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  #21  
Old 03-14-2022, 05:45 AM
dominicperry dominicperry 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
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.
Yes, the Apple Studio is really an update to the 2013 Trashcan in terms of design - putting all the expandability (storage etc) on the outside. The main difference is that the speed of the GPU is massive - but you are still limited by being unable to expand it after the fact.
All the speeds are higher than in 2013 - CPU, GPU, memory, connectivity - but the fundamental design brings bottlenecks which don't exist with a big tower with internal PCIe slots. Still, it will surely run massive sessions.

Dominic
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  #22  
Old 03-14-2022, 11:38 PM
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kings79 kings79 is offline
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Default Re: Apple Studio/Mini - What bits we need

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.

Off The Wall already started a great thread about a general discussion over at https://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=419195 check it out there and get involved.

I want this to be a useful thread about gear we need for the Mac Studio with Pro Tools, that we can update as we research more.

Quote:
Originally Posted by protoolsuserman View Post
Dante is a fabulous protocol, there are plenty of studios using a combination of Dante and avid I/O together which is brilliant! l
Dante is great. I've been using it for almost 10 years in live TV broadcast. It's just audio over IP. But I fail to see the use of it in a small studio unless I had over 32 inputs and I/O boxes around the small room.

Am I missing something?

Quote:
Originally Posted by audiolex1 View Post
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.
Yeah I run 3 plus a Hardware video OP to a TV like I mentioned. But I think a TB to HDMI adapter is going to be the cheapest option.

I don't use mechanical drives except for backups. HDD = SSD. same same. I used to build enclosures too back in the day but I want all the drives in the same enclosure as I already have a billion drives in their own boxes floating around the studio. I use an NVME for my Pro Tools session drive. Super fast!

Quote:
Originally Posted by glasswing View Post
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?
I don't think I need over that speed just for mixing? 2750mb/s is the speed the Sonnet claims highpoint make some really fast PCIe cards for MVME/M.2 Drives. You should check them out. In fact they claim 14,000mb/s. Pretty quick! Guys have been using these in Mac Pro 5,1's for ages. I wonder how fast those would translate inside the Sonnet III boxes. AFterall TB3/TB4 is 40gb/s / 40,000mb/s

What have you been discussing with Sonnet? Sounds interesting!

Quote:
Originally Posted by glasswing View Post
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 wonder if having a Blackmagic Video card and an NVME would affect the NVME speed in one of those Sonnet PCIe boxes?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Marsdy View Post
This is interesting:
https://www.sonnettech.com/product/e.../overview.html but still less than half the speed of internal PCIe NVMe.
Pretty cool huh but 1500mb/s vs 2750mb/s with the sonnet Echo III Desktop

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil O'Keefe View Post
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.
Yeah I've heard even the M1 is great. What sort of stuff have you been doing with it? Do you run video? What enclosures do your Drives live in?


Great discussion so far!

Thinking that
  • PCIe Enclosure for Video Hardware and M.2/NVME drive/s - Thinking the Sonnet Echo IIId
  • Enclosure for my 3.5" & 2.5" HDD's/SSD's - Thinking the OWC Thunderbay 4
  • 2x TB3 to HDMI adapters (I run 3 monitor plus the Video hardware monitor)

This is interesting TB3 vs TB4
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  #23  
Old 03-15-2022, 02:10 AM
dominicperry dominicperry is offline
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Default Re: Apple Studio/Mini - What bits we need

Quote:
Originally Posted by kings79 View Post
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.
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.

Quote:



I don't think I need over that speed just for mixing? 2750mb/s is the speed the Sonnet claims highpoint make some really fast PCIe cards for MVME/M.2 Drives. You should check them out. In fact they claim 14,000mb/s. Pretty quick! Guys have been using these in Mac Pro 5,1's for ages. I wonder how fast those would translate inside the Sonnet III boxes. AFterall TB3/TB4 is 40gb/s / 40,000mb/s

What have you been discussing with Sonnet? Sounds interesting!

