you can tell there's *soooo* much expertise coming from your off-the-cuff take on the new Mac Pro release... I think you're one of those rare individuals which can present cogent, intelligent commentary, spontaneously. Most folks like yourself wouldn't bother with TH-cam constraints as you're simply better than this petty platform, but we appreciate you taking the time here regardless! 😸
No. He's not better than this petty platform, that's why he's here. Nice guy, knows his stuff and seems to have presented an objective and succinct yet deep analysis and I appreciate that. If YOU don't like TH-cam though, you are free to go elsewhere. Thumbs up to the vid tho.
When I heard the announcement of the new M-based Mac Pro, I legitimately first thought of you since I first came to your channel through the Mac Pro unboxing video. I was wondering what your thoughts about the new one were and, here we are - I'm all ears.
This video is exactly as expected and one of the best, most pithy reviews from an actual professional who can provide perspective into this product line in its current iteration. As a film professional who works on set (and does video!), I wish I could provide a parallel niche video review, but Neil is generous enough to share his time and do one that's 90% of exactly what I would say anyway-so thank you, Neil. I've thanked you before and I'm sure will do it again for taking the time to actually make quality things for Pro's like us-unlike, uh, Apple. Other thoughts: - Your Mac Studio argument is compelling and my thoughts exactly. - Proof of concept is a great way to describe it. I just wish they'd released this unit a year earlier so they met their apparently informal two year transition timeline and at least attempted to retain their facade of "catering to Pro's" (not that it was intact then, but they just keep missing the boat in every little action or inaction with the Pro market). They continue to fail almost every time in appeasing us (no surprise, but still disappointing). - Large quantity of video feeds + high resolution ingest is potentially an argument for Pro vs. Studio now-but you make a good point about noise, so it's hard to pinpoint where this would be useful except on maybe literally half a dozen film sets and/or instances I have personally witnessed doing live-to-tape workflows with a dedicated tech room where they are blaring fans to keep other server rack equipment cool anyways. When it comes to high-speed storage, you can now easily use iodyne.com to utilize external storage and Thunderbolt bandwidth if absolutely necessary-and put that cost difference between Studio and Pro towards that product instead. - Love that you made the 10 second "chapter" just to say Apple's crazy with their wheels. Thank you for taking the time do that. ;) Even if Apple forgets about us, you certainly don't. Please continue making this content because you're IMO the only worthwhile person covering these products since "TH-camrs" buying the Mac Pro and pretending to know about them never actually hit the mark because they're obviously not the target market. It's always just clickbait and a sad attempt to emulate what you're doing with your channel. Oh yeah, and you actually have a job in the industry that gives you the credibility and experience to share insight rather than just clicking a benchmark app button and talking numbers for 20 minutes. This is still one of the only channels I've ever commented on using my TH-cam account. I just want to say I'm also astounded that a period of three years has already passed since the first round of incredible Mac Pro coverage on this channel. That's how I found you, and you're STILL the only channel I've seen who ever actually made a set of videos from a working professional perspective that covers the most recent releases of the Mac Pro product line. Please don't stop. We need you!
@@NeilParfittMusic i agree with you but the price to get a pci chasis is almost 3k to get the same amount of slots but it does come at a cost. The thunderbolt chasis have a bandwidth limit. So why pay almost the same to limit your bandwidth? Is that not the opposite of future proof? If the size isnt an issue i cant see any other issue. But im interested in your response
@@mikegonsolin1 the sonnet tech rackmount with one echo III is $1199 and to match what mac pro has which is 6x pcie stots, another echo 3 needs to be purchased @ $999. So with tax (depending on where u live) thats 2700 with allot of moving parts and points of failure (which if you have paying gigs is not a good thing). And then A small bandwidth limitation. Doesn’t seem worth saving 300 bucks. Just my 2 pennies.
@@CTJonze ah gotcha. I only need to cop one of the Sonnets but didn’t realize they were shortchanging you that much on the new Mac Pro pcis. I’m with you guys tho on sitting this one out
I love your comment on not changing hardware till you must. I know an agency here in Toronto on Church Street near Wellesley called Progress Place that has a 1999 iMac G3 that is still in production use. Thier are a social agency and it's used for script writing and some audio composing for specific community-based program where the clients have little to no computer skills and are producing programs for a radio show they are producing and performing podcasts weekly an monthly.
I remember watching you put yours in the rack when you got it. Currently I’m running a M1 Max studio ultra in my professional recording studio and I’ve got to say it’s been a rough transition. Finally getting to the point where I can almost switch to native mode in pro tools, but I still need to update a couple plugins. Crazy your template is over 300 gigs! That orchestral stuff takes a lot of memory.
Ever since the Apple announcement I was waiting to here your opinion as a real audio professional who uses the Macpro as intended. Totally on point; I think this is a holding device until Apple release their intended system.
It's so nice to have someone from the pro audio side of things explain what we need for audio to everyone else because wee don't care about how fast this machine can render in after effects or how many 8k pro res streams it can handle or even high refresh monitors, how much ram and how many tracks, THATS IT!
Important notes on PCIe. PCIe4 x8 is basically the same as PCIe3 x16. But; It's important to note the difference between the slot's connection width and the. actual assigned lane count. On the Mac Pro, both Intel and Apple Silicon, PCIe switching is used, since neither have enough PCIe lanes to fully provide all the slots simultaneously. But Apple Silicon has fewer PCIe lanes on the chip than the Intel Mac Pro did, so more switching is done. The configuration is as follows: M2 Ultra (2x M2 Max Ultra Fusion together, die0 and die1) die0: 8x (Internal SATA, Internal USB, I/O) + 8x for slot 6 die1: All 16x lanes divided among slots 1-5 So. If you fully max out the PCIe connection speed on both slot 1 and slot 2 at the same time, the effective bandwidth is actually x8 on both. They are both connected with x16 potential, but it is a shared connection to die1's PCIe lanes.
They had a LOT to cover, and the Vision Pro was going to eat up a lot of the presentation. I think Apple figured that their Mac Pro customers would have no problem seeking out all the data they needed.
I think you summarized the issues with this new Mac Pro perfectly. That's the big question - "who is this new Mac Pro for?" The rumour is that they were going to put two Ultra chips in it which would have been 384 GB of RAM and double the power of the Mac Studio but weren't able to do it yet. That would have been better of course but what Apple really needs to do is figure out a way for more RAM and GPU expansion, the biggest reasons for Pros to get this machine other than the built in PCI slots...
Lack of RAM expansion is the real achilles heal of the SOC design. Yup, it gives insane memory bandwidth, but sometimes you just need working space and not ultimate speed :/
I suspect the reason we are only seeing the Mac Pro now is because they were hoping to build with 3nm apple silicon which might well have capacity for much more RAM among other things. The issues with production yields so far might have forced their hand… release now based on m2 and its’ limitations or keep leaving it until m3 is ready which could be another year
@@DocNo27 Apple could still have expandable RAM with their SOC's. It would just be an additional tier between the unified RAM and swap on the SSD. They would have to figure out the best way to manage it, shuffling data as needed between the faster, lower capacity unified memory and the slower, higher capacity DDR5 slots. I actually was fully expecting this, because I thought there was no way they would have the new Mac Pro max out at 384 GB when the Intel ones supported four times as much. And that was when I was expecting an M2 Extreme (four Max's slapped together)! I was pretty shocked during the announcement that the M2 Ultra was the highest configuration. The old Mac Pro supported _eight times_ as much RAM. 192 GB is way more than I need as a hobbyist (my 2019 iMac has 72 GB and I'm fine), but for professional composers with large templates, 192 GB is way too little. Hopefully the next iteration of the Mac Pro does have the "Extreme" version of the chip (or whatever they end up naming it), and it will support at least 512 GB (128 GB per M3 Max times 4).
Completely on point @NeilParfittMusic I just had a chat with my IT person, and he said nearly the same thing. Spending the extra money on the Mac Pro vs. the Mac Studio for composers like you and I would be futile at this point. If you are using at thunderbolt 3/4 PCIe Chassis to hold any additional cards it will save you in the long run. I myself and running M.2 SSD's for library storage and a RME MADI Card w/ a Ferrofish Pulse 16....Im just transitioning into spatial sound capability. Yeah...for those who are wanting to upgrade to the new architecture....Save yourself the money.
So if I get a Mac Studio I can run my sample libraries from external drives with sufficient read speeds? I don’t need to run sample instruments from the internal Mac Studio SSD?
@@chrisishoy7924 Definitely. Get a good Thunderbolt 3 (or 4, when they come out) case that can house NVMe sticks. Lots of options for that, and the price of NVMe SSD has really come down.
@@chrisishoy7924 that’s correct. As a general rule you should try not to store any libraries on your internal hard drive. Like Neil said in video..NI only reads at a certain speed anyway.
@@RTJ_Music it’s a long-standing weird thing - even on my 5,1 I had ahci ssds (before nvme was supported in high Sierra). I could get read speeds of >6GB a second all day, yet it was the same conundrum with Kontakt using that bandwidth for loading. Instead it was 700MB-1GB/sec. That was back with Kontakt 3 and 4. Nothing has really changed all that much - so it must be deep in the code with how it’s grabbing the data
A fellow composer here, and I am now working on a 28 core / 384GB RAM 2019 Mac Pro here. I have some mixed feeling on the new Mac Pro. For me, the memory is definitely not enough for media composers. My template now using 250G+ RAM so the 192G max of the new Mac Pro is not nearly usable for me. But on the other hand, I have the fear that they (and a lot more music production software company) may stop supporting Intel base Macs soon, because supporting two different CPU architecture will definitely be more expensive than supporting only one.
I don't think it's just audio production, video editing, machine learning and many other pro tasks require more than 192 gigs of RAM quite often. It is a massive downgrade from the previously possible 1,5TB. I don't really know who that machine is for honestly. Not only did we lose GPU support, but also have 10% of the previously possible RAM. It just doesn't feel like a "Pro" computer anymore.
