Mac Studio for Music First Impressions
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- čas přidán 25. 08. 2024
- Apple's flagship Mac Studio is a 20 core beast packed with 128gbs of ram. But how good is it in practice and what are the problems you might face migrating to the new M1 Silicon chip. Guy has taken the plunge and gives you his first impressions a few days into his journey into the Apple Studio world. He certainly bumped into a few problems along the way. That doesn't mean that you will do but this is his perspective and his personal experience of the process.
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Yes, I just received one today 9/18/2022. Thanks for the heads up on this! :)
@@ryanknaggs I got one these scam offers too. Via text, he would not tell me what I won until AFTER I pay him nearly $300 in shipping fees. Needless to say... I declined.
Thanks Guy-yes I just got one telling me I'd won an M1. Lol :)
I've watched many vids for months now about m1 and m2 but this was by far the most useful/helpful and indeed honest one. The rest was all rainbows and unicorns. Thanks for this 🙏
holy shit! the legend himself!
I love my Mac Studio. I just have the baseline model, but that thing is a true BEAST of a machine. Almost all of the software-issues are resolved and 90% of my plugins are running nativeliy on the M1 and the rest are supported vi a Rosetta. It FLOORED my old I7 and I havent regretted the purchase one day. Silent, efficient and with the best I/O currently available on the Apple Silicon platform. Highly recommended, totally worth the price. It will last you for a decade.
There ARE some quirks, but I remember the transition from Motorola to Intel, and trust me - that was way worse. Rosetta2-preformance is quite frankly astonishing.
I agree. have the m1Max on a mac studio and am as pleased as Punch. Really happy I bought it. I use logic pro and reason. Also using Final Cut Pro for video. Yes, there are some issues but all in all the Mac Studio is a winner in my setup.
Bjorn and John, i so appreciate your updated posts, confirming resolution of most software issues. Thank you!
Has the 32gb RAM been okay for you?
@@simonr344 Thanks to this thread, i got the 32gb model as well and the memory is way more than needed, although i’ll keep it! Operationally, 32GB unified RAM feels comparable to 64GB-96GB conventional DDRAM. Load and installation times … general wait times … are reduced by more than half. It’s a night and day difference over my 2018 Intel Mac Mini w 64GB, which was already “just fine” for audio applications.
@@simonr344 for sure, yes. I am not recording in a studio but with video which pushes it more than audio it presents no problems either. I think the way the m1max works, RAM is used more efficiently
Just wanted to say thank you for all the help and tuition spanning your videos. Your humour, energy and sheer ability to create has been a massive help. Thanks 👍
Thanks for showing us the challenges. Still on an Intel Mac and hearing about rhis, I am highly motivated to get another year of life out my setup…
Helpful as always, thank you very much!
I’m in the same boat here. It may take me 6 months to finish running a full inventory of all my software and hardware and researching what is allegedly Silicon compatible and what isn’t! I’m still lamenting the loss of my old Cycling 74 Pluggo plug-ins on my current Intel system…
Regarding the "I forgot where my stuff is" happens to me when my stuff is located on a remote drive and that drive went to sleep. The trick is: navigate to that drive, open a folder to let it know you want something from it and it's time to wake up and THEN open your app. It should find your stuff from a now non-sleepy drive immediately (so it might have something to do with your energy saver settings really putting the drives to sleep when not in use).
Minor and pedantic technical correction: Rosetta 2 does it’s translation on first load of the binary, and then caches the translated binary. It’s not a continuous process*. The performance differences that arise come from mismatches between what intel ISA does and Arm64 ISA does, plus the cost of a few shims. Overall this is fairly negligible, however there are some use cases which are more problematic, most notably floating point math done using the X87 instructions. Not all floating point is done with X87 on modern intel chips. But audio software has a significant floating point footprint and therefore is prone to this particular pathological case.
