Which new Mac Pro is optimal for a DP DAW?

[Michael Canavan]

I’ve been running DP 11 beautifully on my m1 Mac mini under Big Sur.
kontakt and spectrasonics are working perfectly.
It’s the best, smoothest, most stable system I have ever had with performer since 1986.
Only drawback: 16 gigs of RAM.

I'm balking on getting the M1 Max and buying a 5 month old M1 Macbook Air off Craigslist. Mostly because The M1 Max I want comes in at around 5 grand and at that price I would feel weird taking it places. The 16GB RAM Air and my old trusty 09 MAc Pro with 96GB RAM will cover orchestral stuff just fine with VEP, and at 1/4 the price of the new M1 Max. The combined Geekbench score of the Pro and Air matches the M1 Max, with 16+96GB RAM.The only caveat is going through some hoops to set up two monitors with the Air, but it's possible.

[Rick Cornish]

Interesting that RIck's 2013 is running well with DP11.02 when another user in Japan has noted issues like you have reported. Only diff looks like macOS11.

…Presumably Rick is running DP11 with video. @Rick, if you have time please check out the link HC referenced and let us know if you’re experiencing the movie-window-lag that users of older Macs are experiencing with DP11.

To respond…
I only *just* updated to Big Sur and DP11.02 and hadn't run any video projects on that platform until this morning. I opened a *large* (for me) video project I did in DP 9.52 which included a 720p video file. Once I sorted out issues with plugins I'd changed since I did this score, it ran perfectly without a glitch or hiccup. Screen shot below for reference on the file size.

I will say, my Mac Pro is a working system, so I don't have Microsoft Office or other non-music or video software on it, nor do I have any apps or plugins from sketchy sources installed on my system drive. I like keeping things clean and simple on my working systems.

[HCMarkus]

Rick, did you try the editing move that dix did as depicted in his video at the linked thread?

Just want to confirm this. Thanks!

[mikehalloran]

Rick, did you ever upgrade to an NVMe blade or is your 6.1 still sporting its AHCI SSD?

[dix]

Interesting that RIck's 2013 is running well with DP11.02 when another user in Japan has noted issues like you have reported. Only diff looks like macOS11.

…Presumably Rick is running DP11 with video. @Rick, if you have time please check out the link HC referenced and let us know if you’re experiencing the movie-window-lag that users of older Macs are experiencing with DP11.

To respond…
I only *just* updated to Big Sur and DP11.02 and hadn't run any video projects on that platform until this morning. I opened a *large* (for me) video project I did in DP 9.52 which included a 720p video file. Once I sorted out issues with plugins I'd changed since I did this score, it ran perfectly without a glitch or hiccup. Screen shot below for reference on the file size.

I will say, my Mac Pro is a working system, so I don't have Microsoft Office or other non-music or video software on it, nor do I have any apps or plugins from sketchy sources installed on my system drive. I like keeping things clean and simple on my working systems.

Thanks Rick. Yes. In general large projects with movies run at least as well in DP11 as they did in previous versions of DP on older Macs like mine. It's only specific actions that cause the issue in DP11 (key issues in my workflow). This movie demonstrates just a few of the laggy actions that a Movie window causes in DP11 that disappear when the movie is cleared:

DP11-Movie-NoMovie.mov

I too run a relatively clean DP-only rig, but still can't shake this issue. MOTU has acknowledged the problem, but haven't been able to suggest a fix.

[Apologies again for taking this even further off-topic, but a user of an older Mac that is not experiencing the lag could really help a few of us that are. Thx again]