Do you regret buying the M1 Mac Studio?

jon wayne said:

I am the proud owner of a M2 Max- 96gb, 1 tb. Arrives Wednesday. It would save me a lot of research if someone would tell me the most practical hub for nvme and ssds.

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Lots of approaches here. Depends on how many drives you need to connect. Lots of drives will probably necessitate a powered hub.

jon wayne said:

Also, can I use display port and hdmi to run dual monitors?

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On my Mac Studio Ultra, I'm running a 40" 4k TV as my main display (from the built-in HDMI port) and a Display Port 16:10 display via a $12.00 USB-C to DP adapter (from one of the front panel TB/USB ports.)

HCMarkus said:

On my Mac Studio Ultra, I'm running a 40" 4k TV as my main display (from the built-in HDMI port) and a Display Port 16:10 display via a $12.00 USB-C to DP adapter (from one of the front panel TB/USB ports.)

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I just added a 32” 4K monitor to a 27” 4K touch screen and two 27” 2k screens. I couldn’t immediately get the 32” to use the USB-C connector but the built in hdmi worked fine. The touch screen is using usb-c and the two 2k 27” monitors are both using DP. Everything is working fine. No issue on start up or waking from sleep. (I had occasional wake from sleep problems with external monitors on the iMac.)

I’m tracking the drive performance. I have 2 4TB NVMes running through a sabrent TB3 enclosure; 3 2TB SATA SSDs and one 4TB SATA SSD running through a TB3 OWC Thunderbay; 4 2TB SATA SSDs running through a TB2 OWC Thunderbay mini; 4 2TB SATA drives running through two dual bay USB3 enclosures.

I also have a TB3 dock that gives me 5 powered USB3 A ports and a USB-C port, two video outs and a TB3 through. Additionally I have a powered USB3 hub with 9 USB3 connectors plus three powered USB3 hubs built into the monitors. (The other monitor also has a built-in hub but it’s USB2 and I don’t have a reason to be using it at this time.) So along with the 6 TB4, 2 USB-A, and hdmi ports on the Studio itself, for the first time ever I feel like I have plenty of places to plug drives, monitors, and peripherals in. I’m still working out the optimal arrangement of what to plug in where.

Weirdly the NVMe doesn’t seem any faster than the SATA drives and it is finicky at start up even though it has its own power supply. I don’t know if that’s the Sabrent enclosure, which is generally well liked, or something else. I need to make some speed tests to get a better handle on performance, or at least some reportable data on the difference between my NVMe drives and my SATA drives.

M1 Max macbook pro with 64Gb ram but only 4 Tb drive, wish I went 8.
Otherwise best computer I've owned by far.

I’ve had fantastic performance from a WD Black 770 with an Acasis enclosure. Super fast and zero issues. With an NVMe, it’s all about the enclosure.

Bee_Abney said:

it is great to be able to record, mix and master all at 96 kHz 32 bit floating point. Not that this is necessary for composing work; but it is great for sound design work.

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You should try 192khz for some extreeeeme sound design (assuming the source content is sampled at 192 as well)

Micboosters have some cheap mic caps that easily go up into the 80khz range. I made a stereo setup with a couple of their caps


Sorry for the off-topic here, still on a 6c i7 mini here.

jon wayne said:

Also, can I use display port and hdmi to run dual monitors?

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I would assume yes. I have a 2018 Mac mini and it can do it

My Mac Studio M1 Max with 64 memory has transformed my music making. No regrets at all.

Jett Hitt said:

I’ve had fantastic performance from a WD Black 770 with an Acasis enclosure. Super fast and zero issues. With an NVMe, it’s all about the enclosure.

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I'd say it's about the enclosure + the particular NVME that somebody chooses. Certain drives have had issues with certain enclosures, so it's a good idea to choose a drive + enclosure that has been confirmed to work well by others.

I remember when buying my first Acasis enclosure and the manufacturer warned that certain Samsung NVMEs might be problematic with it, so I stayed away from those because I'm obviously not looking for any potential trouble.

