Mac Studio

did anyone compare mac studio m1 max or ultra to a 2013 12 core trashcan?

I own a 64gb, 12 core trashcan and i am wondering if i will see a huge increase in performance if i buy a m1 max with 32gb ram.

The plugins, libraries, vst instruments and all going on in my sessions, channel count etc i can easily stress the trashcan....its still doing a good job but might be the right time to sell before its worth nothing. And if the m1s are that powerfull, with Universal Audio going also native, i could even sell my uad tbunderbolt octo satellite.

Relevant:

TL;DR: The Studio is probably going to be better. You might have problems with things not working on Apple Silicon.

Side note: I've basically come down on not being able to support Apple with how much they oppose right to repair and a handful of other things. But, the M1s really are impressive computers if you don't have those problems.
 
did anyone compare mac studio m1 max or ultra to a 2013 12 core trashcan?

I own a 64gb, 12 core trashcan and i am wondering if i will see a huge increase in performance if i buy a m1 max with 32gb ram.
It depends a lot on exactly what you're doing. Running under Rosetta, I'd expect you'd see a noticeable improvement for playback of large sessions when comparing to a 12 core trashcan. You'll see significant improvement of single core performance with Rosetta. Running native however, the M1 will run rings around the trashcan. A lot of the major DAWs are apple silicon native now, and with DAWs like Logic, you can mix native and rosetta. My trashcan has been retired from my studio.
 
Relevant:

TL;DR: The Studio is probably going to be better. You might have problems with things not working on Apple Silicon.

Side note: I've basically come down on not being able to support Apple with how much they oppose right to repair and a handful of other things. But, the M1s really are impressive computers if you don't have those problems.

Saw this one, still thanks.....close call but his trashcan is a quad. I am trying to figure out if the m1 10 core would have a significant multi core performance improvement compared to my 12 core xeon cpu. Or if it would be a drawback since it has 2 cores less.
 
Saw this one, still thanks.....close call but his trashcan is a quad. I am trying to figure out if the m1 10 core would have a significant multi core performance improvement compared to my 12 core xeon cpu. Or if it would be a drawback since it has 2 cores less.
Fair enough.

In full disclosure, I didn't notice those details. In general, AS vs. Xeon seems to be a bit of a toss-up depending on the workload. Actually, AS vs normal gamer-y PC hardware is a toss up depending on the exact workload. Some people are claiming that the M1s are a game changer, others are complaining that they're a boat anchor. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

At this point...unless you can find a better comparison, it seems like the return policy is going to be your friend, as long as you can manage your licenses well enough.
 
Saw this one, still thanks.....close call but his trashcan is a quad. I am trying to figure out if the m1 10 core would have a significant multi core performance improvement compared to my 12 core xeon cpu. Or if it would be a drawback since it has 2 cores less.
The ARM cores run circles around the x86_64 cores, generally. Much, much shorter pipelines in the architecture.

I've been absolutely gobsmacked by this M1-based MBPro I got for work. Apple did a good thing jumping to ARM. Took guts to buck the x86_64 incumbent, but absolutely amazing results here.
 
The ARM cores run circles around the x86_64 cores, generally. Much, much shorter pipelines in the architecture.

I've been absolutely gobsmacked by this M1-based MBPro I got for work. Apple did a good thing jumping to ARM. Took guts to buck the x86_64 incumbent, but absolutely amazing results here.
🤓i think you said smth good about m1 🤣too technical for me...is my trashcan x86-64 ?
 
The ARM cores run circles around the x86_64 cores, generally. Much, much shorter pipelines in the architecture.

I've been absolutely gobsmacked by this M1-based MBPro I got for work. Apple did a good thing jumping to ARM. Took guts to buck the x86_64 incumbent, but absolutely amazing results here.
Yeah....that's what I'm talking about.

There are synthetic benchmarks and real world workloads that the M1s lose on. And, there are others they win on.

It's not a clear "this is better", though it very well may be a "this is better for me".

