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I've been using the 2017 touch bar MacBook pro since September and exclusively since December greatly reducing my footprint and it's 100% ITB. It's getting about the same amount of overloads as with the MacPro trashcan. DP meter is the same and only spikes occasionally on start after it's been sitting for a few minutes. I get the overload message but nothing audible. So 4 cores must be as good as 6 for how I work.

Markus warned me about it throttling when hot. I have not experienced throttling yet but the laptop does go to a high speed fan often and it's louder than I would hope for. I put a Thermalake cooler under the laptop but I'm not sure it does much. I think the cooling pads are gimmicky.

Overall I am happy with the change the only negative is fan noise. I'm using a dock called the landing zone. It does not add any more TBolt but it does the rest and works well. The HW companies are just starting to put out Tbolt C devices.

In the studio I use a couple of Ravens and only use the laptop screen for Metering. The laptop physically must be placed on the far right with Raven's so think about that for your set up. Finally being mobile is even better then I thought it would be. Getting out of the room is amazing. A set of headphones and I'm in. The Waves NS headphone thingy is a must for me. I LOVE working anywhere anytime. Hope this helps anyone thinking about going mobile.

Glad it's working well for you Waxie.

OTOH, I picked up a 2010 octo-core Mac Pro last week. As of about an hour ago, it is a 12 core which will soon replace the studio's hex MP.

I guess I'm not going mobile quite yet...

HCMarkus wrote:Glad it's working well for you Waxie.

OTOH, I picked up a 2010 octo-core Mac Pro last week. As of about an hour ago, it is a 12 core which will soon replace the studio's hex MP.

I guess I'm not going mobile quite yet...

How much? what did you put in it? What do you do about Tbolt?

Who needs TBolt for audio? I'm running a MOTU 828es and it is working great with USB; five discreet monitor mixes via AVB mixer with tablet or phone control for the musicians is enough for me and latency is not an issue because all tracking is monitored thru the AVB mixer. VI latency is not a problem either, and the 12 core will let me go deeper into projects before buffer becomes an issue.

And I sold my hex for what it cost me to build the 12 core, which houses all three of the HDs and all but one of the five SSDs the hex used to hold, plus a new 1TB EVO 860.

HCMarkus wrote:Who needs TBolt for audio? I'm running a MOTU 828es and it is working great with USB; five discreet monitor mixes via AVB mixer with tablet or phone control for the musicians is enough for me and latency is not an issue because all tracking is monitored thru the AVB mixer. VI latency is not a problem either, and the 12 core will let me go deeper into projects before buffer becomes an issue.

And I sold my hex for what it cost me to build the 12 core, which houses all three of the HDs and all but one of the five SSDs the hex used to hold, plus a new 1TB EVO 860.

what did the hex have in it? What is the ballpark cost of your new 12 core CPU?

I think USB is fine. But I skipped USB 4 years ago and went from FW Apogee Ensemble and Duet to T-Bolt UAD devices. I have UAD Octo Satellite and Quad Apollo MKII. I just sold an Apollo MK I silver and Apollo 16 silver along with 24 ch of Focusrite ISA 828's . So I'm locked in on T-bolt. T-Bolt 3 is next. The UAD platform is starting to release T-bolt 3 devices. So is Focusrite and Antelope. If I do go multitrack again I'm hoping the Slate pre's are better then the 828's. For me making the switch to Mobile, Slate and UAD for the majority of my system became the target 2 years ago. I have access to a famous multitrack room (you know it) for multiplayer band projects. It's so inexpensive it did not make sense for me to maintain a facility. I've made the transition in one piece but it was kind of scary... lol

That said I think the retro systems can be a better than the trash cans. And certainly less expensive.

Keep in mind that just because your system has 6 or 4 cores doesn't mean DP is using them. Software has to be made multi-core aware.

I'm not sure where DP falls in the multi-core aware camp. I'd bet that DP 5.1 is not multi-core aware. So the only real benefit it sees is raw CPU speed and RAM. Well, and an SSD boot drive probably helps too.

sdemott wrote:Keep in mind that just because your system has 6 or 4 cores doesn't mean DP is using them. Software has to be made multi-core aware.

I'm not sure where DP falls in the multi-core aware camp. I'd bet that DP 5.1 is not multi-core aware. So the only real benefit it sees is raw CPU speed and RAM. Well, and an SSD boot drive probably helps too.

DP has been able to take advantage of multiple CPU cores since DP3 under OS9. Each fader strip is handed off to the OPS as a separate process (thread). It is then up to the OS to allocate threads to available cores.

Dave

magicd wrote:DP has been able to take advantage of multiple CPU cores since DP3 under OS9. Each fader strip is handed off to the OPS as a separate process (thread). It is then up to the OS to allocate threads to available cores.

Dave

Clarity. Thanks Dave!