Going to be getting a new MacBook pro and need some advice

Discuss anything related to audio or music production.
Stromkraft
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Re: Going to be getting a new MacBook pro and need some advice

Post by Stromkraft » Mon Jul 16, 2018 8:55 am

@jamief and @Artcutech, what made you go with 32gb? You feel you need this now or are you preventing the lack of RAM in the future?

@8E, The peculiar Apple thing with soldered memory and storage and assuming this will remain true also in these new "Pro" MBP products, there you have a perfectly valid reason not to get Apple hardware. No need to pretend all Apple hardware is doomed every third year because of the OS updates. Consider this a suggestion for your anti-Apple pitch.

I know quite a few people running Windows on Apple hardware because "it just runs well and holds up year after year". I guess these people are crazy in your opinion. I'm more for running macOS on PC hardware so I guess I'm crazy too.

To each producer his or her own! I just wish Ableton would develop for Linux as BitWig does.
Make some music!

jamief
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Re: Going to be getting a new MacBook pro and need some advice

Post by jamief » Mon Jul 16, 2018 12:51 pm

32GB future proofing and ram can be an issue when your running 40+ plugins on occasion. My spec is a 6 years laptop. £5000 inc AppleCare + Logic X. Minus the sale of my current i7 2.8 GHZ quad / 16GB Ram / 2 TB SSD


Was v close to buying 4 TB SSD model but it was £7k and even for me £2k is too much for an extra 2 TB.

8E
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Re: Going to be getting a new MacBook pro and need some advice

Post by 8E » Mon Jul 16, 2018 7:40 pm

Stromkraft wrote: @8E, The peculiar Apple thing with soldered memory and storage and assuming this will remain true also in these new "Pro" MBP products, there you have a perfectly valid reason not to get Apple hardware. No need to pretend all Apple hardware is doomed every third year because of the OS updates. Consider this a suggestion for your anti-Apple pitch.
That was true until Steve Jobs died. That time I abandoned PC/Win completely.
But I am not alone in criticism, people are getting crazy because of that indeed.
The true problem is that music studio is a very complex environment, as you surely know, thus Windows 7 is so widely supported that you will not have so many problems with tons of software and plugins. Once you have a Mac, you will be frozen in time, you need just one plugin that will crash your software, or just one that will not be any more compatible, or just that very important upgrade that will boost your workflow.
Than, .... than hours of hours of reinstall. Another software stops working. Buy upgrade here and there. Time and money consuming.
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fishmonkey
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Re: Going to be getting a new MacBook pro and need some advice

Post by fishmonkey » Mon Jul 16, 2018 11:31 pm

8E wrote: The true problem is that music studio is a very complex environment, as you surely know, thus Windows 7 is so widely supported that you will not have so many problems with tons of software and plugins. Once you have a Mac, you will be frozen in time, you need just one plugin that will crash your software, or just one that will not be any more compatible, or just that very important upgrade that will boost your workflow.
Than, .... than hours of hours of reinstall. Another software stops working. Buy upgrade here and there. Time and money consuming.
it really depends on how you run your studio. a modern digital-based studio needs to be managed well, whether you are Windows or Mac based. either one can be a nightmare if you don't have a solid way of managing things. and if you don't have the expertise, find someone who can help.

with OS X, the sensible thing to do is to wait 3–6 months or so after a new version comes out before upgrading. any software from reliable, professional developers will have updates in that time, if necessary.

Artcutech
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Re: Going to be getting a new MacBook pro and need some advice

Post by Artcutech » Tue Jul 17, 2018 5:47 am

Stromkraft wrote:@jamief and @Artcutech, what made you go with 32gb? You feel you need this now or are you preventing the lack of RAM in the future?
So i really don't like bouncing anything, i understand clearing up the vst's to audio eventually but i want to treat mixing chains before the final gain staging so that i'm able to stage accordingly throughout the arrangement with everything how i want it, i also feel kind of traumatized by my 8gb of ram MBP and needed to make as big of a jump as possible.

So i finally got most my stuff transferred and wanted to see how many studio drummers in kontakt i could load, these things are hogs on my cpu, i got up to about 45 instances and hit 60 percent cpu in Ableton and the fan came on. Thats fairly good but i'm thinking not nearly $4000 grand good, its a fairly vague test but i will be able to know more in the coming sessions but i might just shell out a couple extra G's and get the iMac pro with 64 giga bites, who knows

edit: definitely going to return this guy today, nothing wrong just really need something that's going to give me more flexibility as far as work flow and performance, plus I'm not going to be leaving my studio very ofter maybe taking it to one other spot a couple times a year so I'm getting this one

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fishmonkey
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Re: Going to be getting a new MacBook pro and need some advice

Post by fishmonkey » Thu Jul 19, 2018 1:06 am

early reports coming out are that the MBP chassis can't cope with the heat pumped out by the i9 hexacore chip, and it thermal throttles badly under sustained load...

Artcutech
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Re: Going to be getting a new MacBook pro and need some advice

Post by Artcutech » Thu Jul 19, 2018 2:42 am

fishmonkey wrote:early reports coming out are that the MBP chassis can't cope with the heat pumped out by the i9 hexacore chip, and it thermal throttles badly under sustained load...
i knew right away when loading a pre bounce maxed out midi arrangement and the fan came on almost instantly that it wasn't for me.

