2013 Mac Pro for Music?

[DPUser]

Regarding expandability: DPUser says that the new Mac pro is an incremental step backwards. Actually, it's far more expandable than the old one. Yes, probably you can't change the graphics card easily. But think about adding other peripherals.

iDon't understand... What peripherals, and at what cost? And how many cables and adaptors will be needed?

New: NO internal drives.
My current MP houses 4 SSDs and 3 HDs. No wires protrude from the case.

New: NO PICe cards. Thunderbolt is close to equivalent, but more costly with fewer options. And there are those pesky and expensive cables again.

New: GPUs... well, you said it.

OK, the new Mac Pro has USB3 built in. There's a PCIe card for that. As there is for eSATA.

I stand by my statement... from the perspective of utility, the new case is a step backward. I will definitely miss out on the Thunderbolt mouse, though. Darn.

 

[Liquidstate]

When has pro gear ever stood still?

Well, interestingly, it appears that pro audio is starting to march forward by going backwards.

For example, UA's TB native Apollo, crammed with vintage plug-ins. Like the Studer A800 modeler. Why would they do this? It's only because a 40 year old Studer 2 track still sounds better than just about anything out there now. Especially if it is combined with a vintage Neve board. Just ask Dave Grohl. He paid more than a lot of people's houses are worth to buy Sound City's Neve board.

After FW800, faster data speeds are not improving audio. However, I agree that audio gear companies are going to jump onto TB to sell more stuff. And I think this time it will become more proprietary. But at the end of the day, it's still how it sounds.

Regarding bits are bits in cabling, that wasn’t my point. My point was, higher bit rates and especially higher frequencies can produce so much detail that it becomes increasingly difficult to get a smooth mix. Just try getting that upper frequency detail out of a mix. Yes, that can be EQ’d out of the incoming signal, but now we’re valving down the artifacts of raw speed.

Note that I'm not trying to troll. I realize that without DAW's and PT and FW and the MP, I wouldn't be able to do what I am doing. And I regularly get down on my knees and supplicate and offer thanks that I was able to get my hands on this gear.

So maybe what I'm trying to get to is: this time, if we're not doing video, audio people can continue to use their aluminum towers just like any other useful piece of audio gear. We don't have to upgrade. We can sit this one out, and focus on what we have that pumps our mixes.

Damn, I'm starting to have flashbacks of Roy on the roof (BladeRunner).

 

[Tanax]

iDon't understand... What peripherals, and at what cost? And how many cables and adaptors will be needed?

New: NO internal drives.
My current MP houses 4 SSDs and 3 HDs. No wires protrude from the case.

New: NO PICe cards. Thunderbolt is close to equivalent, but more costly with fewer options. And there are those pesky and expensive cables again.

New: GPUs... well, you said it.

OK, the new Mac Pro has USB3 built in. There's a PCIe card for that. As there is for eSATA.

I stand by my statement... from the perspective of utility, the new case is a step backward. I will definitely miss out on the Thunderbolt mouse, though. Darn.

With Thunderbolt 2 you can add a heck of a lot more harddrives than you can with the old Mac Pro, even if you add external harddrives to the old Mac Pro. No wires? It's 1 wire. Plus you can put the loud harddrive-case anywhere you want so you can have a more quiet work-area.

You mentioned no available PCIe slots but if you use PCIe cards for USB3 and eSATA in your old Mac Pro, you would've used up almost all available PCIe slots in it - thus you can't complain when not having any available internal PCIe slots in the new Mac Pro. On top of that, you can add more PCIe slots with external cases via Thunderbolt 2. So really, you're better off with the new Mac Pro. The only thing is if you want a gaming GPU which really pushes the limit - that's going to take a slight hit when used via Thunderbolt 2.

 

[Bergante]

iDon't understand... What peripherals, and at what cost? And how many cables and adaptors will be needed?

Let's see how expensive the new Mac Pro will be (I am guessing it will be cheaper than the "classic" ones, and let's see how Thunderbolt prices go down as the offer of peripherals grows.

Make no mistake, however. Thunderbolt is high-end stuff. Very much above the needs of most users.

New: NO internal drives.
My current MP houses 4 SSDs and 3 HDs. No wires protrude from the case.

Yes, no internal drives.

Which means, no obsolete drives limited by outdated disk interfaces. Instead of that, you get a PCIe attached SSD which is said to offer one gigabyte per second of read/write bandwidth, which is the performance realm of high end storage systems.

We have reached the point when using SATA or SAS is stupid, just because it's blatantly stupid to connect a single SSD (which is a bunch of memory chips, period) to a disk interface, making the SSD "simulate" a hard disk.

Before SSDs, the mechanical character of disks was a serious bottleneck. Now the interface itself has become the bottleneck.

