Mac Pro vs iMac Pro For Media Composition
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
- YELLOW TECHNOLOGY RAN EXTENDED AUDIO 'STRESS' TESTS ON IMAC AND REPORTED NO NOTICEABLE FAN NOISE.
YellowTechnology: www.yellowtechn...
Q: What is the spec of my new iMac ?
A: Apple iMac Pro 3.0GHz 10-Core Xeon W / 128GB RAM / 1TB SSD / Radeon Pro Vega 56 8GB / Magic Mouse 2 / Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad
Q: What are the two USB ports you connected
A: Plugable USB 2.0 10-Port Hub with Two Flip-Up Charging Ports
- OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock
Q: What is the arm on the back of the mac?
A: Ergotron 45-241-026 LX Desk Mount VESA LCD Arm
- Attached to this is the VESA Mount Adaptor Kit for iMac Pro (this enabled us to remove the leg from the iMac and attach it to the arm)
Thanks for this. You've shown me that a secondhand Mac Pro is easily capable of doing more than I will ever need. That saves me thousands. :-)
Exactly what I thought
What specs was the mac pro? It would be helpful to know.
The spec is shown on the caption right at the end. 8 core 64GB.
Christian - why don't you use your wide monitor as your main monitor (thunderbolt to HDMI out the back of iMac) and have the iMac screen as the additional screen... with that arm you should be able to miss the speakers!
I’d choose the old Mac Pro upgrade the cpu to 12 core and OWC 128gb ram kit. Then keep the nice ultra wide monitor. I have this setup currently love the old Mac Pro so cool and quiet unstoppable.
Looking at buying the 12 core trash can with 64gb for music as my mbp just died. Thoughts? Thanx
Christian I have a question more important than life itself. Is the monitor you have here (pre iMac Pro) a 34" widescreen or perhaps 38"? And is the resolution 3400xXXX? I can see it's curved, which is lovely, but might be out of my penny pinching ways. thanks!
Next test: Screenflow (at HQ capture settings) + medium to heavy Logic Session to see if and how loud the fan noise can become. Recorded through the RE20. Thank you.
That face when you realise you shouldn't have bought a new Mac after all! ua-cam.com/video/EouLohgmvrI/v-deo.htmlm31s
Made my day! :D haha
You are by far my favourite music production personality. This was incredible to see. I produce on a 2010 macbook pro and have to budget my resources very sparingly. Getting the system overload error gives me PTSD. So it makes me quite jealous seeing this.
I get system overload EVERYDAY!! On a 2019 MACBOOK PRO i9 , i will load videos soon, its is annoying that that laptop cant handle 50 tracks or 10 kontak + audio
Thank you, Christian! I think this is the only review of the new iMac Pro (or even the 2013 Mac Pro) that is geared for us music makers and not for video editors. So helpful. I'm curious, what buffer setting are you running this session at? And for your next test, could you try running that initial session at a lower buffer (64/128) so that if you were to overdub using a new instance of Kontakt, you wouldn't have to deal with any latency. Just wondering how much larger the session can be on the iMac Pro before you'd be dealing with latency while overdubbing.
Great video displaying the power, just can’t help feeling you didn’t need the upgrade as your cylinder had plenty of grunt.
A ton of instances of Diva and RePro5 in divine setting would be a real stress test for this beast.
That's what i wanted to write ... thought about DIVA as the ultimate CPU test ... it would also be interesting if the new imac pro separates the various instances of diva on the multiple cores ... still haven't tried that on my i7 4-core imac at home
yeap, upvote this so CH can see! that's the real test
I’m late to the party, but this is really what I want to see. I’m scoring a film at the moment which requires a ton of Repro5’s Prophet goodness and I’m having a hell of a time with cpu overloads on my 2015 macbook pro. Considering getting an imac pro but I’d love to see how it handles Diva and Repro5 first!!
Thank you for doing this. You could always have the iMac screen on the side out of the way and use your large screen as usual.
what're the specs on the old mac pro?
It might be helpful for us to see the activity monitor to see exactly what’s happening w RAM and CPU overhead?
And Logic's CPU core monitor as well.
dgeyer i think he has that on actually.
I was referring to this little pop-up. support.apple.com/library/content/dam/edam/applecare/images/en_US/proapps/logic/processing_threads.png
dgeyer I thought he has that on the right of the screen but maybe not
In any case, it certainly seems like an able machine and his assessment that it should handle anything he can throw at it, seems correct. Here's hoping that all of us can afford to get the cores we need.
what can i say, i like my mixes wet
I would like to know more about latency. I/O buffer sizes and that stuff.
And to follow up Antonio Andrade's request: Try 10 or more instances of U-he Bazille, on high quality. Now that's a a real stress test.
Cool. I wish you would've tried to run those torture tests at 96k though. A thought for future testing.
