Mac Studio for Music First Impressions
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ต.ค. 2024
- Apple's flagship Mac Studio is a 20 core beast packed with 128gbs of ram. But how good is it in practice and what are the problems you might face migrating to the new M1 Silicon chip. Guy has taken the plunge and gives you his first impressions a few days into his journey into the Apple Studio world. He certainly bumped into a few problems along the way. That doesn't mean that you will do but this is his perspective and his personal experience of the process.
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Yes, I just received one today 9/18/2022. Thanks for the heads up on this! :)
@@ryanknaggs I got one these scam offers too. Via text, he would not tell me what I won until AFTER I pay him nearly $300 in shipping fees. Needless to say... I declined.
Thanks Guy-yes I just got one telling me I'd won an M1. Lol :)
I've watched many vids for months now about m1 and m2 but this was by far the most useful/helpful and indeed honest one. The rest was all rainbows and unicorns. Thanks for this 🙏
holy shit! the legend himself!
Just wanted to say thank you for all the help and tuition spanning your videos. Your humour, energy and sheer ability to create has been a massive help. Thanks 👍
Regarding the "I forgot where my stuff is" happens to me when my stuff is located on a remote drive and that drive went to sleep. The trick is: navigate to that drive, open a folder to let it know you want something from it and it's time to wake up and THEN open your app. It should find your stuff from a now non-sleepy drive immediately (so it might have something to do with your energy saver settings really putting the drives to sleep when not in use).
Guy, I hope you’re well. Question…I will be picking up my Mac Studio this week. Coming from a m1, how easy will it be to move all my sample libraries and plugins to the new computer?
Many thanks
Steve
I love my Mac Studio. I just have the baseline model, but that thing is a true BEAST of a machine. Almost all of the software-issues are resolved and 90% of my plugins are running nativeliy on the M1 and the rest are supported vi a Rosetta. It FLOORED my old I7 and I havent regretted the purchase one day. Silent, efficient and with the best I/O currently available on the Apple Silicon platform. Highly recommended, totally worth the price. It will last you for a decade.
There ARE some quirks, but I remember the transition from Motorola to Intel, and trust me - that was way worse. Rosetta2-preformance is quite frankly astonishing.
I agree. have the m1Max on a mac studio and am as pleased as Punch. Really happy I bought it. I use logic pro and reason. Also using Final Cut Pro for video. Yes, there are some issues but all in all the Mac Studio is a winner in my setup.
Bjorn and John, i so appreciate your updated posts, confirming resolution of most software issues. Thank you!
Has the 32gb RAM been okay for you?
@@simonr344 Thanks to this thread, i got the 32gb model as well and the memory is way more than needed, although i’ll keep it! Operationally, 32GB unified RAM feels comparable to 64GB-96GB conventional DDRAM. Load and installation times … general wait times … are reduced by more than half. It’s a night and day difference over my 2018 Intel Mac Mini w 64GB, which was already “just fine” for audio applications.
@@simonr344 for sure, yes. I am not recording in a studio but with video which pushes it more than audio it presents no problems either. I think the way the m1max works, RAM is used more efficiently
Loving my Mac studio with M1 Max. The CPU handles everything well. The only problem is sometimes moderate loads struggle because it flips between efficient and performance cores. So full mix runs great, but single instrument with fx might hit cpu limit
If you can run everything M1 native it is wonderful.
I ran into this a couple of times too. At least in Logic I went into the preferences and made sure it was using only the performance cores. The HE cores are probably best left to run the OS and any background applications.
Great to see the Reaper Master in here! :-)
Hi Guy! 2021 ThinkSpace MA grad here! Believe it or not, I'm using an M1 Mac Mini (16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD) running Pro Tools in Rosetta and networked up using VEP to a 2010 Mac Pro and a no-name 2020 PC for libraries. Aside from it taking a few months for Avid to produce a version of PT that would run the Video Engine on the M1 (came along in October 2021), it's been smooth sailing. I'm even running Dolby Atmos Production Suite, HD Native, MTRX Studio and mixing on a 12-speaker Atmos array flawlessly. With a Mac Mini!! And with dual 4K monitors, one of them using StarTech on one of the USB ports! Would love to get a Studio when my wallet will allow, but the Mini is doing the job, even with huge orchestral sessions. I've gotten the very occasional RAM warning when running a massive session, but no crashes. 🙂
Thanks for showing us the challenges. Still on an Intel Mac and hearing about rhis, I am highly motivated to get another year of life out my setup…
Helpful as always, thank you very much!
