Mac Studio in the real Logic world

[IAA]

Well, I will have to move off my Studio iMac which has served me well since 2015 at some point to retain the latest OS. I’m working through my plugins etc for Monterey and Apple Silicon native compatibility but I’m struggling to work out the best config.

I use lots of softsynths and Kontact as well as audio from guitar/hardware synths and voice. My interface is Apogee element and I useEucon for my controller.
Looking at the specs, it seems the ultra is 2 max’s glued together (spot my engineering familiarity) giving same core speed but double the cores. So is it really worth going for the ultra? The benchmarks I’ve seen for the ultra weren’t that impressive over the max. Either way it’s got to last at least 5 years so I want to futureproof as best I can. Likely buying this year before Christmas unless the Studio is slated for an M2 chip and it’s worth hanging on. It was much easier to figure this out when I bought my first studio g5 power Mac
Grateful for any tips or real life experiences.

Ian

[MarkOne]

I can only go by my experience with an M1 MacBook Pro and an M1 mini, (both 16GB RAM) and both basically handle everything I can throw at them right now.

I use a lot of Kontakt too, and stuff from Spitfire, Arturia, Waves, etc.

FX wise, I regularly have a Softube console 1 plugin on every track, and often a bunch of Slate virtual mix rack stuff on there too.

The project I have open right now has 11 drum tracks (8 audio, 3 AU samples), percussion, bass (DI and Amp) 8 seperate guitar tracks, 11 synth tracks(all AUs), 7 vocal tracks and an acoustic piano, running on a 64 sample buffer using an Audient iD14.

The MacBook was happy editing a fairly biggish music video in Adobe Premier with a fair amount of FX, Real time playback started to get a bit sluggish with some of the more demanding plugins, but I managed it fine.

I can't believe there is anything you couldn't do in audio land with a Mac Studio, now, or for a good few years to come.

[sonics]

As MarkOne has said, I think either machine would handle production duties for the next five years. What you should consider closely are the elements you cannot change, like the internal storage and memory. Max out those elements and then buy a warranty!

[muzines]

Single core speed will be the same, you just get more of them. So you won't benefit much if your channel strips contain heavy instruments or massive plugin chains (which all ned to be one on core), or require Live mode with heavy CPU requirements, but it will help if you want more tracks, as there are more cores to spread the load around...

[IAA]

Thanks, the core speed was what I suspected I’m not convinced given others points it’s worth the 2k extra for the ultra. That’s a synth…….

[IAA]

Well it’s arrived. I went for the max and saved the cash. I also got the studio display since I used an iMac, I have to say if nothing else Apple can package very well, you can see where the ££ go

So I’m in the transition stage, so far I’ve done a basic test to make sure it works with minimum data transferred. I’ve worked up a migration path and made the decision to run an Apple silicon native studio. A few plugins aren’t there yet, most of those I’ve not used recently so I’ll leave a couple (M Tron pro and SSL) are more of a nuisance. But I’m not going to run Rosetta I’ll use my old tron samples and stock Logic eqs instead.
I’m pruning my virtual synths (do I really need 4 Juno 6’s? ) going to just use Arturia, Spitfire and my 4 Roland cloud emulations. Keep it really simple. When I look at my last years work I realised I’d not used any others (apart from the k1 emulation for one of the OSC’s ). So I think less is best.

I’m set for probably a few more days of steady step by step migration but at least I have a plan and an opportunity to have a clean system.

I’ll drop updates as I go. First job today is reformat external SSDs to APFS, then start installing key m1 native apps including apogee, ilok and software authorisation centres for the software I’m going to use.

So far I’m frustrated at SSL not yet porting to native (except guitar strip, g force and Apple for doing another chip jump I remember having to move from my trusty G5.

No doubt I’ll get to play some music soon…..

[Kwackman]

Congrats on the new toy.
I might be replacing a 2010 Mac Pro in the future for a M1 machine, and I'd be keen to hear of your experiences.
So please keep updating this thread! Ta.

