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Post by Deleted on Dec 6, 2021 9:43:51 GMT -6
Based on the stress tests people have tried, I doubt you'd really need the high power mode. I could see maybe if you are trying to render something quickly and you want to see if it improves the speed. I haven't had a mix in the 100s of tracks yet, but I have worked with 40-50 tracks and there has been no fan noise. I don't even think I've felt it get warm honestly. I believe early when they came out I saw one reviewer trying the high power mode. I can't remember who did this, but it was likely someone like the Verge or Engadget. Not audio people. We'll see how the longevity of these are, but I'm guessing the days of fan concern are over. What a blessing! You’ll enter high powered mode when the cpu heat up. There’s is no turbo mode so will still be still quite easy to max out a single core. Apple needs to find a way to increase the single core clock rate and get more of them. These modern saturation and dynamics plugs are running certain functions into the megahertz. Digital finally has the bandwidth to rival analog but only if you freeze or you have a beast of a cpu.
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Post by sirthought on Dec 6, 2021 10:45:45 GMT -6
Based on the stress tests people have tried, I doubt you'd really need the high power mode. I could see maybe if you are trying to render something quickly and you want to see if it improves the speed. I haven't had a mix in the 100s of tracks yet, but I have worked with 40-50 tracks and there has been no fan noise. I don't even think I've felt it get warm honestly. I believe early when they came out I saw one reviewer trying the high power mode. I can't remember who did this, but it was likely someone like the Verge or Engadget. Not audio people. We'll see how the longevity of these are, but I'm guessing the days of fan concern are over. What a blessing! You’ll enter high powered mode when the cpu heat up. There’s is no turbo mode so will still be still quite easy to max out a single core. Apple needs to find a way to increase the single core clock rate and get more of them. These modern saturation and dynamics plugs are running certain functions into the megahertz. Digital finally has the bandwidth to rival analog but only if you freeze or you have a beast of a cpu. I thought it was something you have to turn on in settings. Either way, I've been getting great performance in real world activity. I doubt the fans will have to turn on in every day audio work.
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Post by cyrano on Dec 6, 2021 17:41:48 GMT -6
I guess it just over clocks the chip for short duration processing, chip heats up more, faster: fans kick in ? That's still thinking in Intel terms... The M1 is so different from an Intel CPU that you need to stop thinking in yesterday's jargon. Clock frequencies no longer matter as much. Nor do Gigabytes. Intel never was able to get everything out of it's CPUs because there is no way to predict when it goes turbo mode or when hyperthreading kicks in. That's very bad, especially for audio. Not only for audio, also for video, albeit less. Intel has to support the past. There are numerous compilers running on Intel chips and nothing else. They simply cannot afford to lose these smaller markets. Apple can make a clean break. They've done it before. That's also why they are promoting Swift. No more wasting cores and cycles waiting for some process to end. In one of the videos, someone referred to IRQ problems on Windows. Way back when Windows was young. IRQs are hardware. Apple managed to hide IRQs 100% from the user, and even from the programmer. And that's what Apple is doing again. Hide the hardware. But not in a way that wastes cycles, or cores. Right now, Intel is a no-growth company in a fast-growing industry. Hec, they're trying to buy the foundry AMD spun off a decade ago. They're trying to lure away AMD's best people. With very little success. No new products, just more of the old stuff at inflated prices. Just like Avid. A blueprint for failure. Not tomorrow, maybe, but in a foreseeable future. Intel's biggest customer, Microsoft, doesn't buy a lot of CPUs. But they drive the market. Typically, MS got scared and started shopping for a way out. And they think they've found one. Windows will NOT run on an M1, but exclusively on Broadcom's ARM CPU. I bet Broadcom is quite pleased. I wonder if MS' shareholders will be as pleased too? But Intel won't be glad with this news, I'm afraid, as Broadcom's CPU's cost about 5% of what Intel charges. And, like Apple's ARM CPU, Broadcom's use about 5% power too. The PC market is largely populated by laptops. Especially the most valuable part. Desktops are yesterday's thing. The server market is already transitioning to ARM CPUs, lead by Google, Facebook and the big cloud providers, for the exact same reason: less power, less dollars, better performance. So, what's left for Intel? They can't battle ARM as it isn't a direct competitor. It's not even a company, it's a foundation, providing CPU design for a number of companies. Intel's own project for mobile CPUs is gone. It failed miserably. Intel's best people are gone too. They've been arrogant for way too long. PC manufacturers are longing for change. ARM will provide that change. Others will rise too.
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Post by kcatthedog on Dec 6, 2021 19:32:35 GMT -6
Fair enough, how then does the m1 chip produce for short periods of time beyond normal processing capacity?