I’m in the same boat here. It may take me 6 months to finish running a full inventory of all my software and hardware and researching what is allegedly Silicon compatible and what isn’t! I’m still lamenting the loss of my old Cycling 74 Pluggo plug-ins on my current Intel system…
Guyyy! Great video! - But would you make an updated video with your experience???
best
Rune
I didn't have these issues. i took a few weeks to slowly and methodically update all my software and setup the machine. There are still some plugins I cant use. Is it a tad dramatic to mock Apple's system based on your experiences alone? Having said that Monterey has caused me some issues more so than Logic or other apps. And I suppose that's a biggie. Mock away! As you note though, audio based software, including the many and various 3rd party plugins, are notoriously more difficult to balance out than video. In any case, I look forward to your Logic based videos.
Hi Guy, thanks for your characteristic and transparent style on this subject.
I was forced into a quick changeover - when faced with an imminent, tight and heavy workload for a project - my previous (ancient 2008 Mac) system decided to punctually crash every 9 minutes.
Fortunately I had anticipated this moment and had already taken delivery of a new system - including replacements for my interface and digital desk which were now redundant on modern Macs.
I decided to stick with Rosetta on the new Studio Max 64GB 2TB Machine, coupled with a new SSL BiG SiX (conveniently replacing both interface and desk in one unit).
However the obvious increase in performance means that I am content to postpone Native usage for a while.
So far the new system is running gloriously - no problems with Logic, 3rd party plugins, peripherals or disc management under Rosetta.
You have such a beautiful music studio. I love the amount of natural light.
Guy, I upgraded from an 8 year old iMac to the exact same configuration of Mac Studio as you did, and use Logic exclusively. I'm just a hobbyist and have far fewer VI libraries and plugins than you have. I did a complete new install rather than using Apple's migration assistant software. Fortunately, I have had only a few minor problems like the one with with Kontakt not fining libraries. All of my libraries are on NVMe drives inside external Thunderbolt enclosures. Keep up the videos... I've learned so much from you, not to mention the entertainment value!
Awesome! Can't wait my Ultra arrive to studio as well. BTW did you gat to wait beyond scheduled or received it earlier?
Minor and pedantic technical correction: Rosetta 2 does it’s translation on first load of the binary, and then caches the translated binary. It’s not a continuous process*. The performance differences that arise come from mismatches between what intel ISA does and Arm64 ISA does, plus the cost of a few shims. Overall this is fairly negligible, however there are some use cases which are more problematic, most notably floating point math done using the X87 instructions. Not all floating point is done with X87 on modern intel chips. But audio software has a significant floating point footprint and therefore is prone to this particular pathological case.
X87 was created very early on in the life of the IEEE 754 floating point spec. As a result it contains what we now think of as bugs, most notably in some edge cases around the representation of numbers in binary. This means that the Rosetta 2 X87 translation subsystem cannot just blindly translate to intel float operations to arm float operations and instead has to do a bunch of double checks and extra work to ensure compatible behaviour. This makes floating point essentially the slowest part of Rosetta 2 translated code.
*This excludes programs that generate machine code on the fly such as just in time compilers for eg JavaScript. These are a pathologically slow corner of Rosetta 2 but are largely outside the scope of what most audio software does.
I knew when I said it I wasnt quite getting it right! Real world I got 30% fewer instances of Dune in C12 running in Rosetta compared with an old intel Macbook pro, let alone natively so for me if it wont run in native silicon it doesnt run at all.
@@ThinkSpaceEducation it’s so frustrating that the area we want to use this stuff in happens to hit the most significant weak points isn’t it. Can only hope that the popularity of these new apple silicon macs, plugin makers will be incentivised to support the platform sooner than later.
