New Macbook Pro

[nori.lam]

...right now i have a late 2011 2.5 ghz and to avoid throttling due to heat i use gfxcardstatus to switch off the dgpu...that helpled a lot!...ableton's cpu meter is now more on a constant level...regarding heat i would definetily prefer the 2016 macbook pro since the whole cpu and dgpu architecture is optimized in that terrain...(i didn't upgrade the gpu to the amd460 to save power/reduce heating though)...from the pure specs the late 2016 has only marginal improvements but all internals need much less power and therefore should stay cooler...i don't know when i'll get mine because i cancelled my apple order to order from a retailer (= 200 euros less) but i'll report!...

I know what you mean. I had a 2012 mbp and it got hot!

I now have a 2013 15" and find that I hit 100C quite often when I do intensive tasks. I have changed the thermal paste and cleaned the fans. low intensity stuff like browsing is totally ok (45-50C). its just the heavy stuff that makes it go crazy.

I wonder about the thermals of the new 2016. Yes, Skylake is better than Haswell but there is a high clock CPU in the 2016 (2.5ghz vs 2.6ghz) so I wonder if there will be any real world benefits there.

Anyway, glad you got to save some € and looking forward to hearing your thoughts

[Tarekith]

I thought this was a really good article on why the move to only USB-C ports is actually a great idea:

https://medium.com/@ageitgey/the-new-ma ... .895tg3sg8

[nori.lam]

Thanks for the article.

USBC will be great in a few years but this transition period will be annoying.

I found this review that I thought was pretty balanced.
http://www.technobuffalo.com/reviews/ma ... ar-review/

Personally, I decided to grab a spec'd out 2015 15" instead.

Magsafe and legacy ports were pretty much the deciding factor for me.
I cant count how many times magsafe saved my 2013 mbp.

[Tarekith]

They linked to a 3rd part mag safe option for any USB-C part in the article above too.

[nori.lam]

Yes but if you look at the user reviews on amazon it seems pretty bad. It also sticks out quite a bit. I would be worried about breaking it off during transport.

Im sure better ones will come out in time. Since I think usbc will take a few years to be fully standard on all devices, so I weighed my options and decided to skip this gen MBPtb.

Hope those who have it enjoy them

[marvingain]

Has anyone done the Live Performance Test (viewtopic.php?f=1&t=191549) on the new Macbook Pros yet, and tested how many tracks can run before getting crackles?
The geekbench benchmarks states that the 2016 models scores a little bit lower than the mid 2015 models, however I suspect there's more under the hood on the 2016 model than Geekbench reveals.

[AAdel]

Nothing special for a producer.

[EasyWorkflow]

To me, this is really an unexciting update. The computers are very expensive, and Sierra has brought nothing to the table (Siri? why should I care? HD Clean Up? Useless too...). Apple somehow has lost its momentum. For the first time in years, I am finding Microsoft's devices really appealing.

The high-end Surface Pro is a duo-core i7. If you make music that's a biggie.

The 15" MacBook Pro with 2.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, — unclear the exact processor but Skylake — 1TB SSD drive is priced at $3,199.00 and with the 2.9GHz option at $3,399.00. The Surface Pro as a duo-core machine is priced around this area.

It's more a question what these platforms can mean for actual music production. If the hands-on (finger-on?) approach of Microsoft can be explored also as a music production tool there could be a shift.

As for actual performance of these machines that remains to be seen.

I have no idea what you have against macOS Sierra. I see nothing that would be detrimental to a music producer in this release. On the contrary, they allegedly fixed some glaring mistakes and increased security with kexts. This is very necessary and is also why Microsoft are adapting signed drivers. I can't wait for that to hit the fan.

My 2009 MBP died a few months ago so I NEED a laptop. You mention that the high end model is s duo core which is a biggie if you make music. I thought quad core was better believing 4 processors are better than two. Did I get this mixed up?

[Soarer]

Very happy with my upgrade, btw!

