4 ms·

As the owner of a recording studio (VO, music work), I'd say that it disappoints me that I'm expected to pay $3000 for a top of the line video editing machine.

As the owner of a recording studio (VO, music work), I'd say that it disappoints me that I'm expected to pay $3000 for a top of the line video editing machine. I wish they'd found a way to make a $2000 or $2500 musician/studio version that didn't have three 4k displays + two GPUs...

seanmcdirmid 13y ago
As the owner of a recording studio, you know that you'll be paying at least $3k, if not much more, for software to actually go on this thing. Most AV professionals I know spend much more on software than hardware.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  As the owner of a recording studio I'd guess he already owns the software.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    Site or per-seat? Also, I assume those licenses get upgraded every few years for lots of cash also.
- ScottWhigham 13y ago
  Not really - I use hardware EQs, comps, etc. The only software costs are Reaper and a reverb (which I hope to replace with a Bricasti next year). I ended up dumping Pro Tools over about a two year period and switching back to all hardware. So it's a disappointment to me to see this pricing. It's as though they've said, "Musicians - they can just buy a regular Mac. The Mac Pro is for graphics and video people who need all this extra hardware."
  - bashinator 13y ago
    If all the heavy lifting in your studio is being done in hardware, why do you need a high-end workstation?
    - ScottWhigham 13y ago
      You really don't nowadays - the key things to battle are latency though, and that's often a metric of "How fast is your processing? How fast are your disks? How long are your cords?" The faster Xeons and the faster bus speeds will make big strides in that regard (thus keep your mic cable runs short and you'll be okay). However, the Mac Pro has been a studio staple since it's inception. I suppose we studio folks are surprised that we've basically been regarded as "not significant" by Apple. Unlike previous Mac Pros, this is not a machine built with "music studios" or musicians in mind. We aren't even considered. You'd be nuts to pay $3000 for a "base model" for a recording studio. You still have another $1000-$2000 that you'd need to spend for disk space, monitor, mouse, and keyboard. It's crazy.
BHSPitMonkey 13y ago
No one expects you to do anything. You're able to keep working with what you currently have, no?
- ScottWhigham 13y ago
  No one expects you to do anything. Then that's a shift in Apple's marketing. The previous Mac Pro was very much a staple of the music industry. This one? I don't know that anyone outside of the the studios that also do video that needs so much video editing/graphics hardware that they are willing to pay an extra $500-$1000 for it. A lot of the digital processing is done on hardware systems already (like UAD-2).
  - cnlwsu 13y ago
    Not to mention nowadays if your in music industry (radio at least) you are pulling XP machines outta the trash.
  - bobbles 13y ago
    But won't the OpenCL implementation allow you to use all that GPU hardware to benefit the non-graphics tasks as well? I have a feeling this computer is going to be much faster than people expect.
astrodust 13y ago
They have. It's called when the 2014 Mac Pro model ships the 2013 one will be marked down to about that price.

seanmcdirmid 13y ago

As the owner of a recording studio, you know that you'll be paying at least $3k, if not much more, for software to actually go on this thing. Most AV professionals I know spend much more on software than hardware.

k-mcgrady 13y ago
As the owner of a recording studio I'd guess he already owns the software.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  Site or per-seat? Also, I assume those licenses get upgraded every few years for lots of cash also.
ScottWhigham 13y ago
Not really - I use hardware EQs, comps, etc. The only software costs are Reaper and a reverb (which I hope to replace with a Bricasti next year). I ended up dumping Pro Tools over about a two year period and switching back to all hardware. So it's a disappointment to me to see this pricing. It's as though they've said, "Musicians - they can just buy a regular Mac. The Mac Pro is for graphics and video people who need all this extra hardware."
- bashinator 13y ago
  If all the heavy lifting in your studio is being done in hardware, why do you need a high-end workstation?
  - ScottWhigham 13y ago
    You really don't nowadays - the key things to battle are latency though, and that's often a metric of "How fast is your processing? How fast are your disks? How long are your cords?" The faster Xeons and the faster bus speeds will make big strides in that regard (thus keep your mic cable runs short and you'll be okay). However, the Mac Pro has been a studio staple since it's inception. I suppose we studio folks are surprised that we've basically been regarded as "not significant" by Apple. Unlike previous Mac Pros, this is not a machine built with "music studios" or musicians in mind. We aren't even considered. You'd be nuts to pay $3000 for a "base model" for a recording studio. You still have another $1000-$2000 that you'd need to spend for disk space, monitor, mouse, and keyboard. It's crazy.

BHSPitMonkey 13y ago

No one expects you to do anything. You're able to keep working with what you currently have, no?

ScottWhigham 13y ago
No one expects you to do anything. Then that's a shift in Apple's marketing. The previous Mac Pro was very much a staple of the music industry. This one? I don't know that anyone outside of the the studios that also do video that needs so much video editing/graphics hardware that they are willing to pay an extra $500-$1000 for it. A lot of the digital processing is done on hardware systems already (like UAD-2).
- cnlwsu 13y ago
  Not to mention nowadays if your in music industry (radio at least) you are pulling XP machines outta the trash.
- bobbles 13y ago
  But won't the OpenCL implementation allow you to use all that GPU hardware to benefit the non-graphics tasks as well? I have a feeling this computer is going to be much faster than people expect.

astrodust 13y ago

They have. It's called when the 2014 Mac Pro model ships the 2013 one will be marked down to about that price.