What cable to connect Mac Studio to 828es?

[mikehalloran]

I feel your pain, Brother James — or is it, I hear you loud and clear?

The thought of having anything in my studio that's louder than my iMac Pro…

[James Steele]

The thought of having anything in my studio that's louder than my iMac Pro…

Yep. Within minutes of not having the MacPro5,1 fan going nor the HD192, I became spoiled and intolerant of "noisy" gear. Not that this enclosure was noisy. Many people would not have noticed it, but this Mac Studio is virtually silent. I may very well start tracking vocals in my control room. No need to go out to my studio unless I'm tracking my guitar amp, and that's only because the studio is soundproofed and I don't want to piss off the neighbors!

[PhireAlly]

Hello James,

I'm running 26 UAD Sharc chips.Two of them are UAD-2 Satellites and three are UAD-2 PCIe Cards in OWC PCie to Thunderbolt Chassis.
I've disconnected the fans in the OWC chassis and I've been working this way for years without issue.

FYI - UAD is going Native with their plugins.... Its called "Spark" If you own any UAD created DSP plugins, you'll get the Native counterpart for free, just create an iLok account to authorize them.

I'm on a M1 MacMini and by all accounts, your M1 Mac Studio would be able to run Waaay more instances of UAD native plugins than the UAD Sharc DSP chips.
I'm hanging on to my UAD DSP boxes as it will probably be a while till all of the UAD plugins are ported to native.
I own almost all of the UAD offerings and quite a few of the third party offerings as well, plus my NFR license is tied to my DSP chips...so I won't be giving that up !!

Anyway, hope that was helpful,
PhireAlly

[James Steele]

Hello James,

I'm running 26 UAD Sharc chips.Two of them are UAD-2 Satellites and three are UAD-2 PCIe Cards in OWC PCie to Thunderbolt Chassis.
I've disconnected the fans in the OWC chassis and I've been working this way for years without issue.

Good to know. I already returned mine. It wasn’t a good value anyway for just one slot.

FYI - UAD is going Native with their plugins.... Its called "Spark" If you own any UAD created DSP plugins, you'll get the Native counterpart for free, just create an iLok account to authorize them.

Thanks. I already knew about this. Problem for me is there are a LOT of the DSP plug ins that do NOT have Spark counterparts. In fact, ONLY plug I have that has a Spark version is Pure Plate. I like the 480L plug a lot… no Spark.

I'm hanging on to my UAD DSP boxes as it will probably be a while till all of the UAD plugins are ported to native.

Again, likewise. That’s why I basically went all in and bought a TB3 Satellite OCTO recently. Probably overkill but best bang for the buck. I’ll sell my UAD-2 DUO on Reverb or something.

[EMRR]

this Mac Studio is virtually silent. I may very well start tracking vocals in my control room. No need to go out to my studio unless I'm tracking my guitar amp, and that's only because the studio is soundproofed and I don't want to piss off the neighbors!

Sigh of relief, mine so far is the quietest computer I've ever run. At the moment it's sitting 18 inches from me between me and the monitor, hardly notice it's on.

[tbwnm]

Finally bit the bullet and purchased a Mac Studio M1Max 1TB SSD on ebay. This will replace my faithful Mac Pro Mid 2010 (hacked to run Big Sur). Not sure if its really worth spending close to $100 to connect the 828es via thunderbolt ($50 for the TB2 - TB3 adapter https://a.co/d/eCcDDPi and $50 for the 6ft TB2 cable https://a.co/d/ifiO3Cl). Those who have this set up how is it working out? My current mac connected via USB 2 frequently drops audio from the 828es which requires a restart of the 828es and/or the mac to bring audio back (even though the Pro Control panel shows audio signal, no audio comes out of the speakers when this happens). This usually occurs after its been on for a few hours so not sure if this is due to the falling asleep issue? I'm also using SoundID Reference from Sonarworks so could be that this combination is crashing the audio system after a time (don't remember 828es audio dropping prior to installing SoundID but can't be sure). Wondering if going the thunderbolt rout will solve this issue? Also need to decide on storage. My sound/sample library is around 10TB and another 10TB for video/photos. Would love to go SSD all the way, but thats to much $$ right now (probably looking at around $800 for 2 8TB SSD's plus external enclosure https://a.co/d/0cgKJ7T). Thinking about the OWC Drive dock https://www.owc.com/solutions/drive-dock-u.2 and installing a couple of 10TB 7200 SATA drives. This will give me the option to add SSD drives later (hopefully prices will continue to fall on these). These WD 16TB HDD Ultrastar DC HC550 SATA 7200RPM 3.5 WD 16TB HDD https://a.co/d/7XCeraQ are going for $169 refurb (have been using on of these for Time Machine Backups for the past few months and have had no issue). Recommendations are always appreciated! Thanks

[mikehalloran]

Thunderbolt is robust and does not have wake from sleep issues.