🤓i think you said smth good about m1 🤣too technical for me...is my trashcan x86-64 ?
Yeah, it is.
 
The ARM cores run circles around the x86_64 cores, generally. Much, much shorter pipelines in the architecture.

I've been absolutely gobsmacked by this M1-based MBPro I got for work. Apple did a good thing jumping to ARM. Took guts to buck the x86_64 incumbent, but absolutely amazing results here.

Same here. I ran a bunch of music production benchmarks when I first got my M1, comparing it to my 2013 MacPro. The M1 was better in every way, even when running under Rosetta. I also compared it to newer Intel cpu's and again the M1 was better in every respect. The only possible situation where I can imagine the MacPro being better would be for running Windows with Bootcamp or Parallels. The bottom line: my MacPro is now in storage in the attic :).

However, unFiltered is asking if he'll see a "huge" difference. Without knowing what he means by "huge" or what specifically he's using the Mac for, that's impossible for anyone except him to answer.

P.S. The silent and cool operation of the M1 is a huge benefit in a studio.
 
Last edited:
You're right...all apps will need to be AS native eventually. At some point Apple will remove Rosetta from MacOS.
Rosetta is just an interim solution. They’re dragging two support balls and chains with it and as long as it’s available, and developers don’t step up with the M1 coded versions of their apps, the true speed of the machine won’t be seen.

Years ago I was sitting in the audience when Apple first announced and previewed the move from CISC to RISC, and the demo was a night and day difference in speed. We’ve seen chip speeds increase since then so the M1 has to be blindingly fast. And it’s just the starting point.
 
Same here. I ran a bunch of music production benchmarks when I first got my M1, comparing it to my 2013 MacPro. The M1 was better in every way, even when running under Rosetta. I also compared it to newer Intel cpu's and again the M1 was better in every respect. The only possible situation where I can imagine the MacPro being better would be for running Windows with Bootcamp or Parallels. The bottom line: my MacPro is now in storage in the attic :).

However, unFiltered is asking if he'll see a "huge" difference. Without knowing what he means by "huge" or what specifically he's using the Mac for, that's impossible for anyone except him to answer.

P.S. The silent and cool operation of the M1 is a huge benefit in a studio.
i run cubase pro 12, with bunch of vst instruments, uad, fabfilter etc plugins and have eucon/avid controllers/multiple tablets hooked up. If this gives an idea...
 
It's not a clear "this is better", though it very well may be a "this is better for me".
Yea, true. Though I'll say this: anything that's ARM64 native is screaming fast and doesn't push the cores or the fans on this MBPro for me. If you end up having to use Rosetta for instruction set translation you won't enjoy the ARM64 chips nearly as much I suspect.
 
Yea, true. Though I'll say this: anything that's ARM64 native is screaming fast and doesn't push the cores or the fans on this MBPro for me. If you end up having to use Rosetta for instruction set translation you won't enjoy the ARM64 chips nearly as much I suspect.
From what I've seen, Rosetta 2 is actually really good compared to other ways of doing that translation.

It's more down to specific code that runs better after being compiled for ARM vs x86.

One example (from a mac guy):

I think his take was at least relatively fair.

The bottom-line is that if you don't screw it up, modern computers are generally more than capable of doing anything you need to do with music and other things probably matter a lot more than M1 vs. Intel/AMD from a technical standpoint. Video tasks is a toss-up. A lot of database and GPU-bound processing can go either way. Thermals are still better on PCs if you're pushing them. Power consumption is much better on Macs.

It's kind of like how ARM was supposed to completely take over the server world years ago. And in some cases, it did. But x86_64 didn't really go anywhere. A lot of important code still doesn't compile properly for ARM, and things working is more important than technical improvements you can't use.

I like ARM. It's a great idea. At some point, I'll probably wind up with a headless ARM machine in my machine/server room for specific things. But...I'm not convinced it's the game changer it was supposed to be yet.
 