@@igniteltd Vienna Ensemble Pro is only the host for a lot of different libraries. And orchestral libraries are only a part of my template. Aside from orchestral libraries(at least 4 different brands), there are keyboards, guitars, drums, epic percussions, choirs/solo voices, synth, sound design libs, and some of my own sounds.
@@PvtAnonymous If I may be blunt to an unreasonable degree here, this feels like a "screw you" product from Apple. They listened just enough, but ignored everything to create a product that less than the bare minimum we were asking for, creating a product that doesn't really have a vision so as to not cannibalize the Studio. It's also just a question of repair and flexibility. If a config I buy turns out to not be suitable, on a more conventional system I can just expand it myself provided I'm getting supported modules and am not already at the limits of what my system can support. Having a blazing fast CPU doesn't mean a damn thing if RAM is saturated and the system has to pull from SWAP.
I waited 2 years to upgrade the cpu. I found on eBay for 700! So I took the dive and change it to a 24 core (from 12core) for me was the sweet spot between ghz and core counts (working here in protools hybrid HDX). Wow now I really pushed to where I feel this machines really but really flies. Atmos is a breeze with this things ! And of course, all pcie slots fully filled with UAD’s, aja video card, nvme, ssd (spares) usb c cards, you name it. Loving it still Thanks Neil for the great videos on Mac Pro Audio. We all are with you in this still intel journey.
Thunderbolt expansion chassis won't have the overall bandwidth of the cards on the motherboard. If you think dropping to two 16 lane slots is bad, it's even worse going over thunderbolt. As you say just depends on what you really need.
Exactly - but keep in mind that no Audio interface in existence needs anywhere near the bandwidth of even a single PCIe 4 1x lane, let alone a PCIe 3 1x lane. As for data transfer - I’m curious to know if the TB4 ports have dedicated pipelines to the cpu or if it’s balancing the load somehow
@@NeilParfittMusic On the Mac Studio, each Thunderbolt port is a dedicated bus connected @ PCIe 3.0 x4. (Actual bandwidth out of the port is a little less due to PCIe-to-Thunderbolt overhead) So Mac Studios with M1 Max effectively have 4 PCIe 3.0 @x4 slots, M1 Ultra has 6 slots(TB3/4).
@@NeilParfittMusic Before I posted last night I did do some quick digging to refresh my memory, and as with everything Thunderbolt related - my searching wasn't conclusive :/ Looks like each TB port is the equivalent to two or four PCI E lanes, depending on where I was reading. Four seems to stick in my mind, but that was from the PCIe 3 days - not sure if it's the same with PCIe 4. On PCs it looks like all the Thunderbolt stuff goes through a thunderbolt controller, motherboard chip and then a CPU. Looks to be better on Apple silicon - I'm pretty sure all the i/o is integrated into the SOC - so a more direct path, but not as much I/O - which is probably why the new Mac Pro has fewer x16 slots. For me the most disappointing thing was the lack of RAM. I'm not surprised given the architecture they are using with Apple Silicon, but for users like you it's a huge downgrade - and no matter how they try to spin it, nothing replaces having RAM when you need raw RAM. Maybe the next gen will double up? It still would be half what you have today but it would be a solid improvement.
Whats interests me, Mac Pro or not, the company "GPU Audio" doing an SDK for Mac silicon.... Possibly for the first time, those GPU core can be utilised in audio production.... Very interesting times indeed.
There’s been a lot of attempts at this throughout the years. Now that Apple has their own cpu, machine learning and GPU stuff locked down - how’s the time for them to make their own apis for it that Logic and 3rd party could tap. As it’s such a shame all that muscle is sitting mostly idle at all times in music work
I just hear that your resting template is at over 300GB of memory I just love hearing that. I know modern sample libraries are wild for music production but that number is so cool. The video production house I work at moved to Mac Studios and the 64GB of RAM is perfectly adequate. In regards to the modular nature of the Mac Pro machines, totally agree that it would have been awesome to be able to drop in a new CPU, but my assumption is that the Motherboard architecture is completely different and isn't compatible. It would be really nice if Apple made the new Mac Pros a cycle that you can just throw in a new CPU, but that is even more of a pain because now the RAM is directly on the CPU die so those kinds of upgrades are even more expensive. Feels less modular than the original now. But if a couple projects pay for that every year, it could be feasible, but a yearly upgrade cycle for business work isn't worthwhile anyways. I've been running (read: struggling) on my hackintosh for about 7 years now and it's time for a new machine and I think the M2 Mac Studio is gonna be what I end up replacing this machine with. Glad to see that your Mac Pro has helped you create incredible things! I love seeing people use the tools they have to their full potential :)
I find the PCIe 4.0 that’s available on these new Mac Pros to be awesome; Huge bandwidth available. Just for reference, On the Mac Studio, each Thunderbolt port is a dedicated bus connected @ PCIe 3.0 x4. (Actual bandwidth out of the port is a little less due to PCIe-to-Thunderbolt overhead) So Mac Studios with M1 Max effectively have 4 PCIe 3.0 @x4 slots, M1 Ultra has 6 slots(TB3/4).
The new Mac Pro is a forces stop gap release. In your case the M3 Extreme will be the first interesting model. And it is the main tool, just like in my video editing studio… (for video we added the Mac Studio a year ago and it is amazing, but all the declink cards are in the mac pro….) time will tell :)
If the M3 Ultra ends up topping out at 256 GB of memory, would an M3 Extreme hit 512 GB? 🤔 It would still be a third of the memory supported by the 2019 Mac Pro, but if they managed to pump that update out in less than a year (maybe as a true high-end and Mac Pro-exclusive config) and dropped the price on both the tower and the rack (because I do see both flopping, G4 Cube-style), they might shut up quite a lot of naysayers and move some units… Buyers of the current version might not be too happy, though… 😬
I hope they bring back expandable RAM, Ampere's ARM systems has had RAM slots for years now - for how much Apple charges for these, it should be standard on the Pro systems - even if it means needing more slots to make up for the bandwidth difference.
A thoughtful video indeed. I have the 2019 Mac Pro and it has been a champ for audio production. I was waiting to see what Apple was going to introduce with the final transition to their chip on the Mac Pro, and sure enough the announcement was a bit underwhelming. I agree with your sentiment: use what we have until it is absolutely obsolete. I would switch to a fully loaded Mac Studio, but I invested in PCIe cards and I do not want to spend money on external boxes for them. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Thanks, you have always been a great inspiration. There is no incentive to go mac pro 2023 for music. It's not more powerful, it has less ram. I installed a cheap similar system that routes my ableton/Rme UFX+ into a MTRX with Protools HDX and HD sync via madi with analog M32 pro cards. Since my hackintosh wasn't large enough I run a second one just for Kontakt Vienna. The MTRX routing combined with the simplicity of Madi makes running two rooms together easy. I documented it with Omnigraffle. Thanks to opencore our hackintoshes are just fluid, with thunderbolt caldigit ensemble making USB and thunderbolt connection easy. It took me a month and 25k to get everything fluid , but thanks to your videos it all works and will probably also last for another 6/7 years.
Nah, I think Intel Support will be dropped after MacOS Sonoma. Effectively cutting short support of Mac Pro 2019, just like Powermac G5. Powermac G5 only got 2 os’s, though they released less versions then.
I have the last generation dual core Power Mac G5 maxed with 16GB ram and 2 ssd drives. It runs Logic 8 just fine. I’ve got audio and midi running through a lexicon lambda that I can switch to run from either the G5 or my m1 mac mini. The mini is also maxed at 16GB of ram and runs the latest version of logic.
@@NeilParfittMusic Yup - long live Open Core Legacy Patcher! Mr. Macintosh is a great TH-cam channel that profiles the legacy patcher. Love my old cheese grater for just playing around!
Hey Neil: I remember watching your "transition video" going from a bunch of TB enclosures and cables to the (then new) 2019 Mac Pro. I'm an audio professional and I'm still rockin' my 2009 Mac Pro (barely). I saw a video last night from Max Tech, and they theorized that the new Mac Pro is a "transitional model" with a lot of real estate inside for future plans and upgrades. Apple put a lot of time and money into developing the 2019 Mac Pro, so why wouldn't they want to amortize their investment? Maybe they ARE in a transitional phase atm. For myself, I'd love to have a 12-16 core used 2019 model. I've gotten SO much mileage out of the 2009. I'm sure that a used 2019 would suit my needs just fine, as I do have several pci cards that I still use. Anyway, glad to see that you're still making music (and the occasional TH-cam video)...👍
the biggest question is compatibility- will the PCIE cards even work? this is the first ARM based machine with PCIE slots afaik, all of the professional audio/video cards were designed with x86 in mind. it also defeats the purpose of a mac pro- they have always been upgradeable, even the trash cans. glad to see the intel mac pro is still working well- hopefully this new one drops the used prices a bit so i can pick one up for just a leg!
Regarding the use of GPUs for DSP, there's already a company, GPU Audio, doing great stuff already and getting awesome results on Nvidia, AMD and apple running plug ins on the graphics card. Always great to hear your insights. Best regards!
Great to hear this from a pro. I financed my 2010 Tower with one gig and still on it. Now upgraded CPU for Catalina. A little iffy but Im not scoring anymore so dont have to sweat anything.
What I like about this video is not the technical analysis (although that's great), it's the business case/financial analysis of why pros spend the kind of money they do on high-end hardware. Most laypersons just don't get this and wonder why anyone would spend many thousands of dollars on a workstation. They're business tools to do work and make money. The more efficient they make a workflow, the better the payback, end of story. You'll also try and squeeze every last drop out of that investment until technology comes along that improves your productivity. I worked in the workstation sales/support business (Sun, SGI, DEC and high-end Intel) for several years in the 90's and early 2000's and I was constantly having the argument with non-pro people about why you'd spend tens of thousands of dollars on hardware and software. The money seems large, but the payback is larger - otherwise why do it.
