Finding the Right Monitor

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Sun Oct 31, 2021 12:37 pm

Rick Cornish wrote:Mike—do you agree that Display Port will provide greater bandwidth (faster refresh rates) than HDMI on an Intel box like mine?

That’s what I’m wondering too. I was considering the Samsung 4K monitor and lots of Windows users left reviews saying that it only refreshed at 30khz at full resolution. I’m hoping if I connect via DisplayPort I can get 60khz. I may pass altogether though as the ones going on sale at Costco appear to be in white cases.

bayswater · Post by **bayswater** » Sun Oct 31, 2021 4:32 pm

mothra wrote: ↑Sun Oct 31, 2021 9:15 amA word of warning about 4K resolution though.. It looks NICE, believe me, but not so nice when you realize you have to sit about 2-3" away from your screen just to read your desktop icons.

That was the first thing that I realized when I got a 32" 4K. Going to the next preset in the Apple preferences usually works well for most things, although I have some DP screensets with scaling turned up that work reasonable well at full res. Full res is also good with screenshots. At full res, you get a big image with a lot of pixels with things like stills from a video.

In retrospect, I'd only bother with a 4K if it was closer to 42".

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Sun Oct 31, 2021 7:56 pm

Rick Cornish wrote: ↑Sun Oct 31, 2021 11:58 am
mikehalloran wrote: ↑Sun Oct 31, 2021 11:34 am If you search Color Profile, you'll find the old threads but here are the instructions:

Go to System Preferences/Displays/Color and uncheck Show profiles for this display only. Select any other Color Profile than the Default.

This has been an issue since El Capitán; everything to do with the 10 bit default color profile. DP is not the only app affected.

You will likely see a slight color shift when you do this but it's certainly not an issue for DP, Finale or any of the apps where most users will notice this. If you are doing work that requires critical color balance, you are using monitors and GPUs where this issue does not apply and 10 bit is the right profile.
Excellent. My new screen will be here Wednesday and this will be the first thing I look at.

Mike—do you agree that Display Port will provide greater bandwidth (faster refresh rates) than HDMI on an Intel box like mine?

I agree that, on paper, Display Port has the potential for better performance. For that reason, I have USB-C to DP cables ($8 on Amazon). For you it would be MDP–DP (mistakenly called TB video).

I do not know if the claimed advantage affects anyone other than gamers on PCs but I needed two cables anyway and an iMac Pro has no HDMI port.

Rick Cornish · Post by **Rick Cornish** » Sun Oct 31, 2021 9:02 pm

Thanks, Mike. Since I have an overabundance of HDMI cables as well as DP cables left over from my production company, I’ll try them both. We'll see what we see.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Mon Nov 01, 2021 3:52 am

mikehalloran wrote: ↑Sun Oct 31, 2021 10:22 amMy eyes are too old to view 4K and 5K monitors at full resolution. They still look nicer when reduced than older 2K or 1080, IMO.

Hmmm... this has me concerned. I'm wanting to replace my 30" Cinema Display... it's the older model that has DVI. 2560x1600. The whole idea is to get more screen real estate, but I don't want to have to be squinting to see things on a 32" 4k display at full resolution. I've even consider 43" 4k TVs... I may have the room for it. 40" 4k might be the right compromise, but there's not a lot out there at that oddball size. I can run HDMI with active mDP to HDMI adapter. Sigh... decisions... decisions.

HCMarkus · Post by **HCMarkus** » Mon Nov 01, 2021 5:46 am

That's why my 4k monitor is a 40" TV...lots of screen real estate at a size I can read without putting my nose on the screen. Looks like 43" is now the standard minimum 4k TV size, as James appears to have noted as well.

A key to using a TV: Gaming Mode, which minimizes latency within the TV. And, just in case anyone thinks it doesn't matter, 60Hz vs 30Hz makes a huge difference in the way one's mouse feels moving the curser about the screen. When I first got my current 4K monitor, I was running Sierra on my Mac Pro, and had to jump thru a bunch of hoops to get 60Hz HDMI from Mac OS. Before I figured it all out, I ran at 30Hz for a brief while. Ugh. Cursor felt like it was on its way to fossilization in slowly thickening amber.