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Post by mrholmes on Dec 6, 2021 20:07:59 GMT -6
Fair enough, how then does the m1 chip produce for short periods of time beyond normal processing capacity? The ARM idea goes back to 1985. The history of x86 vs ARM is explained in this documentary. I thought ARM was something new, but I had to learn its old technology in new clothes...
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Post by sirthought on Dec 6, 2021 20:13:02 GMT -6
This new video tries to avoid the pitfalls criticized in other stress tests. Rather than track count, he's looking at more real world projects and exploring plug-in count. Still really big projects. Unique tracks, not repetitive inserts, etc. And some projects are all VSTs.
You'll see how genre, workflow and even how you organize tracks can impact how hard the CPU and RAM have to work. He's using an Apple M1 Mini with 16 GB memory. The computer does extremely well.
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Post by reddirt on Dec 6, 2021 21:01:49 GMT -6
Kcatt, i'snt the above and beyond M1 ability down to swap memory on the internal SSD - or is that something different again? Cheers, Ross
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Post by reddirt on Dec 6, 2021 21:22:16 GMT -6
Some of us may use the computer more than the bloke above but I suspect most won't so the M1 mini seems a great choice. If you need more go for the larger machines like m1x or wait for next year's model; to expect a mini to do 200 orchestral tracks is like asking the High school running champ to compete with Usain Bolt. Cheers, Ross
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Post by Mister Chase on Dec 6, 2021 21:25:17 GMT -6
I guess it just over clocks the chip for short duration processing, chip heats up more, faster: fans kick in ? That's still thinking in Intel terms... The M1 is so different from an Intel CPU that you need to stop thinking in yesterday's jargon. Clock frequencies no longer matter as much. Nor do Gigabytes. Intel never was able to get everything out of it's CPUs because there is no way to predict when it goes turbo mode or when hyperthreading kicks in. That's very bad, especially for audio. Not only for audio, also for video, albeit less. Intel has to support the past. There are numerous compilers running on Intel chips and nothing else. They simply cannot afford to lose these smaller markets. Apple can make a clean break. They've done it before. That's also why they are promoting Swift. No more wasting cores and cycles waiting for some process to end. In one of the videos, someone referred to IRQ problems on Windows. Way back when Windows was young. IRQs are hardware. Apple managed to hide IRQs 100% from the user, and even from the programmer. And that's what Apple is doing again. Hide the hardware. But not in a way that wastes cycles, or cores. Right now, Intel is a no-growth company in a fast-growing industry. Hec, they're trying to buy the foundry AMD spun off a decade ago. They're trying to lure away AMD's best people. With very little success. No new products, just more of the old stuff at inflated prices. Just like Avid. A blueprint for failure. Not tomorrow, maybe, but in a foreseeable future. Intel's biggest customer, Microsoft, doesn't buy a lot of CPUs. But they drive the market. Typically, MS got scared and started shopping for a way out. And they think they've found one. Windows will NOT run on an M1, but exclusively on Broadcom's ARM CPU. I bet Broadcom is quite pleased. I wonder if MS' shareholders will be as pleased too? But Intel won't be glad with this news, I'm afraid, as Broadcom's CPU's cost about 5% of what Intel charges. And, like Apple's ARM CPU, Broadcom's use about 5% power too. The PC market is largely populated by laptops. Especially the most valuable part. Desktops are yesterday's thing. The server market is already transitioning to ARM CPUs, lead by Google, Facebook and the big cloud providers, for the exact same reason: less power, less dollars, better performance. So, what's left for Intel? They can't battle ARM as it isn't a direct competitor. It's not even a company, it's a foundation, providing CPU design for a number of companies. Intel's own project for mobile CPUs is gone. It failed miserably. Intel's best people are gone too. They've been arrogant for way too long. PC manufacturers are longing for change. ARM will provide that change. Others will rise too. You just brought back bad memories of my youth around 12-13 years of age having to manually tweak and assign IRQ to get my sounds to work in Quake. Awful PITA.
