Mac Studio on the way!

jim1960 · #1 04-03-2023, 07:09 PM

It's done. I just ordered a Mac Studio Ultra. 128gb of ram and a 4tb internal drive. I did not bump up the GPU cores because I'm not sure I'd ever need that. Should be ready for pickup in early May. Going to have it sent to an Apple store in Delaware and save myself $500 in sales tax. I'll probably pick up the larger wireless keyboard when I pick up the computer. I like having a number pad and my current wireless does not have one.

DCCougar · #2 04-03-2023, 07:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jim1960

It's done. I just ordered a Mac Studio Ultra. 128gb of ram and a 4tb internal drive. I did not bump up the GPU cores because I'm not sure I'd ever need that. Should be ready for pickup in early May. Going to have it sent to an Apple store in Delaware and save myself $500 in sales tax. I'll probably pick up the larger wireless keyboard when I pick up the computer. I like having a number pad and my current wireless does not have one.

Wow! That ought to do it. Makes me recall that I started out with a Commodore 64, with 64K RAM, lol. It was fun, though, at the time....

jim1960 · #3 04-03-2023, 07:52 PM

I've never had a computer that I could say was overpowered for my studio needs. I wanted to experience that.

b1j · #4 04-03-2023, 08:55 PM

Congratulations, Jim. You’ll love that machine so much, you’ll forget you’re using it. I can’t bog down my new MacBook Pro M2.

Joseph Hanna · #5 04-03-2023, 09:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jim1960

It's done. I just ordered a Mac Studio Ultra. 128gb of ram and a 4tb internal drive. I did not bump up the GPU cores because I'm not sure I'd ever need that. Should be ready for pickup in early May. Going to have it sent to an Apple store in Delaware and save myself $500 in sales tax. I'll probably pick up the larger wireless keyboard when I pick up the computer. I like having a number pad and my current wireless does not have one.

That.......is a whole lotta Rosie. It'll make your head spin at how comically fast it is. Congrats!

AcousticDreams · #6 04-03-2023, 10:44 PM

A Super Big congratulations! Love my Mac Studio Max!

What Monitor are you going to use with it? Love my ASUS that Kev suggested.

KevWind · #7 04-04-2023, 06:47 AM

That will be a beast of a machine

As I noted in the thread by KennyB I just ran a quick test on my M1 Pro chipped MBP with only 16 GB memory and 1 TB storage

I opened Pro Tools and loaded 400 tracks took only a second or two (using the internal Mac sound card because the Carbon I/O is limited to 58 channels of simultaneous recording )

Record armed 400 tracks used the internal mic and recorded some vocal singing then had to of course lower all the faders way down to not distort.
Then went thru and loaded 400 tracks with PT bundled Eq- compressor - both took maybe 2 seconds to load all 400 then 400 D-verb which took maybe 3-4 seconds to load. hit playback and it worked fine

jim1960 · #8 04-04-2023, 08:11 AM

Thanks all. I'm really looking forward to getting it up and running.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AcousticDreams

What Monitor are you going to use with it? Love my ASUS that Kev suggested.

My BenQ SW271 monitor will take over main monitoring duties. I'm going to move my midi keyboard to the left side of my L-shaped desk and I'll grab a second monitor on the cheap to use with that. It will just be for midi input and a little bit of midi editing (the main midi editing will still take place on the main monitor). I'm likely going to relocate my iMac to the desk in my living room and use it via wireless.

Quote:

Originally Posted by KevWind

Record armed 400 tracks used the internal mic and recorded some vocal singing then had to of course lower all the faders way down to not distort.
Then went thru and loaded 400 tracks with PT bundled Eq- compressor - both took maybe 2 seconds to load all 400 then 400 D-verb which took maybe 3-4 seconds to load. hit playback and it worked fine

The hiccups I experience most often come from using virtual instruments which sometimes tax resources and stop PT dead in its tracks. 128gb of ram should be enough to stop that from happening in the future. That's going to be a nice change.

KevWind · #9 04-04-2023, 08:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jim1960

Thanks all. I'm really looking forward to getting it up and running.

My BenQ SW271 monitor will take over main monitoring duties. I'm going to move my midi keyboard to the left side of my L-shaped desk and I'll grab a second monitor on the cheap to use with that. It will just be for midi input and a little bit of midi editing (the main midi editing will still take place on the main monitor). I'm likely going to relocate my iMac to the desk in my living room and use it via wireless.

