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

[ARDJ]

Yes I know there are already a few MBP threads w/ the announcement of the Quad-Core models out now:

http://www.apple.com/

I've been a guy who has a 2009 MBP (which I love) but also a PC in the studio. I've dreamed of just having one machine that I could walk into my studio with, dock it (ie bluetooth keyboard + mouse, hook up to larger displays, attach to my soundcard/synths, etc) and when I'm done for the day take it with me. As it currently stands I come up with nearly 75% of my ideas on my laptop first, then go into the studio to finish it on the bigger system. I think with the new MBP's this will be my final year w/ a desktop, my friend Grum has been this way for 2yrs and it sounds much more concise & simple.

Anyone else planning on doing this?

[The Leveller]

Jebus, I haven't used a desktop in years for anything.

[rbmonosylabik]

Same here, I pretty much start ideas on the laptop and headphones, then go to the big setup, hook up the laptop, and build on it there. I still could use some more stuff to make it more comfortable, like a monitor and keyboard/mouse, but it works great as is.

[ARDJ]

Jebus, I haven't used a desktop in years for anything.

i'm on a 2core 2.5ghz, 4gigs of RAM on my MBP and unfortunately most of my projects won't run on it. i'm usually about 10-12 midi tracks, 30-40 audio tracks + returns, etc. However the new MBP's are as good if not better than my desktop and now I just think it's time to condense.

Also i was always nervous about all the USB cables i have (external HD's, Virus TI, midi keyboard, thumb drives, etc) but now w/ lightpeak it sounds like a hub could take this with no hiccups. exciting times

[tigali]

I'm using exactly the same spec of MBP as you and I never need to use a desktop. My projects run to a similar amount of tracks as you mention but I rarely have issues. I wonder what you've got going on on those tracks that freezes up your MBP? Could it be heavy-on-the-CPU third party plugins?

[pepezabala]

a laptop feels like an instrument. a desktop feels like a workstation. I prefer to rock on a laptop. but I also consider myself musician, not engineer.

[ARDJ]

I'm using exactly the same spec of MBP as you and I never need to use a desktop. My projects run to a similar amount of tracks as you mention but I rarely have issues. I wonder what you've got going on on those tracks that freezes up your MBP? Could it be heavy-on-the-CPU third party plugins?

Yes, i use to a lot of 3rd party plugs that i've bought over the years. Some are worse than others on CPU and i don't see my projects getting smaller anytime soon unfortunately

[hoffman2k]

10.7 is starting to look good.



Crash or Continue? Continue please, lets see how far we get before shit starts exploding

If you think I'm going off topic, consider Logic Nodes, Xgrid and the Pixar rendering farms...
Thunderbolt and over a decade of experience may soon allow Osx Developers to make apps that use several cores on several computers. It probably won't be for gaming and real-time performing yet, but we'll definitely see some forms of supercomputing in the near future.

[mr.ergonomics]

Since the hdd performance isn't a 100% point against laptops anymore I have another issue with laptop as the main DAW.... I have a laptop, I have a workstation.. when I really stress my laptop it's way louder than my silent workstation. And I literally hate fan-noise. You don't have problems with this?

[ARDJ]

I have the exact opposite problem, i literally just bought condensed air on Saturday to try and quite down my desktop (by cleaning out the fans). So mr.ergonomics looks like you just found a business niche, a containment station for your laptop I don't mind it as much, I don't find it that it interferes all that much w/ my work flow.

[Hervé]

Jebus, I haven't used a desktop in years for anything.

+1

[Khazul]

@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!

[ARDJ]

Khazul great input dude! I'm with ya on the HD limitations, although in the studio right now i actually run all my samples off an external 1tb western digital drive and it's not until i start getting disk issues that i collect all & save. I'm hoping lightpeak might make my personal use of collect all & save something of the past. exciting times nonetheless

[Khazul]

Yeh - people talk about thunderbolt for audio interfaces - (few audio interfaces are even close limited by USB2 for either data bandwidth or latency and so in reality thunderbolt is unlikely to make any noticeable difference), but for me the biggy for the MBP is about enabling high capacity, high speed storage access.

Im keeping an eye on these guys as well to see what they come up with for the new MBP 17.
http://www.hengedocks.com/

Could be tempting to get one if they are any good, and keep the studio permently plumbed into that and maybe consider an RME babyface for the road (I have a UFX in studio, so same drivers, tools etc).

[Khazul]

If you think I'm going off topic, consider Logic Nodes, Xgrid and the Pixar rendering farms...
Thunderbolt and over a decade of experience may soon allow Osx Developers to make apps that use several cores on several computers. It probably won't be for gaming and real-time performing yet, but we'll definitely see some forms of supercomputing in the near future.

Hmm - finally a use for a heap of mac minis once they get a refresh