So, SATA? You are capping the throughput of the SSD disk. SAS? Same thing. And both interfaces have a higher latency than PCIe attached memory which can be directly mapped to the processor address space.

The one and only interface that makes any kind of sense for a modern storage system based on SSD is PCIe. It's the natural way to connect them.

The SATA interface in SSDs is just a temporary solution so that you can put them in SATA equipped equipment. But it's just that.

You want throughput? Compare the throughput of a "classic" Mac Pro with four internal SSDs attached to SATA ports, limited to a maximum of 4x6 Gbps (b as in bits), to a new Mac Pro with two PCIe attached memory devices (aka PCIe SSD disks) each of then attached through a 20 Gbps lane.

Well, interestingly, it appears that pro audio is starting to march forward by going backwards.

For example, UA's TB native Apollo, crammed with vintage plug-ins. Like the Studer A800 modeler. Why would they do this? It's only because a 40 year old Studer 2 track still sounds better than just about anything out there now. Especially if it is combined with a vintage Neve board. Just ask Dave Grohl. He paid more than a lot of people's houses are worth to buy Sound City's Neve board.

That's not a matter of better sound going backwards. That's a simpler matter. Some vintage gear has a distortion that we love. This is music, not laboratory measurements. That old gear adds a beautiful make-up, that's it.

Metric Halo has a built-in preamp "personality" emulation because their preamps are so clean, they are more lab instrumentation preamps than music preamps. That "personality" adds distortion similar to the one added by vintage gear.

Nothing wrong of course, music is art, and deciding what and how you add is part of the creative process.

Regarding bits are bits in cabling, that wasn’t my point. My point was, higher bit rates and especially higher frequencies can produce so much detail that it becomes increasingly difficult to get a smooth mix. Just try getting that upper frequency detail out of a mix. Yes, that can be EQ’d out of the incoming signal, but now we’re valving down the artifacts of raw speed.

Unless some breakthrough is made regarding hearing, we can't notice anything with a frequency higher than 20 KHz. Depending on your age and hearing condition, nothing above 15 Khz.

Note that I'm not trying to troll. I realize that without DAW's and PT and FW and the MP, I wouldn't be able to do what I am doing. And I regularly get down on my knees and supplicate and offer thanks that I was able to get my hands on this gear.

Isn't Digidesign moving towards "native" processing lately? It makes all kinds of sense. In the past, digital signal processors had a huge advantage over general purpose ones for audio processing. Now the advantage isn't that clear, and provided OpenCL code can be invoked with real time guarantees, GPUs are going to be the Next Big Thing™. Guess why Apple seem to be including a couple of huge OpenCL workhorses inside the new "can"?

 

[ekwipt]

Sort of they've opened up the native but real studios who want real time need the HDX cards, w

 

[DPUser]

Which means, no obsolete drives limited by outdated disk interfaces. Instead of that, you get a PCIe attached SSD which is said to offer one gigabyte per second of read/write bandwidth, which is the performance realm of high end storage systems.

Right.

"Outdated and obsolete" or "Functional and cost-effective"?

I love computers, but they are, after all, tools.

Apple wants to push the envelope with an "exciting" new form factor and connectivity. Fine. Feel free to buy a new Mac Pro and make it work for you. I'll pass, and let you and others who are so inclined bleed on the edge for a while until the edge isn't quite so cutting. Then I'll decide if what Apple offers works for me.

Let me thank you in advance for your sacrifice.

 

[aliensporebomb]

Ah

Hello,

A question from a total noob in terms of music production: which part(s) of the process requires top of the line CPUs?

Thanks

Loa

For me it's the softsynths I use (plug-ins and multiple instances of same) and effects plug-ins and doing dozens and dozens of tracks. It's all cumulative.

The mixdown isn't the most cpu intensive part of the process, it's the tracking.

 

[Liquidstate]

Isn't Digidesign moving towards "native" processing lately?

An interesting question.

Digidesign, after it was bought by Avid, has stated that Pro Tools 10 will be the last native version that will not be tied to Digi hardware. No doubt the new dedicated hardware will be TB devices.

What does this mean? Well, for one thing, all you Metric Halo users are either going to be saying goodbye your MH (or all other non-Digi interfaces, for that matter) and buying the new Digi hardware, or you will be dead-ended at PT 10 (like the rest of us). For anything beyond the M-Box series, get ready for typical HD prices. Also note that there is no official word that PT 10 will be supported on Mavericks.

Does this mean you won’t be able to upgrade to the new MP unless you are ready to buy a new Digi interface? Will this require further system changes? And what about the costs of shifting to outboard drive racks and so forth?

All unknowns.