Good point on Apple modularity, if it's modular where is the Pro M2 upgrade card? The reduction of memory is a tell that Apple really wanted another chip for this machine.
once you cant use the os anymore for the internet then you have to upgrade your mac untill then keep going with what you have iam wating it out for M4 systems, the M1 that ihave is great for audio and video stuff but gamming nope not really very good for that the new m2s if you get the higher specs stuff then they are ok for gamming but still not there yet so for me i wont upgrade till atleast M4s are out..
Neil!!! I thought of you when the rumor seemed eminent … then I saw the ram limitation and expected you would not be upgrading. Thanks for your thoughts and video.
ok fine, thanks! Then the big question is - is there a higher latency when using a mac studio with an external pci chassis? (in my case for pro tools hdx and UAD pci)
there shouldn't be - as it's an extension of PCIe. Maybe in the uSecs for the added step? (I'm guessing here) - but nothing problematic with the real-time nature of HDX. When I moved from the tower with an EB7 to the Mac Pro 2013 with chassis - there was no difference in behavior. It was invisible.
Neil, the video looked really good. Did you switch back to the other camera? I'm on a Mac Studio, M1 Ultra with 64 gb of Ram and 20 Core CPU and 48 Core GPU. I do video editing and 3D graphics and this machine works great for me. I can never imagine needing or wanting the current Mac Pro.
Excellent points Neil! Yes, it is an impressive step forward, but they made it to make the transition to ARM complete. I think, this being a stopgap, that the M3 iteration of this machine will have the abilities you and yours need in your workflow and if not they should invite you to discuss it with the engineering team. I am also trying to find information as to how they connected the PCI bus to the SOC because there was talk that they would discourage any bus translation. Funny, you brought up XServe... yeah, we remember. That was 13/14 years ago. Of course, it does not need to be this form factor, somehow it feels they painted themselves in a corner. Johny Srouji has done a wonderful job marrying the chips, but did you notice he was not presenting anything. Apple has something coming in the Fall, I just feel it in my pinky toe. I live just south of Toronto, that smoke.... yikes it was bad.
Thanks for your sharing! Finally, I know some of the professional composing like you are needed that much ram when working with Logic, VSL & protools!! So, would please tell me how much ram you used with logic pro X which is running a huge orchestral template! Because I have no idea how much ram is needed for long-term usage! Thanks in advance!
I have been mentioning you to a lot of youtuber's reviewing the Pro in thier comments since they seem to not understand what differentiates a professional Audio composed and producer versus a tech enthusiast perspective regarding a mac Pro
I didn't even bother looking at the new one, since I too am in a similar situation... MacPro Rack mount, only 16-Core and 384GB of Ram, and 13TB of SSD's... but of all the things you and I have discussed with my "other" gear... LOL, the Mac is just "chugging" along doing it's thing... it's literally the one piece I haven't had a single issue with. I'm still running Big Sur anyways, because like you've said... some things haven't caught up 100%, and since everything is just working, I'm not gonna F*** with it at all... I'm looking forward to getting my NTP-DAD AX64 connected up to this... I'm hoping for at least another 3-4 years out of this machine... and even then, I'm keeping it as well...
I found your channel today, am curious about the Mac Pro but like what you said, everything is working, and I really don't want to risk, but I was thinking maybe run it in parallel with my existing machine for awhile? Or not possible for you? Great video BTW
It’s very difficult to find well informed takes about this stuff from a studio musician standpoint. This is exactly what I needed as I was trying to figure out if there would be any benefit whatsoever for me paying 2-4K more just for pcie slots.
Thanks for sharing your opinion / thoughts about the new Mac Pro. Taking into consideration the computer you have at the moment, it doesn't make sense indeed for you to upgrade. Would like to see some video's about your work as a composer.
I work in manufacturing. All of my clients run ‘obsolete’ production equipment. Some of this stuff is 50 years old - like stamping presses and analog machining centers. When it is no longer useful for the business, it will be sold or scrapped. That’s how it works. Nobody cares if the equipment is state of the art. What matters is whether or not the equipment gets the work done. Computers are no different. Also, computers can be depreciated or written off, and businesses can often avoid sales tax in many parts of the world. For consumers I think the Mac Pro is likely a bad idea. For a business, it might be perfect, or not. Everything is situational.
As I said on someone else's video: it's like Apple is trying to dictate to professionals what they need. The RAM seems to be the biggest problem. Sure, the on-die memory is very high speed but, for audio/video studios, RAM capacity is more important than blistering speed. The only thing you were wrong about are the wheels -- they're "only" $400 now (~$540 CAD). And they still can't be locked in place. 😂
Yeah, I’m surprised Apple released a Mac Pro that tops out at 192GBs. I thought they wouldn’t revisit the Mac Pro until their Apple Silicon had a 512GB unified memory architecture. My only knock about the M1 Ultra Mac Studio is being forced to use TB4 for data storage expansion. 2800MB/s of the TB data lane isn’t too bad, as most samplers don’t have the I/O capability to take advantage of that speed anyway, but still with current NVMe Gen 4 SSDs topping out at 7000 MB/s, I’d much rather have full access to that type of storage speeds. That’s just about the only advantage of buying a Mac Pro, and a MADI or Atmos related PCIe card. Otherwise, the Mac Studio is near perfect. Quite as an iPhone and almost as small as a Mac Mini. Can’t complain seeing its only the first generation.
The memory has to be soddered on (and blazing fast) because it's shared with the GPU. The only way I can see them going back to upgradable ram is if they separate their GPU and CPU memories and then just use regular DDR5 dimms for the CPU. But then they'd have to stock a whole bunch of different SKUs and whatnot and it would also fragment their precious experience between devices. I'd really like to see this in action, but sadly, it's not gonna happen.
Consider this the best they can manage at the moment, and they are trying to convince you that it is good enough. Fanboys like to hate on intel, but clearly intel is ahead of apple in some areas. Apple will say those things don't matter, but they do matter to some people.
@@fredygump5578 Apple isn't known for rushing things, which is part of why this release is odd. I think the rush was just to finalize converting all systems to M-series processors in order to roadmap a definite end to intel support.
@@davidg5898 Apple IS known for rushing to implement some things customer's really do not want. touchbar comes to mind. thunderbolt 2. butterfly keyboard. etc.
I discovered you on your first Mac Pro vid. I’m in a similar spot to you with my Mac Pro. I’m not looking forward to the day pro tools no longer makes intel updates.
As always, great thoughts @NeilParfittMusic! However i don't understand one thing: when you've originally moved to the 2019 Mac Pro, your main argument was that you can put all your PCIe cards inside the machine, and can get rid of all your external thunderbolt chassis. Now you are basically saying that buying the Mac Pro doesn't make sense, since you can have PCIe expandibility for Mac Studio via thunderbolt. PCIe is the whole point of the new Mac Pro. Yes, it's a super niche product, it's needed for a very-very small group of professionals, but the ones who need it, really need it. Having the same M2 Ultra SOC as the Mac Studio is not a wekness of the Mac Pro, it's a strenght of the Mac Studio.
It’s such a catch 22 now - as this latest machine has less pcie lanes than the 2019, no 3rd party GPU, no expandable ram. Honestly, if I needed another non-portable computer I’d be still grabbing another Intel 7,1, now at a discount on the used market. In 2019 interfacing didn’t exist with the I/o I required - but now that digital audio Denmark has their tb3 core 256 - that eliminates audio pcie expansion chassis needs other than avid. If avid comes out with something that allows me drop the hdx cards, then pcie is essentially dead to me (the only thing would be m.2 nvme ssds) Anyway, it’s a strange offering - I’m staying put - there’s literally no advantage to moving to this new machine.
If this machine took a dive, absolutely. I do have spares of GPU, PSU etc so fingers crossed it stays beastly. One of my main colleagues - we got a 2nd matched machine a few months ago for the LA system. So moving between systems is just moving back and forth with a few project ssds - and the sessions don’t know the systems are any different
I have been sitting on my old os and PT10 for years. I just bought the M2 raxk and avid has been redicules in trying to get this to work. So im hopping back and forth between the two till I get it working. I'm using an nvme card in the new machine. But you are right, they made it so proprietary and I can't get two monitors up without it blinking.
Very good analysys. I was not expecting less from you by the way, because I saw y our thinking process when you buy your current machine. A detail, one can get a Fanless SSD carrier. (4 slots) from Sonnet, or one wiht a fan (8 slots) from OWC. The other option is the 10 ssd carrier from Transit but that requieres a RAID controler and I am possitive there is no tested drivers. Two of the Sonnet cars will give you 16GB/sec + 64GB storage. The OWC can do. 26GB/s in theory. So the other example is if you really really want a Mac and need a ton of local storage. The funny part is that for most codecs a 25Gbit/s ethernet is more than enoght and you can buy a thunderbold adapter and a a giagant NAS. It will never be as fast, but altmos all the time
My thought process as well. I went with the M2 Ultra for our video editing. We ent with the 60 core/128GB/8TB internal. Outside the computer we are using the Caldigit TS4 Thunderbolt hub and the Sandisk Pro Blade Station with 16TB of storage and we will still save $$$. If we were running multiple 4K monitors with SDI interface I could see getting the tower. The Mac Studio is inexpensive enough to pay for itself in a few projects. I was hoping for a Mac Pro Mini(about twice the size of the current Mac Studio) but I sure it will come out with the M3 chip. Here’s the great news about all of this-Apple has gotten a bit cheaper in its pricing with a fast as hell computer as well.
You dig it *Don't rock the boat*, BootCamp + Support for older macOS versions. The arm migration will happen to all computers (PC Markets) in the next decade it's too early now at least before 2027.
wow i just found your channel , thank you so much for all this info that you are blessing us with , did you see the leak performance scores on the m2 ultra?