X87 was created very early on in the life of the IEEE 754 floating point spec. As a result it contains what we now think of as bugs, most notably in some edge cases around the representation of numbers in binary. This means that the Rosetta 2 X87 translation subsystem cannot just blindly translate to intel float operations to arm float operations and instead has to do a bunch of double checks and extra work to ensure compatible behaviour. This makes floating point essentially the slowest part of Rosetta 2 translated code.
*This excludes programs that generate machine code on the fly such as just in time compilers for eg JavaScript. These are a pathologically slow corner of Rosetta 2 but are largely outside the scope of what most audio software does.
I knew when I said it I wasnt quite getting it right! Real world I got 30% fewer instances of Dune in C12 running in Rosetta compared with an old intel Macbook pro, let alone natively so for me if it wont run in native silicon it doesnt run at all.
@@ThinkSpaceEducation it’s so frustrating that the area we want to use this stuff in happens to hit the most significant weak points isn’t it. Can only hope that the popularity of these new apple silicon macs, plugin makers will be incentivised to support the platform sooner than later.
It would be great if more DAWs would do something like to Bitwig’s plugin isolation in the future that gives us crash protection as well as allowing mixing plugin for different architectures seamlessly.
@@andrewbrehaut Crapple doesn't provide incentives ...that's the problem and has always been so. It's all cold hard cash to use the platform for writers and users.
Hi Guy, thanks for your characteristic and transparent style on this subject.
I was forced into a quick changeover - when faced with an imminent, tight and heavy workload for a project - my previous (ancient 2008 Mac) system decided to punctually crash every 9 minutes.
Fortunately I had anticipated this moment and had already taken delivery of a new system - including replacements for my interface and digital desk which were now redundant on modern Macs.
I decided to stick with Rosetta on the new Studio Max 64GB 2TB Machine, coupled with a new SSL BiG SiX (conveniently replacing both interface and desk in one unit).
However the obvious increase in performance means that I am content to postpone Native usage for a while.
So far the new system is running gloriously - no problems with Logic, 3rd party plugins, peripherals or disc management under Rosetta.
Thankfully I haven’t had any of these issues since switching from a pc to mac studio, but I started completely fresh with new SSDs and went through the painful process of downloading and installing every plugin I wanted, it’s a good shout anyway as it makes you think about what actual plugins you need and use, as opposed to filling your vst folder with plugins you’ll never touch!
Just going to the same very painful experience of installing everything from scratch, but I agree it's genuinely so worth it. Much less clutter, and everything runs perfectly for me so far.
I'm going through that tedious exercise right now. The plugins I never used get eliminated from the team. And if any program isn't M1 compatible... I won't load it.
+1 here guys :))) I haven’t even unboxed the new beast but, even getting rid of the untouched plugin grave yard is some kind of a relief. I will be a “silicon native or bust!” person as well because, if a developer does not bother to upgrade their product according to the evolving technology then it is more likely they will let you down along the way eventually. That’s my mind set and it doesn’t have to fit everyone on the planet ;-). I’ll update this comment if I bump into any issues when I get the new system going. Cheers :)
Agree with fresh install. I went from a MBP 2013 to a 16" MBP M1 Max 64GB 4TB drive. Instead of carrying forward all that legacy crap using the Migration Tool, I opted to re-download everything fresh. All my sample libraries are on the internal drive (about 2.25TB for the libraries) because I wanted the mobility of not having a drive hanging from the laptop when I travel. Apparently when you step up to the 4TB drive there is also a dramatic increase in throughput vs the 2TB drive, so bonus points there. I've run projects with 100 tracks of sample libraries (not all playing simultaneously, but all loaded) and I'm only at about 25% CPU. The only time I get a spike is when a library is loading while trying to play back or with certain libraries. So far, Action Strings 2 is the worst culprit in this regard, and I would suspect that there is some suboptimal scripting going on in there. I also noticed that the computer got a little faster over the first two weeks which I chalk up to it self-optimizing with machine learning through the Neural Engine. My personal advice to anyone moving to a new M1 is to do a fresh install of everything. A little pain up front is better than weeks spent routing out problems caused by legacy preference and cache files lurking in your system. Also it's great for pruning out seldom used applications, plugins and libraries.