I wonder if having a Blackmagic Video card and an NVME would affect the NVME speed in one of those Sonnet PCIe boxes?


Pretty cool huh but 1500mb/s vs 2750mb/s with the
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
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  #24  
Old 03-15-2022, 03:34 PM
Carl Lie Carl Lie is offline
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Default Re: Apple Studio/Mini - What bits we need

Quote:
Originally Posted by dominicperry View Post
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
Excellent information.

C
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  #25  
Old 03-15-2022, 04:26 PM
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kings79 kings79 is offline
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Default Re: Apple Studio/Mini - What bits we need

Quote:
Originally Posted by dominicperry View Post
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.
No worries man. Just trying to keep this clean for peeps who want actual helpful info for their Mac Studio setup ike you've posted below.

Quote:
Originally Posted by dominicperry View Post
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
Great info man!

It is the bottle neck. But if we used to multitrack record with USB2 or Firewire interfaces. Or stream audio off external drives with USB2/Firewire then if you setup correctly with TB3/4 you have more than enough speed.

Do you have the equation you explained above?

How would you tackle for example my setup seeing as I've ordered a 10 core, 64GB, 2TB Studio? Mixing TV and Film. No VI's.

3 displays and streaming Video from a Blackmagic/AJA device.

Would love to hear you're thoughts as you sound like you're more clued up than most of us and this is the kind of info everyone wants who's pulled the trigger on the Mac Studio.

Thanks again for your info
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  #26  
Old 03-15-2022, 05:21 PM
Sardi Sardi is offline
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Default Apple Studio/Mini - What bits we need

Quote:
Originally Posted by kings79 View Post
Do you have the equation you explained above?
Just divide it by 8.

Also, you could ask a mod to make this a sticky and you can update the first post with bullet points if you want to keep it organised.

There’s no way a forum thread will ever stay on track.


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  #27  
Old 03-15-2022, 08:02 PM
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kings79 kings79 is offline
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Default Re: Apple Studio/Mini - What bits we need

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sardi View Post
Just divide it by 8.
Roger that. Its very misleading. I even heard Sonic Talk's last podcast spruking Thunderbolt 4 at 40 Gigabytes a Second today.

TB3/4 is 5 Gigabytes a Second.

That could be an idea making this a sticky but we need alot more helpful info from as many peeps as possible before that. SO fingers crossed.

I actually just cancelled my Mac Studio order with the 1TB SSD and ordered a new one with 2TB. Then I can partition the drive and use a TB or so for my Pro Tools drive. Can't imagine you're gonna get anything faster than an internal SSD in the Studio.

I might just sell the Blackmagic PCIe card and get a TB box version. And never mind with PCIe in the first place. Even though I have a NVME Drive and PCIe card

Need a big enclosure for all my backup drives, SFX libraries, Video drive ect.

I think this might just fit the best.
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----------------------------------------
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Presonus Quantum 4848
Mac Studio M1 10 Core, 64gig RAM
Sonnet Echo dual NVMe TB Dock
Blackmagic Decklink 3G
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  #28  
Old 03-16-2022, 04:26 AM
protoolsuserman protoolsuserman is offline
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Default Re: Apple Studio/Mini - What bits we need

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)

l
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  #29  
Old 03-16-2022, 04:57 AM
Marsdy Marsdy is offline
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Default Re: Apple Studio/Mini - What bits we need

Quote:
Originally Posted by protoolsuserman View Post
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)

l
You make a good point but being devil’s advocate here, there’s a lot less to go wrong with a SOC computer and they do run a lot cooler as a rule.
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  #30  
Old 03-16-2022, 06:09 AM
protoolsuserman protoolsuserman is offline
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Default Re: Apple Studio/Mini - What bits we need

If that's the case then I'm in!

Maybe I'll see how others get on with theirs first.

l
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