It was a hack of sorts. My desk was designed as a mastering desk - so there’s rackmount bays on the sides and center - so, I found some rackmount vesa monitor Mounts meant for a server caninet and mounted them pointing and mount angled . It’s a pretty clean setup.
1) This Mac Pro uses LPDDR5 RAM, same as all the other Macs. But LPDDR5x is now available, and offers significantly higher densities (and thus much larger RAM chips). If Apple does as they should, and takes advantage of this, the next-gen AS Mac Pro should offer a max of ~1 TB RAM. So when you do ultimately need to retire your Intel Mac Pro, there's reason for optimism, at least on the RAM front. It probably won't be upgradeable, and will surely be more expensive than adding aftermarket RAM (as you were able to do with your current Mac Pro), but at least you can equip it up front. Indeed, the next gen Studio Ultra may offer that level of RAM as well. 2) I wonder if the reason new Mac OS's so often break DAWs is that (a) the vendors of pro audio apps and plug-ins don't (or aren't able to, because of limited resources) take sufficient advantage of the beta period, to ensure their apps are ready when the new OS comes out; or (b) Apple gives the audio vendors insufficient pre-release support; or (c) it's an unavoidable consequence of a new OS. Regardless, I suppose that means if you buy a new machine, you'd want to wait until just before the new OS is released (say, Aug or Sept), so that it is on a very late version of the current OS (say X.5 or X.6). 3) I agree it's disappointing they don't allow you to upgrade your 2019 MP to AS. At the very least, it should be available as a factory upgrade. Maybe they'll offer that in the future.
Also I found that for using large orchestral sample libraries there's need for fast storage devices. I had a bad experience in the past when I am composing using all 4 mic positions in my EWQL PLAY libraries. I hear some missing notes in my project because my NVME ssd is not fast enough to stream all the voices needed from the disk. I then have to add a RAID0 PCIe SSD card to solve this issue(with 9GB/s read speed). For now the only way to get such speed is by using PCIe connections, not even latest thunderbolt 4 can have such speed. But the memory problem of the new Mac Pro... I think I too will stick to the 2019 Mac Pro until Apple can release something usable in the future.
Just because they have PCI-e slots doesn't mean that every card ever will work without problems. Probably is best to wait a couple generations till companies have had a chance to test their addon cards with these new cpus and verify everything works.
I'm not a composer so my use case is different, if I already had a 28 core mac pro I wouldn't upgrade either. If I were starting from scratch, I would jump on the apple silicon mac pro if I could get a rack mount option.
Thanks Neil for the sanest review available on TH-cam. Also almost nothing uses the full speed of PCIe 3 that isn't a GPU. The 4 upgrade doesn't gain you anything today. I'm an Ableton Live user also with extensive library of old tracks. Many of those don't open correctly on my M2 laptop because VST2 support is inconsistent unless you run Live in Rosetta. So I'm stuck converting manually or flattening everything to migrate over.
I used to have a Mac Pro 6,1 (Trash can), and running good for years until 3 years ago, one of the GPU fired and I have to switch. And I chose Mac Mini M1........ I can tell you "Silicon chips" are quite different to that of Intel's (even the re-installing process of the MacOS system), and are suggesting you to stick to your 7,1 for at least 18 months more. And you should heard those compatibility issues, and let them to fix before you committing into a one of the "white mouse".
I’m thinking that the new Mac Pro, the rack mount in particular, might have been motivated by Apple getting into creating content for the new Vision Pro. If they will be doing live, 4k sports streaming in VR they will need serious throughput capabilities for video. How many Pros would they need to have in order to cover a single game? With all of the alternative angles, replays, and the whole VR thing I haver no idea how many video streams they will be dealing with. And of course they are hoping that other companies will be jumping into this new video format as well. You’re right that this might not make a whole lot of sense for audio production right now but give it a few years and the RAM will at least be closer to what you have right now.
When I saw the notification I started the video right away can't believe it's been that long! It's funny that as a tech guy I need your point of view on Apple hardware as a composer
I'm not holding my breath for 100GB underage difference in RAM requirements working out positively :) I know the memory speed is bananas fast - but the moment the OS hits swap non-stop, the party's over. When I bought the first M1 Macbook Air, I loaded something requiring over the brink of Memory and the performance of the entire system nosedived quick. It wasn't wasnt a 100GB over, maybe 10GB over.
The cuts were really obvious with the screens behind you, crazy idea to run green on them and key them out in the video editing you’re doing. I agree that these feel like POC devices, I’m disappointed they didn’t put in expandable RAM or even support extra GPU’s as well.
I can see composer, recording artist, mixer and mastering audio engineers using the Mac Pro if they still use the internal Avid Pro Tools cards. They are expensive cards so if you already have PCI cards you still wish to use then, YES, the Mac Pro will appeal to them. It's not a bad machine, but I agree that for most people in the pro arts the Mac Studio Ultra completely maxed out will be the better buy. Apple should continue to push the 2019 Mac Pro a little. Perhaps update the base spec unit. It's not like Intel is going out of business and that machine can load up 1.5 TB of RAM. It's maybe not as fast as the M ultra chips, but with a 28-core Xeon the machine can be darn fast. But as someone else said, most developers for Macs will ultimately move to the ARM-based M chips.
Yeah, I feel this new Apple silicon Mac Pro is for the most part superfluous nowadays too. As well as being less flexible and modular than it’s predecessor. I think Apple will end just dropping it from their Mac line altogether in a couple of years.
It's cool to hear about tech from a business point of view. I didn't know they released anything new....well, they always release something new, but I'm in a similar position where my technology is working just fine. Not a hint of needing anything new!
Totally makes sense that a Professional with a lot of RAM really just wants a Big Mac! Great to hear your thoughts, mate, and keep up the good work. Oh, and you missed the perfect opportunity to wear your t-shirt for the video! ;-)
Thanks for the informative video Neil. I place a very high value on Information from people who spend 99% of their time working in their field as opposed to hype mongering TH-camrs so thanks! A thought I have is that you have ECC ram in your Intel machine which the new ARM Mac's don't. The ECC ram is likely a large contributor to your system stability. I'm guessing that all your renders come out glitch free. Thanks again 👍
The ECC part is incorrect. Apple Silicon has been using DDR5 since M1 and DDR5 has ECC built in on die. However, as Neil said the instability now comes from macOS instead, Monterey and Ventura are simply unstable.
Your video did show up on home screen. When I heard about this new Mac Pro my first though was “Who is it for?” Essentially it is a Mac Studio with expansion slots and internal storage. My initial though was also “Wouldn’t most customers need more memory?”. I also did expect this computer to be released with options for double or quadruple cpu/memory. I also guess the suppliers need to port cards/drivers to this architecture which can take time.
I always wait for second or third gen as well. Hence I waited for M1 Pro for my laptop. Many rough edges smoothen out, ready to go out of the box for most things.
you can tell there's *soooo* much expertise coming from your off-the-cuff take on the new Mac Pro release... I think you're one of those rare individuals which can present cogent, intelligent commentary, spontaneously. Most folks like yourself wouldn't bother with TH-cam constraints as you're simply better than this petty platform, but we appreciate you taking the time here regardless! 😸
thank you! Appreciate the kind words! :)
No. He's not better than this petty platform, that's why he's here.
Nice guy, knows his stuff and seems to have presented an objective and succinct yet deep analysis and I appreciate that.
If YOU don't like TH-cam though, you are free to go elsewhere. Thumbs up to the vid tho.
When I heard the announcement of the new M-based Mac Pro, I legitimately first thought of you since I first came to your channel through the Mac Pro unboxing video. I was wondering what your thoughts about the new one were and, here we are - I'm all ears.
Came here to say the same thing.
Same.
Same here, I'm so happy he made a video so quickly!
Same
Same here! Thanks Neil!!
This video is exactly as expected and one of the best, most pithy reviews from an actual professional who can provide perspective into this product line in its current iteration. As a film professional who works on set (and does video!), I wish I could provide a parallel niche video review, but Neil is generous enough to share his time and do one that's 90% of exactly what I would say anyway-so thank you, Neil. I've thanked you before and I'm sure will do it again for taking the time to actually make quality things for Pro's like us-unlike, uh, Apple.
Other thoughts:
- Your Mac Studio argument is compelling and my thoughts exactly.
- Proof of concept is a great way to describe it. I just wish they'd released this unit a year earlier so they met their apparently informal two year transition timeline and at least attempted to retain their facade of "catering to Pro's" (not that it was intact then, but they just keep missing the boat in every little action or inaction with the Pro market). They continue to fail almost every time in appeasing us (no surprise, but still disappointing).
- Large quantity of video feeds + high resolution ingest is potentially an argument for Pro vs. Studio now-but you make a good point about noise, so it's hard to pinpoint where this would be useful except on maybe literally half a dozen film sets and/or instances I have personally witnessed doing live-to-tape workflows with a dedicated tech room where they are blaring fans to keep other server rack equipment cool anyways. When it comes to high-speed storage, you can now easily use iodyne.com to utilize external storage and Thunderbolt bandwidth if absolutely necessary-and put that cost difference between Studio and Pro towards that product instead.
- Love that you made the 10 second "chapter" just to say Apple's crazy with their wheels. Thank you for taking the time do that. ;)
Even if Apple forgets about us, you certainly don't. Please continue making this content because you're IMO the only worthwhile person covering these products since "TH-camrs" buying the Mac Pro and pretending to know about them never actually hit the mark because they're obviously not the target market. It's always just clickbait and a sad attempt to emulate what you're doing with your channel. Oh yeah, and you actually have a job in the industry that gives you the credibility and experience to share insight rather than just clicking a benchmark app button and talking numbers for 20 minutes.