The hiccups I experience most often come from using virtual instruments which sometimes tax resources and stop PT dead in its tracks. 128gb of ram should be enough to stop that from happening in the future. That's going to be a nice change.

Ok I can do test with VI's and I can do it connected to Carbon or on Mac sound.. Also I can check it on my Intel machine which has 128 GB of RAM
What number of VI tracks would you normally have going that used to stop PT ?

jim1960 · #10 04-04-2023, 08:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KevWind

Ok I can do test with VI's and I can do it connected to Carbon or on Mac sound.. Also I can check it on my Intel machine which has 128 GB of RAM
What number of VI tracks would you normally have going that used to stop PT ?

I don't think it's so much the number of tracks as it is the amount of resources each VI required. I'm sure some were thirstier than others but I've never stopped to figure out which. Also, my iMac only has 32gb ram, so that didn't help. Depending on which ones, just a few VI's could eat up quite a bit of that 32gb.

Joseph Hanna · #11 04-04-2023, 09:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jim1960

I don't think it's so much the number of tracks as it is the amount of resources each VI required. I'm sure some were thirstier than others but I've never stopped to figure out which. Also, my iMac only has 32gb ram, so that didn't help. Depending on which ones, just a few VI's could eat up quite a bit of that 32gb.

Any VI that has the ability to purge makes things so much more efficient. In my old machine, I found I could double, sometimes triple VI counts with purge. It's now just a habit and continues to dramatically reduce ram usage. I'd also suggest experimenting with voice allocation as often I can reduce the number of voices without compromising sonics. I haven't gone about methodically testing the limits of the new Mac, but I know I had a project last week with 20-ish instances of Kontakt (some of those I was using Multi's), a hand full of Spitfire Colossus, and some ever-present Omnisphere's. It felt like the machine was working with utterly no effort.

I think you'll be very happy with the Studio.

jim1960 · #12 04-04-2023, 10:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joseph Hanna

Any VI that has the ability to purge makes things so much more efficient. In my old machine, I found I could double, sometimes triple VI counts with purge.

Can you expand upon that? I've not heard of any ability to purge VIs before and have no idea how to do that.

Joseph Hanna · #13 04-04-2023, 10:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jim1960

Can you expand upon that? I've not heard of any ability to purge VIs before and have no idea how to do that.

Purge is different for almost all VI's. Native Instruments Kontakt player is the most obvious with a "select purge" button on the main GUI. I've become more and more a fan of Kontakt since the available libraries are endless and CPU usage and ram is so adjustable. Omnisphere can purge ram by selecting "load lite". On some patches, it does little (if anything), but other patches are reduced dramatically. The Spitfire stuff is similar in that there is a select button on the main GUI that allows selecting and or de-select articulations and keyswitches, while just running the primary patch. The Spitfire VI's are using massive amounts of ram with some patches almost 2 gig. Purging brings several down to 500 Mb.

There are however some VI's that are not as ram intensive that don't offer a purge. It's worthwhile to look into things for your particular synths as it really can make a big difference.

jim1960 · #14 04-04-2023, 11:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joseph Hanna

Purge is different for almost all VI's. Native Instruments Kontakt player is the most obvious with a "select purge" button on the main GUI. I've become more and more a fan of Kontakt since the available libraries are endless and CPU usage and ram is so adjustable. Omnisphere can purge ram by selecting "load lite". On some patches, it does little (if anything), but other patches are reduced dramatically. The Spitfire stuff is similar in that there is a select button on the main GUI that allows selecting and or de-select articulations and keyswitches, while just running the primary patch. The Spitfire VI's are using massive amounts of ram with some patches almost 2 gig. Purging brings several down to 500 Mb.

There are however some VI's that are not as ram intensive that don't offer a purge. It's worthwhile to look into things for your particular synths as it really can make a big difference.

Cool. I have Kontakt and Omnisphere but I've never looked for ways to purge. I'll keep an eye out for it now but, hopefully, this new beast won't need me to purge.

Joseph Hanna · #15 04-04-2023, 12:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jim1960

Cool. I have Kontakt and Omnisphere but I've never looked for ways to purge. I'll keep an eye out for it now but, hopefully, this new beast won't need me to purge.

Absolutely Jim. It only takes a second. Beastly machine or not it's a great habit to get into. No downsides.