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Post by mrholmes on Dec 6, 2021 22:00:00 GMT -6
This new video tries to avoid the pitfalls criticized in other stress tests. Rather than track count, he's looking at more real world projects and exploring plug-in count. Still really big projects. Unique tracks, not repetitive inserts, etc. And some projects are all VSTs. You'll see how genre, workflow and even how you organize tracks can impact how hard the CPU and RAM have to work. He's using an Apple M1 Mini with 16 GB memory. The computer does extremely well. Nice video but I bet there was no rosetta involved. As soon I combine native ARM ready plug ins with old ones it does not take long to go into hiccup land. IMO its also a big difference using more cpu intensive plugs like great sounding saturation FLA or KH. Those can stress the M1 CPU. But it’s still impressive that the CPU seems to understand the hiccup. Rewind and play and it works…
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Post by Deleted on Dec 7, 2021 17:39:01 GMT -6
I guess it just over clocks the chip for short duration processing, chip heats up more, faster: fans kick in ? That's still thinking in Intel terms... The M1 is so different from an Intel CPU that you need to stop thinking in yesterday's jargon. Clock frequencies no longer matter as much. Nor do Gigabytes. Intel never was able to get everything out of it's CPUs because there is no way to predict when it goes turbo mode or when hyperthreading kicks in. That's very bad, especially for audio. Not only for audio, also for video, albeit less. Intel has to support the past. There are numerous compilers running on Intel chips and nothing else. They simply cannot afford to lose these smaller markets. Apple can make a clean break. They've done it before. That's also why they are promoting Swift. No more wasting cores and cycles waiting for some process to end. In one of the videos, someone referred to IRQ problems on Windows. Way back when Windows was young. IRQs are hardware. Apple managed to hide IRQs 100% from the user, and even from the programmer. And that's what Apple is doing again. Hide the hardware. But not in a way that wastes cycles, or cores. Right now, Intel is a no-growth company in a fast-growing industry. Hec, they're trying to buy the foundry AMD spun off a decade ago. They're trying to lure away AMD's best people. With very little success. No new products, just more of the old stuff at inflated prices. Just like Avid. A blueprint for failure. Not tomorrow, maybe, but in a foreseeable future. Intel's biggest customer, Microsoft, doesn't buy a lot of CPUs. But they drive the market. Typically, MS got scared and started shopping for a way out. And they think they've found one. Windows will NOT run on an M1, but exclusively on Broadcom's ARM CPU. I bet Broadcom is quite pleased. I wonder if MS' shareholders will be as pleased too? But Intel won't be glad with this news, I'm afraid, as Broadcom's CPU's cost about 5% of what Intel charges. And, like Apple's ARM CPU, Broadcom's use about 5% power too. The PC market is largely populated by laptops. Especially the most valuable part. Desktops are yesterday's thing. The server market is already transitioning to ARM CPUs, lead by Google, Facebook and the big cloud providers, for the exact same reason: less power, less dollars, better performance. So, what's left for Intel? They can't battle ARM as it isn't a direct competitor. It's not even a company, it's a foundation, providing CPU design for a number of companies. Intel's own project for mobile CPUs is gone. It failed miserably. Intel's best people are gone too. They've been arrogant for way too long. PC manufacturers are longing for change. ARM will provide that change. Others will rise too. Windows 10 kernel and ASIO are more efficient than Mac OS and CoreAudio. That’s a fact. Anyone who builds audio PCs or any other sort of workstation can tell you this. You can run the Intel CPUs in turbo all the time given adequate cooling and power. You can control the threads. Just because Dell and Apple couldn’t doesn’t mean it was impossible. Apple’s aluminum unibody Intel computers were mostly terribly designed machines. They were god awful to the point where if you paid for a better CPU, you might actually get a worse performing computer because it throttled faster. You’d have a better computer for 10-15 minutes tops and sometimes 30 seconds ime. ARM just lets them continue making computers that are poorly optimized thermally. There is a lot of engineering work for Apple to accomplish to mark ARM achieve higher single core clock speeds. Alder Lake CPUs undervolted with the clock rate reduced perform very similar to the M1 max performance wise. The difference is that Intel CPUs can take massive amounts of power and heat because that is what they were designed for. More transistors, more performance, more power needed, more heat generated. Server parts sacrifice performance for durability and power consumption. Those pennies add up when you have hundreds of servers. The lack of power will cost you more time than the time you’ll gain in durability. What itb audio work needs is high performance single cores and a lot of them. M1 is a step in the right direction for Apple but Alder Lake is ahead of them. Many itb producers like to pretend that bandwidth and distortion don’t matter but that is why their productions all sound itb. That sound is nothing more than the accumulation of distortion from poor digital processing. Only now in the last few years do we have a lot of clean digital non-linear processing. And it’s insatiable for cpu. Your average MacBook apartment production is just going to sound like that the more it is processed with poor plugins to compensate for recording deficiencies. Now the MacBooks are equivalent to a middle of the road Intel cpu from a few years ago but Apple wants to charge a ridiculous price for anything beyond the Air, Minis, and entry level Mac Book Pros.