This is still one of the only channels I've ever commented on using my TH-cam account. I just want to say I'm also astounded that a period of three years has already passed since the first round of incredible Mac Pro coverage on this channel. That's how I found you, and you're STILL the only channel I've seen who ever actually made a set of videos from a working professional perspective that covers the most recent releases of the Mac Pro product line. Please don't stop. We need you!
Almost can't believe it's been that long. Wow. You still are the platonic ideal of a "Pro User" from so many hypotheticals...
Cranky, cantankerous, I got it all! 😂🥹
@@NeilParfittMusic i agree with you but the price to get a pci chasis is almost 3k to get the same amount of slots but it does come at a cost. The thunderbolt chasis have a bandwidth limit. So why pay almost the same to limit your bandwidth? Is that not the opposite of future proof? If the size isnt an issue i cant see any other issue. But im interested in your response
@@CTJonze 1k not 3k. Does bottleneck your speed a bit tho
@@mikegonsolin1 the sonnet tech rackmount with one echo III is $1199 and to match what mac pro has which is 6x pcie stots, another echo 3 needs to be purchased @ $999. So with tax (depending on where u live) thats 2700 with allot of moving parts and points of failure (which if you have paying gigs is not a good thing). And then A small bandwidth limitation. Doesn’t seem worth saving 300 bucks. Just my 2 pennies.
@@CTJonze ah gotcha. I only need to cop one of the Sonnets but didn’t realize they were shortchanging you that much on the new Mac Pro pcis. I’m with you guys tho on sitting this one out
I love your comment on not changing hardware till you must. I know an agency here in Toronto on Church Street near Wellesley called Progress Place that has a 1999 iMac G3 that is still in production use. Thier are a social agency and it's used for script writing and some audio composing for specific community-based program where the clients have little to no computer skills and are producing programs for a radio show they are producing and performing podcasts weekly an monthly.
Ah that’s cool!! I’d love to see what they’re running for music software - must be logic 4 or cubase vst 24? Or is it protools with a digi001?
@@NeilParfittMusic Next time I drop in I will find out more about how they are using the machine.
I remember watching you put yours in the rack when you got it. Currently I’m running a M1 Max studio ultra in my professional recording studio and I’ve got to say it’s been a rough transition. Finally getting to the point where I can almost switch to native mode in pro tools, but I still need to update a couple plugins. Crazy your template is over 300 gigs! That orchestral stuff takes a lot of memory.
Ever since the Apple announcement I was waiting to here your opinion as a real audio professional who uses the Macpro as intended. Totally on point; I think this is a holding device until Apple release their intended system.
It's so nice to have someone from the pro audio side of things explain what we need for audio to everyone else because wee don't care about how fast this machine can render in after effects or how many 8k pro res streams it can handle or even high refresh monitors, how much ram and how many tracks, THATS IT!
I was hoping you'd make this video. Thank you.
Important notes on PCIe. PCIe4 x8 is basically the same as PCIe3 x16. But; It's important to note the difference between the slot's connection width and the. actual assigned lane count. On the Mac Pro, both Intel and Apple Silicon, PCIe switching is used, since neither have enough PCIe lanes to fully provide all the slots simultaneously. But Apple Silicon has fewer PCIe lanes on the chip than the Intel Mac Pro did, so more switching is done. The configuration is as follows:
M2 Ultra (2x M2 Max Ultra Fusion together, die0 and die1)
die0: 8x (Internal SATA, Internal USB, I/O) + 8x for slot 6
die1: All 16x lanes divided among slots 1-5
So. If you fully max out the PCIe connection speed on both slot 1 and slot 2 at the same time, the effective bandwidth is actually x8 on both. They are both connected with x16 potential, but it is a shared connection to die1's PCIe lanes.
There's a reason Apple spent only a few minutes on the Mac Pro at the presentation. They must feel ashamed.
I wasn’t dreaming right? It was just a blip in their presentation
That mac pro looks like a developer kit. I was expecting to see 2x or 4x m2 ultras in that form factor.
@@NeilParfittMusic 2.5 minutes only
@@gokhun There were rumors of Apple developing an "M2 Extreme" SoC which consisted of 2x M2 Ultras but apparently they scrapped that.
They had a LOT to cover, and the Vision Pro was going to eat up a lot of the presentation. I think Apple figured that their Mac Pro customers would have no problem seeking out all the data they needed.
I think you summarized the issues with this new Mac Pro perfectly. That's the big question - "who is this new Mac Pro for?" The rumour is that they were going to put two Ultra chips in it which would have been 384 GB of RAM and double the power of the Mac Studio but weren't able to do it yet. That would have been better of course but what Apple really needs to do is figure out a way for more RAM and GPU expansion, the biggest reasons for Pros to get this machine other than the built in PCI slots...
Lack of RAM expansion is the real achilles heal of the SOC design. Yup, it gives insane memory bandwidth, but sometimes you just need working space and not ultimate speed :/
I suspect the reason we are only seeing the Mac Pro now is because they were hoping to build with 3nm apple silicon which might well have capacity for much more RAM among other things. The issues with production yields so far might have forced their hand… release now based on m2 and its’ limitations or keep leaving it until m3 is ready which could be another year
@@DocNo27 Apple could still have expandable RAM with their SOC's. It would just be an additional tier between the unified RAM and swap on the SSD. They would have to figure out the best way to manage it, shuffling data as needed between the faster, lower capacity unified memory and the slower, higher capacity DDR5 slots. I actually was fully expecting this, because I thought there was no way they would have the new Mac Pro max out at 384 GB when the Intel ones supported four times as much. And that was when I was expecting an M2 Extreme (four Max's slapped together)!
I was pretty shocked during the announcement that the M2 Ultra was the highest configuration. The old Mac Pro supported _eight times_ as much RAM. 192 GB is way more than I need as a hobbyist (my 2019 iMac has 72 GB and I'm fine), but for professional composers with large templates, 192 GB is way too little.
Hopefully the next iteration of the Mac Pro does have the "Extreme" version of the chip (or whatever they end up naming it), and it will support at least 512 GB (128 GB per M3 Max times 4).
The PCI-E slots use 16 lanes of shared bandwidth which make it even less worth it
Completely on point @NeilParfittMusic I just had a chat with my IT person, and he said nearly the same thing. Spending the extra money on the Mac Pro vs. the Mac Studio for composers like you and I would be futile at this point. If you are using at thunderbolt 3/4 PCIe Chassis to hold any additional cards it will save you in the long run. I myself and running M.2 SSD's for library storage and a RME MADI Card w/ a Ferrofish Pulse 16....Im just transitioning into spatial sound capability. Yeah...for those who are wanting to upgrade to the new architecture....Save yourself the money.
So if I get a Mac Studio I can run my sample libraries from external drives with sufficient read speeds? I don’t need to run sample instruments from the internal Mac Studio SSD?
@@chrisishoy7924 Definitely. Get a good Thunderbolt 3 (or 4, when they come out) case that can house NVMe sticks. Lots of options for that, and the price of NVMe SSD has really come down.
@@chrisishoy7924 that’s correct. As a general rule you should try not to store any libraries on your internal hard drive. Like Neil said in video..NI only reads at a certain speed anyway.
@@RTJ_Music it’s a long-standing weird thing - even on my 5,1 I had ahci ssds (before nvme was supported in high Sierra). I could get read speeds of >6GB a second all day, yet it was the same conundrum with Kontakt using that bandwidth for loading. Instead it was 700MB-1GB/sec. That was back with Kontakt 3 and 4. Nothing has really changed all that much - so it must be deep in the code with how it’s grabbing the data
A fellow composer here, and I am now working on a 28 core / 384GB RAM 2019 Mac Pro here. I have some mixed feeling on the new Mac Pro. For me, the memory is definitely not enough for media composers. My template now using 250G+ RAM so the 192G max of the new Mac Pro is not nearly usable for me. But on the other hand, I have the fear that they (and a lot more music production software company) may stop supporting Intel base Macs soon, because supporting two different CPU architecture will definitely be more expensive than supporting only one.
I don't think it's just audio production, video editing, machine learning and many other pro tasks require more than 192 gigs of RAM quite often. It is a massive downgrade from the previously possible 1,5TB. I don't really know who that machine is for honestly. Not only did we lose GPU support, but also have 10% of the previously possible RAM. It just doesn't feel like a "Pro" computer anymore.
What are you running that takes up the most of 384gb or RAM so far? Is it Vienna?
@@igniteltd Vienna Ensemble Pro is only the host for a lot of different libraries. And orchestral libraries are only a part of my template. Aside from orchestral libraries(at least 4 different brands), there are keyboards, guitars, drums, epic percussions, choirs/solo voices, synth, sound design libs, and some of my own sounds.
I feel like this is why hardware synths are still needed because that is insanity
@@PvtAnonymous If I may be blunt to an unreasonable degree here, this feels like a "screw you" product from Apple. They listened just enough, but ignored everything to create a product that less than the bare minimum we were asking for, creating a product that doesn't really have a vision so as to not cannibalize the Studio.
It's also just a question of repair and flexibility. If a config I buy turns out to not be suitable, on a more conventional system I can just expand it myself provided I'm getting supported modules and am not already at the limits of what my system can support. Having a blazing fast CPU doesn't mean a damn thing if RAM is saturated and the system has to pull from SWAP.
Still loving the 2019 Mac Pro. The best computer I ever had. Just for the pcie slots and the cpu slot.
Same here - best mac I’ve ever had on all fronts: stability, expandability and overall power
I waited 2 years to upgrade the cpu. I found on eBay for 700! So I took the dive and change it to a 24 core (from 12core) for me was the sweet spot between ghz and core counts (working here in protools hybrid HDX). Wow now I really pushed to where I feel this machines really but really flies. Atmos is a breeze with this things !
And of course, all pcie slots fully filled with UAD’s, aja video card, nvme, ssd (spares) usb c cards, you name it. Loving it still
Thanks Neil for the great videos on Mac Pro Audio. We all are with you in this still intel journey.