Thanks Christian. Possibly another test would be to have 10 instances of Kontakt 16 x stereo outs. For me it seems that logic will utilise one core per track. If I load up Kontakt or a particular power synth (that shall not be named) as a multi-out, Logic's CPU meter will only show one core being used. I then have to create another multi-out instrument to start using the next core.
I would also suggest seeing what the recording capabilities are as a test. You could take your 112 x Kontakt, 3 x Mics, 224 reverbs and then send those out to separate busses per channel. Then use those buss channels as inputs on 112 audio tracks to 're-record'. That way you're really pushing both ram and CPU to the limit.
Agreed.
uuuggg. Imac?
no thanks. why would I ever want to replace my 12 core trashcan and two large hi rez touch screens with that dinky all in one.
We switched all our computers to PCs and never looked back. Much faster day and night and fully upgrade-able. Apple is overpriced. We might buy the new Mac Pro if it is any good.
jennifergala Apple is overpriced but you might buy the new Mac Pro?
Exactly what I was looking for! Thanks :). Is there a video somewhere where you go through all your midi controllers in terms of CCs etc?
Like your Juno-6 / Prophet VS / Jupiter-6 / Jupiter-4 Synth Rack. Exactly like mine :-D
Question is will your worlds biggest template be as big as Guy Michelmore’s? 😉 Looking forward to this!
"That's my kind of mix" haha!
Thank you Christian! You just completely gave me peace of mind about my recent (Late 2013) Mac Pro purchase! I am saving a TON of money by purchasing a refurbished, Late 2013 Mac Pro 4-Core and purchasing the 12-Core Intel 2.7Ghz Ivy Bridge processor & 64GB OWC RAM separately, which in total comes out to $2517.00!
Does DAW benefit from more cores?
I do believe when duplicating Kontakt instances - the unique samples loaded can be accessed by other instances thus keeping your memory footprint from expanding from duplicate samples. Kontakt's database will eat up memory space but if you're not using the database tools and have removed instrument entries from the database it will not only make Kontakt perform more responsively, but reduces it's own overhead for each instance loaded. The bounce time was pretty on par with the track-count load.
There is also some "optimizations" that the software (Logic Pro X, Kontakt, etc) are utilizing to manage the incredible workload you're putting on the machine which allow it to continue to perform live playback efficiently enough without breaking. I have to say to Apple developers (and all the 3rd parties involved in the stress test you performed) Kudos on stability!
The fact that the new iMac pro can handle the bench test the Mac pro was struggling with is a good indicator of qualitative user experience gain... Well said! Best of luck on the worlds largest iMac internal orchestral palette, you crazy man, you!
what are the specs on the trash can mac?
Dear Christian: Can I ask you the name of this song? It's awesome!
Reminds me of bits of Danny Elfman’s Batman returns. Excellent!
dsefgrbh d exactly what I immediately thought!!!
The only thing stopping me from getting the Mac Pro right now is not having the USB-C ports that the new iMac pro has. Is it really necessary? Maybe it will get more and more required in the future?
Your studio looks really relaxing. Nice layout and especially like the lighting. BTW, interesting hear the person in the video mentions CCC is more reliable than TM. I need to keep that in mind.
What is the spec of the Mac Pro Cylinder in this test? Can you still buy them? This is pretty impressive :D
I would like to know the answer to this as well!
Oh, it says at the end of the video. 3.0 GHz 8 core, 64GB ram, 1TB SSD
I have a similar machine, but are not able to use more that ca 40-50GB memory, so 128GB maybe a overkill. Did you get the best graphics card? And I got 2T of SSD as the internal is blazing fast, move project over to a RAID disk when they are finished.
Hey are you running your sessions on the internal drive instead of an external SSD then?
This was fun to see thanks. I'm wondering why you'd be so quick to give up that wider screen. Ideally, would have the pc in a little machine room so no fan hum at all, and use extensions (latency permitting) to just swap the new pro out with older helmet system. If not that, maybe put the wider monitor back up and throw the new pro behind it to block a bit of fan noise and also reclaim bigger work area monitor. Putting extra monitors in the way of those speakers seems like a huge step back, especially for a less eloquent solution than your existing wide monitor already offered.
Your channel is my favorite thing on youtube these days, really appreciate all the work you put into it.
Thanks so much for this! I wonder if a higher number of cores would improve speed for the iMac pro? That 10 core is amazing but I wonder how the 18 core would compare?
hi chris, what's the spec of your mac pro cylinder?
I don’t know if you knew but instead of inserting the reverb plugin on one track and copying it, you can select all the tracks (minus busses and output tracks) and choose the plugin on one track. Saves a lot of time.