It would be great if more DAWs would do something like to Bitwig’s plugin isolation in the future that gives us crash protection as well as allowing mixing plugin for different architectures seamlessly.
@@andrewbrehaut Crapple doesn't provide incentives ...that's the problem and has always been so. It's all cold hard cash to use the platform for writers and users.
I've been using my Apple M1 Mac Mini (16 GB) for a year now and love it. I have had some similar issues in the beginning, but I think some of your problems may come from the operating system, macOS Monterey. I'm on macOS Big Sur and I haven't experienced some of your difficulties like Disk Utilities formatting issues or mysterious audio plugin death spirals. The best fix was to load only the audio plugins that I knew were up to date, then slowly add older plugins as I needed them - sometimes they worked and other times not. I also found that even with using Rosetta for some software, a significant speed increased happened over my old i7 Mac mini (16 GB) and my MacBook Pro (16 GB).
Can you run a huge number of tracks simultaneously too? Like how much have you pulled off?
Hi Guy, would love to see how you're getting on with Mac Studio transition? Upgrade to M2 Ultra chip? Still living with Rosetta issues?
When Kontakt asks you to find the files always select the “‘search with spotlight” it’s a single click solution. By the way this has happened to me for years. Normally it’s when I load up a project from 6-7-10 years ago….
You just saved me from a lot of headaches... thank you very much!
I was wondering if, by any chance, you are still using the Mac Studio … and if you might create some kind of follow-up video.
@guymichelmore Just watched this, in Oct 2023. Have just ordered a Mac Studio with the M2 Ultra chip, maxed out with 192GB of RAM and an 8TB SSD. Couple of points - that problem of Logic scanning plugins may be due to the fact that Logic also scans and runs VST plugins, so if you didn't remove those, perhaps there was something in there that caused Logic to choke? Also, we're now up to Mac OS 14 Sonoma, so hopefully a lot of the software compatibility problems have been sorted out by now, including the Disk Utility thing. I should find out later this week when my monster is delivered. Thanks for the run-down on your migration from Intel to M1. Did you use the Migration Assistant to get most of your stuff across from the old computer?
thank you so much for your wonderful video ,You saved my life, I bought m1 and I had the same issue like you, and I got so much frustrated , but after your explanation I understand what I should do , god bless you
Are you still loving it? 13th gen intel has turned out to be pretty rapid along with zen 4 ryzen.
@ThinkSpaceEducation a year later, do you still run into those issues or updates and releases fixed them?
Also, how much RAM would you recommend ?
Thank you for those amazing tips and tutorials.😊
As far as I can tell it’s basically fixed now for most things. But check with your specific plugins one by one in case you need something specific. Most of the growing pains have been fixed by the developers and by MacOS by now.
Why did you have to empty and clean your shed before installation? I'm pretty sure other brands do not require this.
Thanks Guy, I was ready to go M1, think I’ll hold it back now and keep with my older Mac mini? Really do appreciate your review.
Glad you made the switch! I went from 30 hour video renders for my music to 4 minutes (yes, that is insane). No issues with my plugins but issues with Atmos...
Thank you for the clarity…delivered with levity 😇! QUESTION: M1 Max vs. M1 Ultra… noticeable difference ?? I’m using Ableton 11, UA Apollo +Console, lots of plugins and sound libraries…. Any advice is greatly appreciated !
I know this is a late response, but Ultra only adds more graphics cores compared to Max, so for audio purposes there is no difference.
The power/performance of the ARM-based Apple Silicon is truly impressive, and I would love to get one, apart from the price. Maybe by M3 these software issues will have been resolved.
Hi Guy. Thank you so much for this. Love your sensible reality. I’m considering defecting from old PC to Mac since M2 arrived. Has anything changed since this video that might change my mind? Singer songwriter want to create a solid future proof at-home/writer/production studio. Using onboard Cubase 5 vst’s ( will upgrade soon), and lots of vocal layering for creative writing ambiences. Best regards, Dunx
Six months on and how are you finding it now Guy? Am very close to taking the plunge with exactly this spec model migrating from my late 2013 dustbin MacPro
Are you still using the Mac Studio. I am thinking about getting one after WWDC.
