New MBP's and the death of desktops for us studio nerds?

[Khazul]

Ive allways found the guys at RME to have very pragmatic views, however I have to wonder if they will still hold onto that if say the symphony 64 system, jumps on, and say PT HD MADI follow suit with a thunderbolt to MADI adapter etc?

Time will tell. Of course if someone else comes out with a thunderbolt to MADI, no reason they cant still use the RME audio gear as MADI is an industry standard. And also note worthy - thunderbolt is currently not an industry standard - perhaps intel and apple need to push it through a friendly standards group - that should keep them busy for a few years - long enough for it to get its connectors changed and re-badged as USB4

Another point of interest - He says it translates to PCI express. PCI express (and the smaller express card interface) is pretty liberals in what the host takes takes for granted in terms of acting on signals. At least PCI express kind of has some physcial protection from shall we say 'hostile' devices - ie you have to take the case apart generally, get past phsyical locks in some cases. With thunderbolt - just plug something in and potentially its on the PCI-express bus (in terms of signalling) and pretty much free with some helpful software to do whatever it likes. I wonder just exactly how pci-express like it is at the host end...

Companies have allready got rather paranoid about people plugging in USB sticks and group policy banned them entirely in several organisations and USB actually has a whole big fugly software stack between it and the host bus. I have to wonder what you could do with an intensionally hostile thunderbolt device just by plugging it in - at the very least probably completely stiff the host ?

[LoopStationZebra]

Just watched a video where they streamed 4 uncompressed HD video streams from a Thunderbolt RAID on a MBP and then displayed the resulting video on a Cinema Display daisy chained from the same port. The RAID's throughput was 700MB/s!!! Insane.

THIS

[vanceg]

This is a very interesting issue to me. I have actually found in the past that I get BETTER performance when I turn OFF the multicore support in Live. That is, I'll have a specific session open and I'll be using say 53% of processing power with Multiprocessor support on. I turn off Multiprocessor support and suddenly it shows 43% use. Additionally, if I'm getting clicks and poops that sound like processor overload, if I turn off Multiprocessor support, I seem to drop back own into a range of CPU use that the machine can deal with.

This was more dramatic in Live 7 than it seems to be in 8. It was really noticeable when using Cubase.

I've noticed this on my (now ancient) 2.33ghz core2 duo MacBook pro, a two processor 3.0ghz core 2 duo Mac pro tower.

I set my live sessions up with 12 sends and receive channels and use them extensively. Loads of plugins, but almost no audio track playback (maybe 4 channels). So it's a bit of an odd setup in that sense.

But this is a major question for me: Go for the new "slower" i7 quad core, or the faster clocking dual core from last year.

One thing to keep in mind with the new MBPs is that while they are true quad core, they are also slower than last year's i7 per core. When you think about how Live and most other DAWs allocated each track to a single core, it's possible you might get LESS performance out of a newer MBP compared to the last ones. IE, if you had a softsynth on a track with a bunch of plug ins on a 2.66 i7 and it starts to stutter, well a 2.2 CPU is going to start stuttering even earlier since you have less processing power per track. Though of course you can likely run more tracks on the flip side. Just one thing to keep in mind if you have a newer MBP and are thinking of upgrading already.

Also, +1 to having used laptops for years for my music. Like Abletontrainer, I never understand why people need to run 60+ tracks to make music. GUess it's just a personal workflow thing.

[nowtime]

@OP

Dunno yet - see how the new MBP17 pans out as it aint arrived yet.

Early results from some folks with the 2.2Ghz MBP17 look very encouraging (Im getting the 2.3Ghz mnodel - larger cache too) - someone posted 20% Live perf test result for one. My 4Ghz i7 (1600Mhz memory instead of the 1333the MBP has) desktop manages 12% so obviously *alot* faster for ruuning live and cubase, however what is making me rethink this a bit is how much better Logic multi-core utilization on a mac seems to be than cubase 6 on a PC, so definately going to consider the viability of moving production over to the MBP - it might even turn out to be possible that logic may handle bigger and more CPU intensive projects on the MBP than even my PC can with cubase - Ive not been impressed with C6 so far - even Live seems to perform better.

