Mac Studio - options

[hammerman]

I am finally moving from my trusty 2010 Mac Pro Tower (running Mojave & DP 11) to an M2 Mac Studio. I'm thinking of the Ultra with 64GB of RAM and 4TB of Storage and just throw everything on the internal. (I do some video editing as well). Is the Ultra worth it compared to the Max? Should I put my VI's on an OWC external thunderbolt drive like the Envoy Express? (cheaper). I am able to save 15% as I know someone at Apple.

2nd question - Corning makes a $360 optical thunderbolt cable where I can extend an Apple Studio Display 16 feet. It does not route bus power though. I know Apple makes a longer Thunderbolt cable but that is only 10 feet and I need it longer than that. Anyone have experience with extending their monitor? I would like the ports on the new display to work.

Thank you!

[HCMarkus]

I am finally moving from my trusty 2010 Mac Pro Tower (running Mojave & DP 11) to an M2 Mac Studio. I'm thinking of the Ultra with 64GB of RAM and 4TB of Storage and just throw everything on the internal. (I do some video editing as well). Is the Ultra worth it compared to the Max? Should I put my VI's on an OWC external thunderbolt drive like the Envoy Express? (cheaper). I am able to save 15% as I know someone at Apple.

2nd question - Corning makes a $360 optical thunderbolt cable where I can extend an Apple Studio Display 16 feet. It does not route bus power though. I know Apple makes a longer Thunderbolt cable but that is only 10 feet and I need it longer than that. Anyone have experience with extending their monitor? I would like the ports on the new display to work.

Thank you!

I bought the Ultra and it has been great, but I have yet (after a year) to get close to tapping it out. Whether the extra cost is worth it for you depends on your use case.

I run my VI Samples from two Envoy Express/Samsung 970 EVO Plus drives with great success. I put small heatsinks on mine as a precaution. Reports suggest that you will see similar performance with Kontakt regardless of whether you use Envoys, faster 4-lane Thunderbolt drives, or slower SATA SSDs. I have also been advised to avoid RAIDing VI Sample drives.

Too bad you can't just use HDMI for your monitor; that 16 feet would be a non-issue. The Corning glass cables are active and do not have a good track record as far as durability is concerned. And you've identified the power issue, for which I cannot offer a solution.

[mikehalloran]

Because of recent changes to the MacOS, if you share files with others over the cloud, you want the largest internal drive you can afford. Here’s a link to a recent thread.
https://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=73244

If you use Backblaze for additional backup, same thing. Although Time Machine can include external drives, Backblaze requires one of their business enterprise plans to do the same.

Otherwise, streaming VIs from external SSDs doesn’t make much difference whether it’s SATA III in a TB 2 dock or the fastest TB3 external. Loading might be slower (especially SampleTank) but once loaded, it’s not an issue. With video, speed can be an issue. Thunderbolt is licensed by Intel and uses more robust components than USB peripherals— important with external storage.

Max vs Ultra? With audio not much of an issue but video/AV rendering favors the Ultra.

[hammerman]

Thank you Gentlemen.

That $360 Corning optical Thunderbolt cable could be attached to an OWC Thunderbolt Hub (which has its own power) and then I can plug in stuff. Basically, I have a cart that I roll around into different positions based on what I am doing - keyboard, piano, or mixing. It has my monitor, keyboard, trackpad (used little) Wacom tablet (little guy used all the time) and a Contour Design Shuttle Pro (can't live without it). I think once I have the new system, the keyboard and trackpad will be wireless, the Shuttle Pro doesn't need power but the Wacom tablet does. So I'll go through all that just to power it. I can use it with a pen or fingers. I mainly use the pen. The Corning cable has a 1 year warranty. I've read mixed reviews but overall positive. It may be the only way I can go. 9 feet ain't long enough.

[James Steele]

Max vs Ultra? With audio not much of an issue but video/AV rendering favors the Ultra.

