and he has the Ultra. can't wait for my Max to finally ship lol
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Mac studio v1 fan noise - it's going to be one of the loudest Macs at idle.
- Thread starter AdamSeen
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Well this can hardly be a surprise… I’m yet to see a Mac from recent time that is louder than a similar spec’ed PC. But it’s like comparing electric cars with combustion.
The big question still remains: Does it have an audible fan or not?
If you’re compiling or encoding videos you’re in a different world than if you’re doing audio.
Without doubt this is among the top 5 computers in the world that will give you most power per sound pressure level. Extremely efficient! But can it be silent enough for audio production without having to hide it in some box?
Apple stated in the presentation that the Mac Studio is “very quiet”. They didn’t say “silent”.
If something is “very quiet”, it’s still audible.
If something is “very quiet”, it’s still audible.
Jason Snell covered this in his review and I trust his input:
“Speaking of chugging, I should mention that the Mac Studio has a fan—about half of its volume is taken up with a cooling system—and that fan seems to run constantly. It’s very quiet, throwing out low-level white noise that I couldn’t hear unless I sat in my office when it was completely quiet. But the sound is very much there, in a way my iMac Pro fan never was, and if you’re ultra-sensitive to fan noise in quiet environments, you will notice it. The good news is, not only is it quiet, the noise also seems fairly consistent.”
He also confirmed that the Studio Display has a fan.
“Speaking of chugging, I should mention that the Mac Studio has a fan—about half of its volume is taken up with a cooling system—and that fan seems to run constantly. It’s very quiet, throwing out low-level white noise that I couldn’t hear unless I sat in my office when it was completely quiet. But the sound is very much there, in a way my iMac Pro fan never was, and if you’re ultra-sensitive to fan noise in quiet environments, you will notice it. The good news is, not only is it quiet, the noise also seems fairly consistent.”
He also confirmed that the Studio Display has a fan.
His Mac Studio has an M1 Max in it. He says later on in his video that it's no louder than his MacBook Pro with M1 Max and doubts you'd notice the fan unless you do some crazy long workloads. In everything he's thrown at it, e.g. video rendering for his kind of length YouTube videos, it's been done in a few minutes. His microphone is mostly picking up the air movement which is amplifying the apparent noise in the video.
I'd guess, based on what people have said in these videos and what Apple has said, that the vast majority of the inside of the Mac Studio is dedicated to cooling it. It seems to have a quiet fan that moves a considerable mount of volume and they've coupled that with a significant amount of metal that can soak up a huge amount of heat which means that under practically every possible load you throw at it, with the fan running ultra quietly, it has more than enough thermal capacity to handle it all without having to ramp up the fan.
Imagine reading this comment 3 years ago. Apple has given us a fairly small machine that can run at max loads indefinitely, with headroom to spare, while staying quiet. Did people forget that macs sounded like a jet engine only a few years ago, and even some of the desktops were throttling power under max loads. Apple has come a long way.
Also, to put things into perspective, this is still only first-Gen Mac silicon.
I recall years ago there was an actual forum called g4noise.com , the old silver towers were outrageously loud and almost unusable
Things really have changed for the better with Apple tech in a big way
Things really have changed for the better with Apple tech in a big way
That’s why it’s funny when I see people making statements like “the Mac studio is too loud and apple doesn’t care about recording studios” as if studios didn’t all use G4’s and Mac Pro cheese graters for over a decade. The Mac Studio is more than quiet enough for a studio, especially considering most recording studios aren’t going to have their computer sitting right in front of them.
Didn't that change for everybody though, except perhaps for laptop gamers?
The PCs and Unix workstations I used in the past were incredibly loud by todays standards. I do recall getting a few of those same workstations I had at uni and at work for home use when they started to come off lease. Oh boy! Office background noise makes all the difference I suppose.
Nowadays my PCs are configured with noiseproofed cases, silent fans, silent power supplys, totally oversized CPU coolers. You can still hear them but only as a faint background hum.
Aaaaanyway seems like this Studio really is kinda audible like the list in the OP suggests. I wonder what that list would have to say about the 2012 i5 Mini which I have here as a server. I legit can not hear that even when I put my ear to the case.
So it’s a Mac studio… for the graphic studio. Not for the audio studio. Unless you put it somewhere else
To be fair it does seem like the mini M1 base model can already handle a lot. Several videos out there with people running 100’s of tracks and plugins on that. And it’s cheaper.
Yes, however when mixing large projects that power can certainly be put to very good use in terms of running plugins in higher oversampling modes. Improving the quality of the mix and mastering no question. Not to mention the time saved in our workflows by things loading and bouncing faster - think boucnes stems or alternative mixes! In my world as a mix engineer that is a seriously valuable asset.
Then for mastering an album, currently I can run 5 or 6 songs on my Mac with full mastering chains. If working on a 10 song album project I have to start committing previous songs, and going back reactive, deactivate etc. With a Studio Ultra it looks like I will be able to run a lot more than 5 or 6 songs without committing, another huge time saver and workflow improvement!