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Mon Nov 01, 2021 8:27 am

HCMarkus wrote: ↑Mon Nov 01, 2021 5:46 am That's why my 4k monitor is a 40" TV...lots of screen real estate at a size I can read without putting my nose on the screen. Looks like 43" is now the standard minimum 4k TV size, as James appears to have noted as well.

A key to using a TV: Gaming Mode, which minimizes latency within the TV. And, just in case anyone thinks it doesn't matter, 60Hz vs 30Hz makes a huge difference in the way one's mouse feels moving the curser about the screen. When I first got my current 4K monitor, I was running Sierra on my Mac Pro, and had to jump thru a bunch of hoops to get 60Hz HDMI from Mac OS. Before I figured it all out, I ran at 30Hz for a brief while. Ugh. Cursor felt like it was on its way to fossilization in slowly thickening amber.

Thanks for weighing in. These are all things to consider next time around. If the next Mini comes with RAM/Storage that I like, a 43” 4K for the center might be something to consider. Fortunately, my current setup works well for me (till my eyes get older, of course).

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Mon Nov 01, 2021 2:07 pm

HCMarkus wrote: ↑Mon Nov 01, 2021 5:46 amA key to using a TV: Gaming Mode, which minimizes latency within the TV. And, just in case anyone thinks it doesn't matter, 60Hz vs 30Hz makes a huge difference in the way one's mouse feels moving the curser about the screen. When I first got my current 4K monitor, I was running Sierra on my Mac Pro, and had to jump thru a bunch of hoops to get 60Hz HDMI from Mac OS. Before I figured it all out, I ran at 30Hz for a brief while. Ugh. Cursor felt like it was on its way to fossilization in slowly thickening amber.

Agreed. 30lHz is just a no go. The new graphics card I'm using, HD 7950, is metal compatible and pretty robust. I used an active mDP-to-HDMI adapter and actually ran a long HDMI cable to my living room 65" 4K Samsung TV and ran it at 60Hz and it was just a thing of beauty. Even considered putting one on the wall in front of me and running it that way. Hard to explain my setup... I may have to include a picture at some point. There are some refurbed 40" TVs on Amazon that I'm looking at. I've decided 32" is too small. 43" is too big. Goldilocks likes 40" TVs!

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Mon Nov 01, 2021 11:03 pm

Well, believe it or not, I decided to go with a 43" 4k TV from Costco:

https://www.costco.com/samsung-43%22--- ... 49147.html

60Hz refresh rate. Pricer than some other options, but I've got good experiences with Samsung products. It turns out that for my studio desk (an old Argosy), there's plenty of room for one that size and a larger screen will let me push it back a bit further and outside the throw of the nearfields and the total height won't be much more than my current cinema display as the Argosy is designed nicely that the rear surface drops about 3" below the front surface of the desk. I'm still thinking of at some point hanging a much larger TV (65" or so) on the wall directly ahead of me high enough so I can see above the close monitor and then use it for movie window if working to picture (which honestly I haven't done in a long time), or an extra screen for DP when I'm not.

I'm thinking if I can be happy with the 43" for a while, maybe I'll ditch my 23" Cinema Display on an arm that's off to the side as it was always hard to see, but it's almost like you just can't have too many monitors sometimes. I know I'll be tempted to keep it around for something. I'd attach a photo but my studio is just far too messy right now to include it. The 43" gets here on Wednesday.

Who knows... maybe with this much screen I'll be tempted to use the Consolidated Window more?

I know I'll save electricity compared the the 30" Cinema Display. That sucker gets pretty warm!

HCMarkus · Post by **HCMarkus** » Tue Nov 02, 2021 6:17 am

One thing to "watch" for, maybe not an issue anyone will run into, but one I experienced when using a DP to HDMI Active Adaptor under Sierra: A slight delay in screen display of DP, enough the counter would be off by a small amount. Mouse response was fine (this was @60Hz) so useable, but a bit weird. I had to use the active adaptor to get 60Hz HDMI when running under Sierra.