I think a lot of the new MP angst in audio justifiably comes from the fear that this is going to start an expensive domino effect. And that, in addition to no real benefit in terms of sound quality, it could initiate bleeding edge system issues for who knows how long.

But it is interesting to establish that (perhaps for the first time), very clean and very fast computer systems may no longer be an advantage for audio. I agree that most people prefer "happy distortion" to icy clean digital sound.

This thread has helped me to use more accurate terminology. The result is still the same, but being able to further isolate and locate the specific implementation helps. Thanks for the clarification! And where can I get some of those cables?

 

[wesk702]

Then Apple is probably programing the next version of Logic Pro, which is long over due, in OPENCL to take advantage of the dual GPUs which Phil Schiller said is standard configuration.

This, has to be. Can't see it any other way.

 

[OS6-OSX]

I think a lot of the new MP angst in audio justifiably comes from the fear that this is going to start an expensive domino effect. And that, in addition to no real benefit in terms of sound quality, it could initiate bleeding edge system issues for who knows how long.

Correct!
Now I plug my Mojave Audio mic into the Neve mic pre eq
The Neve into the HDX-SDI
The HDX-SDI into the MP via expresscard34 (PCIe adapter)
UAD2 into the MP via expresscard34 (PCIe adapter)
If spdif is needed it is plugged into the Finalizer and the Finalizer into the HDX-SDI
With the MP 6.1 a PCIe expansion chassis would be needed
Would there be latency based on the Mic>Neve>HDX-SDI>PCIe adapter>PCIe>Chasis>TB2-MP 6.1>DP7?
Does not matter, an MP 6.1 is not in the plans!

 

[Tesselator]

OK, but that's an unfounded fear. If it's like that then just don't upgrade to MP6,1 Get a used 5,1 or 4,1 instead.

 

[Liquidstate]

That's an unfounded fear...

It’s is not an unfounded fear if you use Pro Tools. Which is the industry standard. As I said in the last post, Digi has stated PT 10 is the last native version that won't be tied to a Digi device.

It’s the fear of being thrown against a very expensive dead-end wall with no advance notice and very little verifiable information.

But... after lurking MR's MBP upgrade thread last night (I'm going to need a MBP or MBA in the fall), I found out the new MP is probably early spring 2014 due to TB2 issues such as the controller. And then the shakeout will begin. Perhaps a year of bleeding. So that’s 2 years before I’d consider making any changes to my Nahalem powered system.

This would mean Apple announced the new MP at WWDC mainly to keep their MP users from bolting to PC's. The iBarrel is not imminently available.

And from that, I realized another factor. Which is, this was the first WWDC without Steve Jobs. So even though the new MP is not available, they needed that wow factor to silence those who were saying Apple is unable to innovate without him.

So by this analysis, hopefully there’s going to be time to figure out a practical upgrade path. Big leaps are fine for consumer gear, but not when you have essential pro gear that requires a steady upgrade path.

 

[deconstruct60]

We have reached the point when using SATA or SAS is stupid, just because it's blatantly stupid to connect a single SSD (which is a bunch of memory chips, period) to a disk interface, making the SSD "simulate" a hard disk.

It is not stupid if need to store the data. There are two groups of data. Stuff you are working with. Stuff just primarily storing. SSD are great for the first. They are not so great for the second.

The benefit of simulating SATA is there is built in software in the OS that can interface with it for free. Apple maintains it and keep it up to date. It appears on every Mac. Go away from that and have proprietary drivers to get to the data. If the driver vendors stop supporting it then drives may work in new machine or later OS updates.

If using 2.5" or 3.5" containers then drives fit in 100's of millions of computers. It depends upon what the objective is.

What folks are complaining about is that need two different boxes to address the two classes of storage needs with the new Mac Pro. SATA isn't going to go away. SSD-HDD hybrids are gong to become much more common.

Even crazy fast SSDs are still roughly an order of magnitude behind RAM. Instead of just CPU caches -> RAM -> SATA/SAS it will likely be four tiers in many systems going forward CPU caches -. RAM -> SSD -> SATA/SAS . The Mac Pro makes that harder to implement.

PCIe attached memory which can be directly mapped to the processor address space.

Disk data can be mapped into memory space. (https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man2/mmap.2.html ) The file system is going to handle either SATA or PCI-e "disks".

The one and only interface that makes any kind of sense for a modern storage system based on SSD is PCIe. It's the natural way to connect them.
that.

That ignores a large present problem for large number of users. Back-ups. large libraries , etc.

It also ignores that PCI-e lanes are a limited resource in most designs. The Mac Pro is obsubscribed. You couldn't add a second PCI-e SSD without taking bandwidth away from another device. that is going to lmit the usefulness of PCI-e based storage. Sure SATA is slower but upside with slower means can timeslice more shared usage during those "slow delays" to individual devices. ( e.g., interleaved RAID and command queues ).