This is the way.
You just saved me from a lot of headaches... thank you very much!
The power/performance of the ARM-based Apple Silicon is truly impressive, and I would love to get one, apart from the price. Maybe by M3 these software issues will have been resolved.
Loving my Mac studio with M1 Max. The CPU handles everything well. The only problem is sometimes moderate loads struggle because it flips between efficient and performance cores. So full mix runs great, but single instrument with fx might hit cpu limit
If you can run everything M1 native it is wonderful.
I ran into this a couple of times too. At least in Logic I went into the preferences and made sure it was using only the performance cores. The HE cores are probably best left to run the OS and any background applications.
Great to see the Reaper Master in here! :-)
I bought one at the store and walking out the store with it in an apple bag made me feel so cool........yet so dorky!
I've been using my Apple M1 Mac Mini (16 GB) for a year now and love it. I have had some similar issues in the beginning, but I think some of your problems may come from the operating system, macOS Monterey. I'm on macOS Big Sur and I haven't experienced some of your difficulties like Disk Utilities formatting issues or mysterious audio plugin death spirals. The best fix was to load only the audio plugins that I knew were up to date, then slowly add older plugins as I needed them - sometimes they worked and other times not. I also found that even with using Rosetta for some software, a significant speed increased happened over my old i7 Mac mini (16 GB) and my MacBook Pro (16 GB).
Can you run a huge number of tracks simultaneously too? Like how much have you pulled off?
Refreshing to see someone not trumpeting the "Macs just work" stuff. Hope it works out for you and doesn't end up costing you much in productivity.
Guy, I upgraded from an 8 year old iMac to the exact same configuration of Mac Studio as you did, and use Logic exclusively. I'm just a hobbyist and have far fewer VI libraries and plugins than you have. I did a complete new install rather than using Apple's migration assistant software. Fortunately, I have had only a few minor problems like the one with with Kontakt not fining libraries. All of my libraries are on NVMe drives inside external Thunderbolt enclosures. Keep up the videos... I've learned so much from you, not to mention the entertainment value!
.....haha....I spent half my life, sorting PC problems! just like you and now I feel much better !
You have such a beautiful music studio. I love the amount of natural light.
Guy, I must say it's been a jolly long time since I've stopped off here, and I can see, the guy Guy is as sharp and funny as ever, and let me not forget informative, God Bless guy Guy!
Glad you dropped in!
Thank you Guy
This is very well done by you. this is the best review I have seen.
But I didn't expect anything else from you.You are a hero.
Gr.Ness
When Kontakt asks you to find the files always select the “‘search with spotlight” it’s a single click solution. By the way this has happened to me for years. Normally it’s when I load up a project from 6-7-10 years ago….
Hey Guy, I find myself forced to look at a new Mac as my 2011 Mac GPU gave up. Watching this hugely informative video is certainly food for thought. I think I’m going to buy into the M1 world, albeit with some trepidation. Reading through the comments (very helpful everyone), It seems to lean towards a ‘yes’ from everyone. I fear that my Waves plugins will be an issue as they are some years old now…anyone care to share their experience in this? Thank you so much Guy for this and making it entertaining along the way 👍👍🙏👏
Really useful video Guy. Thanks for taking the bullet for us. I use Mac at work and Pc at home. I have no preference either way as long as they function and I get the results. Let's just write the music.
FINALLY!!!
An honest discussion about Apple M1/M2 for music production.
I've seen so many videos claiming how amazing their new M1/M2's work with their DAW and how they've had no problems whatsoever.
It made me think I was the only one with issues!!
Thank you so much for this refreshingly honest discussion of your experiences.
Recently bought a M1Max Studio (half the price..) and I must say it wasn't that bad of a transfer. Plenty powerful enough for sound design and post stuff, and actually ALL my plugins worked. (Don't have 1000+, but maybe 100 or so) Some minor issues, but nothing big! Running Nuendo, coming from a MacPro (2009!!) this was a BIG difference and well worth the money and time! Windows users probably have to face the same transition in a few years anyways.. so yeah, glad I made the transfer.