Thunderbolt expansion chassis won't have the overall bandwidth of the cards on the motherboard. If you think dropping to two 16 lane slots is bad, it's even worse going over thunderbolt.
As you say just depends on what you really need.
Exactly - but keep in mind that no Audio interface in existence needs anywhere near the bandwidth of even a single PCIe 4 1x lane, let alone a PCIe 3 1x lane.
As for data transfer - I’m curious to know if the TB4 ports have dedicated pipelines to the cpu or if it’s balancing the load somehow
@@NeilParfittMusic On the Mac Studio, each Thunderbolt port is a dedicated bus connected @ PCIe 3.0 x4. (Actual bandwidth out of the port is a little less due to PCIe-to-Thunderbolt overhead) So Mac Studios with M1 Max effectively have 4 PCIe 3.0 @x4 slots, M1 Ultra has 6 slots(TB3/4).
@@NeilParfittMusic Before I posted last night I did do some quick digging to refresh my memory, and as with everything Thunderbolt related - my searching wasn't conclusive :/
Looks like each TB port is the equivalent to two or four PCI E lanes, depending on where I was reading. Four seems to stick in my mind, but that was from the PCIe 3 days - not sure if it's the same with PCIe 4. On PCs it looks like all the Thunderbolt stuff goes through a thunderbolt controller, motherboard chip and then a CPU. Looks to be better on Apple silicon - I'm pretty sure all the i/o is integrated into the SOC - so a more direct path, but not as much I/O - which is probably why the new Mac Pro has fewer x16 slots.
For me the most disappointing thing was the lack of RAM. I'm not surprised given the architecture they are using with Apple Silicon, but for users like you it's a huge downgrade - and no matter how they try to spin it, nothing replaces having RAM when you need raw RAM. Maybe the next gen will double up? It still would be half what you have today but it would be a solid improvement.
Whats interests me, Mac Pro or not, the company "GPU Audio" doing an SDK for Mac silicon.... Possibly for the first time, those GPU core can be utilised in audio production.... Very interesting times indeed.
There’s been a lot of attempts at this throughout the years. Now that Apple has their own cpu, machine learning and GPU stuff locked down - how’s the time for them to make their own apis for it that Logic and 3rd party could tap. As it’s such a shame all that muscle is sitting mostly idle at all times in music work
cool.
@@NeilParfittMusic
gpu dot audio
I just hear that your resting template is at over 300GB of memory I just love hearing that. I know modern sample libraries are wild for music production but that number is so cool. The video production house I work at moved to Mac Studios and the 64GB of RAM is perfectly adequate.
In regards to the modular nature of the Mac Pro machines, totally agree that it would have been awesome to be able to drop in a new CPU, but my assumption is that the Motherboard architecture is completely different and isn't compatible. It would be really nice if Apple made the new Mac Pros a cycle that you can just throw in a new CPU, but that is even more of a pain because now the RAM is directly on the CPU die so those kinds of upgrades are even more expensive. Feels less modular than the original now.
But if a couple projects pay for that every year, it could be feasible, but a yearly upgrade cycle for business work isn't worthwhile anyways. I've been running (read: struggling) on my hackintosh for about 7 years now and it's time for a new machine and I think the M2 Mac Studio is gonna be what I end up replacing this machine with.
Glad to see that your Mac Pro has helped you create incredible things! I love seeing people use the tools they have to their full potential :)
I find the PCIe 4.0 that’s available on these new Mac Pros to be awesome; Huge bandwidth available. Just for reference, On the Mac Studio, each Thunderbolt port is a dedicated bus connected @ PCIe 3.0 x4. (Actual bandwidth out of the port is a little less due to PCIe-to-Thunderbolt overhead) So Mac Studios with M1 Max effectively have 4 PCIe 3.0 @x4 slots, M1 Ultra has 6 slots(TB3/4).
The new Mac Pro is a forces stop gap release. In your case the M3 Extreme will be the first interesting model. And it is the main tool, just like in my video editing studio… (for video we added the Mac Studio a year ago and it is amazing, but all the declink cards are in the mac pro….) time will tell :)
How are the decklink fans?
If the M3 Ultra ends up topping out at 256 GB of memory, would an M3 Extreme hit 512 GB? 🤔
It would still be a third of the memory supported by the 2019 Mac Pro, but if they managed to pump that update out in less than a year (maybe as a true high-end and Mac Pro-exclusive config) and dropped the price on both the tower and the rack (because I do see both flopping, G4 Cube-style), they might shut up quite a lot of naysayers and move some units…
Buyers of the current version might not be too happy, though… 😬
I hope they bring back expandable RAM, Ampere's ARM systems has had RAM slots for years now - for how much Apple charges for these, it should be standard on the Pro systems - even if it means needing more slots to make up for the bandwidth difference.
The Xserve burn made me laugh... they were loud for sure lol
I had one for a minute, and sold it very quickly.. as I was horrified when I turned that beast on... holy crapballs was it loud!
I love this guy... can listen to him talk about tech all day
i should make some more videos then - you may catalpult me out of my near- year absence! haha!
@@NeilParfittMusic dude, I'm not even exaggerating, I wish there was an AI clone of you so I could listen to tech stuff all day while writing code
I think I first found your channel when you bought the new computer... didn't realize it was 3 years ago. Time flies!
The Genelec keep staring at me over your shoulder... Hey ! my eyes are up here !
A thoughtful video indeed. I have the 2019 Mac Pro and it has been a champ for audio production. I was waiting to see what Apple was going to introduce with the final transition to their chip on the Mac Pro, and sure enough the announcement was a bit underwhelming. I agree with your sentiment: use what we have until it is absolutely obsolete. I would switch to a fully loaded Mac Studio, but I invested in PCIe cards and I do not want to spend money on external boxes for them. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Thanks, you have always been a great inspiration. There is no incentive to go mac pro 2023 for music. It's not more powerful, it has less ram.
I installed a cheap similar system that routes my ableton/Rme UFX+ into a MTRX with Protools HDX and HD sync via madi with analog M32 pro cards. Since my hackintosh wasn't large enough I run a second one just for Kontakt Vienna. The MTRX routing combined with the simplicity of Madi makes running two rooms together easy. I documented it with Omnigraffle. Thanks to opencore our hackintoshes are just fluid, with thunderbolt caldigit ensemble making USB and thunderbolt connection easy. It took me a month and 25k to get everything fluid , but thanks to your videos it all works and will probably also last for another 6/7 years.
The MTRX is my fav piece of computer audio hardware I’ve ever owned. DAD is so amazing. And omnigraffle is literally my fav app! ❤
you made the right choice. You will get 5 more years of support for the machine. thats 8-9 years of updates.
I mean, look how long the 5,1 machine has been in the field. I still see them all over the place running strong.
Nah, I think Intel Support will be dropped after MacOS Sonoma. Effectively cutting short support of Mac Pro 2019, just like Powermac G5. Powermac G5 only got 2 os’s, though they released less versions then.
I have the last generation dual core Power Mac G5 maxed with 16GB ram and 2 ssd drives. It runs Logic 8 just fine. I’ve got audio and midi running through a lexicon lambda that I can switch to run from either the G5 or my m1 mac mini. The mini is also maxed at 16GB of ram and runs the latest version of logic.
@@carbongrip2108 they say they will support for 5 years after final production date.
@@NeilParfittMusic Yup - long live Open Core Legacy Patcher! Mr. Macintosh is a great TH-cam channel that profiles the legacy patcher. Love my old cheese grater for just playing around!
Great commentary. 👍 I was actually waiting to see what you thought about the new machine. Thanks for taking a moment to put this video out.
We missed you 🎉🎉🎉
Always look forward to your videos Neil, insightful and good fun! Keep ‘em coming!
Was hoping you would weigh in!
dude you were the first person I thought of after this Mac Pro announcement! thanks algorithm for bringing me here :)
Woohoo!
Same here. First thing I thought was "this ain't gonna work for Neil".
Yes you are correct in the professional world you use a tool as long as it is doing the job for you.
Thank you for your honest opinion
Hey Neil: I remember watching your "transition video" going from a bunch of TB enclosures and cables to the (then new) 2019 Mac Pro. I'm an audio professional and I'm still rockin' my 2009 Mac Pro (barely). I saw a video last night from Max Tech, and they theorized that the new Mac Pro is a "transitional model" with a lot of real estate inside for future plans and upgrades. Apple put a lot of time and money into developing the 2019 Mac Pro, so why wouldn't they want to amortize their investment? Maybe they ARE in a transitional phase atm. For myself, I'd love to have a 12-16 core used 2019 model. I've gotten SO much mileage out of the 2009. I'm sure that a used 2019 would suit my needs just fine, as I do have several pci cards that I still use. Anyway, glad to see that you're still making music (and the occasional TH-cam video)...👍
the biggest question is compatibility- will the PCIE cards even work? this is the first ARM based machine with PCIE slots afaik, all of the professional audio/video cards were designed with x86 in mind. it also defeats the purpose of a mac pro- they have always been upgradeable, even the trash cans.
glad to see the intel mac pro is still working well- hopefully this new one drops the used prices a bit so i can pick one up for just a leg!
Regarding the use of GPUs for DSP, there's already a company, GPU Audio, doing great stuff already and getting awesome results on Nvidia, AMD and apple running plug ins on the graphics card. Always great to hear your insights. Best regards!
yea but that is just useless really, Apple silicon is so damn fast and the latency is unheard of, the whole gpu stuff is a useless nothingburger
Great to hear this from a pro. I financed my 2010 Tower with one gig and still on it. Now upgraded CPU for Catalina. A little iffy but Im not scoring anymore so dont have to sweat anything.