[muzines]

Which Roland Cloud plugins? Roland's M1 support is pretty dire and although they improved it a little for some of the ACB instruments, which are the worst offenders, they still perform really badly - the ACB engine is just not optimised for M1, say Roland - likely because the engine is multicore, which doesn't work the same on M1 as for Intel (Korg had a similar problem with the first versions of their wavestate and opsix plugins, but they rewrote their audio engine to fix it and they work great now).

No problems with the SSL plugins in Logic natively, but you'll need Rosetta of course. Having said that SSL promised M1 versions late this year ("Autumn 2022"), so hopefully it's not much longer to wait for native updates...

[IAA]

Which Roland Cloud plugins?

I have the D50, Jup 8, Juno 106 and 5080, the 5080 is the one I use most for some of those “just right pads”

My progress in transition, in summary is…

Didn’t realise about Thunderbolt cable differences - buy adapter for audio interface
Longer Thunderbolt cable needed for display, - buy 2m cable stop short at 3m Apple cable at £160
Take opportunity to move external storage to SSD - buy 4tb of SSD

Start installation of all native s/w

Ilok went ok

Apogee required changing security profile at recovery level, but ok

EUCON for avid artist didn’t work on direct connection (10gb Ethernet issue) so buy simple Ethernet switch. Worked flawlessly

Install logic. Went fine till I tried to move sound library to external disk. No options to do this. Likely due to some remembered library path on previous installation. Spent 6 hours re downloading all library, twice before speaking to Apple support. They couldn’t crack it. So I completely erased and reinstalled without ant migration except Apple ID. that did it. Moved sound library.

Phew, now I have Logic, Eucon and apogee interface all working in native mode. Now to start loading instruments and samples. But first Synthfest!

The hardware seems fine, quiet and quick. But I’d expect that for the £££ I’ve shelled out on it.

More to come….

Eucon

[muzines]

Which Roland Cloud plugins?

I have the D50, Jup 8, Juno 106 and 5080, the 5080 is the one I use most for some of those “just right pads”

The D50 is fine, the 5080 is heavier than it should be but doesn't cause problems in practice. JP8 and 106 were terrible (unusable) and the last minor update improved them a bit and they're borderline - Ok at higher buffers but lower buffers might still overload a core - I haven't checked for a while, so ymmv.

Same for the other ACB and Aira plugins, they all nearly overload a full core and just glitch out...

So it's worth checking their performance on your system when you get that far...

Install logic. Went fine till I tried to move sound library to external disk. No options to do this. Likely due to some remembered library path on previous installation. Spent 6 hours re downloading all library, twice before speaking to Apple support. They couldn’t crack it. So I completely erased and reinstalled without ant migration except Apple ID. that did it. Moved sound library.

If you'd have asked here, I'd have told you what you could do to sort this... no re-downloading necessary.
Nevermind, you sorted it the brute-force way...
.

[IAA]

I'd have told you what you could do to sort this

I did think, but went for brute force

I’m at Synthfest today do it will be tomorrow before I start loading key plugins. I think based on native compliance they’ll be:

Arturia
Kontact
Spitfire including beta versions of some libraries
Izotope
Soundtoys
Slate
Waves (v13) my wup has just expired but I think v13 is native.

Ones for later when compliant

SSL
GeForce

I’ll keep you posted.

Cheers Desmond.

Ian

[IAA]

Episode 3 - it’s starting to work!

Soooo, hardware working well, midi for external synths all working, software install nearly completed.

Isotope Neutron 2 not m1 native so I’ve left it and not prepared to shell out for v3 or 4.

Spitfire all working ok with beta programs for a couple of libraries.

MusicLab guitars are perfect at v6. (Support is great and responsive too)

Slate have left FG x so just sticking to tape machine and console collection. That will be fine.

Fabfilter updated legacy plugins so well done!

Waves worked fine at v13

IK multimedia are a work in progress. Amplitude and the Hammond are m1 rest of my stuff is in the transition.

Valhalla supermassive (free) is at v 2 and m1 native. One wonders if they can do that for a free plugin why SSL can’t pull their finger out.

Left to do; relocate all spitfire Labs, straightforward I think but repetitive. A bulk relocate would be good.

Set up back up routine

Create new logic templates

Create music.

It’s taken me on and off a week. But it’s nearly there I think. I don’t want to do it again for some years.