Last edited:
And it’s just the starting point.
IMHO, that's the important big picture issue here. You can pick nits about whether a $699 MacMini outperforms (for music production) a multi-thousand dollar water-cooled i9 rig that sounds like a blast furnace in your studio, but what's striking is the performance trajectory of Apple Silicon vs. Intel product lines. When it comes to performance for things that matter in music production, Apple seems to be making more progress year over year than Intel/AMD.
 
IMHO, that's the important big picture issue here. You can pick nits about whether a $699 MacMini outperforms a multi-thousand dollar water-cooled i9 rig that sounds like a blast furnace in a music production studio, but what's striking is the performance trajectory of Apple Silicon vs. Intel product lines. When it comes to performance for things that matter in music production, Apple seems to be making more progress year over year than Intel/AMD.
Yep.

Benchmarks are kinda useful, in a generic way, but they're designed to measure general purpose use of a chip, not specific for a particular application.

Apple, on the other hand, has a really good idea how their chips are being used, whether they're Intel or Motorola, or Apple's own because they've profiled the heck out of the system's calls so they know what operations are most important, and what needs to be optimized in their environment.

Intel is in the business of making general-purpose CPUs and, while Apple was buying a lot of them, I doubt Intel was about to optimize the operations just for Apple. I'm sure that there were a lot of discussions between the two companies, just as there were between Apple and Motorola and IBM with the PowerPC, which prompted the switch to Intel when they surprised everyone by keeping the CISC technology able to perform. Eventually it became apparent to Apple that there wasn't going to be any Intel solution so they bought their own silicon manufacturing and designing their own chips that have been optimized specifically for their own needs.

And, once again, I'm sure the nay-sayers are forecasting doom for Apple. Yeah… right…. Again.
 
And, once again, I'm sure the nay-sayers are forecasting doom for Apple. Yeah… right…. Again.
I'm not.

I just lament that they abandoned me as a customer.

If they make an M1 desktop that can be repaired, has PCIe slots, and uses off the shelf RAM and SSDs, I'll consider going back.
 
If they make an M1 desktop that can be repaired, has PCIe slots, and uses off the shelf RAM and SSDs, I'll consider going back.
I think we'll see an M1 replacement for the Pro at some point. But not this year is my prediction.

There's demand enough for a very, very high end system that can accommodate PCIe cards and run macOS.
 
Same here. I ran a bunch of music production benchmarks when I first got my M1, comparing it to my 2013 MacPro. The M1 was better in every way, even when running under Rosetta. I also compared it to newer Intel cpu's and again the M1 was better in every respect. The only possible situation where I can imagine the MacPro being better would be for running Windows with Bootcamp or Parallels. The bottom line: my MacPro is now in storage in the attic :).

However, unFiltered is asking if he'll see a "huge" difference. Without knowing what he means by "huge" or what specifically he's using the Mac for, that's impossible for anyone except him to answer.

P.S. The silent and cool operation of the M1 is a huge benefit in a studio.
man this helps so much with the decision, first hand information and seems like our setup was similar if not the same....thank you!
 
I think we'll see an M1 replacement for the Pro at some point. But not this year is my prediction.

There's demand enough for a very, very high end system that can accommodate PCIe cards and run macOS.

That's the thing....I don't want a high-end system. I mean...I'd take one if it were free. But, it's not a reasonable use of money.

I already have access to high end systems for things that actually need it, and I own something high-end enough for the one purpose I have that it (kind of) matters for. Macs can't replace any of them; they won't run the right software. I want a normal desktop that I can upgrade, expand, and replace parts in. That isn't a niche that Apple serves.
 
I think we'll see an M1 replacement for the Pro at some point. But not this year is my prediction.

There's demand enough for a very, very high end system that can accommodate PCIe cards and run macOS.
Apple said in late 2020 they'd turn over the entire product line within 2 years. Only the MacPro remains. I would guess we'll see it in the fall.
 
Back
Top Bottom