About to purchase Mac Studio - 1st time Silicon Mac

[machenryr]

OK. Don't kill me for not studying better before posting. I'm a Mac Pro guy. Professional music studio where I also do video FCPX. I have MP 2019 7,1 and two 2010 5,2. But I'm about the throw in the towel and get the new Mac Studio. IDK anything yet about these "new" M4 Silicon Macs. Are they upgradeable? Can I add more ram? Can I expand the internal storage? I'm keeping my 7,1 for networking and storage since I have bogs of SSD in it. Also a lot of external SSD and spinning drives for backup and storage, I'm about to ull the trigger but I need ot know that, like in previous Macs, if I buy basic ram I can upgrade with 3rd party memory. For now I've picked M4 chip with 16 core CPU/40 Core GPU/16 Core Neural Engine. Whatever that is. Or will I be sorry for not going for the M3Ultra chip 28 core CPU/60 core GPU/32 core NE? I have the Apple Pro Display XDR. I hope I'll be able to use this!

 

[Chancha]

CPU, GPU, RAM are absolutely not upgradable, so that is that.

Then with internal storage, they are not officially upgradable, but since the Studio uses one or two daughter card boards to house the actual SSD NAND chips on, and they are socketed, so in a technical sense they are replaceable, Apple even offers self-repair shop and guides for this, but we are talking about direct swap with no increase in storage capacity. In some ways they can be upgraded to larger capacity but there are limits in what can be done, depending on what config you initially bought.

There has been one 3rd party maker who invested into producing 3rd party after market daughter cards for the Studio, was on kickstarter and actually shipped. It took years from conception to actual products so for the new Studio it will probably also take years.

On your Mac Pro, if you have any PCIe cards that you still want direct access on the Studio, you will need to put them into PCIe enclosures that connect to the Mac via Thunderbolt. There are added latency and other potential issues like adding points of failure, and probably also drivers issues since you came from Intel to now Apple Silicon. Storage cards can work this way, network card as well, but with audio and video I/O cards like said there can be latency / jitter type issues introduced. dGPU cards will not work period.

I hope you spend more time on detailing what will work and what will not work before pulling the trigger.

 

[machenryr]

Thank you. I suppose the tariff won’t make the price go higher than it already is? I’m just having some issues with the 7,1. Figure it’d be a good time fit a change. And I’m building a brand new studio. Out with her old, in with the new. Thanks. I will cogitate some more. You’ve given me good information.

 

[SkweeBop]

The good news is that even low-end macs are fantastic for studio work. I'm typing here from a 2020 just-above-baseline mac mini, and it silently does anything I need it to for recording folk, chamber music, and new age stuff.

 

[benwiggy]

Even the most basic M3 or M4 has enough power and bandwidth for music work -- you can find videos of the base M1 being made to do absurd amounts of processing in Logic and FCP. The internal storage is much faster than you need for reading and writing audio streams. If you're doing video, you'll probably want lots of super fast external storage anyway.

In short: your priorities are RAM, storage, CPU.

 

[cupcakes2000]

the chips in them will blow anything you have already out of the water. But you need to buy with the ram and storage etc that you need form the outset. You’ll need to spend money on things like pci enclosures and disk arrays. But also, if you want to stick with a Mac it’s your only option, the new Mac Pro is in a similar boat - I think upgrading your ram yourself is forever out of the question now.

I would treat the whole set up as modular. Spend money on decent peripherals - the disk arrays and pci enclosures etc, they’ll be the thing you keep longer. Buy a fairly basic studio, (they’re still head and shoulders above your current systems) - even a M1 Max is still extremely relevant - but max the ram and drives. Then when you come to upgrade, hopefully you can just swap the parts out as a when, but as a whole. So in 6 years time or whatever, swap out the studio for an upgrade.

Looking at it like this, it’s messier, and potentially more expensive, but it’s almost along the same lines as a traditional tower. Obvs the pc world still has the ability to work like you’re used to. That’s a different topic though.

 

[MarkC426]

I’m just having some issues with the 7,1.

