 19,510
Default Re: Please advise for New Mac Mini Rig and Pro Tools HDX (coming from a Mac Pro User)

A Mac Mini is one model computer, a Mac Studio is a different model computer. What one are you talking about?

Nobody here has any clue what you are doing with Pro Tools, what your environment looks like, so nobody is going to be able to give you very useful specific advice. It's a bit much to expect others here to custom produce notes for you when everything you are asking is already so well covered on DUC. And you'll get more detail/better answers if you look around and aggregate lots of existing info out there.

You should be searching DUC. There are very clear existing threads recently talking exactly about not mixing SSD and HDX cards because of serious problems.

And there are other threads talking about available expansion chassis. And you should be reading threads and Avid knowledge base articles about problems (and solutions) with expansion chassis.

Single external SSD drive for samples and sessions? On modern Macs my starting place would be to pay $$$ to Apple if you can for a large internal SSD. Adding multiple external slower Thunderbolt 3/NVMe drives will only significantly slow down I/O performance vs. what the internal SSDs can do. But there may well be other good reasons like cost/capacity/moving samples between systems etc. to use external SSDs. And I and others have been all over this topic many hundreds of times on DUC.

And you'll need to read threads about Apple silicon native plugin support and ideally have all your plugins sorted out before you transition over.

And be careful under configuring memory and SSD as there are no upgrades. And don't listen to folks advocating significant memory under-configuring. That's been covered to death as well.

Google search with the site:duc.avid.com qualifier is the *only* effective way to search DUC.

e.g. "HDX" expansion chassis "silicon" site: duc.avid.com

I would not be making any decisions until I see what is announced at the Apple WWDC happening soon. But unfortunately lots of pundits think we already know the news about new M3 processor based systems won't be good.

Last edited by Darryl Ramm; 05-20-2023 at 09:41 PM.
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  #4  
Old 05-20-2023, 11:35 PM
BScout BScout is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 4,136
Default Re: Please advise for New Mac Mini Rig and Pro Tools HDX (coming from a Mac Pro User)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zak7 View Post
Any recommended Thunderbolt 3/PCIe Chassis for my HDX card?
I heard that the Avid ones are noisy...any other solid alternatives that are as good or better?
Any chassis that can put my HDX card and also NVMe Drives (which ones are the best NVme Drives?
All approved Thunderbolt Chassis are made by Sonnet (including the Avid branded ones.) That should answer your question. (buy Avid or buy Sonnet -- still same people)

Do not put your NVMe Drive card in the same chassis as HDX cards. HDX cards have to run at PCIe 2.0 speeds which means a chassis hosting the HDX card is then running less than full speed. That will affect the performance of an NVMe drive card which can run at PCIe 3.0 speed.

SSD and projects, etc. are way in the past. You do not need to split them up. Put them where ever you want. On top of that, the Apple SSD controllers can run 2 times (NVMe) to 14 times (SSD over SATA 3) faster.
That is ridiculously faster than 7200 rpm drives when the old rule of splitting things up existed.
Buy the biggest internal drive you can afford -- it runs faster than anything else attachable.
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  #5  
Old 05-21-2023, 09:07 AM
Zak7 Zak7 is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2013
Location: Ft Lauderdale, FL USA
Posts: 82
Default Re: Please advise for New Mac Mini Rig and Pro Tools HDX (coming from a Mac Pro User)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm View Post
A Mac Mini is one model computer, a Mac Studio is a different model computer. What one are you talking about?

Nobody here has any clue what you are doing with Pro Tools, what your environment looks like, so nobody is going to be able to give you very useful specific advice. It's a bit much to expect others here to custom produce notes for you when everything you are asking is already so well covered on DUC. And you'll get more detail/better answers if you look around and aggregate lots of existing info out there.

You should be searching DUC. There are very clear existing threads recently talking exactly about not mixing SSD and HDX cards because of serious problems.

And there are other threads talking about available expansion chassis. And you should be reading threads and Avid knowledge base articles about problems (and solutions) with expansion chassis.

Single external SSD drive for samples and sessions? On modern Macs my starting place would be to pay $$$ to Apple if you can for a large internal SSD. Adding multiple external slower Thunderbolt 3/NVMe drives will only significantly slow down I/O performance vs. what the internal SSDs can do. But there may well be other good reasons like cost/capacity/moving samples between systems etc. to use external SSDs. And I and others have been all over this topic many hundreds of times on DUC.

And you'll need to read threads about Apple silicon native plugin support and ideally have all your plugins sorted out before you transition over.

And be careful under configuring memory and SSD as there are no upgrades. And don't listen to folks advocating significant memory under-configuring. That's been covered to death as well.

Google search with the site:duc.avid.com qualifier is the *only* effective way to search DUC.

e.g. "HDX" expansion chassis "silicon" site: duc.avid.com

I would not be making any decisions until I see what is announced at the Apple WWDC happening soon. But unfortunately lots of pundits think we already know the news about new M3 processor based systems won't be good.
Thanks, you already are giving me good advice
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  #6  
Old 05-21-2023, 09:09 AM
Zak7 Zak7 is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2013
Location: Ft Lauderdale, FL USA
Posts: 82
Default Re: Please advise for New Mac Mini Rig and Pro Tools HDX (coming from a Mac Pro User)

Quote:
Originally Posted by BScout View Post
All approved Thunderbolt Chassis are made by Sonnet (including the Avid branded ones.) That should answer your question. (buy Avid or buy Sonnet -- still same people)

Do not put your NVMe Drive card in the same chassis as HDX cards. HDX cards have to run at PCIe 2.0 speeds which means a chassis hosting the HDX card is then running less than full speed. That will affect the performance of an NVMe drive card which can run at PCIe 3.0 speed.

SSD and projects, etc. are way in the past. You do not need to split them up. Put them where ever you want. On top of that, the Apple SSD controllers can run 2 times (NVMe) to 14 times (SSD over SATA 3) faster.
That is ridiculously faster than 7200 rpm drives when the old rule of splitting things up existed.
Buy the biggest internal drive you can afford -- it runs faster than anything else attachable.
Thank you this is very good info!
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