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Yeah but what music production workflow needs the power of an “extreme” chip? The M1 Max and Pro (not to mention Ultra) are already practically overkill for th

by eunoia 4y ago

Yeah but what music production workflow needs the power of an “extreme” chip? The M1 Max and Pro (not to mention Ultra) are already practically overkill for the vast majority of musical workflows. Many producers work on plain M1 Airs as when everything has enough functional power, the lack of a fan becomes the most desirable feature.

rewgs 4y ago
Film composers. Absolutely absurd track counts, plus usually working in quad or 5.1. A majority of the big ones have long since moved to using multiple Windows machines, but most of them did so begrudgingly. For a long time, the usual choice was a Mac Pro, but the Xeons were never a great choice from a processing standpoint -- they just enabled the massive amounts of RAM needed for said absurd track counts, though ECC was an unnecessary added expense. Musicians tend to prefer macOS for a variety of reasons, and the Mac Studio is a breath of fresh air, finally giving us something we actually need. That said, the Mac Studio still doesn't quite enable everything to be loaded on one machine, so the PC farms are still in use; worse, the primary software used to utilize those PC farms, Vienna Ensemble Pro, isn't yet Apple Silicon native, so...for the time being, the Mac Studio still isn't quite ready for prime time. The Apple Silicon Mac Pro would likely enable finally moving to using a single machine running macOS with the CPU performance and amount of RAM needed, so you best believe that film composers will move to it in droves once it comes out, whatever the price, as VEP being native or not will no longer be a factor. Source: was a fairly successful film composer myself until I developed an ear condition called Hyperacusis, now working as a programmer writing custom tools for my peers, and as a tech consultant designing their rigs.
- eunoia 4y ago
  Yeah that actually makes a ton of sense. I almost added a flippant addendum to my post along the lines of “unless you’re running 1000 orchestral VSTs at once”. And sure enough, that is a real workflow! Thanks for the knowledge.
  - rewgs 4y ago
    Totally, always happy to talk about this stuff. Making film/game/TV scoring a not-horrible experience is a fascinating problem to solve.

by eunoia 4y ago

rewgs 4y ago

Film composers. Absolutely absurd track counts, plus usually working in quad or 5.1. A majority of the big ones have long since moved to using multiple Windows machines, but most of them did so begrudgingly. For a long time, the usual choice was a Mac Pro, but the Xeons were never a great choice from a processing standpoint -- they just enabled the massive amounts of RAM needed for said absurd track counts, though ECC was an unnecessary added expense. Musicians tend to prefer macOS for a variety of reasons, and the Mac Studio is a breath of fresh air, finally giving us something we actually need. That said, the Mac Studio still doesn't quite enable everything to be loaded on one machine, so the PC farms are still in use; worse, the primary software used to utilize those PC farms, Vienna Ensemble Pro, isn't yet Apple Silicon native, so...for the time being, the Mac Studio still isn't quite ready for prime time. The Apple Silicon Mac Pro would likely enable finally moving to using a single machine running macOS with the CPU performance and amount of RAM needed, so you best believe that film composers will move to it in droves once it comes out, whatever the price, as VEP being native or not will no longer be a factor. Source: was a fairly successful film composer myself until I developed an ear condition called Hyperacusis, now working as a programmer writing custom tools for my peers, and as a tech consultant designing their rigs.

eunoia 4y ago
Yeah that actually makes a ton of sense. I almost added a flippant addendum to my post along the lines of “unless you’re running 1000 orchestral VSTs at once”. And sure enough, that is a real workflow! Thanks for the knowledge.
- rewgs 4y ago
  Totally, always happy to talk about this stuff. Making film/game/TV scoring a not-horrible experience is a fascinating problem to solve.