I have to say, my Macbook Pro M1 Max has been night and day for Pro Tools and iZotope RX under Rosetta 2 compared to the Trashcan. Zero problems. All startling improvements. I don't have any native music/audio software. But even the "foreign" stuff has been flawless and blindingly fast. RX processes that used to take 20 minutes now take less than 2. Pro Tools sessions that used to bog down the trashcan barely make the Max breathe faster. I have yet to hear the fan.
Caveat: that's at my day job which is 97% audio tech/dialogue editor, 3% composer. At home, I happily compose in Pro Tools on Windows. I wouldn't mind upgrading my home system to Cubase on Mac M1. But since it's mainly a hobby at this point, I do with what I have and it's fine, even for BBC SO Pro plus Kontakt, ew Play, Arturia synth models, and Superior Drummer all in one template.
Have the Ultra on the way. Thanks for the heads up, Guy! Best, Daniel - And Apple! Fix your bugs!
As a hobbyist, I tend to avoid Apple, mostly because the price and lack of user upgradeable parts. I also have an issue with how their products don't work with older programs, even their own. But I do love the idea of a fast computer. I am also glad to see more than 2 USB/Thunderbolt ports. I'm thinking maybe in 3 years, I will check the used market if they hold up well. Thanks for an interesting video.
It only took you 6 sentences to tell the internet that you're not only a hobbyist, but also have no idea what you're talking about. Kudos.
Sounds like a sensible approach.
Really Helpful and comforting to know I'm not alone with the M1 growing pains
Brilliant run down as I’m thinking of getting a Mac Studio for all the Spitfire software.
Yes, patience is the key but it’s a difficult time for musicians with regard to future proofing or getting the most powerful MacBook Pro 16 intel available 2nd hand.
Thanks Guy.
Not a single F-word used! Good job, Guy, for these issues deserve quite a few.
Finally, someone who works with orchestral and film scores gets an mac studio, can wait to see how it holds up
Thank you for sharing your transition experience, Guy. I look forward to the day when everything runs more smoothly on Apple Silicon than on MacIntel. For now, I'm content to wait while it gets sorted out.
With your videos my learning curve will shrink drastically. Thank you.
thank you so much for your wonderful video ,You saved my life, I bought m1 and I had the same issue like you, and I got so much frustrated , but after your explanation I understand what I should do , god bless you
Love your perspectives - always balanced. I use both macs and PCs but have leaned more toward mac, especially since the M1 and because I find macs easier to use with complex audio routing. Definitely, computers are tools to enable creative production. Love your excellent videos. Cheers!
For some reason when a plug-in or DAW doesn’t work on my M1, it always seems to be a Waves plug-in … might be time to move on!
Glad you made the switch! I went from 30 hour video renders for my music to 4 minutes (yes, that is insane). No issues with my plugins but issues with Atmos...
Hi Guy! 2021 ThinkSpace MA grad here! Believe it or not, I'm using an M1 Mac Mini (16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD) running Pro Tools in Rosetta and networked up using VEP to a 2010 Mac Pro and a no-name 2020 PC for libraries. Aside from it taking a few months for Avid to produce a version of PT that would run the Video Engine on the M1 (came along in October 2021), it's been smooth sailing. I'm even running Dolby Atmos Production Suite, HD Native, MTRX Studio and mixing on a 12-speaker Atmos array flawlessly. With a Mac Mini!! And with dual 4K monitors, one of them using StarTech on one of the USB ports! Would love to get a Studio when my wallet will allow, but the Mini is doing the job, even with huge orchestral sessions. I've gotten the very occasional RAM warning when running a massive session, but no crashes. 🙂
Very good choice!
I've been running an M1 Mac Mini for over a year now. Initially there were some plugins that weren't ready to run natively on it, but that's been taken care of, and now I consider it one of the best music production purchases I've ever made. So much so that it makes me quite keen to save up and get the Mac Studio because I'm certain it's a thorough beast of a machine!
