New "Mac Studio" from Apple

[Eric Lambert]

This is the one I bought for my PC. It's more expensive but got good reviews, and I've been using it for months without issues.

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

[ramonetl]

Originally Posted by Carl Lie

Lots of videos/articles popping up on Max vs Ultra. Will be interesting to see how audio performs. Looks like the new studio display has a crappy camera that Apple needs to rewrite code for to fix. Also, most note that the graphics are no where near as powerful as Apple says.

The open question is whether the Ultra really doubles the power of the machine for "all" apps and apparently it does not. Of course that may depend on coding for the new architecture.

Time to do some actual work. Looking forward to the tests.....

C

Isnt if funny when a 12MP camera on a monitor is a "crappy" thing? My old Nikon digital SLR cant even touch that! :) That said for the price it really should be better.

[K Roche]

Originally Posted by ramonetl

Isnt if funny when a 12MP camera on a monitor is a "crappy" thing? My old Nikon digital SLR cant even touch that! :) That said for the price it really should be better.

Yes I think the disappointment with the camera is that is still only 1080 and not 4k and If it is no better than the one I have in my mid 2020 iMac then it is indeed pretty marginal

Here is a recent Music video I made using the Photo booth app on my iMac
which is not that great even on my new 14" MBP with it's mini LED display let alone when full screen on my 5k 27" inch iMac display pretty blaa IMO

https://youtu.be/J3jHoBCe-Ic

[Michael Carnes]

Originally Posted by moogboy100

I think my question comes down to, does anyone know what Pro Tools does that is multi-core and/or single-core?

Pro Tools does a very good job of dividing the load over all the available cores. To oversimplify a little, you might have one channel using one core and a second channel using another. The PT usage monitor is wildly inaccurate and gives a false picture of what's going on. Use the operating system's usage monitor (on Mac it's called Activity Monitor) to get a true picture of how cores are being used.

[moogboy100]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

I wonder what docks will appear for the Mac Studio. It's crying out for a dock to sit on top of (or maybe under?) the Studio.

I'm looking forward to what Sonnet Tech might make. Something like their Mac mini rack, but for the Studio. Because I'm putting this thing in a rack, on a shelf for now, but I'd get a Sonnet rack just for their awesome little front-facing power button contraption.

Apple should have put the power button on the front of this thing. Having to give the studio a reach-around every time you turn it on is lame.

[Marsdy]

Originally Posted by Michael Carnes

Pro Tools does a very good job of dividing the load over all the available cores. To oversimplify a little, you might have one channel using one core and a second channel using another. The PT usage monitor is wildly inaccurate and gives a false picture of what's going on. Use the operating system's usage monitor (on Mac it's called Activity Monitor) to get a true picture of how cores are being used.

Michael you would know this for sure but I was under the impression that an individual AAX plug-in (and other formats for that matter,) can only utilise one core?

Normally this isn’t too problematic except for really CPU greedy virtual instruments that are record enabled (or the PT pref to enable MIDI thru with selected track is selected.) I’m still getting occasional CPU overloads in this case, even on a 16 core 7.1 Mac Pro. Now disks are so fast it’s the last remaining bottleneck for me. The Mac Studio has some appeal here with its 50% faster single core performance.

[Michael Carnes]

Originally Posted by Marsdy

Michael you would know this for sure but I was under the impression that an individual AAX plug-in (and other formats for that matter,) can only utilise one core?

Normally this isn’t too problematic except for really CPU greedy virtual instruments that are record enabled (or the PT pref to enable MIDI thru with selected track is selected.) I’m still getting occasional CPU overloads in this case, even on a 16 core 7.1 Mac Pro. Now disks are so fast it’s the last remaining bottleneck for me. The Mac Studio has some appeal here with its 50% faster single core performance.

You're quite correct in that regard. I'll extend that by saying that--to the best I could ascertain--all the plugs in a channel are processed on that single core. As far as VIs go, there really is considerable variance. My experience is mainly with Orchestral Tools, Spitfire and several instruments running under Kontakt. I think the greediest of those was the OT running under Kontakt. That was basically the result of all the scripts they had to run to get what they wanted. They've been busy moving all of that to their own SINE plugin host. That really removes the issues I was experiencing when they're running under Kontakt.