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Post by tim on Dec 7, 2021 22:39:56 GMT -6
That's still thinking in Intel terms... The M1 is so different from an Intel CPU that you need to stop thinking in yesterday's jargon. Clock frequencies no longer matter as much. Nor do Gigabytes. Intel never was able to get everything out of it's CPUs because there is no way to predict when it goes turbo mode or when hyperthreading kicks in. That's very bad, especially for audio. Not only for audio, also for video, albeit less. Intel has to support the past. There are numerous compilers running on Intel chips and nothing else. They simply cannot afford to lose these smaller markets. Apple can make a clean break. They've done it before. That's also why they are promoting Swift. No more wasting cores and cycles waiting for some process to end. In one of the videos, someone referred to IRQ problems on Windows. Way back when Windows was young. IRQs are hardware. Apple managed to hide IRQs 100% from the user, and even from the programmer. And that's what Apple is doing again. Hide the hardware. But not in a way that wastes cycles, or cores. Right now, Intel is a no-growth company in a fast-growing industry. Hec, they're trying to buy the foundry AMD spun off a decade ago. They're trying to lure away AMD's best people. With very little success. No new products, just more of the old stuff at inflated prices. Just like Avid. A blueprint for failure. Not tomorrow, maybe, but in a foreseeable future. Intel's biggest customer, Microsoft, doesn't buy a lot of CPUs. But they drive the market. Typically, MS got scared and started shopping for a way out. And they think they've found one. Windows will NOT run on an M1, but exclusively on Broadcom's ARM CPU. I bet Broadcom is quite pleased. I wonder if MS' shareholders will be as pleased too? But Intel won't be glad with this news, I'm afraid, as Broadcom's CPU's cost about 5% of what Intel charges. And, like Apple's ARM CPU, Broadcom's use about 5% power too. The PC market is largely populated by laptops. Especially the most valuable part. Desktops are yesterday's thing. The server market is already transitioning to ARM CPUs, lead by Google, Facebook and the big cloud providers, for the exact same reason: less power, less dollars, better performance. So, what's left for Intel? They can't battle ARM as it isn't a direct competitor. It's not even a company, it's a foundation, providing CPU design for a number of companies. Intel's own project for mobile CPUs is gone. It failed miserably. Intel's best people are gone too. They've been arrogant for way too long. PC manufacturers are longing for change. ARM will provide that change. Others will rise too. Windows 10 kernel and ASIO are more efficient than Mac OS and CoreAudio. That’s a fact. Anyone who builds audio PCs or any other sort of workstation can tell you this. You can run the Intel CPUs in turbo all the time given adequate cooling and power. You can control the threads. Just because Dell and Apple couldn’t doesn’t mean it was impossible. Apple’s aluminum unibody Intel computers were mostly terribly designed machines. They were god awful to the point where if you paid for a better CPU, you might actually get a worse performing computer because it throttled faster. You’d have a better computer for 10-15 minutes tops and sometimes 30 seconds ime. ARM just lets them continue making computers that are poorly optimized thermally. There is a lot of engineering work for Apple to accomplish to mark ARM achieve higher single core clock speeds. Alder Lake CPUs undervolted with the clock rate reduced perform very similar to the M1 max performance wise. The difference is that Intel CPUs can take massive amounts of power and heat because that is what they were designed for. More transistors, more performance, more power needed, more heat generated. Server parts sacrifice performance for durability and power consumption. Those pennies add up when you have hundreds of servers. The lack of power will cost you more time than the time you’ll gain in durability. What itb audio work needs is high performance single cores and a lot of them. M1 is a step in the right direction for Apple but Alder Lake is ahead of them. Many itb producers like to pretend that bandwidth and distortion don’t matter but that is why their productions all sound itb. That sound is nothing more than the accumulation of distortion from poor digital processing. Only now in the last few years do we have a lot of clean digital non-linear processing. And it’s insatiable for cpu. Your average MacBook apartment production is just going to sound like that the more it is processed with poor plugins to compensate for recording deficiencies. Now the MacBooks are equivalent to a middle of the road Intel cpu from a few years ago but Apple wants to charge a ridiculous price for anything beyond the Air, Minis, and entry level Mac Book Pros. I spent a bit of time tweaking c-states on a PC and over-clocking it to push CPU’s to their max. It certainly helps but what I really like about Apple’s new direction with the M1 is the task-specific hardware. Rather than brute forcing cpus to do tasks they’re not optimized for you instead utilize different parts of the chip built for those tasks. I’m really excited about the neural engine and what benefits it may offer to audio processing. Need to dig into it more to see.
