At last, a use-case which has nudged me into wanting a wider (or more) display(s)

[B S Magnet]

I’ve no idea whether this was running on a 10.5.8 or 10.6.8 setup (I’m leaning toward 10.6.8 for no better reason than when this clip was posted and how Dropbox is still showing as working), but it looks like Pro Tools 8.

What I know is:

to be able to view the imported multi-track breakdown of a song from an album which was nothing shy of groundbreaking, pivotal, and influential from the day I first heard it (16 November 1989, a Thursday evening), is now what’s sent me over into “OMGGGGGGG I NEED MORE SCREEN WORKSPACE LAST WEEK.”

To this day, said album holds high in my top ten list of all-time favourites because it was the album which taught me to love dance music. Now it’s teaching me there’s no substitute for more screen space.

This is the complete(d) song a studio playback of that Pro Tools project, if you’re interested:

UPDATE: And here is how it actually sounds on the album itself (i.e., how I’ve always known it):

 

[Amethyst1]

To this day, said album holds high in my top ten list of all-time favourites because it was the album which taught me to love dance music.

Hubert Kah, eh? I'm more familiar with his Neue Deutsche Welle (New German Wave) music from the '80s ("Sternenhimmel" etc.) but that piece is also quite cool

 

[B S Magnet]

Hubert Kah, eh? I'm more familiar with his Neue Deutsche Welle (New German Wave) music from the '80s ("Sternenhimmel" etc.) but that piece is also quite cool

Yeah… “Sternenhimmel” and “Rosemarie” were Hubert KaH’s NDW teething days (sidebar: I have a healthy portion of NDW in my library! Neonbabies, anyone?) before Hubert KaH began working with the pioneering producer, Michael Cretu (you know, the guy behind not only Enigma, but also Moti Special, Sandra, Cretu and Thiers, the ’88-era Peter Schilling, and on and on). Basically, if you remember “Engel 07” from ’84, that was the earliest single from the Cretu years, and “(It’s Me) Cathy” from early 1990 was the last, before a hiatus and then founding member Hubert Kemmler’s return in ’95/’96 with a wholly different sound.

It’s the Cretu stuff across three Hubert KaH albums — Goldene Zeiten in ’84, Tensongs in ’86, and Sound of My Heart in ’89 — which are sort of when Hubert KaH were at their high point, and all three albums are albums you can listen to from start to finish and not be bored by them… if you like the Michael Cretu sound (and I very much do).

Back on topic: the above multi-track project was posted by lead vocalist/founder Hubert Kemmler himself, ostensibly from his own studio workstation, and the original multi-track transfer from tape to a Pro Tools project had me pressing my hands to the sides of my head to (figuratively) keep it from exploding with awe, amazement, and glee at such a rare chance to see on screen what was assembled originally by Cretu and remix engineer Armand Volker (who also produced Münchener Freiheit’s — or simply Freiheit — 1988 album and also Swiss duo Double) without that software interface.

If you’re going to explore Cretu-era Hubert KaH, I’d start with Sound of My Heart, if for no other reason other than it captures that Zeitgeist immediately prior to reunification.

Now… what kind of display has those ultrawide screen proportions?

 

[G4fanboy]

I’ve no idea whether this was running on a 10.5.8 or 10.6.8 setup (I’m leaning toward 10.6.8 for no better reason than when this clip was posted and how Dropbox is still showing as working), but it looks like Pro Tools 8.

It is Protools HD, bigger than 8.0 because it has 10 inserts instead of 5 (until 7.4). It is more probably 9 or 10. Protools 10 HD can run up from Snow to El Capitan hacking the installer. It could be any Mac OS between. I think if you look for when this video were recorded (June 2017) and the dropbox dropping PowerPC date (look for @Czo dropbox post ) we could speculate what version is.

Also you have to have in mind that a working Studio setup of a musician rarely updates . If the musician have it working (lets say in a Protools 10 HD license) he would use that license (if he can) until his death. Protools 10 license were 3000 bucks and normaly it only works on 2 or 3 Mac OS. Protools 10 installer only allow it on Snow, Lion and Mountain Lion, but hackers modded the installer and it works up to Capitan. Protools 5 only worked on Mac OS 9, PT6 on Jaguar and Panther, 7 on Tiger, 8 on Leopard and Snow (but you can Pacifist-Install on Tiger) and 9 (Intel only) on Snow and Lion IIRC.

The last Protools PowerPC version were 8.0.1 on LE systems.

I prefer dual head (double screen) than those rare resolutions that are only hackable with ResX. One screen for the Edit Window and other for the Mixer Window. But my folks with Protools Ultimate (latest HD) plugged to 3 4k monitors tell me you never have enough screen state. Plugins ocupy more screen state even.

If you love those strange resolutions look for Matrox Dual Head and Triple Head external boxes, but their refresh rate is 60 or 75 Hz, a little low for today.

 

[Amethyst1]

If you love those strange resolutions look for Matrox Dual Head and Triple Head external boxes, but their refresh rate is 60 or 75 Hz, a little low for today.