[beats me]

Duet Display for iPad added the task bar at the bottom. It functions the exact same way as the task bar on the new MBPs, changes contextually with the application in focus. It is a bit awkward to use but maybe that’s because it’s on the iPad. It just seems a little small, but maybe also because I’m using a 9.7” iPad. Might be better on the 12”. It doesn't feel natural which is usually a big concern for Apple.

[Stromkraft]

You mention that the high end model is s duo core which is a biggie if you make music. I thought quad core was better believing 4 processors are better than two. Did I get this mixed up?

What I meant was that the fact the top MS model is only a duocore should be a big concern. My friend is getting one of the new MBPs. I'll look into suggesting a model for him. Already told him to not short on the SSD.

[joefrost01]

The new MacBook Pro does look nice but it's very expensive for what it is. I agonized long and hard about whether to upgrade or not but in the end I decide to keep my MacBook Air 11" i7 for mobile stuff and buy a PC for heavy lifting when at home. For less than the price of a new MacBook Pro I was able to buy a custom PC in an acoustically deadened case with 2x 512GB M2 drives, 64GB RAM, an 8 core (16 vcore) i7 clocked at 4GHz and an NVidia GTX1070 graphics card. This machine benches about 20% faster on the 64bit multi-core Geekbench 4 test than the top spec Mac Pro for just over a third of the UK price.
I had some reservations about Windows 10 but so far every single thing that I use on the Mac has worked fine on Windows 10 with my BabyFace interface rock solid at 128 samples of latency.
I appreciate that it's not for everyone and I would much have preferred to buy a similar machine from Apple even if at a slight premium but it's just not possible.
The fact that I already had a decent external monitor made this option much more financially attractive to me than the 5K iMac.
I'm not trolling and I'm not trying to spark an Mac vs PC debate, I'm simply sharing my thought process and experiences with regard to updating my systems in light of the latest product releases from Apple.
The rationale for choosing the most CPU heavy option was to enable me to use as many instances of things like SoundToys, Omnisphere, Diva, Reaktor etc. as I want to when making tunes in Ableton without having to waste time freezing and unfreezing and try to juggle system resources.
It also had the pleasant (although not musically relevant) side effect of allowing me to play the latest games with all the settings maxed out in my down time due to the awesome graphics card...

[makaruk]

@ marvingain

I did not do such test, but currently I'm testing Ableton 9.7.1 with MBPro late 2016 15 inch, 16GB RAM, 2.6 Ghz i7 Touch Bar with the RME Fireface 400 interface. I'm connecting it through 2 dongles made by Apple: Thunderbolt 3 -> Thunderbolt 2, Thunderbolt 2 -> Firewire 800, and then a standard cable firewire 800 to firewire 400 - the connection works fine while using the external power supply for RME.

The results are very good - I have 44 channels of software instruments, 18 of which are Komplete Kontrol VST/adg plugins which gives me 38% CPU use when idle with the buffer size of 128 samples and 88200 Hz sample rate - to achieve 3.28ms latency (screenshot attached) (about 48% when playing back 7 software instruments simultaneously plus a few audio channels). Interestingly enough the system Activity Monitor shows 185% CPU use for Ableton when I hit play (about 150% when idle).

Any setting above it gives me crackles during playback - especially when using more than one complex software instruments like Kontour or Prism.

The computer fans are working but the machine doesn't get very hot. I can't measure the precise temperature.

As a side note: the Touch Bar is totally useless for Ableton live right now by the way - unless Ableton makes it work in future I'd say the touch bar is NOT for professionals - something as simple as maximising live on stage gets to use both hands - which You need while playing - not to mention the fact that you can't just mute/unmute channels from your keyboard!!!!! (requires You to press Fn + F..)).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5b3znztk3bzmw ... 7.png?dl=0

[prestondj]

Very interesting i wonder how fast the 16gb 15 inch ones are hey Ha

[Stromkraft]

Very interesting i wonder how fast the 16gb 15 inch ones are hey Ha

Some surprising details in:

15" MacBook Pro with Touch Bar Drama! (Jonathan Morrison Youtube)