New "Mac Studio" from Apple

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

And you don't expect to as the chassis is hard dividing the available bandwidth in quarters and hard allocating 1/4 to each drive.

Sure I understand that, but what I was suggesting was that this bandwidth is still far more than what I'll ever require with my workload.

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by Obsidian Dragon

FYI: Every Apple Store will only stock two configurations of the Mac Studio. M1Max with 32GB RAM and 512 SSD or M1Ultra with 64GB RAM and 1TB SSD. Anything other than that, you will need to order online and have it shipped to you.

It's the standard config I'm looking at.

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by caseystone

If you order one now, Apple won't charge you until it ships to you. In the mean time, go ahead and check every day and if you can get one sooner, happy day! If not, then at least you'll eventually get one. Also, after you order, the estimated ship date can slide earlier, as happened on my order now due 29 April - 16 May. Cancelling the order is easy to do if you get lucky and nab one locally.

Just a suggestion.

Ya know, I was curious about that. Should I get in line for June delivery and continue checking each day, but will I somehow end up with two computers? If canceling is a simple task, maybe I will head down that path.

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by kings79

Sounds like a good solution. My only gripe is the price. There are cheaper ones on the market. OWC stuff is Hella marked up.

True, but I have a long history with OWC and they've saved my company's butt a few times. Strong customer support, and since I bought the chassis without drives their markup was more manageable. Also, they've been quite reliable, and peace of mind offers some value here.

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

...or maybe wait and see what the Mac Pro that is expected to be announced at the WWDC in June is about... but that is probably a late year delivery.

The Studio Ultra will end up being more machine than I need. I got 9 years out of the trashcan and it's still entirely viable today, so I'm getting my money's worth. Of course, that could be an argument to get the new MacPro, but for simple audio/music production it'll be swinging way too fast and high for my needs.

[glasswing]

If the trashcan is still working fine I wouldn't buy anything. But I really love my Ultra. So far it's replaced 2 old cheese graters and working great - although I haven't pushed it real hard yet. I'm still installing stuff - turning one of the old cheese graters into a backup server in the back room.

My only caveat might be that it's hard to know how many chips etc Apple has stored in their root cellar. China is still pretty locked down and it's hard to know the future there. But I could well be Chicken Little-ing too. But that was a part of my logic with buying the Ultra. The good news for you is you already have the PCI chassis etc all figured out.

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by glasswing

If the trashcan is still working fine I wouldn't buy anything.

It's working fine, which is to say that it's not malfunctioning, but it does reach its maximum CPU usage from time to time with larger sessions and I'd rather not have a CPU ceiling at all.

[thebeatless]

Well, like I’ve been saying, you’ll still have that problem with the studio until avid updates the software, so be patient. It works, but it’s not any better than earlier macs with pro tools. Hopefully an update will make it better!

I just opened a session from the studio ultra on my iMac and the studio ultra could barely play it. The iMac cpu meters maxed out at 60% and it played fine.

[audiolex1]

Originally Posted by Eric Lambert

It's working fine, which is to say that it's not malfunctioning, but it does reach its maximum CPU usage from time to time with larger sessions and I'd rather not have a CPU ceiling at all.

I think it is because PT doesn't know how to calculate with the new chips. I think if you were seeing that on Intel chips, you would see issues.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by audiolex1

I think it is because PT doesn't know how to calculate with the new chips. I think if you were seeing that on Intel chips, you would see issues.

The Pro Tools CPU meters produce suspect info, and more importantly are just bad predictors of actual problems on all systems. For many users seeing lower CPU usage on Apple Silicon is maybe a nice thing (look in macOS Activity Monitor to confirm) but the only real authoritative test is can you actually run larger session of the time you need to run, using the plugins you need to run, without CPU errors. And it seems lots of folks are getting impressive results so far on Apple Silicon (and if you aren't the same thing as always, the place to start troubleshooting is plugins).