Dear Guy, Any problems with VSL products? Dorico? Will purchase M1 Ultra October 2023
Best
Peter
Great video (as usual)! Can you please comment on your choice of 128GB memory vs your previous computer? Would be curious on your memory utilization when loading large projects with a large number of plugins…. Thanks!!!
Thanks guy. I will have to wait till all or most problems solved. I think I will use Mac Pro meantime.
Hi Guy,
You are a very talented, brilliant and funny man interjecting humor in your videos!
I have been watching for a while and now have just subscribed.
Thank you for your technical experience with the Mac Studio.
I have been a PC user and wondering if this is a new direction for me.
I have a better understanding on what to expect now with your presentation.
I really appreciate your sharing your experience and wisdom.
Thanks again, Best always,
Munro
This is so much appreciated! Congrats on keeping your sense of humor!
I bought the same Mac. 2000 plugins. 30+ connected usb devices. 30TB of connected raid drives. Five plugins would not work. No issues formatting or using disk utility. No issues with usb…. I would never run Clean My Mac. I have a had a few issues with permissions not being set correctly which caused a few issues. I have had some crashes on restart due to a drive issue (I assume) between the Mac and soft raid.
Thats pretty good and goes to show as every set up has a different configuration the outcomeds are very unpredictable. Glad its working. It is now pretty much working fine for me too
Agreed. Clean my Mac is malware.
Great overview of true troubles ..Thank You!!
Thank you Guy
This is very well done by you. this is the best review I have seen.
But I didn't expect anything else from you.You are a hero.
Gr.Ness
Hey Guy, I find myself forced to look at a new Mac as my 2011 Mac GPU gave up. Watching this hugely informative video is certainly food for thought. I think I’m going to buy into the M1 world, albeit with some trepidation. Reading through the comments (very helpful everyone), It seems to lean towards a ‘yes’ from everyone. I fear that my Waves plugins will be an issue as they are some years old now…anyone care to share their experience in this? Thank you so much Guy for this and making it entertaining along the way 👍👍🙏👏
I’m having the same Logic problem. I’ve started with Apple tech support weeks ago but no solution from Apple as yet. Digital Performer and all notation software works perfectly.
Gr8 vid. Plz do a follow up soon and let us know how this is working a few month in (like now). :D
Brilliant run down as I’m thinking of getting a Mac Studio for all the Spitfire software.
Yes, patience is the key but it’s a difficult time for musicians with regard to future proofing or getting the most powerful MacBook Pro 16 intel available 2nd hand.
Thanks Guy.
Very helpful and informative, many thanks !
Great video, as always Guy!
The big question then....If you had the chance to go back in time, would decide against buying it and hold out till things got better?
5k is a lot of money for something that doesn't run as it should!
I bought the same model he has about 3 months ago and while it hasn’t been a perfect transition, it’s still a remarkable system. There’s really nothing else quite like it on the market achieving that much power in such a small, quiet form factor that uses so little electricity. Even with all 20 CPU cores pushed to 100% it barely exceeds 50°C, which is almost absurdly cool by traditional computer standards and should contribute to a long lifespan. I think the majority of the teething problems isn’t the hardware, but more Monterey and especially when migrating older systems to it. Most users are seeing the fewest number of issues doing a clean-slate setup. macOS updates throughout the year have improved things quite a bit, but depending on the software/plug-ins you use there can still be a few hiccups from time to time.
@@tronam Thanks for the reply!
I will definitely look to upgrade at some stage in the future when it settles down a bit but, as it stands I'm still using a late 2013 Imac 27" 3.2ghz i5 that my mac guy upgraded the ram on to 32gb(took the screen off) and it still flys!
I can have a ridiculous number of tracks/plugins going and it never thinks twice.
The only ones that cause it to slow down are if I have multiple instances of Spitfire plug ins going at once.
Excellent introduction to M1 Guy. There seems to be very little on the web about using M1 for music. Look forward to your update on using the Studio in due course.
yep, same here. I'm just on the cusp of getting a pretty much identical machine.....but have over 1000 plug-ins. I'm -quite frankly -'daunted'.