What I like about this video is not the technical analysis (although that's great), it's the business case/financial analysis of why pros spend the kind of money they do on high-end hardware. Most laypersons just don't get this and wonder why anyone would spend many thousands of dollars on a workstation. They're business tools to do work and make money. The more efficient they make a workflow, the better the payback, end of story. You'll also try and squeeze every last drop out of that investment until technology comes along that improves your productivity. I worked in the workstation sales/support business (Sun, SGI, DEC and high-end Intel) for several years in the 90's and early 2000's and I was constantly having the argument with non-pro people about why you'd spend tens of thousands of dollars on hardware and software. The money seems large, but the payback is larger - otherwise why do it.
Good point on Apple modularity, if it's modular where is the Pro M2 upgrade card?
The reduction of memory is a tell that Apple really wanted another chip for this machine.
I would love to see how it looks (and sounds) to fill all this memory with sounds and how this orchestration looks...
If it all played at once... well... it would be an acoustic soup of absolute terror! :)
I was waiting for this video...!
glad you are still around, i couldn't find your videos because youtube's search algorithm is spamass now
i still want the 2019!
Being able to add more storage is the reason I bought one.
once you cant use the os anymore for the internet then you have to upgrade your mac untill then keep going with what you have iam wating it out for M4 systems, the M1 that ihave is great for audio and video stuff but gamming nope not really very good for that the new m2s if you get the higher specs stuff then they are ok for gamming but still not there yet so for me i wont upgrade till atleast M4s are out..
Neil!!! I thought of you when the rumor seemed eminent … then I saw the ram limitation and expected you would not be upgrading. Thanks for your thoughts and video.
Yeah, here's hoping the next one makes more sense.
ok fine, thanks! Then the big question is - is there a higher latency when using a mac studio with an external pci chassis? (in my case for pro tools hdx and UAD pci)
there shouldn't be - as it's an extension of PCIe. Maybe in the uSecs for the added step? (I'm guessing here) - but nothing problematic with the real-time nature of HDX.
When I moved from the tower with an EB7 to the Mac Pro 2013 with chassis - there was no difference in behavior. It was invisible.
I totally agree. The external chase TB3 with Blackmagic Design DeckLink is enough for me. Happy producing! Greetings from Austria!
Thank you for the video. Was planning to go for a macstudio, you just confirmed my thoughts !
Great video love your take on this!
Neil, the video looked really good. Did you switch back to the other camera? I'm on a Mac Studio, M1 Ultra with 64 gb of Ram and 20 Core CPU and 48 Core GPU. I do video editing and 3D graphics and this machine works great for me. I can never imagine needing or wanting the current Mac Pro.
Yeah this is the fujifilm x100V. I’m a hair out of the focus zone but it still smokes the Sony ZV1
Excellent points Neil! Yes, it is an impressive step forward, but they made it to make the transition to ARM complete. I think, this being a stopgap, that the M3 iteration of this machine will have the abilities you and yours need in your workflow and if not they should invite you to discuss it with the engineering team. I am also trying to find information as to how they connected the PCI bus to the SOC because there was talk that they would discourage any bus translation. Funny, you brought up XServe... yeah, we remember. That was 13/14 years ago. Of course, it does not need to be this form factor, somehow it feels they painted themselves in a corner. Johny Srouji has done a wonderful job marrying the chips, but did you notice he was not presenting anything. Apple has something coming in the Fall, I just feel it in my pinky toe. I live just south of Toronto, that smoke.... yikes it was bad.
Thanks for your sharing! Finally, I know some of the professional composing like you are needed that much ram when working with Logic, VSL & protools!! So, would please tell me how much ram you used with logic pro X which is running a huge orchestral template! Because I have no idea how much ram is needed for long-term usage! Thanks in advance!
I have been mentioning you to a lot of youtuber's reviewing the Pro in thier comments since they seem to not understand what differentiates a professional Audio composed and producer versus a tech enthusiast perspective regarding a mac Pro
Uh oh - influx of trolls - here we go! Hehe
So the recommendation worked for me, curius to hear your opinion
I didn't even bother looking at the new one, since I too am in a similar situation... MacPro Rack mount, only 16-Core and 384GB of Ram, and 13TB of SSD's... but of all the things you and I have discussed with my "other" gear... LOL, the Mac is just "chugging" along doing it's thing... it's literally the one piece I haven't had a single issue with. I'm still running Big Sur anyways, because like you've said... some things haven't caught up 100%, and since everything is just working, I'm not gonna F*** with it at all... I'm looking forward to getting my NTP-DAD AX64 connected up to this... I'm hoping for at least another 3-4 years out of this machine... and even then, I'm keeping it as well...
I remember you got that Mac Pro rack I think I’m getting the new M2 Mac Pro or the new Mac Studio M2
I found your channel today, am curious about the Mac Pro but like what you said, everything is working, and I really don't want to risk, but I was thinking maybe run it in parallel with my existing machine for awhile? Or not possible for you? Great video BTW
It’s very difficult to find well informed takes about this stuff from a studio musician standpoint. This is exactly what I needed as I was trying to figure out if there would be any benefit whatsoever for me paying 2-4K more just for pcie slots.
Thanks for sharing your opinion / thoughts about the new Mac Pro. Taking into consideration the computer you have at the moment, it doesn't make sense indeed for you to upgrade. Would like to see some video's about your work as a composer.
I work in manufacturing. All of my clients run ‘obsolete’ production equipment. Some of this stuff is 50 years old - like stamping presses and analog machining centers. When it is no longer useful for the business, it will be sold or scrapped. That’s how it works. Nobody cares if the equipment is state of the art. What matters is whether or not the equipment gets the work done. Computers are no different. Also, computers can be depreciated or written off, and businesses can often avoid sales tax in many parts of the world. For consumers I think the Mac Pro is likely a bad idea. For a business, it might be perfect, or not. Everything is situational.
As I said on someone else's video: it's like Apple is trying to dictate to professionals what they need.
The RAM seems to be the biggest problem. Sure, the on-die memory is very high speed but, for audio/video studios, RAM capacity is more important than blistering speed.
The only thing you were wrong about are the wheels -- they're "only" $400 now (~$540 CAD). And they still can't be locked in place. 😂
Yeah, I’m surprised Apple released a Mac Pro that tops out at 192GBs. I thought they wouldn’t revisit the Mac Pro until their Apple Silicon had a 512GB unified memory architecture. My only knock about the M1 Ultra Mac Studio is being forced to use TB4 for data storage expansion. 2800MB/s of the TB data lane isn’t too bad, as most samplers don’t have the I/O capability to take advantage of that speed anyway, but still with current NVMe Gen 4 SSDs topping out at 7000 MB/s, I’d much rather have full access to that type of storage speeds. That’s just about the only advantage of buying a Mac Pro, and a MADI or Atmos related PCIe card. Otherwise, the Mac Studio is near perfect. Quite as an iPhone and almost as small as a Mac Mini. Can’t complain seeing its only the first generation.
The memory has to be soddered on (and blazing fast) because it's shared with the GPU. The only way I can see them going back to upgradable ram is if they separate their GPU and CPU memories and then just use regular DDR5 dimms for the CPU. But then they'd have to stock a whole bunch of different SKUs and whatnot and it would also fragment their precious experience between devices. I'd really like to see this in action, but sadly, it's not gonna happen.
Consider this the best they can manage at the moment, and they are trying to convince you that it is good enough. Fanboys like to hate on intel, but clearly intel is ahead of apple in some areas. Apple will say those things don't matter, but they do matter to some people.
@@fredygump5578 Apple isn't known for rushing things, which is part of why this release is odd.
I think the rush was just to finalize converting all systems to M-series processors in order to roadmap a definite end to intel support.
@@davidg5898 Apple IS known for rushing to implement some things customer's really do not want. touchbar comes to mind. thunderbolt 2. butterfly keyboard. etc.
I discovered you on your first Mac Pro vid. I’m in a similar spot to you with my Mac Pro. I’m not looking forward to the day pro tools no longer makes intel updates.
As always, great thoughts @NeilParfittMusic! However i don't understand one thing: when you've originally moved to the 2019 Mac Pro, your main argument was that you can put all your PCIe cards inside the machine, and can get rid of all your external thunderbolt chassis. Now you are basically saying that buying the Mac Pro doesn't make sense, since you can have PCIe expandibility for Mac Studio via thunderbolt.
PCIe is the whole point of the new Mac Pro. Yes, it's a super niche product, it's needed for a very-very small group of professionals, but the ones who need it, really need it.
Having the same M2 Ultra SOC as the Mac Studio is not a wekness of the Mac Pro, it's a strenght of the Mac Studio.
It’s such a catch 22 now - as this latest machine has less pcie lanes than the 2019, no 3rd party GPU, no expandable ram. Honestly, if I needed another non-portable computer I’d be still grabbing another Intel 7,1, now at a discount on the used market.
In 2019 interfacing didn’t exist with the I/o I required - but now that digital audio Denmark has their tb3 core 256 - that eliminates audio pcie expansion chassis needs other than avid. If avid comes out with something that allows me drop the hdx cards, then pcie is essentially dead to me (the only thing would be m.2 nvme ssds)
Anyway, it’s a strange offering - I’m staying put - there’s literally no advantage to moving to this new machine.
I hope they add vga support for the pcie slots
I just need some 1024x768 monitors.. I could turn my studio into the matrix area in the Nebuchadnezzar!
Neil I appreciate your perspective.
Neil we bought our MPs the same time and I'm with you! I"m not at a bottleneck yet, software's been fine, and we're making money! Love these dude!
Great video Neil!
Would you still consider buying an intel Mac Pro?
If this machine took a dive, absolutely. I do have spares of GPU, PSU etc so fingers crossed it stays beastly.
One of my main colleagues - we got a 2nd matched machine a few months ago for the LA system. So moving between systems is just moving back and forth with a few project ssds - and the sessions don’t know the systems are any different
I meantioned you in my video about the Mac Pro. I really appreciate your perspective on things. Thanks for all you do Neil!