TR909sample said:

I'd say it's about the enclosure + the particular NVME that somebody chooses. Certain drives have had issues with certain enclosures, so it's a good idea to choose a drive + enclosure that has been confirmed to work well by others.

I remember when buying my first Acasis enclosure and the manufacturer warned that certain Samsung NVMEs might be problematic with it, so I stayed away from those because I'm obviously not looking for any potential trouble.

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I seem to recall watching videos detailing which NVMe worked best and which performed very poorly. That's how I wound up with the WD Black. So yes, you're right about the combo.

Kind of general questions about Mac Studios as I’m looking to upgrade -

I run a current 2015 MacBook Pro 2.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, 16 GB memory, Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

1. So currently any project I work on these days the performance meter shows the CPU skyrocket, as my templates become more demanding my project no longer can seem to keep up with what I’m looking for. It’s really hard for me to compare my 2015 MacBook Pro to current market of Mac Studios. I’m looking at the M2 Max 12 core CPU 96 GB RAM. I always thought RAM was more important than CPU, but after a YouTube demo of someone running into cpu problems before ram with the M1 chip, and it seems my CPU is crashing before even my 16 GB of RAM gets used. So I now am more wary if I’m investing in enough CPU. I figure it’s not as simple as saying the m2 studio would be 3x as powerful as my 2015 MacBook Pro quad core. So the general question is, am I just underrating the new M2 Studio chip 12 core cpu or is this something to actual keep in mind when upgrading?

2. Does buying the new M2 Studio come pre installed with the latest Mac OS? Meaning might I have some troubles with having some of my plugins and instruments not function correctly as they aren’t supported yet? Can I install a previous version or how do you work around this?

3. Gaming - I know Macs aren’t very known for gaming and performance like a PC, but would this upgrade allow me to play some “normal” sized games on like steam and whatnot? I’ve always been a console gaming bc I used my laptop sturdily for music as it couldn’t begin to run the basics nor did I want it competing with space and power.


Any help with these would be greatly appreciated. I know it may be a bit off topic but seeing some of the replies and comments and doing my research brought up these questions.

Thanks!

1. Incredible upgrade. The one you are considering will be amazing.

2. Generally, you go back only as far as the OS version that shipped with the Mac when first released. that said, Ventura, and even Sonoma, seem to be working really well for most. Depending on your DAW of choice, you can even run many plugins (and there really aren't that many anymore) that are not yet Apple Silicon Native.

3. No idea.

HCMarkus said:

1. Incredible upgrade. The one you are considering will be amazing.

2. Generally, you go back only as far as the OS version that shipped with the Mac when first released. that said, Ventura, and even Sonoma, seem to be working really well for most. Depending on your DAW of choice, you can even run many plugins (and there really aren't that many anymore) that are not yet Apple Silicon Native.

3. No idea.

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Huge help! Thank you much for the information.

And yeah in terms of gaming, I just work occasionally with indie game devs and it would be great to be able to run their games through the same place without an issue. In the same vein kind of having that graphics/video power be enough for video enduring programs to put together visuals for music and such.

I started this thread with questions about M1. Turns out I got an M2 Max, 1tb, 96 gbs. It shipped with Sonoma and I haven’t had any real issues so far. Man, it is gonna be nice to not to have to get down on the floor for Mac Pro repairs. I’m loving my Mac Studio. Now on to paying for it!!

jon wayne said:

It would save me a lot of research if someone would tell me the most practical hub for nvme and ssds.

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For external SSDs I prefer thunderbolt, because USB doesn't support Trim and the SSD would become pretty slow over time.

I use THIS enclosure on an iMac Pro, because it's "plug&play" (no screwdriver needed). My SSD choice is the Lexar NM790, because it doesn't produce as much heat as e.g. Samsung SSDs. Write speed is around 2200 and read speed around 2500.

I swap 2 of these SSDs, one for sample libraries, one for Time Machine backups.