Guy, I must say it's been a jolly long time since I've stopped off here, and I can see, the guy Guy is as sharp and funny as ever, and let me not forget informative, God Bless guy Guy!
Glad you dropped in!
Love your perspectives - always balanced. I use both macs and PCs but have leaned more toward mac, especially since the M1 and because I find macs easier to use with complex audio routing. Definitely, computers are tools to enable creative production. Love your excellent videos. Cheers!
Thankfully I haven’t had any of these issues since switching from a pc to mac studio, but I started completely fresh with new SSDs and went through the painful process of downloading and installing every plugin I wanted, it’s a good shout anyway as it makes you think about what actual plugins you need and use, as opposed to filling your vst folder with plugins you’ll never touch!
Just going to the same very painful experience of installing everything from scratch, but I agree it's genuinely so worth it. Much less clutter, and everything runs perfectly for me so far.
I'm going through that tedious exercise right now. The plugins I never used get eliminated from the team. And if any program isn't M1 compatible... I won't load it.
+1 here guys :))) I haven’t even unboxed the new beast but, even getting rid of the untouched plugin grave yard is some kind of a relief. I will be a “silicon native or bust!” person as well because, if a developer does not bother to upgrade their product according to the evolving technology then it is more likely they will let you down along the way eventually. That’s my mind set and it doesn’t have to fit everyone on the planet ;-). I’ll update this comment if I bump into any issues when I get the new system going. Cheers :)
Agree with fresh install. I went from a MBP 2013 to a 16" MBP M1 Max 64GB 4TB drive. Instead of carrying forward all that legacy crap using the Migration Tool, I opted to re-download everything fresh. All my sample libraries are on the internal drive (about 2.25TB for the libraries) because I wanted the mobility of not having a drive hanging from the laptop when I travel. Apparently when you step up to the 4TB drive there is also a dramatic increase in throughput vs the 2TB drive, so bonus points there. I've run projects with 100 tracks of sample libraries (not all playing simultaneously, but all loaded) and I'm only at about 25% CPU. The only time I get a spike is when a library is loading while trying to play back or with certain libraries. So far, Action Strings 2 is the worst culprit in this regard, and I would suspect that there is some suboptimal scripting going on in there. I also noticed that the computer got a little faster over the first two weeks which I chalk up to it self-optimizing with machine learning through the Neural Engine. My personal advice to anyone moving to a new M1 is to do a fresh install of everything. A little pain up front is better than weeks spent routing out problems caused by legacy preference and cache files lurking in your system. Also it's great for pruning out seldom used applications, plugins and libraries.
This is the way.
As a hobbyist, I tend to avoid Apple, mostly because the price and lack of user upgradeable parts. I also have an issue with how their products don't work with older programs, even their own. But I do love the idea of a fast computer. I am also glad to see more than 2 USB/Thunderbolt ports. I'm thinking maybe in 3 years, I will check the used market if they hold up well. Thanks for an interesting video.
It only took you 6 sentences to tell the internet that you're not only a hobbyist, but also have no idea what you're talking about. Kudos.
Sounds like a sensible approach.
Thanks for the lesson. Just brought soft soft
I am still using Apple laptop! One day I will love to get that! Thank you for sharing!
For some reason when a plug-in or DAW doesn’t work on my M1, it always seems to be a Waves plug-in … might be time to move on!
Well informative. I just bit the bullet and purchased the same cpu
Main question here. Did you use migration assistant or do a complete fresh install from scratch of everything? Got a feeling the main issues you have experienced are to do with migration
fresh install for everything except the actual sample libraries
The problems with the external 8TB SSD are ringing a bell. I upgraded my Intel MBP from Big Sur to Monterey and it totally corrupted the drive (losing some nonessential data in the process). It then was unable to reformat the drive properly. Reformatting the drive under an older MacOS went fine. Reconnected it to my Monterey MBP, corrupted again. Eventually I downgraded my MBP back to BigSur (obviously wiping the whole thing) with the help of a TimeMachine Backup I had pulled minutes before I started the upgrade…. Happily ever after. I wonder if that MBP is now stuck on Big Sur forever. We are talking APFS formatted drives and Monterey 12.5.1 so the should have had ample time to fix this ….