The biggest killer it seems might be hard drives, and more to the point, only being able to directly SATA connect 1 HD (I only count USB/FW as viable for backup) unless you rip out the DVD drive. Its seems 6Gbps SATA 3 SSDs are a bit glitchy on the new MBP17 (but obviously fine at 3Gbps), but if apple sort this out, then 6gbps 256GB SSD in the fture could make it a very effective production workstation. Though maybe an express card or thunderbolt could add some fast access HDs to give it the size and speed of online storage Im used ot on this PC.

Spectrasonics, NI Komplete etc and other stuff with lots of sample content and libraries I use take 250GB all on their own - before I even add in the size of current projects etc - so I dont really want to have to get a dog just so I can take it for a walk while waiting for a sample set to load off an external HD - ugh!

I am always curious about those who are adamant about eSata. You are connecting via the EC24, I presume. And what kind of sessions are you running that require more speed than FW? Would love to hear more about how you use eSata and how it benefits you.

[Saxer]

im working with logic most of the time and sometimes with ableton.

live is made for laptops: one window, everything small sized. works great with electronic music.

lot of music jobs i have to do can´t be done with a laptop. i.e. filmmusic stuff needs more ram, more cpu and more disc space than actual laptops can handle. and even if it could be done, it would make no sense. workspace with multiple screens, controllers, monitors and room acoustic... and than install a laptop to start working? why?

i like to have a dedicated room with ergonomic space, multiple screens etc.
a laptop is good for sketching some ideas or live playing or mobile recording. but i could imagine replacing it by a ipad, if ableton or some compareable software would run on it.

[3phase]

im working with logic most of the time and sometimes with ableton.

live is made for laptops: one window, everything small sized. works great with electronic music.

lot of music jobs i have to do can´t be done with a laptop. i.e. filmmusic stuff needs more ram, more cpu and more disc space than actual laptops can handle. and even if it could be done, it would make no sense. workspace with multiple screens, controllers, monitors and room acoustic... and than install a laptop to start working? why?

i like to have a dedicated room with ergonomic space, multiple screens etc.
a laptop is good for sketching some ideas or live playing or mobile recording. but i could imagine replacing it by a ipad, if ableton or some compareable software would run on it.

? you can connect mutiple screens with the new thunder bla port..and a raid..

when you have an own movie mixing faciulity at home..ok.. but thats not a private computer than anymore ..more than one person is working there and the facility is running 24/7 ? of cuase ther will be place for desktops ..

but for the individual artist or producer? do you like to pump your libs on the harddrives of any studio you are working in? i dont... they get a digital audio connection, midi and timecode..thats it..

[The Carpet Cleaner]

I was using a laptop BEFORE.

ANd there was something really, really annoyting : plugin and unpluging things.

Everytime : the external screen, the batteries, the USB hub, the stuff that you dont want to go trough the hub such as audio soudncard, or either a firewire soundcard. An externat hard drive as well.

so you have at least 3, to 5 stuff to plug everytime. Then you have to have a dedicated place to put the laptop on a side. So between your midi controler, the computer keybord, the mouse, the midi keyboard, the external screen, the studio monitors, and other shit, you have to find a place for your laptop.

Honestly I felt it was annoying, haveing to plug all this thing again and again.

Now it's better : I got this imac, that has a huge screen, super fast, and connected to all the shit in my "studio". And that's it. no time to plug and move, around, and plug again, etc...


Also, what can you do with your laptop , in the living room , or in the kitchen, or in the park ??? you're going to program not with the mouse pad, or with the computer keybord. Or you travel always with a bag full of small midi devices? that you keep plugin and unpluging again. And also always work with headphones because the laptop speakers are too crapy ? And the laptop is still heavy, and burning your balls if you leave it more than 5 minutes, and the fan is super noisy when you use lots of CPU.