And you're composing movie scores, symphonies, etc? Or do you just have more money than brains?
@@PreacherAtArrakeen u dont have to be an a list composer to afford what can be as little as 2000 pounds for the base model. its admittedly the most important part of a modern composers setup
@@joederbyshire_ + a decent monitor and peripherals. My M1 mini does just fine.
@@PreacherAtArrakeen i use an m1 mini too. but i can see why people would want a more powerful computer. its not a bad investment in any way
I took the Mac Studio plunge July 2022. My DAW of choice is Reaper and I am running in Rosetta mode. I experienced only minimal issues (aided by my Tech Guru friend) transitioning. These issues were mostly due to migrating from my PC and then not being able to locate things. Any fresh installs I did were pretty much trouble free. Loading some old projects did cause Reaper to crash but I narrowed this down to a single instance of a Waves plugin that was fixed by a reinstall of said plugin. All other Waves plugins work perfectly. With respect to CPU usage, the only time I had minor audio glitches in playback was when I had inadvertently left the settings for minimum latency (4.3ms for recording). My old system would have collapsed in a heap under this load. No regrets moving to M1.
Guyyy! Great video! - But would you make an updated video with your experience???
best
Rune
to the lost library links that need to be found again every start, just to drop my 2 cents, since i am working alot in both worlds: Loosing the location of the soundlibs also could be a problem by the soundlibs library software. On PC side, if you run i.e. two different monitor resolutions, many of them also don't know how to display correctly. All library driven systems might face problems like this one. I really love both bases. Of course the mac studio in that size is faaaaar beyond the budget; a small macbook air with a bit of ram solves it for me. But my music projects are simply much smaller... Love your videos and the service you give us amateurs... :D
Hi Guy,
You are a very talented, brilliant and funny man interjecting humor in your videos!
I have been watching for a while and now have just subscribed.
Thank you for your technical experience with the Mac Studio.
I have been a PC user and wondering if this is a new direction for me.
I have a better understanding on what to expect now with your presentation.
I really appreciate your sharing your experience and wisdom.
Thanks again, Best always,
Munro
Have used 16GB Ram M1 Mini in Rosetta for over a year now and it’s been absolutely fine. Definitely a lot faster than my old 2010 Mac. Is it fast enough, once you’re recording audio in with plugs and virtual instruments running, no not yet, but, certainly a hundred times better than before. Will M2 be the answer to all our dreams. My guess is, once it’s out, we’ll be looking at M3 for the same promises as our demands grow with it.
I'm planning on switching to a Mac next year, since Windows is going to be a pain in the ass. This video helped a lot on my way!
Very excited to get my hands on one of these - I have a feeling it's going to be a night and day difference between this and my current setup!
Thanks for such a great video!
I love my new Mac studio. Also,
I learned a lot from you thank you
and my Mac cleaner
do without it Mac cleaner.
This is so much appreciated! Congrats on keeping your sense of humor!
This came just as I was thinking of upgrading to an M1 Mac from an Intel Mac. Extremely helpful, thank you.
Sure like you … the real deal … and so helpful!!
Excellent introduction to M1 Guy. There seems to be very little on the web about using M1 for music. Look forward to your update on using the Studio in due course.
yep, same here. I'm just on the cusp of getting a pretty much identical machine.....but have over 1000 plug-ins. I'm -quite frankly -'daunted'.
Great video by the way. During the plug-in management set up my M1 Max studio didn’t crash all that interesting that happened to you. And I feel like a moron but I didn’t know about turning on Rosetta in the info window. Thank you so much for that tip!
I suppose having 700 plugins (half of them waves to be fair) didnt help but Cubase managed it so Im not sure why logic couldnt
Thanks Guy! Very practical, “seasoned”, video! It was enormously easy to understand and your examples are spot on!
I use Pro Tools on my MacBook pro. I haven't updated the computer or the software. they are both 2015. Admittedly I 'm not doing your kinda productions, but when I see the problems with subscriptions and upgrades, I'm happy in my little corner of the world. I can still use new software thankfully. I think I am at the edge of it all, and huge financial outlay may be in my future, but for now, I ain't going nowhere.