Smaller external SSDs (2TB) and a conventional external 8TB HD drive didn’t present any problems whatsoever.
Really useful video Guy. Thanks for taking the bullet for us. I use Mac at work and Pc at home. I have no preference either way as long as they function and I get the results. Let's just write the music.
I'm planning on switching to a Mac next year, since Windows is going to be a pain in the ass. This video helped a lot on my way!
I have a Mac Studio M1 Max. I've had problems with Ozone, and some of NI instruments (not Kontakt). Soundtoys and Waves plugins working smoothly.
Recently bought a M1Max Studio (half the price..) and I must say it wasn't that bad of a transfer. Plenty powerful enough for sound design and post stuff, and actually ALL my plugins worked. (Don't have 1000+, but maybe 100 or so) Some minor issues, but nothing big! Running Nuendo, coming from a MacPro (2009!!) this was a BIG difference and well worth the money and time! Windows users probably have to face the same transition in a few years anyways.. so yeah, glad I made the transfer.
I use Pro Tools on my MacBook pro. I haven't updated the computer or the software. they are both 2015. Admittedly I 'm not doing your kinda productions, but when I see the problems with subscriptions and upgrades, I'm happy in my little corner of the world. I can still use new software thankfully. I think I am at the edge of it all, and huge financial outlay may be in my future, but for now, I ain't going nowhere.
Very helpful, Guy ... Just about to pull the trigger on purchasing a Mac Studio ( Max ) and your reflections are very informative. Well done !
With your videos my learning curve will shrink drastically. Thank you.
Thinking about getting this for Musescore 4 and VSTs etc.
to the lost library links that need to be found again every start, just to drop my 2 cents, since i am working alot in both worlds: Loosing the location of the soundlibs also could be a problem by the soundlibs library software. On PC side, if you run i.e. two different monitor resolutions, many of them also don't know how to display correctly. All library driven systems might face problems like this one. I really love both bases. Of course the mac studio in that size is faaaaar beyond the budget; a small macbook air with a bit of ram solves it for me. But my music projects are simply much smaller... Love your videos and the service you give us amateurs... :D
I'm interested to know, you had a powerful PC, what performance issues were you getting with it?
Great video. I switched finally in March to M1 Max MacBook Pro 16” 64Gb 8TB and went full in.
I’m still using Rosetta mode due to some plugs not updating and putting my main Kontakt libraries on the internal 8TB. As it’s all self contained, I’ve not had many problems, as previously I was using about 8 drives hanging off the back of my iMac.
But I still keep an i7 MacBook Pro around on an earlier OS for some intel plug ins and weirdness that M1 spits it’s dummy at!
Hi Guy, I'm looking to buy a new Mac Studio, can you make a new video on your thoughts from using it for a half a year. Would a M1 Max enough (vs the Ultra)? 128gb Ram enough? .. ... ..
Thanks!!
I was investing in an audio PC in July. Thought about Apple but decided for XMG Audio PC with Windows. Just a fraction of the costs for Apple. But we have as well m1 MacBook pro for office and so on. Amazing and the battery lasts ages and it is silent. I didn't want to have all the issues and workarounds you mentioned.
Thanks Guy! Very practical, “seasoned”, video! It was enormously easy to understand and your examples are spot on!
Just in case there is some confusion, it is worth stating here, that you do not need to run Logic in Rosetta mode to run intel plug-ins. Some plug-ins are not working with Rosetta and just need to be updated, true. But the vast majority either run fine in Rosetta while Logic is NOT running in Rosetta mode (yes this works), or they simply don’t work. There are a few plug-ins that need to be run with Logic in Rosetta mode once to setup their authentication/copy protection, but then work fine if you then run Logic in native, non Rosetta mode. And over the past year a great number of plug-ins have been reworked to work natively on Apple silicon Macs. Once the actively developed plug-ins have been updated for Apple silicon none of these wacky work around will be required.