 

[Tesselator]

It’s is not an unfounded fear if you use Pro Tools. Which is the industry standard.

Meh, I still say it's an unfounded fear. There are better DAWs out now - have been for a couple of years - and way cheaper too! So sell the ProTools and use the money to but 50 MacPros all with awesome DAW!

Of if you're just talking about a baby PT system it doesn't matter anyway... Sell it and you'll have enough to upgrade the MP to 6,1 and buy your 3 or 4 most favorite DAWs.

You have customers who demand PT? OK, like I said above, don't upgrade. Either that or be a good salesman and show them how other DAWs are now better. I guess not too many people are hung-up on PT anymore anyway. That's so 2007...

 

[LogicRumours]

This, has to be. Can't see it any other way.

Exactly what we've heard

 

[spoonie1972]

Meh, I still say it's an unfounded fear. There are better DAWs out now - have been for a couple of years - and way cheaper too! So sell the ProTools and use the money to but 50 MacPros all with awesome DAW!

Of if you're just talking about a baby PT system it doesn't matter anyway... Sell it and you'll have enough to upgrade the MP to 6,1 and buy your 3 or 4 most favorite DAWs.

You have customers who demand PT? OK, like I said above, don't upgrade. Either that or be a good salesman and show them how other DAWs are now better. I guess not too many people are hung-up on PT anymore anyway. That's so 2007...

Tess - there may be "better" DAW's out there, but it doesn't matter. Everyone and their dog in the pro, not "pro-sumer" industry uses Pro Tools HD/ HDX. Cheapness means NOTHING compared to downtime when you have a roomfull of orchestra sitting idle because you told your boss something else was "better". 10HD as it is now is acceptably powerful. Shame on AVID for charging for new HDX hardware simply because they changed a bios chip.

 

[deconstruct60]

Then Apple is probably programing the next version of Logic Pro, which is long over due, in OPENCL to take advantage of the dual GPUs which Phil Schiller said is standard configuration.

Whether this Mac Pro appeared or not that would have been a reasonable move. Every other Mac from top-to-bottom is going to have OpenCL with OS X 10.9. Intel is finally showing up with OpenCL drivers for the Ivy Bridge and new Haswell chips. They aren't the super fast TFLOP horsepower of the upcoming Mac Pros but it is a common infrastructure that will be available on all 2013 Macs. Why would they ignore hundreds of MFLOPs of performance???

Sure you could probably do much more complicated work with tons of virtual instruments on the upcoming 2013 Mac Pro, but the new Logic has to make all get better at being able to use sessions. There is not going to be a necessity to buy a Mac Pro to be able to do useful work with Logic. It would be suicide for Logic to only be effective on one relatively very low volume Mac.


In a couple of years some of the Intel iGPUs will be creeping up on the 1 TFLOPs mark and it gets even more dubious to be ignoring that kind of 'horsepower'.

 

[Liquidstate]

There are better DAWs out now...

Uh, not if you actually record. PT uses a studio workflow routing system that has been refined for decades. It's designed to process audio so that it gets as close as possible to industry standard sound. And that sound is still the preferred sound for most people, including the people who buy music. The “happy distortion” factor that was discussed earlier.

That’s why everyone and their dog in pro audio use it. Admittedly, it’s probably overkill for a lot of folks.

For those who work a different way - the beats and synth and virtual instrument people who function mainly in the box - well, they can experiment with DAW’s all they want.

One of the things people usually find out anyway is, in audio, circuitry and software matter. Whether it is analog or digital. That's what you are paying for in higher quality gear and software. If it did not matter, no one would be spending that kind of money.

As far as being “a salesman,” well, the playback, stability and future compatibility are, in my opinion, the most important factors. If a cheaper DAW can get the sound you want, great. But I can hear the difference for what I do. Being a salesman? What would that matter? I work for the sound, not an auto dealer.

That said, I have learned quite a lot from this thread. So even though it’s not right for me, I get it that most people would be using the new MP for pre-processed audio (so much easier and faster than recording it).

As other posters have said, Logic Pro will probably be optimized for the new MP, which is primarily an in-the-box system. Just maybe, a new Logic Pro and new Mac Pro combo will be Apple’s way of taking on Digi. But as always, Digi and the other gear and software companies will shake it out. And when they do, then I’ll have a listen.

 

[entropi]

And from that, I realized another factor. Which is, this was the first WWDC without Steve Jobs. So even though the new MP is not available, they needed that wow factor to silence those who were saying Apple is unable to innovate without him.

Steve died in 2011 (RIP).

btw, I like the new mac pro and I have been making music on macs since 1993. A MP is totally overkill for me though. I guess the two graphic cards is for running Logic X at retina x 2...