Guy, you can open Logic while holding the command SHFT+CTRL keys and, this should disable any audio units that haven't been validated by Logic.
Thinking about getting this for Musescore 4 and VSTs etc.
Right there with you Guy with a new MacBook Pro. I found migration assistant caused a lot of issues for me, so I'm installing fresh but having to load everything one by one. It makes you appreciate companies that have good loading programs (e.g. UVI, Arturia). I wish Cubase had a better loading program that would do everything at once. Good luck and hopefully in a couple of months we won't even think about the effort to make the switch!
After all these years I'm surprised we haven't seen a clever developer create a utility to help us manage these enormous collections of plug-ins. It's probably more difficult than I think, but even if it just maintained a database showing current vs installed versions of plugins with a link to their download page, it'd be incredibly useful.
Thanks guy. I will have to wait till all or most problems solved. I think I will use Mac Pro meantime.
Well, I am currently running an M1 Mac Mini 16Gb with zero issues, mainly because i don't run that many 3rd party plugins, and the ones i DO have pretty much all been successfully "M1-ified".
What is interesting is, that now we are two years into the ASi era, and it seems that many of the smaller developer houses have done their work, better and quicker than some companies with presumably more resources and programmers to hand. Moddart, Valhalla, U-He to name but 3. And as I run Logic and FCP as my main apps, with the Affinity trio for graphics, etc, I am well served now, without recourse to rosetta. And i am looking forward to a big new Mac later this year to replace my old main computer, a 2014 iMac i7 which is still going, but runs out of steam with Logic and FCP these days. And of course is now unable to be updated to the latest OS, without some hacks that I can't be bothered with.
I am still using Apple laptop! One day I will love to get that! Thank you for sharing!
Thanks for the warning!
Thanks for the lesson. Just brought soft soft
I’ve enjoyed my M1 Max MacBook for music. More than enough RAM for me, plus it’s portable. Expensive, but it’s future proofed me pretty well I think.
Great video. I switched finally in March to M1 Max MacBook Pro 16” 64Gb 8TB and went full in.
I’m still using Rosetta mode due to some plugs not updating and putting my main Kontakt libraries on the internal 8TB. As it’s all self contained, I’ve not had many problems, as previously I was using about 8 drives hanging off the back of my iMac.
But I still keep an i7 MacBook Pro around on an earlier OS for some intel plug ins and weirdness that M1 spits it’s dummy at!
Great overview of true troubles ..Thank You!!
I gave up Guy.. The problems outweighed the advantages for me.. I went back and upgraded my 2017 Imac 27" with a new processor and 40MB RAM and i'm in heaven now. Everything just flies!
That's the thing with many Mac computers now, they're appliances and if they don't perform there's often little you can do to rectify this. I love ARM processors and wish there was a way to build up a Windows/Linux PC with ARM from parts. I like the expandability of my self made machines. Even my laptop has 4 SSD slots. Apple doesn't cater for that market now, they cater for the clueless.
Moved to an M1 Mac Mini in March. Cubase 12, tons of plug-ins, still in Rosetta Mode. To be honest… hadn’t had a single problem. The most painless system transfer I‘ve ever had. And it runs smoother than my baseline iMac Pro, it’s insane. Of course, it doesn’t have quite the multicore horse power of the 8c iMac Pro, but that’s a given. I could still buy a Mac Studio.
I’m working on M1 MacBook Pro 13’ (16 Gb of Unified RAM and 2 TB) with BigSur on board - it works better in 99% than all previous Intel based Macs
Just in case there is some confusion, it is worth stating here, that you do not need to run Logic in Rosetta mode to run intel plug-ins. Some plug-ins are not working with Rosetta and just need to be updated, true. But the vast majority either run fine in Rosetta while Logic is NOT running in Rosetta mode (yes this works), or they simply don’t work. There are a few plug-ins that need to be run with Logic in Rosetta mode once to setup their authentication/copy protection, but then work fine if you then run Logic in native, non Rosetta mode. And over the past year a great number of plug-ins have been reworked to work natively on Apple silicon Macs. Once the actively developed plug-ins have been updated for Apple silicon none of these wacky work around will be required.