Like others here, I've concluded that this is actually quite a testament for the old Mac Pro Cylinder. Please share with us the configuration details of that Mac Pro since some of us can only afford an older unit via eBay and would love to know what to look for.
Great vid, Christian. I absolutely adored the double takes on your face when you couldn't break the Mac Vader Helmet. Priceless.
Hi 👋Christian, do "Midi Stress Tests" exist at Spitfire ? (ie multi simultaneous tracks vst/au from multi midi sources recording)
Hi Christian, Love your videos and I fell in love with your products and composing a year ago. I got started out buying a Imac late 2013 8G 256 and a apollo x4 to record my own vocals as a opera singer. All worked well. When I got into composing I noticed very soon that with 10 to 15 tracks of instruments of Discovery and also with the UAD instruments my Imac renders at 100 to 135 what is causing drops and even crashing sometimes. UAD has the Neve console which asks some CPU when I turned it on as well. It is giving me a headache and often can't finish my projects --- 2022. I need a new Imac. Many recommend the new 24 inch 2021 M1 Imac 16G 1 terra to do the job. This computer is in my budget round 2400 euro. Others say that I need at least the upcoming 2022 Imac Pro or MAX 32 to 64G to do the job (I guess if Apple release this Imac in the spring with a 27inch screen it will go way over 3000 and probably is out of my wallet 🙂 - With your experience with the new M1 machines on Albion (which I will purchase when I get a new computer) and the discovery (later will purchase the BBC when have 1 terra harddrive) would the Imac 2021 M1 16G 1 terra run a orchestral work up to 3 to 5 min incl busses for routing and plug ins for the added vocals ect. With all the advice , mainly from people who work on rap music, pop songs ect I really have no idea what Imac would bring me a smile and doesn't renders at 100 and clicks and pops or crashes with 15 to 30 tracks to 50 tracks incl busses. I only use the fab EQ for the orchestra, some UAD plug ins for the vocals and busses, and Izotope for mix and mastering, nothing crazy. Love to hear your thoughts what would be wise and I understand you can't guarantee anything regarding the M1 16G Imac. - Long story and hope you find the time to share your ideas :-) Thanks in advance
Impressive and useful demo! Does it say somewhere what the libraries are streaming from. The drive, hardware/enclosure particulars would be good to know.
Hey, this is Mac Pro trash 🗑 can test / iMac 🖥 test... not Mac Pro 2020 (checking last section of video)
FYI Mac Pro uses 3rd Gen Motherboards, and AMD is using 4th.
PCIE 4 the starting point for throughput 2020... directionally speaking. Don’t stress, (scamming the industry at these prices.)
“Monopoly oversight pls”
GlobeHB it’s an iMac Pro.
Christian Henson Music Yep 👍 thanks ... trash can Mac Pro is question these days. Which question, I don’t know
Congratulations Christian! May you have many wonderful hours of happy creation on your new Mac and may you never experience the beach-ball-of-death. :)
I have an iMac Pro with top specs - 18 cores, 4tb, 128gb ram. I break mine daily with 40-50 virtual instruments and 2 or 3 plugins on each track. I'm honestly considering getting rid of it to go back to the Mac Pro as I haven't noticed any improvement yet.
Spent an hour trying to load a relatively small project yesterday that had the colour wheel of death without any explanation.
No matter how many cores or rams are in it, Apple still manage to fuck it up.
Did you get this working properly? I have similar issues with my iMac Pro
Wow! I was just planning on buying a similar used iMac Pro and then I read this. How is that possible? And have you fixed it?
@@Dustiliciousz no I ended up selling it. I now have a maxed out MacBook Pro and works almost as well albeit with less VST instruments due to the smaller amount of ram. Works fine though
Does anyone here have experience with the fan noise on the new imacs? I mix with open backs and my current macbookpro is way too loud. I'm wondering if the fan rarely comes on with a powerful imac under heavy music production or if it is always running? Also how loud is it?
Hi Christian, great vid new subscriber. Please could you include side-chain compressors and bussed channels, These are real world applications often overlooked in benchmark tests as it forces the computer to run multiple channels through a single thread.
Such testing should be done at 64 or even 32 buffer. The challenge is to run the computer at low latency.
Absolutely....alot of us are using real instruments in the studio and would love to see the real time latency with both models and know the full specs of both systems.
uau very danny elfman
Thanks for this Christian and GREAT piece. I was curious this week whether the Spitfire programmers prefer to use PC or mac to write their kontakt script? And if they do prefer one or the other, why?
So what you are saying with this channel is... "I've worked my bollocks off, I'm in the one percent, I'm firing on all cylinders, and life's fucking funny in'it". LOL You are cracking me up sir. All power to you... keep going up that hill.
I have very similar computer but I’m using Ableton and Cubase and can’t open so many plugins without using Vienna Pro.