How do you think an iMac pro 8- core Intel Xeon W processor with 64 gb of ram holds up under heavy sustained loads fish? do you think 10 core one would make that much of a difference? and have you heard anything about how these hold up?

jamief
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Re: Going to be getting a new MacBook pro and need some advice

Post by jamief » Thu Jul 19, 2018 5:14 am

I also seen this however I'm not concerned.
32GB / 2TB I9 and 6 core will supersede my i7 2.8 GHZ quad 16Gb 2TB SSD 15 mid 2012 .
I haven't upgrade till now specifically because my current macbook have has never maxed out on processor ( so no extra power needed) and the issue of not being able to physically add a 2nd 1TB ssd due to lack of DVD drive on machines after 2012 an the cost of 2TB SSD single modules being stupidly priced for what they are. I have however regularly ran out of RAM so 32GB will be a big big bonus + its DDR 4 which is even better news. And the ram is a bottle neck when you are running a lot of simultaneous plugs ins. Spinning wheel of death etc etc ..........

If this throttling is an issue on the new machines its not going to throttle my music production and that ( wether or not this report is accurate ) is all im looking at. Im not sure Live and the other software i use is 6 core compliant/can yet anyway ?
I have apple care 3 years + plus the laptop is separately covered for international theft, beer spillage and accidental damage.
All data is stored on ICOUD 2TB account and also on time capsule.
fishmonkey wrote:early reports coming out are that the MBP chassis can't cope with the heat pumped out by the i9 hexacore chip, and it thermal throttles badly under sustained load...

Stromkraft
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Re: Going to be getting a new MacBook pro and need some advice

Post by Stromkraft » Thu Jul 19, 2018 8:14 am

jamief wrote: Im not sure Live and the other software i use is 6 core compliant/can yet anyway ?
Live supports up to 64 cores.
Make some music!

fishmonkey
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Re: Going to be getting a new MacBook pro and need some advice

Post by fishmonkey » Thu Jul 19, 2018 8:27 am

jamief wrote:I also seen this however I'm not concerned.
i'm waiting to see if the it's worth paying the extra for the i9 (or even the 2.6 i7). at the moment it's not really clear.

Stromkraft
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Re: Going to be getting a new MacBook pro and need some advice

Post by Stromkraft » Thu Jul 19, 2018 7:04 pm

fishmonkey wrote:
jamief wrote:I also seen this however I'm not concerned.
i'm waiting to see if the it's worth paying the extra for the i9 (or even the 2.6 i7). at the moment it's not really clear.
I'd like to see some throttling tests on the six-core i7s.
I was actually thinking of getting the 2.2GHz 6-core 8th-gen i7 model. The two extra cores give each core 4 tracks to process instead of 6 in a 24 track song. Just that alone is huge.

I'm also reminded of all the talk about the iMac Pro throttling in January, which turned out differently in music production practice. "Meh!" is a practically valid response to reports like this one* until you've made your own testing. Which means going to a store and beg them for some real world data.

*It's still a useful report and I'm thankful for it.
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8E
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Re: Going to be getting a new MacBook pro and need some advice

Post by 8E » Thu Jul 19, 2018 11:50 pm

fishmonkey wrote: with OS X, the sensible thing to do is to wait 3–6 months or so after a new version comes out before upgrading. any software from reliable, professional developers will have updates in that time, if necessary.
I say no. Because of the incompatibility of all things. You cannot update ALL at once.
It is like having full fridge of food but a few goes together.
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8E
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Re: Going to be getting a new MacBook pro and need some advice

Post by 8E » Thu Jul 19, 2018 11:51 pm

fishmonkey wrote:early reports coming out are that the MBP chassis can't cope with the heat pumped out by the i9 hexacore chip, and it thermal throttles badly under sustained load...
Just that we should not call "PRO".
MacOS Mojave MacBook Pro (15", Mid 2015), 2,5 GHz i7, 16GB RAM
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jamief
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Re: Going to be getting a new MacBook pro and need some advice

Post by jamief » Fri Jul 20, 2018 9:25 am

Ive seen these types of discussion through the ages with mac updates. Been a mac user since 1995 when i bought a desktop running cubase audio ( 4 track max recorder) for £2200. Before that i had an Atari Falcon at £1800 which was shit and useless.
Not to be unkind but nearly all the issues people are raising are irrelevant unless it stops you making music.

The i9 is a £320 upgrade price and on a £5 k laptop it wouldn't makes sense not to have it.

What the real conversation people are having here is ' how much can afford or not afford to purchase the new macbook pro ?". The macbook pros are ridiculously expensive now. For me im 23 years on mac and there is not turning back. They have got me by the bollocks - i once bought a pc for music - for me bad mistake.

fishmonkey
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Re: Going to be getting a new MacBook pro and need some advice

Post by fishmonkey » Fri Jul 20, 2018 9:48 am

for music production, i think the i9 will probably do well, since it's largely CPU-based work. the various testing that people have done that is CPU-heavy has been favourable. it's when both the CPU + GPU are being cranked that the heat build-up gets too much for the cooling system...

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