Thanks Guy very interesting I am think of eventually upgrading my studio intel imac , i do have a m1 MacBook Pro and air ! Apple do need to up there game on the software but overall they are great machines i fell . Found this vid very interesting keep up the fab work as ever…
Guy, thank you sooooo much, you are the savior of saviors, you simply are the best! have a nice summer
Hello Guy, this is surely an interesting topic. I am experimenting myself, with a MacBook Pro M1, the transition to an ARM SOC system. No big issues so far, but with the implicit peace of mind that my main DAW is still an Intel-based Apple computer. My opinion on the subject, as a both Windows and Mac user, is that, even after forty years of Midi and twenty-five of VST, still there is no real standardisation of technology, as it comes to music production on a personal computer. The reason behind this state of things, pretty straightforward, is that those devices were and still are primarily conceived for: 1) office automation, 2) communication (later Internet and social networks, 3) gaming, 4) computer graphics. After many years of usage with different machines, it appears obvious to me that electronic music on a computing appliance is a bit of a false economy in the end, since it seems (and it is) convenient under certain aspects, but forcing a digital device to behave reliably, like a bunch of real-time electronic circuitry for sound synthesis, remains one of the toughest tasks to implement on the old office machine that a PC/MAC still is at its core. While graphics tend to run smoothly on a limited set of software elements, music tends to require (as you justly point out) a galaxy of different components, marching together with clockwork precision. When it comes to this, the musical user is obliged to get his hands dirty, with various IT stuff, hidden directories and arcane workarounds: in this area of ours, unfortunately, still no difference in quality of workflow between MACs and PCs, at least in my experience. (by the way, this is why one seldom - if never - sees a new computer advertised for calculation-intensive music applications, requiring real-time synthesis and sample playback of a written score).
Hi Guy, would love to see how you're getting on with Mac Studio transition? Upgrade to M2 Ultra chip? Still living with Rosetta issues?
Very helpful, Guy ... Just about to pull the trigger on purchasing a Mac Studio ( Max ) and your reflections are very informative. Well done !
Very helpful and informative, many thanks !
The problems with the external 8TB SSD are ringing a bell. I upgraded my Intel MBP from Big Sur to Monterey and it totally corrupted the drive (losing some nonessential data in the process). It then was unable to reformat the drive properly. Reformatting the drive under an older MacOS went fine. Reconnected it to my Monterey MBP, corrupted again. Eventually I downgraded my MBP back to BigSur (obviously wiping the whole thing) with the help of a TimeMachine Backup I had pulled minutes before I started the upgrade…. Happily ever after. I wonder if that MBP is now stuck on Big Sur forever. We are talking APFS formatted drives and Monterey 12.5.1 so the should have had ample time to fix this ….
Smaller external SSDs (2TB) and a conventional external 8TB HD drive didn’t present any problems whatsoever.
I got a m1pro 16” in December last year. It’s has been a slightly bumpy ride in some respects but ultimately it’s been surprisingly smooth going. Few issues with audio interface drivers but I don’t use it in Apple silicon mode, I run Cubase in Rosetta. I work in a shop and spent 4 grand on a laptop lol (I got the 4tb with 32gig)
Timely video! Been on the fence about upgrading from my 2017 MBP to a Mac Studio. Compatibility issues outweigh my current system crashes at the moment. I’ll gladly persevere a bit more before handing Apple a chunk of my bank account. Thanks for this video! Cheers!
I've got a mac studio and so far not encountering any issues but I'm only using Logic for audio production and Final Cut Pro for video, both apple products. No issues with plugins so far... probably just haven't chosen any that might not work well with the new silicon
Thanks Guy, I was ready to go M1, think I’ll hold it back now and keep with my older Mac mini? Really do appreciate your review.