60 or 75 Hz is fine IMHO. I don't understand this obsession with, say, ≥120 Hz monitors if you're not a gamer. Resolution is what matters to me. But everyone is different.
And, for the record, I'm pretty confident noone loves strange resolutions as much as I do

@B S Magnet:

As for ultrawide monitors, you could look into, say, a 3840×1080 (basically two 1920×1080 screens fused together) or 3440×1440 monitor (i.e. 2560x1440 expanded horizontally by a little more than a third); these are pretty common ultrawide resolutions and pixel clock for these is under the (official) 330 MHz limit for dual-link DVI or 360 MHz for DisplayPort 1.1 so they should™ work with early Intel Macs too (you need a converter to go from an early MBP's dual-link DVI to DisplayPort if the monitor doesn't have DVI though; you can't go from dual-link DVI to HDMI directly). The 2011 MBP with its HD 3000 is an exception as there's an arbitrary 270 MHz pixel clock limit, so 3440×1440 at 60 Hz won't be possible unless the limit is patched.

What Mac(s) would you be connecting the monitor to?

 

[Doq]

And, for the record, I'm pretty confident noone loves strange resolutions as much as I do

Watch out. I'm coming for that strange resolution crown.

 

[B S Magnet]

60 or 75 Hz is fine IMHO. I don't understand this obsession with, say, ≥120 Hz monitors if you're not a gamer. Resolution is what matters to me. But everyone is different.

For doing on-screen music or video production work, a 60–75Hz display is perfectly fine for my needs.

As for ultrawide monitors, you could look into, say, a 3840×1080 (basically two 1920×1080 screens fused together) or 3440×1440 monitor (i.e. 2560x1440 expanded horizontally by a little more than a third); these are pretty common ultrawide resolutions and pixel clock for these is under the (official) 330 MHz limit for dual-link DVI or 360 MHz for DisplayPort 1.1 so they should™ work with early Intel Macs too (you need a converter to go from an early MBP's dual-link DVI to DisplayPort if the monitor doesn't have DVI though; you can't go from dual-link DVI to HDMI directly). The 2011 MBP with its HD 3000 is an exception as there's an arbitrary 270 MHz pixel clock limit, so 3440×1440 at 60 Hz won't be possible unless the limit is patched.

I need to go and read more about pixel clocks, as that’s a concept with which I’m still not very acquainted. The part I’m not sure of just yet is why a 270MHz pixel clock limit would be a problem for a display running at, say, 60Hz.

What Mac(s) would you be connecting the monitor to?

It’s a good question. My delay in replying has me thinking about my current Macs and also about which Mac I’m liable to next buy (and for what use-cases).

I think a ultra-widescreen display would be connected to either a 2011 Mac mini which I’ve yet to buy or to a Mac Pro4,1 or 5,1 which, likewise, is something I don’t yet have. In short, I think the Mac mini might be the better way to go, given desk space constraints, but if I follow that path, I’d be planning for two Mac minis, since I have another server-based use case for a headless Mac mini, unrelated to a revamped music production workstation. Decisions.

 

[Amethyst1]

The part I’m not sure of just yet is why a 270MHz pixel clock limit would be a problem for a display running at, say, 60Hz.

The pixel clock required for a given mode using a given timing formula is a function of both resolution and refresh rate. You can use e.g. this calculator to see what pixel clock predefined or totally arbitrary modes require. There are several different timing formulae (e.g. CVT, CVT-RB, CVT-RBv2) to calculate pixel clock and other parameters. Using the CVT-RB timing formula, which is used by the vast* majority of LCD monitors out there, for illustration, a 270 MHz pixel clock limit is just about enough for 2560×1600 pixels at 60 Hz refresh rate: this requires 268.5 MHz:

(The CVT formula is for CRT monitors. These require a much larger blanking interval and thus a significantly higher pixel clock for a given mode than LCD monitors.)

If you want to increase the resolution while staying below a certain pixel clock limit, you need to decrease the refresh rate. For instance, 3840×2160 pixels at 30 Hz refresh rate requires a 262.75 MHz pixel clock using the CVT-RB formula and is thus also within the limit.
If you want to increase the refresh rate while staying below the limit, you need to decrease the resolution. For instance, 1920×1080 pixels at 113 Hz refresh rate requires 267.75 MHz pixel clock using the CVT-RB formula, which is also fine.

Generally speaking, the maximum resolution attainable on a GPU is usually not some fixed value like 2560×1600, but limited by the pixel clock. A GPU which can do 2560×1600 at 60 Hz (and thus, a 268.5 MHz pixel clock) can usually also do 3840×2160 at 30 Hz (because 262.75 < 268.5). There are a few exceptions (because there are always exceptions...), such as the ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 in 15- and 17-inch PowerBooks not displaying resolutions wider than 2660 pixels correctly on OS X, or older [pre-2016] AMD and [pre-2017] Intel GPUs not displaying resolutions wider than 4096 pixels correctly/at all on OS X.

I think a ultra-widescreen display would be connected to either a 2011 Mac mini

Let's assume this will have the Intel HD Graphics 3000, since the AMD dGPU also available in that lineup is known for less than stellar reliability. This GPU supports DisplayPort 1.1, which allows for a maximum pixel clock of 360 MHz when using 8 bits-per-component colour, or 288 MHz when using 10 bits-per-component colour.
However, for some reason, OS X's driver contains an artificial pixel clock limit to the aforementioned 270 MHz. This is enough for what the GPU is officially said to be able to do (2560×1600 at 60 Hz) and also for an 3840×1080 ultrawide at 60 Hz... but when running, say, 3440×1440, the refresh rate needs to be reduced to 50 Hz.
This is because increasing the vertical resolution has a more serious impact on the pixel clock than increasing the horizontal resolution.

* LCD monitors which do not use CVT-RB timings include e.g. the original 22" Apple Cinema Display (because this timing formula didn't exist when it was released) or the original 21.5" LG UltraFine 4K, which uses timings similar, but not identical to CVT-RBv2.