Thx Jon! Send a link, I’d love to watch :)
I have been sitting on my old os and PT10 for years. I just bought the M2 raxk and avid has been redicules in trying to get this to work. So im hopping back and forth between the two till I get it working. I'm using an nvme card in the new machine. But you are right, they made it so proprietary and I can't get two monitors up without it blinking.
oh man - that's brutal - what issues are you running into?
Very good analysys. I was not expecting less from you by the way, because I saw y our thinking process when you buy your current machine. A detail, one can get a Fanless SSD carrier. (4 slots) from Sonnet, or one wiht a fan (8 slots) from OWC. The other option is the 10 ssd carrier from Transit but that requieres a RAID controler and I am possitive there is no tested drivers. Two of the Sonnet cars will give you 16GB/sec + 64GB storage. The OWC can do. 26GB/s in theory. So the other example is if you really really want a Mac and need a ton of local storage. The funny part is that for most codecs a 25Gbit/s ethernet is more than enoght and you can buy a thunderbold adapter and a a giagant NAS. It will never be as fast, but altmos all the time
My thought process as well. I went with the M2 Ultra for our video editing. We ent with the 60 core/128GB/8TB internal. Outside the computer we are using the Caldigit TS4 Thunderbolt hub and the Sandisk Pro Blade Station with 16TB of storage and we will still save $$$. If we were running multiple 4K monitors with SDI interface I could see getting the tower. The Mac Studio is inexpensive enough to pay for itself in a few projects. I was hoping for a Mac Pro Mini(about twice the size of the current Mac Studio) but I sure it will come out with the M3 chip.
Here’s the great news about all of this-Apple has gotten a bit cheaper in its pricing with a fast as hell computer as well.
Not gonna lie was waiting for your thoughts on M2 mac pro
You dig it *Don't rock the boat*, BootCamp + Support for older macOS versions. The arm migration will happen to all computers (PC Markets) in the next decade it's too early now at least before 2027.
wow i just found your channel , thank you so much for all this info that you are blessing us with , did you see the leak performance scores on the m2 ultra?
Nope! Please post a link
I remember you composing about 2019 it shipped with Catalina. History repeats it self 😅
how do you get your monitors to lean back and low like that
It was a hack of sorts. My desk was designed as a mastering desk - so there’s rackmount bays on the sides and center - so, I found some rackmount vesa monitor Mounts meant for a server caninet and mounted them pointing and mount angled . It’s a pretty clean setup.
1) This Mac Pro uses LPDDR5 RAM, same as all the other Macs. But LPDDR5x is now available, and offers significantly higher densities (and thus much larger RAM chips). If Apple does as they should, and takes advantage of this, the next-gen AS Mac Pro should offer a max of ~1 TB RAM. So when you do ultimately need to retire your Intel Mac Pro, there's reason for optimism, at least on the RAM front. It probably won't be upgradeable, and will surely be more expensive than adding aftermarket RAM (as you were able to do with your current Mac Pro), but at least you can equip it up front.
Indeed, the next gen Studio Ultra may offer that level of RAM as well.
2) I wonder if the reason new Mac OS's so often break DAWs is that (a) the vendors of pro audio apps and plug-ins don't (or aren't able to, because of limited resources) take sufficient advantage of the beta period, to ensure their apps are ready when the new OS comes out; or (b) Apple gives the audio vendors insufficient pre-release support; or (c) it's an unavoidable consequence of a new OS.
Regardless, I suppose that means if you buy a new machine, you'd want to wait until just before the new OS is released (say, Aug or Sept), so that it is on a very late version of the current OS (say X.5 or X.6).
3) I agree it's disappointing they don't allow you to upgrade your 2019 MP to AS. At the very least, it should be available as a factory upgrade. Maybe they'll offer that in the future.
Also I found that for using large orchestral sample libraries there's need for fast storage devices. I had a bad experience in the past when I am composing using all 4 mic positions in my EWQL PLAY libraries. I hear some missing notes in my project because my NVME ssd is not fast enough to stream all the voices needed from the disk. I then have to add a RAID0 PCIe SSD card to solve this issue(with 9GB/s read speed). For now the only way to get such speed is by using PCIe connections, not even latest thunderbolt 4 can have such speed. But the memory problem of the new Mac Pro... I think I too will stick to the 2019 Mac Pro until Apple can release something usable in the future.
Just because they have PCI-e slots doesn't mean that every card ever will work without problems. Probably is best to wait a couple generations till companies have had a chance to test their addon cards with these new cpus and verify everything works.
I'm not a composer so my use case is different, if I already had a 28 core mac pro I wouldn't upgrade either. If I were starting from scratch, I would jump on the apple silicon mac pro if I could get a rack mount option.
Thanks Neil for the sanest review available on TH-cam. Also almost nothing uses the full speed of PCIe 3 that isn't a GPU. The 4 upgrade doesn't gain you anything today. I'm an Ableton Live user also with extensive library of old tracks. Many of those don't open correctly on my M2 laptop because VST2 support is inconsistent unless you run Live in Rosetta. So I'm stuck converting manually or flattening everything to migrate over.
I used to have a Mac Pro 6,1 (Trash can), and running good for years until 3 years ago, one of the GPU fired and I have to switch. And I chose Mac Mini M1........ I can tell you "Silicon chips" are quite different to that of Intel's (even the re-installing process of the MacOS system), and are suggesting you to stick to your 7,1 for at least 18 months more. And you should heard those compatibility issues, and let them to fix before you committing into a one of the "white mouse".
Nicest guy on TH-cam! I look forward to your opinion on Mac Pros at every new launch.
I've been looking forward to hearing your take on this.
Excellent as always Neil - and now that Avid is having its own problems, what next for the Mac Pro?
I’m thinking that the new Mac Pro, the rack mount in particular, might have been motivated by Apple getting into creating content for the new Vision Pro. If they will be doing live, 4k sports streaming in VR they will need serious throughput capabilities for video. How many Pros would they need to have in order to cover a single game? With all of the alternative angles, replays, and the whole VR thing I haver no idea how many video streams they will be dealing with.
And of course they are hoping that other companies will be jumping into this new video format as well. You’re right that this might not make a whole lot of sense for audio production right now but give it a few years and the RAM will at least be closer to what you have right now.
When I saw the notification I started the video right away can't believe it's been that long!
It's funny that as a tech guy I need your point of view on Apple hardware as a composer
Careful about RAM usage comparisons. The “same” program on X86 vs ARM may use different amounts of RAM.
I'm not holding my breath for 100GB underage difference in RAM requirements working out positively :)
I know the memory speed is bananas fast - but the moment the OS hits swap non-stop, the party's over.
When I bought the first M1 Macbook Air, I loaded something requiring over the brink of Memory and the performance of the entire system nosedived quick. It wasn't wasnt a 100GB over, maybe 10GB over.
The cuts were really obvious with the screens behind you, crazy idea to run green on them and key them out in the video editing you’re doing. I agree that these feel like POC devices, I’m disappointed they didn’t put in expandable RAM or even support extra GPU’s as well.
I can see composer, recording artist, mixer and mastering audio engineers using the Mac Pro if they still use the internal Avid Pro Tools cards. They are expensive cards so if you already have PCI cards you still wish to use then, YES, the Mac Pro will appeal to them. It's not a bad machine, but I agree that for most people in the pro arts the Mac Studio Ultra completely maxed out will be the better buy. Apple should continue to push the 2019 Mac Pro a little. Perhaps update the base spec unit. It's not like Intel is going out of business and that machine can load up 1.5 TB of RAM. It's maybe not as fast as the M ultra chips, but with a 28-core Xeon the machine can be darn fast. But as someone else said, most developers for Macs will ultimately move to the ARM-based M chips.
Yeah, I feel this new Apple silicon Mac Pro is for the most part superfluous nowadays too. As well as being less flexible and modular than it’s predecessor. I think Apple will end just dropping it from their Mac line altogether in a couple of years.
It's cool to hear about tech from a business point of view. I didn't know they released anything new....well, they always release something new, but I'm in a similar position where my technology is working just fine. Not a hint of needing anything new!
Totally makes sense that a Professional with a lot of RAM really just wants a Big Mac!
Great to hear your thoughts, mate, and keep up the good work. Oh, and you missed the perfect opportunity to wear your t-shirt for the video! ;-)
Oh craaaap I totally forgot!!!!
Love the shirt. Where did you get it from?
I think it was red bubble or busted ties -
It was a few years ago :)
Thanks for the informative video Neil.
I place a very high value on Information from people who spend 99% of their time working in their field as opposed to hype mongering TH-camrs so thanks!
A thought I have is that you have ECC ram in your Intel machine which the new ARM Mac's don't. The ECC ram is likely a large contributor to your system stability. I'm guessing that all your renders come out glitch free.
Thanks again 👍
The ECC part is incorrect. Apple Silicon has been using DDR5 since M1 and DDR5 has ECC built in on die. However, as Neil said the instability now comes from macOS instead, Monterey and Ventura are simply unstable.
@@OnTheLeftHandSideoh, thanks. I didn't know that... en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR5_SDRAM#:~:text=There%20still%20exist%20non%2DECC,errors%20that%20occurred%20in%20transit.
Thanks for your video. I had the same thoughts. Is Vienna ensemble pro running with Apple silicon do you know? Cheers.
Your video did show up on home screen. When I heard about this new Mac Pro my first though was “Who is it for?” Essentially it is a Mac Studio with expansion slots and internal storage. My initial though was also “Wouldn’t most customers need more memory?”. I also did expect this computer to be released with options for double or quadruple cpu/memory. I also guess the suppliers need to port cards/drivers to this architecture which can take time.
I always wait for second or third gen as well. Hence I waited for M1 Pro for my laptop. Many rough edges smoothen out, ready to go out of the box for most things.