A little backstory, I had been running a 5,1 in my recording studio since 2011. Managed to max it out during lock down and was happy with the set up under High Sierra. But since Ventura on M1 supports Apple Music and Apple TV+ delivering full 7.1.4 ATMOS I was desperate to make the switch. I had fair success with open core and Monterey but Ventura was not stable and also I wanted to try out the AirPods Pro with head tracking which only works on M chips.
By pure luck I managed to get a new work laptop (14" 2021 M1 Pro). This was a fantastic start, I just need to found out how to connect all my stuff inc. 2 screens and my Sound card which is an RME Raydat PCIe sound card. I also had just bought a Kensington Orbit Fusion trackball which I could not get reliably working on my 5,1 which was very disappointing.
In some studios that I work in in London we have used Sonnet housings for our Trash can Macs as they needed to be rack mounted for studio use. We also use them to house our Mac mini's with no issues for over 10 years now so I thought I would check out there docks.
Another thing that was important to me was having some decent external storage as I had 3x SSD and 3 large spinners in there.
Also wanted to be able to make a partition on an external drive that I can boot from when I am in the studio for 2 reasons.
1. If the laptop broke/stolen etc I could easily buy a Mac mini and carry on as if nothing happened.
2. I am a little paranoid about swap files possibly shortening the life of the MacBook internal drives.
So with all that said I have been running in my new setup, booting from an external NVMe (which started of as a Super Duper Clone!)
has been perfect and seamless. And FYI if I accidentally turn the NVMe docks power of and the MacBook just reverted to the boot selection screen with no drama.
So I went with the sonnet SE1 for my PCIe card, the Echo 11 dock and their dual NVMe dock.
Coming from the 'startech' dock that work gave me which could only seem to do 1 thing at a time I am over the moon with the setup and because the dock has a 'power' usb socket it totally fixed my Kensington wireless mouse.
So if you are looking for a thunderbolt dock do check out https://www.sonnettech.com/product/thunderbolt/thunderbolt-products.html
I made some videos so you guys can see my journey
PCIe Se1 Dock
Echo 11 dock
Dual NVMe dock
I hope this helps anyone interested in docks!
By pure luck I managed to get a new work laptop (14" 2021 M1 Pro). This was a fantastic start, I just need to found out how to connect all my stuff inc. 2 screens and my Sound card which is an RME Raydat PCIe sound card. I also had just bought a Kensington Orbit Fusion trackball which I could not get reliably working on my 5,1 which was very disappointing.
In some studios that I work in in London we have used Sonnet housings for our Trash can Macs as they needed to be rack mounted for studio use. We also use them to house our Mac mini's with no issues for over 10 years now so I thought I would check out there docks.
Another thing that was important to me was having some decent external storage as I had 3x SSD and 3 large spinners in there.
Also wanted to be able to make a partition on an external drive that I can boot from when I am in the studio for 2 reasons.
1. If the laptop broke/stolen etc I could easily buy a Mac mini and carry on as if nothing happened.
2. I am a little paranoid about swap files possibly shortening the life of the MacBook internal drives.
So with all that said I have been running in my new setup, booting from an external NVMe (which started of as a Super Duper Clone!)
has been perfect and seamless. And FYI if I accidentally turn the NVMe docks power of and the MacBook just reverted to the boot selection screen with no drama.
So I went with the sonnet SE1 for my PCIe card, the Echo 11 dock and their dual NVMe dock.
Coming from the 'startech' dock that work gave me which could only seem to do 1 thing at a time I am over the moon with the setup and because the dock has a 'power' usb socket it totally fixed my Kensington wireless mouse.
So if you are looking for a thunderbolt dock do check out https://www.sonnettech.com/product/thunderbolt/thunderbolt-products.html
I made some videos so you guys can see my journey
PCIe Se1 Dock
Echo 11 dock
Dual NVMe dock
I hope this helps anyone interested in docks!
