I like the no noise part , with my current Mac Pro, which sits under the right side of my recording desk, the new graphics card has noticeable fan noise. Which comes on full speed from start up. So right now I have to put one of my 2'X4' acoustic panels in front of it when recording.. I may build an iso box as a different location is in not in cards .
While I think the machine itself is competitive, I agree the Apple display and also the RAM are arguably the most non competitive cost factor in the new items, compared to the options available.

Monitors have been a frustration since I moved over to a late 2018 Mac Mini earlier this year. Given my "it just works" experience with earlier Mac Minis and older Mac Pros this was totally unexpected for me. On the new Mini the Apple HDMI to DVI cable dongles didn't work when I dropped in my new Mini in place of the old one. Sometimes no video or unusable seeming "out of sync" video. Moving to Thunderbolt/USB C to DP or DVI cables almost entirely fixed this. Now occasionally the monitor "wake up" from display sleep or switch to the 2018 Mac Mini doesn't seem to work via my KVM (never a problem with my older Mac Minis or Mac Pro).

I can't say what causes this, or if the new Mac Pro shares this issue with the late 2018 Mini, but moving to USBC/Thunderbolt connection seems to the best way to connect monitors, so you're on the right track there.

I'd include SSD drives as well on the non-competitive list.
$400 for 1tb? $800 for 2tb?
A 2tb Samsung EVO will cost you about $250 in SATAIII or about $340 in the M.2 version.

Yes indeed, I didn't think about that because I would simply take the dual 1 TB EVO's I have in my current machine and put them into the new one (when and if )

I think the HDMI problem is with my monitor, since I've tried to connect other things (cameras) to it before and failed.With a thunberbolt 3->2 adaptor, it's working fine.

That is great,, it is LG widescreen you said ? Any chance or posting a photo of it an the Mac

I'm kind of in a state of total mess right now :-) once I get things a bit more organized a picture won't be as embarrasing. My current monitor is a LG 34UM95, a bit old now:
https://www.lg.com/africa/monitors/lg-34UM95

Here's a photo taken during a recording session last month before I got the new mac, with the monitor. Trashcan mac is in a different room.

Boy that is "widescreen" Hard for me to focus much past the Brauners though :D What spks are on top of the Barefoots ?

Also one more question Is your UAD system recognized by Logic on your new Mac ? This question came up over on the Avid ProTools forum

The LG is basically the same as having 2 monitors side-by-side, give or take a few inches/pixels. That's what I had before I got this.

I've only installed the UAD plugins so far, haven't connected the Apollo yet, but everything seems fine so far. I found some page on UAD that said it wasn't official yet, but that it was working as far as they know. I've hit a few others that are issues, iZotope has some problems with installation on some versions. I have some BlueCat stuff that doesn't work - they say "this quarter".

The migration is taking longer than I expected. 8 years of stuff accumulated on the old mac, and I don't want to blindly copy it over because there is a lot of cruft I don't want. So I keep finding new apps that I'd not thought of that I'll want, figure out how to install, register, etc...

Progress... UAD/Apollo is working. Apoggee Ensemble is working. I'm mostly moved over now!

OK, I'm migrated to the new machine, and everything seems to work. Apollo interface works, UAD plugins work, Apogee Ensemble works, I've edited some video, recorded and mixed some audio. Nearly all is well. There are a few plugins that don't like Catalina, hopefully that will be resolved soon.

I lost a nifty tool, mpeg StreamClip for video format conversions and simple edits. They have a "cutting edge beta" that was released in 2012, so it appears that development on that is dead, and 32 bit apps won't work anymore. It was just handy, but I can do what it did in other ways.

I did one real world performance comparison, just exporting a video edit. Same project on each machine. New Mac took 10 seconds, old mac took 30. I'm not sure what this is exercising, tho. Disk measurements indicated writes to the SSD was 3X faster on the new machine, so that may simply be file writing time.

Kev, you asked for photos. Not sure there's all that much to see, but here you go.

I decided to put the box in the other room. Still no noise issue, but it's big and there's no reaosn to have it right at hand. So here it is, with some external drives added, and the old trashcan sitting beside it for comparison. The size difference doesn't seem as dramatic as it is in person. The new Mac's a definite two-hander, lugging it across the room. The trashcan's like a thumb and one finger carry.

Attachment 31960

Studio setup, really unchanged, same old monitor, etc. Here's a video session, plenty of room without even filling the whole screen. (Smaller monitor attached to the trashcan Mac peeking in from the side. Just there until I'm 100% sure I don't need something off it still)

Attachment 31962

It's really nice to be able to stretch out audio tracks. Not all that many tracks here, but it'd be even more useful with a bigger multi-track session:

Attachment 31961

So does Logic also allow for having both mixer channels and the linear tracks /edit windows to be displayed at the same time, on a single screen ?

What is the unit above the M7, is that your interface ?

If I just spent 10K on a Mac Pro, I don't think I could immediately banish it to another room. I'd want to gaze at it adoringly for at least a few months.

:-) . I've had it a week or so now, and the thrill of a big heavy box sitting on the desk tends to wear off quickly.

Above the Bricasti is the Apogee Ensemble, basically there since it's my monitor controller.

Yes, you can display the mixer window (and other stuff) in Logic either as separate windows, or tiled within the main window. Here's an example of both. The extra screen space comes in handy.
Attachment 31975

I've always used multiple monitors, so the widescreen is just sort of a neater version of 2 monitors. The new Mac supports an insane number of monitors, I'd love to have more screen space if I could figure out where to put them! I do use a 2nd monitor set up where I can see it more easily from my normal recording position, to help with mic placement.