Very informative, thank you Guy for your invaluable insight! - I'll be found in the wait a bit longer camp. 🙂
When Kontakt makes you re- find the files for a VI, you can do a Batch Resave to make it remember next time. It's under the little floppy disc icon at the top.
Batch re-save should not affect that. Batch re-save hard codes the relative path of the samples into those files for faster loading. If it works it’s a qwirk of whatever the real problem is. I suspect it’s a permissions issue that prevents app preferences from always being saved correctly. I have seen that on several apps on the Mac studio.
Guy, I hope you’re well. Question…I will be picking up my Mac Studio this week. Coming from a m1, how easy will it be to move all my sample libraries and plugins to the new computer?
Many thanks
Steve
Thanks as always. I have the Mac ultra and only found a few items where I needed Rosetta. In a couple instances I was able to validate the plugins with Rosetta on and then they ran in universal mode-- Xpandr! is an example
Gr8 vid. Plz do a follow up soon and let us know how this is working a few month in (like now). :D
So happy with this video - just bought my daughter her first Mac (book Pro M1) as she did so well in GCSEs and is about to start Music A-Level where they use Logic. I've been in software for 30 years, and have never touched a iOS! 'How to use Logic' would be a good title for your next video, eh?
She'll love it! A level music is quite brutal - think about our How to Writ3e music course for her. Might help.
@@ThinkSpaceEducation Thanks Guy! I will. We're currently sitting in the Albert Hall about to watch the Earth Prom. Apparently Mr Zimmer is here! She's so excited!
Thank you so much for shairing your experiences and opinions about new Macs with Apple Sillicon. May I suggest something? Could you please also share what kinds of accessories you are using with Mac Studio? SSDs, Thunderbolt or USB hubs, and other things. As a composer, instructor, and content creator, I assume you need many SSD space and multiple ports for your needs. It would be great if you can share more nerd stuff with us! :)
As a Logic user I can’t wait for some Logic content from you!
Just finishing my logic template :)
Very honest review Guy, thank you. As a new subscriber I have been thoroughly enjoying the channel
Very helpful and informative video. Thank you!!
I know tNice tutorials is an old video but I’m new and thank god I finally found you . Thank you for such an amazing and helpful video ❤️
I’m having the same Logic problem. I’ve started with Apple tech support weeks ago but no solution from Apple as yet. Digital Performer and all notation software works perfectly.
Well done, Delighted for you, dear Guy.
I was investing in an audio PC in July. Thought about Apple but decided for XMG Audio PC with Windows. Just a fraction of the costs for Apple. But we have as well m1 MacBook pro for office and so on. Amazing and the battery lasts ages and it is silent. I didn't want to have all the issues and workarounds you mentioned.
Hi Guy. Thank you so much for this. Love your sensible reality. I’m considering defecting from old PC to Mac since M2 arrived. Has anything changed since this video that might change my mind? Singer songwriter want to create a solid future proof at-home/writer/production studio. Using onboard Cubase 5 vst’s ( will upgrade soon), and lots of vocal layering for creative writing ambiences. Best regards, Dunx
I have a Mac Studio M1 Max. I've had problems with Ozone, and some of NI instruments (not Kontakt). Soundtoys and Waves plugins working smoothly.
I didn't have these issues. i took a few weeks to slowly and methodically update all my software and setup the machine. There are still some plugins I cant use. Is it a tad dramatic to mock Apple's system based on your experiences alone? Having said that Monterey has caused me some issues more so than Logic or other apps. And I suppose that's a biggie. Mock away! As you note though, audio based software, including the many and various 3rd party plugins, are notoriously more difficult to balance out than video. In any case, I look forward to your Logic based videos.
I am a PC user and for what it's worth, there are certainly problems with Windows as well. I would like to add though, regarding quietness, you can buy VERY QUIET power supplies for your PC. I never hear mine running and it's very fast. Good luck with solving the issues. That is always frustrating no matter what kind of computer you have.
Guy thank you for this needed and informative (and funny) video. Thank you very much indeed.