SSD?

[spinsong]

You’re degree in physics doesn’t mean didly to real world applications. You have to realize why solid wire is used in housing over braided. Thinner hairs tend to fail more often. How many sessions had to be stopped over faulty braided microphone wire. Get for real. One of the most often part that fails in an automobile is the alternator which is made of spun wire. Look at silicon. What’s it made of. Putty. What are the odds of it outlasting plastic which spoils over time. Keep your head out of the gutter, and face the facts.


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[Darryl Ramm]

Putty? You don't know the difference between silicon and silicone? Oh Jeez. What clueless incoherent rambling. Oh well thanks for making it clear so nobody is going to listen to you.

[spinsong]

It’s all thin wiring associated with doping used in transistors which uses silicone. Makes you wonder why they call it that.


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[climber]

so this thread is going well...

[Carl Lie]

Can we talk about space ships now?

C

[its2loud]

@Daryll, your knowledge and expertise on this topic is invaluable to the DUC and everyone knows it. Don’t mind the trolls.

[K Roche]

Originally Posted by Sergius

Sorry for the vagueness in my post. I'm going to be buying a new iMac 27". It comes with a 500GB internal SSD (might get the 1TB). RAM will be at least 32GB. I'm assuming I will also need an external drive and meant to ask if an 1TB SSD like the Samsung T7 or the G-Technology R-Series are compatible for Pro Tools audio sessions. All sessions, VI samples will be on external SSD drive. I currently run G-Tech Firewire drives on my mid2010 iMac 8GB RAM.

OK So back to what the OP is doing ::
The first big question is,,,,, in your PT sessions will you be doing analog microphone recording in the same location as the computer ???

If not :: than an Intel iMac may be fine (depending on how sensitive you are to computer fan noise)

Because I can tell you from first hand experience (depending on how long a PT session you are doing and how much processing is involved) the fan noise will definitely become noticeable and will be a factor in raising the noise floor into good sensitive mic/s ....

Also I do editing in Final Cut Pro the fans ramp up quickly and are quite noticeable throughout the entire process (SO unless I have a defective machine or you can verify the new Gen intel are quieter ) AND if you do any recording with with mic/s in the same room ?? I would suggest not buying an Intel iMac .....period

As someone who owns a 27" 2020 iMac with a 10th gen. Intel i7 chip. (in a one room situation that relies on microphone recording ) Honestly I would I would buy an Intel chip iMac.. I would if you need a new machine right now either see if the 24 M1 iMac would work for you OR wait for the June Apple event where we will see the new M2 chip and possibly a new new high end M2 Mac Mini ...

Also I have the same always on fan noise with my OWC Express 4 M2 enclosure :::now I do not use them during recording,,,, and only use for session back and Final Cut Pro storage I can get the video files off my internal SSD (see my system below)

[Skytouch]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

The issue is more the hassle involved in having the soldered on SSD replaced, but which again is extremely unlikely to happen (and typically folks here are going to find SSDs more reliable that more fragile spinning disks).

Hi Darryl, I'm preparing to upgrade my 2010 5,1 to a Mac Studio Max, likely 64GB RAM / 8TB SSD running Monterey as shipped. Having 8TB SSD may enable moving everything into the box - system, apps, samples, and sessions.

A couple things. I'm comfortable recording ITB partly because the internal SSDs are socketed. If I manage to wear anything out (unlikely), Apple should be able to replace the SSDs without major motherboard surgery. Not having to deal with external chassis, cables or wall warts is very appealing.

Also, I've had a discussion with Avid support about APFS vs HFS+ for session media. Their guidance is somewhere in between "don't use APFS" and "use APFS at your own risk."

So in your experience, what are potential issues recording and playing back sessions on the internal APFS-formatted SSD? For session media, I prefer a dynamic APFS volume versus a fixed HFS+ partition if possible.

Sky

[thin ice]

Originally Posted by Skytouch

Hi Darryl, I'm preparing to upgrade my 2010 5,1 to a Mac Studio Max, likely 64GB RAM / 8TB SSD running Monterey as shipped. Having 8TB SSD may enable moving everything into the box - system, apps, samples, and sessions.

A couple things. I'm comfortable recording ITB partly because the internal SSDs are socketed. If I manage to wear anything out (unlikely), Apple should be able to replace the SSDs without major motherboard surgery. Not having to deal with external chassis, cables or wall warts is very appealing.

Also, I've had a discussion with Avid support about APFS vs HFS+ for session media. Their guidance is somewhere in between "don't use APFS" and "use APFS at your own risk."

So in your experience, what are potential issues recording and playing back sessions on the internal APFS-formatted SSD? For session media, I prefer a dynamic APFS volume versus a fixed HFS+ partition if possible.