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Post by veggieryan on Dec 7, 2021 22:43:40 GMT -6
Windows 10 kernel and ASIO are more efficient than Mac OS and CoreAudio. That’s a fact. Anyone who builds audio PCs or any other sort of workstation can tell you this. Oh boy another mac vs pc discussion! In my tests and benchmarks on my previous dual boot hackintosh comparing Mac OS to Windows 10 the difference was negligible at best. One could easily pick a device, driver, plugin or DAW that was more optimized for one OS versus the other to squeeze out a slightly better score but in the end it was a wash on the same machine. This thread is discussing M1x ARM processors. In order to prove this claim relative to what we are discussing you would have to compare windows running on an ARM processor and demonstrate better performance with the same DAW running on windows. Given that windows is many years behind in producing a viable version of windows on ARM this claim is unfounded and will likely remain so for several years. You can run the Intel CPUs in turbo all the time given adequate cooling and power. Yes, because they are several orders of magnitude less efficient you waste a ton of energy on cooling which produces a lot of fan noise. You can control the threads. Just because Dell and Apple couldn’t doesn’t mean it was impossible. Apple’s aluminum unibody Intel computers were mostly terribly designed machines. They were god awful to the point where if you paid for a better CPU, you might actually get a worse performing computer because it throttled faster. You’d have a better computer for 10-15 minutes tops and sometimes 30 seconds ime. ARM just lets them continue making computers that are poorly optimized thermally. You seem to miss the key point here: The new M1 ARM processors are literally several orders of magnitude more “optimized thermally.” It’s the main reason they make such a great laptop chip and why the new M1 MacBooks are so desirable. The fan noise basically non existent. There is almost zero heat generated. It's easily one of the most thermally optimized laptops ever produced. It's the literal opposite of what you are claiming. There is a lot of engineering work for Apple to accomplish to mark ARM achieve higher single core clock speeds. Alder Lake CPUs undervolted with the clock rate reduced perform very similar to the M1 max performance wise. The difference is that Intel CPUs can take massive amounts of power and heat because that is what they were designed for. More transistors, more performance, more power needed, more heat generated. Again you are mixing up the meaning of power with the meaning of efficiency. Intel has to consume 4 to 10 times more power to compete with the current M1 Max. In doing so they generate many more times the heat and produce fan noise that is several orders of magnitude greater. Specifically, Intel CPUs "take massive amounts of power and heat" not because they were "designed to" but because they are an inferior and antiquated design when compared to CPU's which produce better performance at the same power level.... IE: the current ARM processors. By the same token: when apple eventually releases an apple silicon based “mac pro” they will similarly outperform intel and amd at every power consumption level while producing far less heat. Server parts sacrifice performance for durability and power consumption. Those pennies add up when you have hundreds of servers. The lack of power will cost you more time than the time you’ll gain in durability. This is the main reason ARM is also outgrowing x86 in the server market, it is cheaper, more efficient and less heat generation means greater durability. What itb audio work needs is high performance single cores and a lot of them. M1 is a step in the right direction for Apple but Alder Lake is ahead of them. Alder lake is many years behind where it counts for the laptop processors we are discussing: efficiency and heat. Alder lake must consume 4-10x the power to produce a similar single core speed to apple silicon. The battery life will suffer at the same level of deficiency. It basically makes no logical sense to chose that platform right now for a laptop unless you are married to windows, need to fry an egg on your lap, need to blow dry your hair or need to get a workout carrying around a battery that weighs 4-10x more for the same battery life... Many itb producers like to pretend that bandwidth and distortion don’t matter but that is why their productions all sound itb. That sound is nothing more than the accumulation of distortion from poor digital processing. Only now in the last few years do we have a lot of clean digital non-linear processing. And it’s insatiable for cpu. Your average MacBook apartment production is just going to sound like that the more it is processed with poor plugins to compensate for recording deficiencies. Now the MacBooks are equivalent to a middle of the road Intel cpu from a few years ago but Apple wants to charge a ridiculous price for anything beyond the Air, Minis, and entry level Mac Book Pros. "Apartment production” with M1 based laptops will usually sound better for anything recorded with a microphone given the lack of obnoxious fan noise in all the recordings. In reality the M1 Mac Mini and MacBooks are some of the best priced computers in history when comparing actual price versus actual performance. In my experience my M1 computers haven’t crashed once in over 6 months and it has been bliss living without fan noise or a laptop that could burn a hole in my pants. Personally I wouldn’t go back to using any computer producing any fan noise at all even if it were twice the performance in an imaginary scenario. I wouldn't want to pay the extra power bill either. I wouldn’t be tempted to use windows ever again even for 4x the performance but that is just a personal preference as I require a true UNIX based environment and operating system as a minimum requirement for any computer. Anyhow, all in good fun. No hard feelings. They are just computers...
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Post by enlav on Dec 9, 2021 14:32:51 GMT -6
Just out of curiosity, did anyone end up going for this OWC miniStack STX pre-order? It doesn't look like they've shipped yet but curious if we end up having any one who might be getting in on the first batch.