Cheap, handy, fast enough ... at least for my taste.

Just learned 2 things today: didn’t know you could drop the Activity Monitor cpu activity to the dock. And, after enabling all tracks in a fairly large orchestral template, then record all tracks at once, with big cluster chords, that cpu monitor barely moves! Happy camper!

Hey, @jon wayne - congrats on the new Studio! Glad to hear you like it so far, I am looking to upgrade to the same configuration pretty soon.

Since it’s a least semi-relevant, let me continue the thread with this:

jbuhler said:

Weirdly the NVMe doesn’t seem any faster than the SATA drives and it is finicky at start up even though it has its own power supply. I don’t know if that’s the Sabrent enclosure, which is generally well liked, or something else. I need to make some speed tests to get a better handle on performance, or at least some reportable data on the difference between my NVMe drives and my SATA drives

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I have the same Sabrent enclosure. I had a pair of 2T Samsung 970 NVMe in OWC Envoy Express enclosures, and I just added my first 4T stick. I’m port-limited since I’m using an M1 laptop for the moment, and the Sabrent was one of the few two-in-one enclosures that I could find any hands-on talk about at all. To add to jbuhler’s data - I did find the enclosure a little finicky the first time I mounted it. I think it took a little while for either drive to show up, and then they did but one at a time? I don‘t remember, because it only happened the first time. After that I haven’t had any issues with rebooting or remounting.

The truth is: most people upgrade their computers too early. They think they need the latest M-Whatever chip (a lot of people have upgraded from M1 - M3 already) when in reality it will barely, if at all, change your workflow. You truly need to ask yourself what you need in an upgrade. Sounds like you made a good decision for yourself, that computer is going to last your upwards of 8-10 years.

danstein said:

I have the same Sabrent enclosure. I had a pair of 2T Samsung 970 NVMe in OWC Envoy Express enclosures, and I just added my first 4T stick.

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I’ve since tested mine and the NVMe drives are in fact considerably faster. But it also says quite a lot that I didn’t notice the difference. Where I have noticed a difference is loading projects. But SATA SSDs running through USB3 are plenty fast enough for sample streaming.

And the reduced speed of the dual enclosure is also not significant for the task of sample streaming.

danstein said:

I think it took a little while for either drive to show up, and then they did but one at a time? I don‘t remember, because it only happened the first time.

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It’s about 50/50 on whether the drives in the enclosure mount on start up and I have to flip the power button several times if they don’t mount. Once they mount they are solid and there’s no issue with wake from sleep.

Fitz said:

The truth is: most people upgrade their computers too early.

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I definitely did not need an upgrade. I was working on a 2020 i9 iMac and it was (and is) perfectly adequate. But it was a university machine and the conditions for using it had become quite onerous. My choice was to buy a new machine or go back to a 2015 iMac. The latter was old enough that it would not have been able to run all my libraries and software.

I see quite a few answers above with 64GB; has that really been enough for orchestral templates?

Aymara said:

For external SSDs I prefer thunderbolt, because USB doesn't support Trim and the SSD would become pretty slow over time.

I use THIS enclosure on an iMac Pro, because it's "plug&play" (no screwdriver needed). My SSD choice is the Lexar NM790, because it doesn't produce as much heat as e.g. Samsung SSDs. Write speed is around 2200 and read speed around 2500.

I swap 2 of these SSDs, one for sample libraries, one for Time Machine backups.

Cheap, handy, fast enough ... at least for my taste.

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The enclosure is almost half the price of an 4TB NVMe. That's rather ridiculous really. Seems there isn't much competition in this field.

Also, what do you do to avoid clutter with all those external devices? Someone should build a nice housing, Mac Studio style, that could hold some of these enclosures, or even better, one that just has 2-3 TB ports each going to its own (dual) NVMe connector. That way you could house 4-6+ NVMe's in one elegant solution instead of this spaghetti-ugly hell that you end up with on a Mac Studio.

Sorry for derailing this slightly off topic.