I just updated to Geekbench 6 and on my M1 Max Mac Studio (10 cores) I got a single-core score of 2417 and multi-core score of 12797.

I checked their Mac Benchmark chart here https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks/

geekbench6.jpg (71.59 KiB) Viewed 2592 times

The M1 Ultra Mac Studio (20 cores) result of single-core at 2379 and multi-core at 17593. (For some reason the M1 Max Mac Studio in the chart came in with a lower multi-core score than mine. Might be my 64GB of RAM accounts for that? Might also be that an Ultra with more RAM is faster? These results also don't show the size of the internal drive and I remember reading that the stock smaller drive hampered performance as well.

So these scores might be a bit suspect. Because from this chart it would seem that the Ultra has a lot of overhead as it's not close to twice the score of my M1 Max which you'd think it would be close to having twice the cores. Using the calculator, that indicates that there's only a 37% gain in CPU power (not talking about graphics, etc.) from going from my M1 Max (12797) to the M1 Ultra Mac Studio on the chart (17593).

Honestly that doesn't seem right. Would love to hear from an M1 Ultra Mac Studio that has Geekbench 6 to run it and see what score they come up with.

[HCMarkus]

If you use Backblaze for additional backup, same thing. Although Time Machine can include external drives, Backblaze requires one of their business enterprise plans to do the same.

I don't think that is correct, Mike. As long as External Drives are attached within every 30 days (or once a year if you pay the extra $2/Month for extended history), BackBlaze personal plan backs them up fine.

Backup & Archive
Back up all of your attached external drives.

https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup.html

[mikehalloran]

If you use Backblaze for additional backup, same thing. Although Time Machine can include external drives, Backblaze requires one of their business enterprise plans to do the same.

I don't think that is correct, Mike. As long as External Drives are attached within every 30 days (or once a year if you pay the extra $2/Month for extended history), BackBlaze personal plan backs them up fine.

Backup & Archive
Back up all of your attached external drives.

https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup.html

Nice. External drives are excluded from my plan and I couldn't find a Personal plan that allowed this when I signed up. I need to talk with Support and see if I need to change plans. Thanks for the heads up.

In the new notice, I see that mounted Volumes are specifically excluded — Time Machine can be set up to include them. Also excluded are Volumes that have any Time Machine data on them.

https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/art ... ard-Drives

Likewise, any files residing in the cloud not sync'd up to store copies on your Mac will not be included in a BackBlaze archive. Since MacOS Monterey 12.3, those copies will only sync to the System drive. This is same as Time Machine. I posted about that here.

https://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=73244

[HCMarkus]

I thing BB is trying to avoid backups that could include data from a second computer (like via NAS). In my case, all data is on internal or external USB or TB connected drives, so BB has me covered (except for the TM and macOS system and applications, which is fine.)

[Julia123]

I ran across this in case anyone is curious. Still trying to sort the new options out.
https://www.facebook.com/HaMacNews/post ... 9Lz3cb1r6l

[mikehalloran]

I ran across this in case anyone is curious. Still trying to sort the new options out.
https://www.facebook.com/HaMacNews/post ... 9Lz3cb1r6l

No real world examples were harmed making that ridiculous test.

I don’t believe that a 28 core MP 7.1 handles 64 bit audio and pug-ins (386 tracks) better than an M1 (311) or M2 (364) Ultra Studio. That the M1 Mini can only handle 102 and the M2 Mini only 80 tracks tells me a lot about the test and nothing about the hardware.

When the iMac Pro came out, Apple made a number of tests showing how a 10 core iMP with 32GB RAM could handle over a thousand instances of VIs in Logic, each running a convo reverb pus additional effects. The comparison was with a 12 core MP 5.1 (choking on 150 tracks) and a 12 core MP 6.1 that couldn’t quite handle 300 48k/24bit. Those tests were believable.

[HCMarkus]

I don’t believe that a 28 core MP 7.1 handles 64 bit audio and pug-ins (386 tracks) better than an M1 (311) or M2 (364) Ultra Studio.

