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  #11  
Old 03-13-2022, 10:59 AM
glasswing glasswing is offline
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Default Re: Apple Studio/Mini - What bits we need

Bob Ohlssen said, "I think apples are being compared to oranges in discussions about CPU speed, cores, memory, and storage compared to Intel."
This is what I've heard - particularly that RAM is totally different in the Apple Silicon machines. You don't need as much. And that the Mac Studio Ultra will be about as fast as a 2019MacPro 28 core.
So.... I bought a Mac Studio Ultra 128 gigs RAM to replace my two 5.1 CG's that are becoming like old, aggressive drunks in a crowded bar.
ON another topic, I've been boning up on NVMe. 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?
It's frightening after so many decades of PCIe - having starting with the Apple CI when we were all Digidesign guinea pigs. I'll buy the AVID box to host my HDX card because I'm a chicken.
Has anyone noticed a great speed difference with NVMe for VI libraries as opposed to standard SSD's?
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  #12  
Old 03-13-2022, 11:19 AM
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Bob Olhsson Bob Olhsson is offline
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Default Re: Apple Studio/Mini - What bits we need

I switched to windows rather than moving past Apple system 9. I'm now considering a move back to the new Mac.
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  #13  
Old 03-13-2022, 12:35 PM
Marsdy Marsdy is offline
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Default Re: Apple Studio/Mini - What bits we need

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Originally Posted by glasswing View Post
Has anyone noticed a great speed difference with NVMe for VI libraries as opposed to standard SSD's?
Yes. NVMe drives are massively faster, I’m estimating 5 to 6 times faster in real world use here, both in load times and polyphony count. Wether you need the speed depends on what libraries you use, how many mic position you load per instrument, how much polyphony you need, how complex compositions/arrange to are etc. Either way, load times are way faster which really makes a difference with a large template. With SSDs, I needed a second computer to host samples. With NVMe I’m doing it all on one machine.
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  #14  
Old 03-13-2022, 12:50 PM
glasswing glasswing is offline
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Default Re: Apple Studio/Mini - What bits we need

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.
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  #15  
Old 03-13-2022, 01:17 PM
Marsdy Marsdy is offline
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Default Re: Apple Studio/Mini - What bits we need

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Originally Posted by glasswing View Post
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.
No still using VE Pro. My template is currently over 200GB so it’s too big to load multiple times a day. Even with super fast NVMe it still takes over 5 minutes to load so I don’t want that ever time I create a new session.

The four NVMe blades are on a Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe card in a 2019 Mac Pro which reads and writes at over 8000 MB/sec. That’s way faster than over Thunderbolt 4.

Kontakt works just fine fine with NVMe here. I’ve actually lowered the default pre load buffer to a third of the default setting.

It’s kind of frustrating watching the new Mac Studio kill the value of my Mac Pro 16 core. Single core performance of an entry level M1 is significantly faster than 16 core Intel. I find core performance is where the bottleneck is with VIs. It’s a record armed/live (MIDI thru,) demanding VI that sometimes chokes the CPU. Disk speed with NVMe is no longer an issue.

This is interesting:
https://www.sonnettech.com/product/e.../overview.html but still less than half the speed of internal PCIe NVMe.
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  #16  
Old 03-13-2022, 03:29 PM
glasswing glasswing is offline
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Default Re: Apple Studio/Mini - What bits we need

Dave - I don't know about killing the value. I think the Mac Pros will be around for a while.
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  #17  
Old 03-13-2022, 04:15 PM
Sardi Sardi is offline
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Default Re: Apple Studio/Mini - What bits we need

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Originally Posted by glasswing View Post
And that the Mac Studio Ultra will be about as fast as a 2019MacPro 28 core.
Its not about as fast, it’s much faster.

There’s already Geekbench scores out for the Max Studio Ultra and it outperforms the 28 core nMP in both single and multi core tests.


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  #18  
Old 03-13-2022, 08:13 PM
Phil O'Keefe Phil O'Keefe is offline
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Default Re: Apple Studio/Mini - What bits we need

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.
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Last edited by Phil O'Keefe; 03-13-2022 at 08:40 PM.
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  #19  
Old 03-14-2022, 02:52 AM
dominicperry dominicperry is offline
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Default Re: Apple Studio/Mini - What bits we need

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

I had a debate on another thread where I was accused of spreading "miss information". So I will only say this once (more).

The reason that the RAM in the early M1 machines appeared to be stretching so far was because the internal disk and the speed of the memory bus and CPU made fast switching from RAM to disk (paging/swap) very quick. So you could do things with 8GB or 16GB which would have been impossible on an Intel machine with slower disk. However, there's only so far this approach will take you. There is nothing fundamentally different about the RAM in an M1/M1 Pro/M1 Max/M1 Ultra machine from an Intel box, other than pure speed of the memory bus. There is no magic. If you needed 768GB before, you won't suddenly only need 16GB now. Stuff that the CPU needs to work on still has to be loaded into RAM - even if that can be done really fast - before the CPU can do its job.
The real world tests are what you need, rather that some conjecture about the new 'difference'. You will certainly be able to load samples faster into memory than before. Things like Kontakt's DFD - Direct From Disk - will work well and fast, but you should understand that DFD is actually misnamed - the samples are not streamed direct from the disk to the audio interface. That isn't possible. They still have to go into RAM first, they just do so on the basis of a little stub held in memory that buys time for the rest of the sample to load (i.e. load from disk to memory).

Real world tests that approximate to your own personal use case are what you need to see in order to judge how much memory you need.

Dominic
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  #20  
Old 03-14-2022, 05:37 AM
glasswing glasswing is offline
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Default Re: Apple Studio/Mini - What bits we need

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.
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