I will let you know when mine arrive sometime in may
Under the housing sits an air vent which serves as an air intake for ventilation, the flow of which is rejected at the back, above the connectors. Apple is again a master in managing the temperatures and silence of its computers. The ventilation is inaudible in office automation and we had to launch several resource-intensive software simultaneously for it to really start. Even then, the result is impressive, as we only picked up 33.7 dB with our sound level meter (50 cm from the computer), which is barely perceptible.
Source
Source
It looks like my initial assessment is accurate - it's one of the loudest macs at idle. However, I haven't had mine delivered yet, so cannot be sure.
Apple has designed a computer that exhausts say 150 watts of heat at idle, as opposed to say 60 watts of heat at idle. The upside to this is that the fans do not move much, the downside of this is we have fans that are going much faster than they need to be at idle.
It's more complicated than what I've put above about because a) I don't know how much thermal energy the fans are designed to blow out at idle b) it doesn't take into account the thermal energy store of heating up the heatsink. But the result is the same, a consistent fan speed at idle which has a large thermal buffer so it doesn't spin up and down often.
That does mean that those with the Max chip, despite having an aluminium heatsink, the fans are probably running much in excess of what is needed and may never spin up, as they have consistent idle fan speeds between the Ultra and Max.
Is this going to be a problem for me?
It depends on the noise floor in your office. If it's above 30/35dB it will likely be "silent". If it's around 25dB, you will likely notice it. I use the decibel X app on my iPhone to measure sound. I don't recommend you use the Apple watch, because it doesn't go below 30dB.
Also, if you do have a quiet office, you may not care about fan noise - many people do not.
I suspect it will be a problem for me - I live near the countryside in a very quiet area - My office is as quiet as 24dB.
Why is this not a problem for most reviewers?
Many professional reviewers may work in offices with other people, the noise floor there is likely much louder than those who work from home. They also may not be sensitive to it.
Is the Mac Studio a "loud Mac"?
It is one of the loudest at idle, but the reviews show that is barely spins up during workloads and has excellent thermal properties. At idle, it will be almost as loud as a Mac Pro - and may be perceived to be louder as it's closer than a Mac Pro would sit - At load, it has excellent cooling and will tend to be quieter than many other Macs, including laptops.
Apple has designed a computer that exhausts say 150 watts of heat at idle, as opposed to say 60 watts of heat at idle. The upside to this is that the fans do not move much, the downside of this is we have fans that are going much faster than they need to be at idle.
It's more complicated than what I've put above about because a) I don't know how much thermal energy the fans are designed to blow out at idle b) it doesn't take into account the thermal energy store of heating up the heatsink. But the result is the same, a consistent fan speed at idle which has a large thermal buffer so it doesn't spin up and down often.
That does mean that those with the Max chip, despite having an aluminium heatsink, the fans are probably running much in excess of what is needed and may never spin up, as they have consistent idle fan speeds between the Ultra and Max.
Is this going to be a problem for me?
It depends on the noise floor in your office. If it's above 30/35dB it will likely be "silent". If it's around 25dB, you will likely notice it. I use the decibel X app on my iPhone to measure sound. I don't recommend you use the Apple watch, because it doesn't go below 30dB.
Also, if you do have a quiet office, you may not care about fan noise - many people do not.
I suspect it will be a problem for me - I live near the countryside in a very quiet area - My office is as quiet as 24dB.
Why is this not a problem for most reviewers?
Many professional reviewers may work in offices with other people, the noise floor there is likely much louder than those who work from home. They also may not be sensitive to it.
Is the Mac Studio a "loud Mac"?
It is one of the loudest at idle, but the reviews show that is barely spins up during workloads and has excellent thermal properties. At idle, it will be almost as loud as a Mac Pro - and may be perceived to be louder as it's closer than a Mac Pro would sit - At load, it has excellent cooling and will tend to be quieter than many other Macs, including laptops.
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The thing is that in a proper studio you have a control room and a recording room. The computer noise is never a problem for the recording. When you are mixing in the control room you either use over-ear headphones or loud speakers to hear the sound properly. You will never hear the computer there either. The noise "problem" is only experienced by those who do their recording very close to the computer, i.e. non professionals. I used to work at a school with PM G5 and we had those about one meter from the monitor or on the floor. There was never a problem with any noise from the Mac Tower, despite its reputation for being loud.
I think the line between pro, prosumer and amateur is more fuzzy today than just 10-20 years ago. You can do so much “in the box” these days that a lot of independent talents out here, approaching pro-level are actually producing great music at home or without a separate control and recording room.
Surely the real pro’s have the proper setup and don’t have to worry about 25-30 dB noise from the computer. Heck: the PSU for my old analog mixing desk also had a fan so a bit of fan noise in the control room has never been an issue.
But if this Mac studio is targeting the talented, but not-so-pro people doing a lot in the box and is just recording vocals in the same room then the noise might matter. And like it or not the extra dB is important for those of us who might be considering the Mac studio for audio production.
Yes, but then again even those people don't/shouldn't have their microphones pointed at the back of their Macs or sit right next to the vent when recording.