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Post by cyrano on Dec 9, 2021 20:28:38 GMT -6
That's still thinking in Intel terms... Windows 10 kernel and ASIO are more efficient than Mac OS and CoreAudio. That’s a fact. Anyone who builds audio PCs or any other sort of workstation can tell you this. You can run the Intel CPUs in turbo all the time given adequate cooling and power. You can control the threads. Just because Dell and Apple couldn’t doesn’t mean it was impossible. Apple’s aluminum unibody Intel computers were mostly terribly designed machines. They were god awful to the point where if you paid for a better CPU, you might actually get a worse performing computer because it throttled faster. You’d have a better computer for 10-15 minutes tops and sometimes 30 seconds ime. ARM just lets them continue making computers that are poorly optimized thermally. There is a lot of engineering work for Apple to accomplish to mark ARM achieve higher single core clock speeds. Alder Lake CPUs undervolted with the clock rate reduced perform very similar to the M1 max performance wise. The difference is that Intel CPUs can take massive amounts of power and heat because that is what they were designed for. More transistors, more performance, more power needed, more heat generated. Server parts sacrifice performance for durability and power consumption. Those pennies add up when you have hundreds of servers. The lack of power will cost you more time than the time you’ll gain in durability. What itb audio work needs is high performance single cores and a lot of them. M1 is a step in the right direction for Apple but Alder Lake is ahead of them. Many itb producers like to pretend that bandwidth and distortion don’t matter but that is why their productions all sound itb. That sound is nothing more than the accumulation of distortion from poor digital processing. Only now in the last few years do we have a lot of clean digital non-linear processing. And it’s insatiable for cpu. Your average MacBook apartment production is just going to sound like that the more it is processed with poor plugins to compensate for recording deficiencies. Now the MacBooks are equivalent to a middle of the road Intel cpu from a few years ago but Apple wants to charge a ridiculous price for anything beyond the Air, Minis, and entry level Mac Book Pros. You still don't understand, I think. Nobody wants a desktop. Not even in the server market. So it doesn't matter. Battery life is what matters. And, BTW, I used to build servers and other specialty PC's for a living. Stopped doin' that over a decade ago, cause I could see it coming. Virtualisation, SAAS, cloud... It also doesn't matter that Windows doesn't have a 20 sample safety buffer, like Macos. Yes, it'll give you better latency, but nobody cares. I mean, how many different audio systems are there for Windows? Nobody wants to play around with those anymore. The duopolistic tandem Microsoft/Intel is done. Over with. As both have bags of money, they'll last a while, still. Look at the acceptation of Windows 11...
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Post by tim on Dec 10, 2021 19:25:57 GMT -6
You still don't understand, I think. Nobody wants a desktop. Not even in the server market. So it doesn't matter. Battery life is what matters. And, BTW, I used to build servers and other specialty PC's for a living. Stopped doin' that over a decade ago, cause I could see it coming. Virtualisation, SAAS, cloud... It also doesn't matter that Windows doesn't have a 20 sample safety buffer, like Macos. Yes, it'll give you better latency, but nobody cares. I mean, how many different audio systems are there for Windows? Nobody wants to play around with those anymore. The duopolistic tandem Microsoft/Intel is done. Over with. As both have bags of money, they'll last a while, still. Look at the acceptation of Windows 11... At my day job I have an intel MacBook Pro as my only computer. Laptops are becoming the norm at a lot of places. Add a dock plugged into a big monitor and wireless keyboard and mouse and it’s actually a really nice setup. Considering I vpn into a bunch of Linux servers it never fires up the fans accept on big video conf calls. If the new MBPs are dead silent most of the time and can handle what I throw at it for audio then I’d lean towards a laptop for my next recording rig.
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Post by BenjaminAshlin on Dec 10, 2021 23:10:39 GMT -6
You still don't understand, I think. Nobody wants a desktop. Not even in the server market. So it doesn't matter. Battery life is what matters. And, BTW, I used to build servers and other specialty PC's for a living. Stopped doin' that over a decade ago, cause I could see it coming. Virtualisation, SAAS, cloud... It also doesn't matter that Windows doesn't have a 20 sample safety buffer, like Macos. Yes, it'll give you better latency, but nobody cares. I mean, how many different audio systems are there for Windows? Nobody wants to play around with those anymore. The duopolistic tandem Microsoft/Intel is done. Over with. As both have bags of money, they'll last a while, still. Look at the acceptation of Windows 11... Windows 11 roll out is hardly surprising. Most corporations will stay on W10 for another year or two. Latency is a huge concern, it is make or break for many vocal performances and peoples ability to sing in tune. You can get a very good setup on both systems. Even Apogee has started supporting windows (although they make terrible drivers for mac. They are a good example of bad implementation of the coreaudio API.)