OWC used to offer a TB2 version of that Dual Drive Dock. I found mine on eBay where they show up now and then. It has a pair of TB 1/2 ports for daisy-chaining. If you can find one, you could plug the 828es into it, then into the Apple TB2–3 adapter into your Studio as I am doing (I have an 828mkII into the Apple FW–TB adapter in my setup). Here is the old description:
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB2U3DRVDCKU/

Usually, USB 2 interfaces do not have the sleep issue if they are connected directly via a USB 2 cable and not through a hub. Look for a "USB Printer Cable" with a USB-B connector on one end and a USB-C or USB-A connector on the other, depending on which port you wish to plug into. Even my wife's new Yamaha keyboard lost its connection through a hub but never directly.

I have never used USB 2/3 storage or hubs that didn't have wake from sleep problems. I've wasted too much time, bought and returned too many over the years. Every now and then, I have to unplug and re-plug my current Anker powered hub just so that my iLok and phone charging cables etc. can be seen. I did buy a new TB4/USB hub from OWC but haven't set it up yet—only had my Studio a few days.

I have a pair of those 8TB QVO 870 drives in that dual drive dock. They work great. I thought they might be too slow for my M2 Studio Ultra but VIs load as quickly as before. I might not go with anything faster. Or…

Here is the M.2 SSD via U.2 Adapter by itself.
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/U2SHTLONE/

I wonder how fast that is in my TB2 dock with an NVMe 3 x4 blade. Despite OWC's speed claims, you cannot get those over USB 3, 3.1, TB2 or TB3/4 because of the bandwidth of the pipe. Those claimed PCi4 speeds happen internally in PCs built for them (and the Mac Studio but Apple uses proprietary NAND and can't use these 3rd party). In a TB2 enclosure or dock, the max possible speed is 1500 Mbps about 3x the max of a SATA III SSD like the QVO 870.

Anyway, I may have to buy one and a slow blade like a Crucial P2, drop it into my dock and see what happens. Not today...

[tbwnm]

Thanks for your most helpful reply (as always ). I’m not using a USB hub on my Mac Pro and I am using the USB printer type cable going straight into a third party USB 3 native PCIe card in the Mac Pro so really shouldn’t have any issues with dropping audio from the 828es. Non of the other peripherals (external hard drives) I have connected to the USB 3 PCI card fall asleep or drop connections which makes me suspect it is Sonarworks SoundID causing the issue (have experienced some other bugs running SoundID). I’ll try disabling the calibration and see if that makes a difference and also try quitting the SoundID Software and see if that fixes the sound drop out issues on the 828e. I can also try switching the input to one of the stock USB 2 connections on the Mac Pro and see if that helps. Hopefully all this will get worked on once I switch over to the Mac Studio.

[tbwnm]

That OWC TB2 Dual Dock would be a good solution for my use case. It's a shame they don't still make it. I'll keep an eye out on ebay. My sample libraries are currently on a 10TB RAID array made up of a 6TB and 4TB WD Black Series SATA drives mounted internally on my Mac Pro. I'm getting an average 158 mbs read/write speeds (using AJA Systems light to run the speed test). Will the read speed be comparable using the OWC Drive Dock USB-C with 2 of those WD 16TB HDD Ultrastar DC HC550 SATA 7200RPM drives connected to the Mac Studio (it would be a bummer if my sample libraries actually end up loading slower on the Mac Studio than on my current ancient Mac Pro system)? The bottle neck on the Mac Studio would appear to be the SATA Hard Drives, irrespective of whether the Drive Dock has 5Gb/s or 10Gb/s controller with either USB 3.0 or USB 3.2 interface. There are other less expensive USB 3 Doc's that have 5Gb/s or 10Gb/s controllers which I'll also look into.

[mikehalloran]

I'm getting an average 158 mbs read/write speeds (using AJA Systems light to run the speed test). Will the read speed be comparable using the OWC Drive Dock USB-C with 2 of those WD 16TB HDD Ultrastar DC HC550 SATA 7200RPM drives connected to the Mac Studio

Probably. HDDs are slooooooow compared to everything else. HDDs should be used for archival and Time Machine. It might be a little faster if your old Mac Pro has a SATA II bus instead of SATA III.

(it would be a bummer if my sample libraries actually end up loading slower on the Mac Studio than on my current ancient Mac Pro system)

Relatively, that cannot be helped. Your M1 Max internal is around 4000 Mbps if it uses one NAND for that 1TB storage or 7600 if using two 512GB chips (I don't know what you have without opening it up). My M2 Ultra 8TB uses a pair of 4TB NAND in what Apple calls a "Modified RAID 0" array for about 8000 Mbps.

The max speed of a SATA III SSD like the QVO 870 is around 550 Mbps — about the same as USB 3.0 (or 3.2 gen 1 depending on the chart you reed). There is no way to speed that up without going to RAID 0 which I absolutely will not do — especially since that will only give me about 900 Mbps due to the speed limitation of SATA III. I'm finding VI loads the same speed as those same drives connected to my old iMac Pro. Fine for now but I will be exploring faster solutions in the next few weeks.

Many people are having trouble with OWC's "soft raid solution" connected to Apple Silicon. If RAID is not built into the firmware of your enclosure, I cannot recommend it — definitely not over USB 2 or 3.