Some of the problems that appear to be CPU overload may be related to disk (these days I should say 'storage') access. If you're recording to the same device you're getting samples from, then you might run out of bandwidth and the CPU is stuck waiting. As you very well know, you can't wait long before you have a failure. Surprisingly, the Mac's internal storage (the stuff you pay such inflated prices for) isn't nearly as fast as an internal M.2 RAID. On my 2019 Mac Pro (same basic configuration as yours), I measure write/read to internal SSD as 2444/2870 MB/s. I've got the Sonnet 4-lane PCI card configured as a single RAID-0 (4 M.2 chips onboard). On that, I measure write/read as 6692/8145 MB/s. I can get a lot of stuff through that speed difference.

This raises (to me) the most interested question about the Mac Studio line. Thunderbolt PCI devices max out at under 3000 MB/s (Sonnet has some interesting information on their website). That's less than half the speed you get with internal PCI. There's a lot less RAM on board, so you can't preload much of your instruments in RAM. That means you have to stream more. For people running serious VI orchestras that might be too much of a limitation.

[Marsdy]

Originally Posted by Michael Carnes

You're quite correct in that regard. I'll extend that by saying that--to the best I could ascertain--all the plugs in a channel are processed on that single core. As far as VIs go, there really is considerable variance. My experience is mainly with Orchestral Tools, Spitfire and several instruments running under Kontakt. I think the greediest of those was the OT running under Kontakt. That was basically the result of all the scripts they had to run to get what they wanted. They've been busy moving all of that to their own SINE plugin host. That really removes the issues I was experiencing when they're running under Kontakt.

Some of the problems that appear to be CPU overload may be related to disk (these days I should say 'storage') access. If you're recording to the same device you're getting samples from, then you might run out of bandwidth and the CPU is stuck waiting. As you very well know, you can't wait long before you have a failure. Surprisingly, the Mac's internal storage (the stuff you pay such inflated prices for) isn't nearly as fast as an internal M.2 RAID. On my 2019 Mac Pro (same basic configuration as yours), I measure write/read to internal SSD as 2444/2870 MB/s. I've got the Sonnet 4-lane PCI card configured as a single RAID-0 (4 M.2 chips onboard). On that, I measure write/read as 6692/8145 MB/s. I can get a lot of stuff through that speed difference.

This raises (to me) the most interested question about the Mac Studio line. Thunderbolt PCI devices max out at under 3000 MB/s (Sonnet has some interesting information on their website). That's less than half the speed you get with internal PCI. There's a lot less RAM on board, so you can't preload much of your instruments in RAM. That means you have to stream more. For people running serious VI orchestras that might be too much of a limitation.

Thanks for confirmation on core usage!

Same Sonnet card here. I guess it partially depends on how many actual Thunderbolt busses there are on the Mac Studio. If it’s one bus at 3000MB/s per physical port then it might get interesting, especially factoring in the 7400MB/s Apple is claiming for the system storage and that empty internal expansion slot, (albeit an odd size.)

I hear you about limited RAM in the Mac Studio, I have 384GB in my 7.1. As an aside, it will be interesting to see how Apple are going to do this on the Apple Silicon Mac Pro. It struck me that if Apple go with expandable RAM external to the CPU it would negate the advantage of SOC RAM.

[Michael Carnes]

Originally Posted by Marsdy

Thanks for confirmation on core usage!

...
It struck me that if Apple go with expandable RAM external to the CPU it would negate the advantage of SOC RAM.

I think with expandable RAM they'd have to treat it like one of those old RAM disks (remember those). I really don't need PCI in a new Mac Pro (don't use HDX) so I'd be happy with a bunch ( >= 8) of M.2 sockets. Perhaps the rumored small Mac Pro might be something like that. But at this point it's idle speculation from anyone who opens their mouth about it

[Actionmusic]

Any early purchasers of Studio Max or Studio Ultra give us first thoughts on them, especially from a PT view point (if only just supported) ? and other apps/DAWS

On the Macrumours forum there's a little chat about ever present fan noise from boot on the Max, less so on the Ultra, but a bit vague as to levels or whether this is on every unit. Something i think this recording community would want some proper info on if there's anyone out there!