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Post by Deleted on Dec 11, 2021 8:08:37 GMT -6
Windows 10 kernel and ASIO are more efficient than Mac OS and CoreAudio. That’s a fact. Anyone who builds audio PCs or any other sort of workstation can tell you this. You can run the Intel CPUs in turbo all the time given adequate cooling and power. You can control the threads. Just because Dell and Apple couldn’t doesn’t mean it was impossible. Apple’s aluminum unibody Intel computers were mostly terribly designed machines. They were god awful to the point where if you paid for a better CPU, you might actually get a worse performing computer because it throttled faster. You’d have a better computer for 10-15 minutes tops and sometimes 30 seconds ime. ARM just lets them continue making computers that are poorly optimized thermally. There is a lot of engineering work for Apple to accomplish to mark ARM achieve higher single core clock speeds. Alder Lake CPUs undervolted with the clock rate reduced perform very similar to the M1 max performance wise. The difference is that Intel CPUs can take massive amounts of power and heat because that is what they were designed for. More transistors, more performance, more power needed, more heat generated. Server parts sacrifice performance for durability and power consumption. Those pennies add up when you have hundreds of servers. The lack of power will cost you more time than the time you’ll gain in durability. What itb audio work needs is high performance single cores and a lot of them. M1 is a step in the right direction for Apple but Alder Lake is ahead of them. Many itb producers like to pretend that bandwidth and distortion don’t matter but that is why their productions all sound itb. That sound is nothing more than the accumulation of distortion from poor digital processing. Only now in the last few years do we have a lot of clean digital non-linear processing. And it’s insatiable for cpu. Your average MacBook apartment production is just going to sound like that the more it is processed with poor plugins to compensate for recording deficiencies. Now the MacBooks are equivalent to a middle of the road Intel cpu from a few years ago but Apple wants to charge a ridiculous price for anything beyond the Air, Minis, and entry level Mac Book Pros. I spent a bit of time tweaking c-states on a PC and over-clocking it to push CPU’s to their max. It certainly helps but what I really like about Apple’s new direction with the M1 is the task-specific hardware. Rather than brute forcing cpus to do tasks they’re not optimized for you instead utilize different parts of the chip built for those tasks. I’m really excited about the neural engine and what benefits it may offer to audio processing. Need to dig into it more to see. Too bad Apple neglects pro audio market because the money is not there. The stuff they have been doing in the last 10 years for the Starbucks market hurts the pro users. Soldered in ssds, batteries, and ram, thermal issues, os updates breaking plugins and drivers, neglecting Logic. Remember when the white plastic MacBook was laid out like a bento box? Anyone could fix it and it didn’t have any throttling. You can’t trust any computer manufacturer in general, only individual models. And not every spec out will be good. All 20XX MacBook Pro with a 17” screen are not the same.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 11, 2021 8:16:30 GMT -6
You still don't understand, I think. Nobody wants a desktop. Not even in the server market. So it doesn't matter. Battery life is what matters. And, BTW, I used to build servers and other specialty PC's for a living. Stopped doin' that over a decade ago, cause I could see it coming. Virtualisation, SAAS, cloud... It also doesn't matter that Windows doesn't have a 20 sample safety buffer, like Macos. Yes, it'll give you better latency, but nobody cares. I mean, how many different audio systems are there for Windows? Nobody wants to play around with those anymore. The duopolistic tandem Microsoft/Intel is done. Over with. As both have bags of money, they'll last a while, still. Look at the acceptation of Windows 11... Windows 11 roll out is hardly surprising. Most corporations will stay on W10 for another year or two. Latency is a huge concern, it is make or break for many vocal performances and peoples ability to sing in tune. You can get a very good setup on both systems. Even Apogee has started supporting windows (although they make terrible drivers for mac. They are a good example of bad implementation of the coreaudio API.) That’s why you monitor off the interface dsp mixer and not the daw for UAD, Apogee, Metric Halo etc. not everyone is RME or Lynx. But Monterey even threw RME off. The Apogee USB hardware is better on Windows than on Mac now ime. The Symphony Desktop and Duet 3 are a big step in the right direction. Motu is great on Mac, wtf on Windows.
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Post by kcatthedog on Dec 11, 2021 8:26:20 GMT -6
Dan, my symphony mkii worked perfectly on my Mac: one of the best interfaces I had.
Why do you say the drivers are bad ?
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Post by Deleted on Dec 11, 2021 8:53:45 GMT -6
Dan, my symphony mkii worked perfectly on my Mac: one of the best interfaces I had. Why do you say the drivers are bad ? Apogee USB. So Duets, Quartets, Symphony Desktop, etc. Not the Mac only thunderbolt line. If Apogee just made converters and pres again, they would be even more successful. RME, UAD, MOTU have stolen a lot of their market even though the sound isn’t as good because the software is better and you can’t get the Apogee quality sound (ive never heard a 1200-1500 dollar stereo DA and AD sound this good or a 600 dollar thing as good as the discontinued Element 24) without putting up with not as good software. Prism has the same problem as Apogee: great sound, middling software. Lynx, is really good though about sound and software.
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Post by kcatthedog on Dec 11, 2021 10:22:52 GMT -6
Ah got it, ya I was tbolt!