I took the Mac Studio plunge July 2022. My DAW of choice is Reaper and I am running in Rosetta mode. I experienced only minimal issues (aided by my Tech Guru friend) transitioning. These issues were mostly due to migrating from my PC and then not being able to locate things. Any fresh installs I did were pretty much trouble free. Loading some old projects did cause Reaper to crash but I narrowed this down to a single instance of a Waves plugin that was fixed by a reinstall of said plugin. All other Waves plugins work perfectly. With respect to CPU usage, the only time I had minor audio glitches in playback was when I had inadvertently left the settings for minimum latency (4.3ms for recording). My old system would have collapsed in a heap under this load. No regrets moving to M1.
Thanks Guy very interesting I am think of eventually upgrading my studio intel imac , i do have a m1 MacBook Pro and air ! Apple do need to up there game on the software but overall they are great machines i fell . Found this vid very interesting keep up the fab work as ever…
I bought one at the store and walking out the store with it in an apple bag made me feel so cool........yet so dorky!
Great video by the way. During the plug-in management set up my M1 Max studio didn’t crash all that interesting that happened to you. And I feel like a moron but I didn’t know about turning on Rosetta in the info window. Thank you so much for that tip!
I suppose having 700 plugins (half of them waves to be fair) didnt help but Cubase managed it so Im not sure why logic couldnt
Have used 16GB Ram M1 Mini in Rosetta for over a year now and it’s been absolutely fine. Definitely a lot faster than my old 2010 Mac. Is it fast enough, once you’re recording audio in with plugs and virtual instruments running, no not yet, but, certainly a hundred times better than before. Will M2 be the answer to all our dreams. My guess is, once it’s out, we’ll be looking at M3 for the same promises as our demands grow with it.
I have to say, my Macbook Pro M1 Max has been night and day for Pro Tools and iZotope RX under Rosetta 2 compared to the Trashcan. Zero problems. All startling improvements. I don't have any native music/audio software. But even the "foreign" stuff has been flawless and blindingly fast. RX processes that used to take 20 minutes now take less than 2. Pro Tools sessions that used to bog down the trashcan barely make the Max breathe faster. I have yet to hear the fan.
Caveat: that's at my day job which is 97% audio tech/dialogue editor, 3% composer. At home, I happily compose in Pro Tools on Windows. I wouldn't mind upgrading my home system to Cubase on Mac M1. But since it's mainly a hobby at this point, I do with what I have and it's fine, even for BBC SO Pro plus Kontakt, ew Play, Arturia synth models, and Superior Drummer all in one template.
I setup the exact same machine a couple of months back.
Any Cubase and Spitfire users should note what I didn't on first setup...
If you are going to use Cubase with Rosetta (I have to until VEP is native) make sure you are running the Spitfire App in Rosetta before you install plugins, otherwise it installs the silicon versions and they don't show up when Cubase is in Rosetta.
Other than that, I've been loving the machine, and in particular how it manages the RAM. My VEP template hasn't changed and it uses about 20% less RAM than on my old setup.
Well, I am currently running an M1 Mac Mini 16Gb with zero issues, mainly because i don't run that many 3rd party plugins, and the ones i DO have pretty much all been successfully "M1-ified".
What is interesting is, that now we are two years into the ASi era, and it seems that many of the smaller developer houses have done their work, better and quicker than some companies with presumably more resources and programmers to hand. Moddart, Valhalla, U-He to name but 3. And as I run Logic and FCP as my main apps, with the Affinity trio for graphics, etc, I am well served now, without recourse to rosetta. And i am looking forward to a big new Mac later this year to replace my old main computer, a 2014 iMac i7 which is still going, but runs out of steam with Logic and FCP these days. And of course is now unable to be updated to the latest OS, without some hacks that I can't be bothered with.
Really Helpful and comforting to know I'm not alone with the M1 growing pains
I've been running an M1 Mac Mini for over a year now. Initially there were some plugins that weren't ready to run natively on it, but that's been taken care of, and now I consider it one of the best music production purchases I've ever made. So much so that it makes me quite keen to save up and get the Mac Studio because I'm certain it's a thorough beast of a machine!
