nMP vs iMac for Music production?

[zephonic]

The OP obviously already made his purchase, so this may be redundant, but I'd like to offer my views for those who are on the verge of making similar purchase decisions:

CPU power has not been the limiting factor for music production for quite a while now. I talked to Spectrasonics a while back about whether or not my 2013 (1.3GHz) MacBookAir would be able to reliably run Omnisphere live. Their answer:

CPU speed is not as important as RAM. Using Omnisphere live you'd want to make sure you have sufficient memory to load up all your Omnisphere sounds. 4GB is acceptable, but if you're running other plugins in a memory-heavy host, you could have issues.

You have an SSD, so your sounds should load quickly, but make sure you're give Omnisphere as much memory as possible.

My personal observations of my '09 MacPro seem to corroborate this. I tend to work pretty efficiently, I hardly ever have more than 20 instances of VI's open, but my 12GB RAM fills up quickly, whereas the CPU hardly ever gets taxed to even 50% (and that is with Box in the background, browser/email open etc.) Loading large sounds from the HDD takes a while, but once loaded everything is fine.

The bottleneck, then, on my system is low-latency performance. At 128 samples, things are just about manageable, at 64 I really can't push the system much before I start having audible artifacts. The audio interface is a critical element in addressing LLP issues. A well-designed PCI driver will yield a much more noticeable improvement in over-all system performance than a faster CPU.
So if reliable LLP is important to you, be sure to do some research and allocate a healthy part of your budget towards the right interface.

 

[fastlanephil]

zephonic: CPU power has not been the limiting factor for music production for quite a while now

That’s not actually true in many cases. Sufficient memory is necessary for loading the samples but CPU(s) performance is also important if you are recording and playing back several midi tracks using demanding sample libraries, mostly orchestral. There are also some synth type libraries that are very CPU hungry such as DIVA.

That’s why many orchestral or sound track composers use a master/slave computer setup, and probably Vienna Ensemble Pro via ethernet.

Most if not all DAWs now utilize multi-core processing so 6, 8, 10, 12 cores or possibly more can also be advantageous depending on your computer(s) setup.

 

[zephonic]

Good points, Phil.

VEP was actually designed specifically because:

- in a 32-bit world a single application would not let you use more than 3GB of RAM. Composers would stick 16 or 32GB of RAM in their machines and it would sit there doing nothing. VEP allowed access to the full amount of RAM.

- DAW's at the time did not take advantage of multi-core (let alone multi-thread) processing. VEP was able to utilize the other cores. This was as recently as five years ago, and although it is better now, it is still not where it needs to be. On forums like Gearslutz, there are a number of reports of Logic maxing out the first two cores with the others sitting at nearly idle. That is why the consensus in pro audio is that dual-CPU machines are a waste of money.

- Networking. Like you said, running slave PC's with orchestral templates has become an established practice among film composers.

The first two raisons d'etre, full memory access and multi-core performance aren't as much of an issue anymore, so these days VEP is all about networked slaves.
Sure, playing back those massive 100GB libraries could bring a CPU to its knees, but in a typical VEP scenario the bus speed and network bandwidth will cave before the CPU does.

I have not used Diva myself, but I have heard others saying the same thing you say. I did read an interview with Eric Persing about Omnisphere 2 and he says:

That's why we're always pushing what the computer can do, as in a little bit of time, it'll be no big deal. For us, sound quality is everything, so if getting it efficient changes the sound, we'd rather have it take a little more CPU, as pretty soon it's not going to be a big deal.

Which has me worried that my humble '09 MacPro may not be up to task.

So yeah, it is possible to bring a CPU to its knees with modern audio software. I guess my point was you are more likely to run into other bottlenecks before the CPU craps out on you.

The audio interface's driver is one area were much performance gain can be had. A MOTU PCIe interface will let your computer handle much higher workloads than an USB or FW interface.

In other words, don't buy a $4000 MacPro and pair it with an Apogee Duet. It will be like driving a 650HP supercar on the 405 at 5pm on a Friday.

 

[fastlanephil]

I tried VE Pro 5 with an aging iMac(slave)and a newer Mac Mini(master) but working with two machines and two mice and keyboards didn’t match my work flow of throwing things against a wall and seeing what sticks.

But I always seem to find a use for VE Pro 5. I use it as a host for 64-bit only plug-ins in a 32-bit DAW that I like and I just recently found it to be the host solution again for a very slow sample loading bug of the Garritan CFX Concert Grand in Logic Pro X on my Mac Pro that MakeMusic couldn’t replicate in house.