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Post by brenta on Dec 11, 2021 12:25:06 GMT -6
You still don't understand, I think. Nobody wants a desktop. Not even in the server market. So it doesn't matter. Battery life is what matters. And, BTW, I used to build servers and other specialty PC's for a living. Stopped doin' that over a decade ago, cause I could see it coming. Virtualisation, SAAS, cloud... It also doesn't matter that Windows doesn't have a 20 sample safety buffer, like Macos. Yes, it'll give you better latency, but nobody cares. I mean, how many different audio systems are there for Windows? Nobody wants to play around with those anymore. The duopolistic tandem Microsoft/Intel is done. Over with. As both have bags of money, they'll last a while, still. Look at the acceptation of Windows 11... At my day job I have an intel MacBook Pro as my only computer. Laptops are becoming the norm at a lot of places. Add a dock plugged into a big monitor and wireless keyboard and mouse and it’s actually a really nice setup. Considering I vpn into a bunch of Linux servers it never fires up the fans accept on big video conf calls. If the new MBPs are dead silent most of the time and can handle what I throw at it for audio then I’d lean towards a laptop for my next recording rig. Exactly. That’s the thing people seem to miss: a laptop connected to a dock is functionally the same as a desktop, except for one key part—the ability to also be a laptop! A mini is somewhat Mobil but you still need a monitor, mouse and keyboard. All this nitpicking about performance. Yes you can build a desktop PC that will beat these new MacBook pros, but they will still be desktops! These new MBPs are beasts no matter how you slice it. They will kick ass at any task you throw at them. And all the worry about the fans, well, desktops have fans too. You gotta work hard to make these MBPs get hot and turn their fans on.
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Post by Mister Chase on Dec 11, 2021 12:50:03 GMT -6
At my day job I have an intel MacBook Pro as my only computer. Laptops are becoming the norm at a lot of places. Add a dock plugged into a big monitor and wireless keyboard and mouse and it’s actually a really nice setup. Considering I vpn into a bunch of Linux servers it never fires up the fans accept on big video conf calls. If the new MBPs are dead silent most of the time and can handle what I throw at it for audio then I’d lean towards a laptop for my next recording rig. Exactly. That’s the thing people seem to miss: a laptop connected to a dock is functionally the same as a desktop, except for one key part—the ability to also be a laptop! A mini is somewhat Mobil but you still need a monitor, mouse and keyboard. All this nitpicking about performance. Yes you can build a desktop PC that will beat these new MacBook pros, but they will still be desktops! These new MBPs are beasts no matter how you slice it. They will kick ass at any task you throw at them. And all the worry about the fans, well, desktops have fans too. You gotta work hard to make these MBPs get hot and turn their fans on. True but my PC already exists in another room(like most studios that had or still run on cheese graters) so noise is not an issue. I can also repair it, build, upgrade etc. If the fans do kick on because of big sessions, then I'd rather have the computer in the other room. If its on the MBP, then it's right under my nose. And while the fans don't kick on much in 2021 on these things, give it a few years when software and plugins become more demanding because they *always* do, then fans will be on a higher percentage of the time, I bet. If it's a computer that needs to last 10 years or so(it better for the money) then you have to plan for the advancement/demands of technology.
So far my M1 Mini fan comes on only sometimes, and it's hard to even hear. So there is that.
But, there will surely be a Mac Pro for that at some point.
Plusses, the MBP can be an anywhere rig for mobile and the studio. So if no pro Mini arrives, I'll consider a docked MBP... because they are beastly.
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Post by brenta on Dec 12, 2021 8:40:47 GMT -6
Exactly. That’s the thing people seem to miss: a laptop connected to a dock is functionally the same as a desktop, except for one key part—the ability to also be a laptop! A mini is somewhat Mobil but you still need a monitor, mouse and keyboard. All this nitpicking about performance. Yes you can build a desktop PC that will beat these new MacBook pros, but they will still be desktops! These new MBPs are beasts no matter how you slice it. They will kick ass at any task you throw at them. And all the worry about the fans, well, desktops have fans too. You gotta work hard to make these MBPs get hot and turn their fans on. True but my PC already exists in another room(like most studios that had or still run on cheese graters) so noise is not an issue. I can also repair it, build, upgrade etc. If the fans do kick on because of big sessions, then I'd rather have the computer in the other room. If its on the MBP, then it's right under my nose. And while the fans don't kick on much in 2021 on these things, give it a few years when software and plugins become more demanding because they *always* do, then fans will be on a higher percentage of the time, I bet. If it's a computer that needs to last 10 years or so(it better for the money) then you have to plan for the advancement/demands of technology.
So far my M1 Mini fan comes on only sometimes, and it's hard to even hear. So there is that.
But, there will surely be a Mac Pro for that at some point.
Plusses, the MBP can be an anywhere rig for mobile and the studio. So if no pro Mini arrives, I'll consider a docked MBP... because they are beastly.
If you’re able to put your PC in another room, that’s awesome. Machine rooms were the norm 20 years ago, but they are super rare these days, at least in my area. My MacBook Pro is about to hit 10 years old without any need to reconfigure ram, cpu, or hard drive. I’ve got one of these new MBPs on the way and I expect it to last 10-15 years as well. Part of it is because of me buying over-built units.
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