In all honesty, even if that test was true, I wouldn't be extremely sad that my $4,000 Mac Studio is THAT close to that 28 core, what was it... $30k? $50k?... Mac Pro.

[nk_e]

Thank you Gentlemen.

That $360 Corning optical Thunderbolt cable could be attached to an OWC Thunderbolt Hub (which has its own power) and then I can plug in stuff. Basically, I have a cart that I roll around into different positions based on what I am doing - keyboard, piano, or mixing. It has my monitor, keyboard, trackpad (used little) Wacom tablet (little guy used all the time) and a Contour Design Shuttle Pro (can't live without it). I think once I have the new system, the keyboard and trackpad will be wireless, the Shuttle Pro doesn't need power but the Wacom tablet does. So I'll go through all that just to power it. I can use it with a pen or fingers. I mainly use the pen. The Corning cable has a 1 year warranty. I've read mixed reviews but overall positive. It may be the only way I can go. 9 feet ain't long enough.

FWIW, I bought one of those Corning cables. I was using it to position an OWC Thunderbay 8 drive as far away from my work area as possible. The Thunderbay held sample libraries and audio assets (sound effects, loops, etc.). I also held my active audiobook projects.

It’s not like I was trying to stream lots of video, so the drives were not in constant heavy use. However the Corning cable was not up to the task. It overheated and connections became increasingly erratic when it did so. And it always did so after the system was turned on for a little while.

I tried attaching other peripherals to the cable instead. A sonnet external pci enclosure for my UAD octo card was a no go, as well as a couple of other peripherals. In the end, it was just a huge waste of money.

If HDMI is an option at all, or can be with some small investment, it might be more reliable.

[hammerman]

Thanks for the info regarding the Corning cable. Oy. I need at least 12 feet and Apple's cable gets me to 10 feet. I did see some Thunderbolt extension cables on Amazon (a few feet). I wonder if it would work with Apple's 10 foot cable. I am only plugging in a Wacom tablet and a Contour Design Shuttle Pro into the monitor.

[mothra]

Nice. External drives are excluded from my plan and I couldn't find a Personal plan that allowed this when I signed up. I need to talk with Support and see if I need to change plans. Thanks for the heads up.

In the new notice, I see that mounted Volumes are specifically excluded — Time Machine can be set up to include them. Also excluded are Volumes that have any Time Machine data on them.

https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/art ... ard-Drives

Likewise, any files residing in the cloud not sync'd up to store copies on your Mac will not be included in a BackBlaze archive. Since MacOS Monterey 12.3, those copies will only sync to the System drive. This is same as Time Machine. I posted about that here.

https://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=73244

That's odd what plan are you using? I have the 'regular' old desktop backup plan, and I've been backing up my 4 external drives since day 1 with it. They're disabled in the preferences by default, but they work just fine once you enable them (except the Time Machine drives of course).

Now for my NAS, I had to buy the business plan to back that up. Its on its own seperate plan, and runs inside the Qnap Backup utility on the NAS.

[nk_e]

Thanks for the info regarding the Corning cable. Oy. I need at least 12 feet and Apple's cable gets me to 10 feet. I did see some Thunderbolt extension cables on Amazon (a few feet). I wonder if it would work with Apple's 10 foot cable. I am only plugging in a Wacom tablet and a Contour Design Shuttle Pro into the monitor.

Both of those are peripherals are USB, yes?And you want to have your monitor on the cart also?

I have different areas in my workspace also, but have set up multiple monitors. I use this with great results:

https://www.amazon.com/OWC-Thunderbolt- ... 08FM3NVKD/

No reason you couldn't use this and run an HDMI and USB active extension cable to your monitor on the cart, then feed the two peripherals from the USB ports on your monitor.

https://www.amazon.com/Extension-SNANSH ... B0936XLNJK

You would have two cables running to the cart, but it would be a cheaper and more reliable set up than the Corning and "extended TB extension" cables I think...