Sky

I have continued to work from an external thunderbolt SSD because I never had any issues on a maximum of around 100 tracks. However, with no moving parts on SSDs, is usage of the internal SSD really putting any wear on the drive?

Are Apple offering to replace faulty drives on M1 Macs?

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Skytouch

Hi Darryl, I'm preparing to upgrade my 2010 5,1 to a Mac Studio Max, likely 64GB RAM / 8TB SSD running Monterey as shipped. Having 8TB SSD may enable moving everything into the box - system, apps, samples, and sessions.

A couple things. I'm comfortable recording ITB partly because the internal SSDs are socketed. If I manage to wear anything out (unlikely), Apple should be able to replace the SSDs without major motherboard surgery. Not having to deal with external chassis, cables or wall warts is very appealing.

Also, I've had a discussion with Avid support about APFS vs HFS+ for session media. Their guidance is somewhere in between "don't use APFS" and "use APFS at your own risk."

So in your experience, what are potential issues recording and playing back sessions on the internal APFS-formatted SSD? For session media, I prefer a dynamic APFS volume versus a fixed HFS+ partition if possible.

Sky

There are *no* issues. Beyond treating it the same as any other drive, e.g. don't run out of space.

---

Wear life on good modern SSDs is large. It's a bit of an irritation that Apple does not clearly spec anything here (no DWPD or TBW specs, or seperate drive warranty life). But Apple is using quality NAND and knows what they are doing with controllers etc. Ao I expect at least typical/upper end consumer wear specs.

And a sample there is the 2TB Samsung 908 Pro that I use have an endurance spec of 1200 TBW. That is you expect to be using them reliable at stated capacity up to 1,200 TB of data written. Worried about audio data, lets say you spend your time just recording 64 channels @ 32-bit float at 96 kHz, over and over and over...

64 channels * 96,000 Hz * 32/8 bytes *60 * 60 * 24 = ~1.9 TB/day

So if you did nothing else but just continuously 24x7x365 record those 64 channels per day, repeating over and over and removing stuff of disk and keeping going.... a drive with a 1200 TBW endurance spec should last

1,200/1.9 ~ 630 days ~ 21 months.

And congratulations if anybody actually hammers a drive anywhere near that. Most folks are not working 24x7x365 and are going to be tracking on average less than a few hours per day and typically less tracks, so you can plug in your own number the math above. And then calculate how many years of expected life you also have left.

If taking sessions in to mix...its the size of the session plus some estimate for how much stuff you ever write out, bounce to disk, consolidate, or freeze/commit. And Avid disk cache might sometimes help there with reducing some disk writes. Doing video add that in as well... And it's only writing that counts all the basic audio editing we do usually does not change anything on disk, so there is no drive wear from that. If you plug in realistic numbers for most DAW users you will get expected lifetimes of many years, often exceeding the expected life of the user. And for things like writing the the internal drive of a laptop where the NAND is soldered to the motherboard... if the expected SSD wear life is much larger than the expected usage life of the laptop (or user) you really don't have an issue. It takes a bit of adjustment to accept things wear out.. but that it does not matter. Computers are wearing out all the time: fans, batteries, keyboards, capacitors, solder joint expected failure rates, laptop mechanical hinge life, etc. etc. Some of those are easy to repair in old laptops and some mean you toss it (and over time maybe we'll see soldered MBP motherboard SSD replacement but until then it's a motherboard swap, and hopefully not with a used board.. and there are some supplies of motherboards in the third party repair market with seem to be new and with new drives on them, I'm not sure where they are sourced, hopefully that will improve in future).

And yes as far as overall reliability and uptime goes (and not looking like an idiot in front of a customer for commercial folks), having everything in once box and not a bunch of external drives and cable etc. is typically going to be more reliable. I've bounced external HDD and SSD drives off the floor multiple times with varying results...

----

As for Avid staff and APFS, I have no idea who you are talking to at Avid. I'll wager if they are front line support staff who may not know what to say and are stuck with ancient disk recommendation specs from the last century and trying to work out what that means.

It's a pity that Avid's storage advice seems so hopelessly last century. I've suggested many times that they need to get this updated. It's just embarrassing. I'm not sure why it's not been updated I would hope Avid still has staff with enough technical ability to do this properly.

And if anybody at Avid knew of any issue with APFS then they better damn well be a responsible company and be communicating about those problems as they will know that many (most) Mac users are likely operating on APFS today. Where is the customer notice? Knowledge base articles?

APFS (unlike FAT32, exFAT etc.) supports all Pro Tools should need. It's a very advanced file system with great support for NAND flash, snapshots and other features and from a hardening/robustness viewpoint is deployed in ~Billion devices worldwide from iPhones, iPads to Mac. That's a non-trivial user base. And given it's been default filesystem on Macs for quite some time, it will be being used by a very large percentage of Pro Tools users. And... *crickets*.