New M2 Macs Out Today

[audiolex1]

Seems like the cost of the M2 Pro vs a M1 Studio, price wise the M1 Studio is a better bargain as you get more GPU cores, more ports and double the ram bandwidth.

[685]

Originally Posted by thebeatless

Sadly today didn't go as well as yesterday. I had to open several sessions from a few weeks back and I was unable to play any of them. Even after freezing most audio tracks I was getting constant CPU overloads. Whatever was happening on auxes or the final output was just pushing the cpu too hard. Once again, I really wanted this to work! I'm much more comfortable working on Mac! I think my first impression was just due to working on "smaller" sessions, and really really wanting it to be the answer.

Out of curiosity I tried opening one of these using the beta native option. Too many plugins were missing to really know, but it did seem to work well. Hopefully it's not too far off, we just need updates from several developers.

I also did a geekbench after the system got a chance to cool off. It wasn't as high as what shows up for the M2 Pro mini on geekbench.com. I got 1886 single, 14727 Multi. My PC gets 2200/24958 so I see why I'm hitting the wall on the MacBook with these sessions. I am comparing a power sipping laptop to a power hungry and very hot running desktop.

Lastly, I did a Blackmagic test to see if the 1TB drives are included in the slowdown. It seemed great and I was mostly seeing 5-6k read/write. So looks like the 1TB option is OK.

I really hope the Mac Pro one ups intel's current offerings! I've got to say it again. I wish apple kept some modern intel options until they had a Mac Pro Ready to go!

What plugins are you using in your sessions?
My Studio is running sessions pretty nice even if I have chrome or firefox open. The only plugin that gave me an issue was Sonarworks inserted after a hardware insert.

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by 685

What plugins are you using in your sessions?
My Studio is running sessions pretty nice even if I have chrome or firefox open. The only plugin that gave me an issue was Sonarworks inserted after a hardware insert.

I keep activity monitor's CPU% active on my Stream Deck at all times, watch it frequently, and have yet to see it go past 40%. I run large sessions. Studio Ultra w/ 64GB RAM. PT 2022.12. OS Monterey. Since buying this Mac many months ago I've hit the CPU ceiling twice, both times strictly because of sloppy plugin code (Acustica Audio plugins, which I quickly removed from the session).

[LDS]

Originally Posted by thebeatless

Sadly today didn't go as well as yesterday. I had to open several sessions from a few weeks back and I was unable to play any of them. Even after freezing most audio tracks I was getting constant CPU overloads. Whatever was happening on auxes or the final output was just pushing the cpu too hard. Once again, I really wanted this to work! I'm much more comfortable working on Mac! I think my first impression was just due to working on "smaller" sessions, and really really wanting it to be the answer.

Out of curiosity I tried opening one of these using the beta native option. Too many plugins were missing to really know, but it did seem to work well. Hopefully it's not too far off, we just need updates from several developers.

I also did a geekbench after the system got a chance to cool off. It wasn't as high as what shows up for the M2 Pro mini on geekbench.com. I got 1886 single, 14727 Multi. My PC gets 2200/24958 so I see why I'm hitting the wall on the MacBook with these sessions. I am comparing a power sipping laptop to a power hungry and very hot running desktop.

Lastly, I did a Blackmagic test to see if the 1TB drives are included in the slowdown. It seemed great and I was mostly seeing 5-6k read/write. So looks like the 1TB option is OK.

I really hope the Mac Pro one ups intel's current offerings! I've got to say it again. I wish apple kept some modern intel options until they had a Mac Pro Ready to go!

Perhaps it is time to put together a few Pro Tools Benchmark sessions so we can see some computer performance in a more Pro Tools specific way? Someone did something similar for Logic, and the results seem far more worthwhile than generic benchmarks. They also don't seem necessarily intuitive.

https://music-prod.com/logic-pro-benchmarks/

I can probably make a couple in the coming weeks if anyone has some suggestions on what they should test. Perhaps a 64 sample buffer session for low latency recording, and another geared more towards VIs and playback?

[685]

Originally Posted by Eric Lambert

I keep activity monitor's CPU% active on my Stream Deck at all times, watch it frequently, and have yet to see it go past 40%. I run large sessions. Studio Ultra w/ 64GB RAM. PT 2022.12. OS Monterey. Since buying this Mac many months ago I've hit the CPU ceiling twice, both times strictly because of sloppy plugin code (Acustica Audio plugins, which I quickly removed from the session).

Seems to be the same on my end. And yes, I removed all of the Acustica plugins. I feel its easier to remove an issue than to deal with an issue. lol
Now I see/hear people mention that the Protools CPU meter is terrible but no one goes into detail about what's broken or should I say what needs to be fixed. I think I asked that once before. What I have noticed on 2022.12 Ultimate is that the CPU "total" window seems higher than what the expanded core views show. Activity monitor shows pretty much the same CPU percentage as what the individual cores are showing in the CPU expanded view. The session is a mix of mono and stereo tracks(91voices), lots of plugins, and the buffer is at 64 with no options checked. The cache is also set to normal. Dropbox, Chrome are running and sharing sharing/mirroring to my iPad so I can look at activity monitor.

Originally Posted by LDS

P. . . Perhaps a 64 sample buffer session for low latency recording, and another geared more towards VIs and playback?

Yes sir, 32 or 64 should be the standard benchmark buffer setting for any native DAW test.
Not sure why any reviewer would use 1024 at all. 32 or 64 would work the system harder I'm assuming.

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by 685

Yes sir, 32 or 64 should be the standard benchmark buffer setting for any native DAW test.
Not sure why any reviewer would use 1024 at all. 32 or 64 would work the system harder I'm assuming.

If you look at DAWbench results, they’re not linear. Some processors relatively perform better at low latencies than high ones. Since many people work at higher latencies, it’s worthwhile dong both imo.

[HowHoffman]

Not that anyone responded to my problem, but I’ll still impart an interesting bit of info I got.

Thinking that the automatic upgrade of the new Mini M2 from OS 13.1 to 13.2 was making Pro Tools act badly, I followed Apple’s online directives on how to downgrade - including completely erasing the Mini’s drive - but repeatedly got a “Ventura is not compatible with this Mac” error. Huh? After a long call with Apple support and three techs, the third finally told me that Silicon Macs cannot be downgraded once you install the latest MacOS.

Even the Shift-Alt-Command-R move to get it back to the OS it came with wasn’t working.

Their advice was to sit tight until Avid did an upgrade - which would be another three months or so.

Before I reactivated my previous Intel Mac, I reinstalled 13.2 into the M2 and I’ve begun a fresh reinstall of everything from scratch, including a new version of Eucontrol 22.12 that just released this week - all because migration from my previous Mac failed.

So far, so good, as I’m now in the process of reinstalling plugins also from scratch.

If all continues to go well, I’ll let you know. If it doesn’t, I’ll REALLY let you know.

[685]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

If you look at DAWbench results, they’re not linear. Some processors relatively perform better at low latencies than high ones. Since many people work at higher latencies, it’s worthwhile dong both imo.

OK, but how many people do you know record audio(on a native system) with the buffer set to 1024?

I don't know any. lol
Computers are getting so powerful that the buffer setting may become irrelevant in the near future. My buffer has been set to 64 for several months now and its rocking along. Well, other than testing a few things at 32.

[DontLetMeDrown]

Originally Posted by 685

OK, but how many people do you know record audio(on a native system) with the buffer set to 1024?

People who mix use a higher buffer. Plugins like Soothe2 and SplitEQ use more CPU when using a low buffer.

[Tweakhead]

Several reports are indicating that the SSD in the M2 Mini is half the speed of the previous generation.