When I moved to Mojave, I was able to lose the adaptor and run HDMI directly from my GPU (AMD RX460) and the DP delay was gone.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Tue Nov 02, 2021 10:43 am

HCMarkus wrote:One thing to "watch" for, maybe not an issue anyone will run into, but one I experienced when using a DP to HDMI Active Adaptor under Sierra: A slight delay in screen display of DP, enough the counter would be off by a small amount. Mouse response was fine (this was @60Hz) so useable, but a bit weird. I had to use the active adaptor to get 60Hz HDMI when running under Sierra.

When I moved to Mojave, I was able to lose the adaptor and run HDMI directly from my GPU (AMD RX460) and the DP delay was gone.

Interesting. Unfortunately, the HDMI out on my HD 7950 card doesn’t work. Apparently that happens on PC cards when they’re flashed for Mac. I could probably check this easily as I have a standard HD monitor connected with a mDP to HDMI adapter right now. Although maybe the 4K will introduce a delay?

If I have the desire I could test this by running an HDMI cable out to my living room 4K TV again and see if the counter lands on beats. My hope though is that the delay was because you weren’t taking advantage of Metal in Sierra. I’m on Mojave. Metal seems to make things go drastically faster. Maybe I’ll test this today.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Tue Nov 02, 2021 3:17 pm

I just did a little test and am happy to report there appears to be no lag for my setup running Mojave and my graphics card. I even zoomed in to a MIDI track on the sequence editor and could see the wiper hit the MIDI note just at the right time as it should and counter clicking along in time with the beat. Did this with 3 displays mirrored at first and finally separate. I was running three monitors for my test, my 23" inch Cinema, my 30" Cinema, and my 4K 65" TV at 60Hz and all is well. So I have to guess that it's Mojave and the Metal support that makes it possible.

I have noticed I have a project where I get a processor spike most of the time on the first playback and after that it never appears again. I think that happened after my Mojave update. I haven't tried changing the default profile for the 4K monitor as has been suggested to lessen then load. I'll need to make sure I'm not running the 4K TV that gets delivered tomorrow in 10-bit mode.

Anyway... relieved that I won't have to worry about that. At some point down the road, I'll be able to run all these monitors off a MacMini M1 Pro, but I'm still invested in PCI-audio so I may have to make due a while longer. By then, maybe Apple will have M1 Pro MacMini refurbs available?

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Tue Nov 02, 2021 5:21 pm

Well, well... HC Markus... you've probably dealt with the local Costco, yes? So I ordered that TV from Costco online and it said it will be here tomorrow. I thought it would just be Costco's delivery guys that brought my 65" TV last time, but maybe that's not the case with the smaller TVs. To my dismay it looks like Costco "created a UPS label" and it's been handed off to UPS. I hope the TV is coming from the San Diego area. That's gonna mess up my plans to get it up and running before I'm going to be too busy for a few days.

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Wed Nov 03, 2021 9:46 am

I know I'll save electricity compared the the 30" Cinema Display. That sucker gets pretty warm!

Modern monitors and displays not only look better but are cool to the touch.

I wasn’t kidding when I said that the energy savings paid for mine. Besides the reduced current draw, I run the AC far less often. 24” and small displays are cheap.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Wed Nov 03, 2021 1:32 pm

mikehalloran wrote: ↑Wed Nov 03, 2021 9:46 am
I know I'll save electricity compared the the 30" Cinema Display. That sucker gets pretty warm!
Modern monitors and displays not only look better but are cool to the touch.

I wasn’t kidding when I said that the energy savings paid for mine. Besides the reduced current draw, I run the AC far less often. 24” and small displays are cheap.

So true, Mike. That seems to be something often overlooked and really makes me think this is something I should have done a while ago, if for no other reason than to use less energy and get my monthly bill down. I don't know if it's this 43" TV or maybe the 32" monitor that HC Markus posted, but I think one of them had the estimated annual energy cost as $11!! I imagine the more I run my Cinema Displays, I'm driving my power bill up. Ironically, I'm typing this response on my office MacPro that ALSO has an older DVI 30" Cinema Display which I probably have powered only (sadly) more often then my studio monitor... so I should make it a priority to replace this. Can't get much I imagine for used Cinema Displays... maybe I'll try to get $150 for it for a quick Craigslist sale.

I'm super excited to get the 43" Samsung today. It's already out for delivery with UPS!!!

Also, all this is trying to start prepping myself to at some point retire my 12-core MacPro 5,1.

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