I do miss the possibility of moving araound with a device to do internet, or stuff like that, or music. For the moment I use my GF's laptop, and I was actually waiting for the iPad 2. Now it's gonna be out very soon, that will not be a problem anymore. And I think the price between an imac + ipad is not too far from a single laptop.

and it seems there is lots of good app to make music on instrument, or weird stuff to play around on the ipad. Much better to do "sketches" then bring everything back on the studio with minium plug and hassles.

Cheers

[Khazul]

Was thinking of getting one of these to sort the connecting problem out...
http://www.hengedocks.com/index.html

Already got screen/mouse/keyboard etc.

[chase]

I don't have any problem connecting my laptop. I prefer the trackpad to a mouse and I don't mind the keyboard, so all I need to do is plug it in (occasionally) and plug in headphones. When I'm ready to do something more serious, I plug in my firewire interface, no big deal. I suppose if I used my separate MIDI interface and an external monitor and maybe an outboard drive plugging would become tiresome, but I'd still have the option of leaving everything plugged in and treating it like an iMac. Except you can't really take an iMac over to the couch or into the bed... or on the plane to Hawaii.

Just get one of those velcro cable ties and keep all your cables together, they all plug in right next to each other on the newer MBPs.

[chase]

Was thinking of getting one of these to sort the connecting problem out...
http://www.hengedocks.com/index.html

Already got screen/mouse/keyboard etc.

Or get one of these, they look pretty sweet.

[chase]

Matthias at RME noted that RME will not implement Thunderbolt into any interfaces as it is a proprietary system that requires Intel's chips and "always translates to PCI Express".

I don't get this. Firewire is a "proprietary system", but you can still get firewire interfaces from RME. And [I'm guessing] any [recent] PCI audio card uses PCI Express, so I don't see the problem there, either.

At any rate it doesn't matter (yet), you can still use the FW800 port for your interface and leave the T-bolt for a RAID, external monitor, and possibly outboard DSP.

[Khazul]

Matthias at RME noted that RME will not implement Thunderbolt into any interfaces as it is a proprietary system that requires Intel's chips and "always translates to PCI Express".

I don't get this. Firewire is a "proprietary system", but you can still get firewire interfaces from RME. And [I'm guessing] any [recent] PCI audio card uses PCI Express, so I don't see the problem there, either.

At any rate it doesn't matter (yet), you can still use the FW800 port for your interface and leave the T-bolt for a RAID, external monitor, and possibly outboard DSP.

Firewire development was started by Apple, then later placed in the hands of a stanards working group to become IEEE1394. Now Firewir3e is just an Apple specific brand name for an implementatin of that standard.. So at this point in time, any working group member can get involved in the ongoing future feature set and soecification of IEEE1394 and its derivitives.

At this time, thunderbolt is exclusively an intel/Apple baby (in fact it might even be exclusively intel with Apple just being the first buyer) - only they currently have control of the specification and so implementation. As such, other than use in apple computers there is no gurantee whosoever it will be taken up by the PC market and in turn leading to price reductions etc.

Eventually thunderbolt will probaly get placed in the hands of a standards group to accelerate adoption etc and maybe stop AMD crying about it. As it stnards at the moment it isnt an open stndard and therfore the only way to implement it is to pay intel whatever they want for their controller chips. If it was a standard then there is a chance you might have a choice of other vendors, and still goto intel (for quality) who in thoery would have to be competitive on pricing.

Who knows, maybe it just isnt cost effective at this time to buy controller chips (and the implied technology usage license) in the kind of qualities RME might use and TBH they probbay dont want to be distracted by early adopter syndrome issues either.

If/When it get placed in the hands of a standards working group, and gets adopted across the PC market, then Im sure RME will re-evaluate the situation.

[chase]

OK, thanks Khazul, that explanation makes sense.

[TechnoPrisoner]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4205/the- ... -bridge/16

very interesting review although its about MBP'S i believe the same applies for PC Laptops using the Sandy Bridge.
In some tests the new mobile QuadCore Sandy Bridge CPU outperforms the desktop 8core Xeon! yikes!!!