Out of curiosity, what are the problems…?

I am a ‘happy’ studio user, coming from a cMP, but am constantly tempted to get a 7.1, just because the prices keep plummeting and they are so sexy.

 

[cupcakes2000]

Oh yeah they just don’t make them like that anymore. Damn shame. Beast of a computer. I wish they’d done better with the revamp.

Out of curiosity, what are the problems…?

I am a ‘happy’ studio user, coming from a cMP, but am constantly tempted to get a 7.1, just because the prices keep plummeting and they are so sexy.

 

[machenryr]

Out of curiosity, what are the problems…?

My 7,1 was a corner case, as in not unusual for me. When I first got it, right out the gate I had problems with two music applications. The apps would crash all the time. Eventually apple engineers got involved and couldn't figure it out. Since it was a brand new flagship product they took it seriously. I'm a member of a high end audio beta team, so that developer got involved. Apple sent my same machine to him and he eventually was able to duplicate the problem, but not to the extreme that I had the problem. He said the problem was MOTU and APPLE. It would eventually get fixed in the next Major OS upgrade. Eventually THAT problem went away but I've had others. An elaborate usb/midi controller set up worked beautifully for a couple of months then died. This handled 6 headphone mixes for 6 musicians individually. It was fantastic when it worked. No idea why it stopped or how to fix it. The developer has no idea. I have a mystery 7,1. It might not be the Mac Pro. Otherwise it's been a dream, but damn. I'm tired of it. I've given up on this multiple controller idea, for now.

 

[MarkC426]

My 7,1 was a corner case, as in not unusual for me. When I first got it, right out the gate I had problems with two music applications. The apps would crash all the time. Eventually apple engineers got involved and couldn't figure it out. Since it was a brand new flagship product they took it seriously. I'm a member of a high end audio beta team, so that developer got involved. Apple sent my same machine to him and he eventually was able to duplicate the problem, but not to the extreme that I had the problem. He said the problem was MOTU and APPLE. It would eventually get fixed in the next Major OS upgrade. Eventually THAT problem went away but I've had others. An elaborate usb/midi controller set up worked beautifully for a couple of months then died. This handled 6 headphone mixes for 6 musicians individually. It was fantastic when it worked. No idea why it stopped or how to fix it. The developer has no idea. I have a mystery 7,1. It might not be the Mac Pro. Otherwise it's been a dream, but damn. I'm tired of it. I've given up on this multiple controller idea, for now.

Thanks for the detailed explanation……👍

 

[picpicmac]

OK. Don't kill me for not studying better before posting. I'm a Mac Pro guy. Professional music studio where I also do video FCPX. .... For now I've picked M4 chip with 16 core CPU/40 Core GPU/16 Core Neural Engine. Whatever that is. Or will I be sorry for not going for the M3Ultra chip 28 core CPU/60 core GPU/32 core NE? I have the Apple Pro Display XDR. I hope I'll be able to use this!

The following YouTuber seems to do the best comparos for Macs for use in music studio applications:

 

[SkweeBop]

yes, that guy is good.

 

[BotchQue]

Henry R, long time no see! I'm Botch from the "old FB", Foxboard. A few of us are still active on facebook's "The Foxboard Emergency Group", and I know Phil O'K upgraded his studio to an Apple Studio, he may have some suggestions too. Or pop in just to say "Hi!"

 

[benwiggy]

Oh yeah they just don’t make them like that anymore. Damn shame. Beast of a computer. I wish they’d done better with the revamp.

Even a base M3 gets a higher Geekbench score than a 24-core 7,1 Mac Pro. (3079/11559 vs. 1331/11161.)

 

[machenryr]

Henry R, long time no see! I'm Botch from the "old FB", Foxboard. A few of us are still active on facebook's "The Foxboard Emergency Group", and I know Phil O'K upgraded his studio to an Apple Studio, he may have some suggestions too. Or pop in just to say "Hi!"

Wow! Hey Botch!! How are you? Maybe I'll check into foxboard!