And you're composing movie scores, symphonies, etc? Or do you just have more money than brains?
@@PreacherAtArrakeen u dont have to be an a list composer to afford what can be as little as 2000 pounds for the base model. its admittedly the most important part of a modern composers setup
@@joederbyshire_ + a decent monitor and peripherals. My M1 mini does just fine.
@@PreacherAtArrakeen i use an m1 mini too. but i can see why people would want a more powerful computer. its not a bad investment in any way
It seems to me that Spitfire Audio has all but abandoned Albion One - which is what I use. I can't afford another orchestral software but really need to upgrade my Mac. What's the deal with Spitfire and Albion One??????????
Guy, thank you sooooo much, you are the savior of saviors, you simply are the best! have a nice summer
So happy with this video - just bought my daughter her first Mac (book Pro M1) as she did so well in GCSEs and is about to start Music A-Level where they use Logic. I've been in software for 30 years, and have never touched a iOS! 'How to use Logic' would be a good title for your next video, eh?
She'll love it! A level music is quite brutal - think about our How to Writ3e music course for her. Might help.
@@ThinkSpaceEducation Thanks Guy! I will. We're currently sitting in the Albert Hall about to watch the Earth Prom. Apparently Mr Zimmer is here! She's so excited!
Refreshing to see someone not trumpeting the "Macs just work" stuff. Hope it works out for you and doesn't end up costing you much in productivity.
Moved to an M1 Mac Mini in March. Cubase 12, tons of plug-ins, still in Rosetta Mode. To be honest… hadn’t had a single problem. The most painless system transfer I‘ve ever had. And it runs smoother than my baseline iMac Pro, it’s insane. Of course, it doesn’t have quite the multicore horse power of the 8c iMac Pro, but that’s a given. I could still buy a Mac Studio.
I love my new Mac studio. Also,
I learned a lot from you thank you
and my Mac cleaner
do without it Mac cleaner.
Thank you! Brilliant since my work studio has been all about the upgrade -I’ve held off on my own private studio knowing that it’s the future but hating that many of my plug-ins are not made for the new chip.
Sounds amazing .. It will run FCPro too I assume, but require some adapting. I see from the fast forward in the beginning that you completely gutted your studio and retired everything 🌹Thanks.
I got a m1pro 16” in December last year. It’s has been a slightly bumpy ride in some respects but ultimately it’s been surprisingly smooth going. Few issues with audio interface drivers but I don’t use it in Apple silicon mode, I run Cubase in Rosetta. I work in a shop and spent 4 grand on a laptop lol (I got the 4tb with 32gig)
Thank you for sharing your transition experience, Guy. I look forward to the day when everything runs more smoothly on Apple Silicon than on MacIntel. For now, I'm content to wait while it gets sorted out.
Very informative, thank you Guy for your invaluable insight! - I'll be found in the wait a bit longer camp. 🙂
Curious if you still like your mac studio? I'm considering getting one with 64GB of RAM converting from Windows machine at 32GB. Using VEPro (not Silicon compatible yet) and Dorico with several Kontakt,VSL and Infinite libraries. My current machine is primarly CPU bound but think the additional RAM won't hurt. So just wondering if you still like it some 6 months later.
Thank you so much for shairing your experiences and opinions about new Macs with Apple Sillicon. May I suggest something? Could you please also share what kinds of accessories you are using with Mac Studio? SSDs, Thunderbolt or USB hubs, and other things. As a composer, instructor, and content creator, I assume you need many SSD space and multiple ports for your needs. It would be great if you can share more nerd stuff with us! :)
Guy, you can open Logic while holding the command SHFT+CTRL keys and, this should disable any audio units that haven't been validated by Logic.
I love the design and speed but I'm still on a Mac Pro 5,1 which runs faultlessly albeit a bit slow. I'm a mixing records, 7.1 score and dolby atmos stuff and I can't afford to lose a plug in or a day off for that matter.
Very good choice!
Just use ableton, I've never had an issue with non native plugins running in m1 mode, also I think the plugin issue is related to it being a vst not an au