Is it Logic Pro optimized so well that it’s possible to open so many instances of Kontakt? Also, what was a buffer size and processor load in Logic. Next time please show same test with Omnisphere:)
Thanks!
You have spec'd the new iMac Pro with 128Gb RAM - the old Mac Pro was 64Gb. Have you done any tests to see how much RAM the full orchestra with reverbs uses? Is the significant extra cost of the additional RAM worthwhile? Any others' views on 128 vs 64? Many thanks Chris
Apologies if stupidly obvious - but why the need for the 2 USB hubs? I know the OWC hub is great and essentially breaks out the back panel of the iMac with USB 3/Thunderbolt. But i understood that USB3 was compatible with older USB 2 running at '2' speed? Is a USB 2 option specifically handy/essential to have in addition..?
This video seems to be great advertising for Logic Pro X which is hardware optimized.
Begs the question, was it really necessary to go the expense of the upgrade?
totally agree
j p a t t o n s t u d i o How could it be necessary if even mac pro didn't hit the ceiling. Not to mention that he bought with imac pro the overpriced display that he's probably not going to use. You better be using it to the max with that kind of prices.
Hey Christian. Is there a specific reason why you didn’t max out the number of cores on both machines? Why not 12 cores for the vader helmet? Better suited for composing needs? Single core vs multi core performance? Thanks and Greetings u
Thanks for the test! But I really want to know the buffer size, is it possible to set 64/128 or even lower! By the way, how is the working temperature of the iMac Pro? Thx in advance!
Interesting test, thanks for doing it. You're using an 8 core cylinder, too, aren't you? One additional factor here that I didn't hear you mention was your buffer settings on these two machines. That can make quite a bit of difference. If you're willing to put up with latency, you can really squeeze a lot out of a 2013 Mac Pro.
BTW, if you're looking for something that will help "break" a project for this sort of testing, try using some multi engine instances of Galbanum B-2 reverb. That'll bring your machine to its knees. ;) Are you familiar with B-2? Fantastic, detailed, magical reverb, but uses a ton of CPU cycles (I usually freeze tracks using it). Amazing tool, though. My favorite reverb, but I have to plan how I use it. In contrast, Space Designer is extremely efficient. You can use tons of Space Designer instances without stressing the machine.
amazing video. now please give some poor people 0,0000000000001% of your money to buy this imac pro :D
Do you not like running a Vienna Ensemble Pro host/server environment? The iMac Pro plus the 2013 Mac Pro as a VE Pro slave would be very nice.
That for me would be a backward step. Slaving places a rigidity to the way one approaches orchestral programming.
Could you maybe repeat this test with a similar session with the picture running inside of Logic instead of in Pro Tools? Or could you try bouncing a whole reel with the picture running? That'll give us a very good idea of how much the iMac Pro can really handle. Thanks!
Hi, there is any chance to test a super heavy project cpu stress and bounce (realtime and offline) times on the new Mac Pro "2019"? I would be awesome. Thanks!
I'll be running this test tomorrow. I'll report back.
I had no doubts about the iMac Pro's ability but it's good to hear you're not finding the fan noise an issue. Hopefully it stays that way.
As others have suggested, I think you'd probably be better putting your old screen back. Yeah it's a bit of a waste of that nice 5K iMac one but spending more money to tack on side monitors seems like the wrong approach.
It would also take the fans further away from you reducing any chance of them becoming an issue even if they did start to wind up.
Hi Christian, can you confirm the cylinder specs please? specifically processor and ram..thanks!
Seriously loving that curved Screen
and my computer has a stroke when I run zoom and chrome simultaneously
Last vlog I was wondering how you were recording your vocals. Just noticed on your other screen you have another Logic session running recording your voice. Thanks for making that visible! Going to apply this in my next video.
Now I'd love to know what cams you're using though! ;)
Were you loading all of the samples into RAM, or straight off the SSD's? Or a combination of using the DFD buffer in Kontakt?
First of all: SUBSCRIBED. Second: thank you a thousand times for this. Like everyone it seems, my only concern with buying an iMac Pro is the potential for fan noise. How about this as a test: try 5 (or more!) instances of the RolandCloud JUNO-106. It's Roland's circuit-accurate recreation of their synth as a plug-in, and after 2 instances, it makes my 2015 MacBook Pro's fans howl. I would love an iMac Pro if it can handle the load silently.
Such a great review! Thank you Christian. I definitely will be getting the old 2013 Mac Pro and save thousands. Can you tell me what your specs are for that machine? Was it just maxed out?
Hey Christian, I have a question: Do you think that the USB C Vs Thunderbolt 2 made a difference in data access to the libraries?
Thanks for your help!
Mauro
Thanks for this. Yes a Mac Pro with decent size screen is the better solution for me.
Thanks for this Christian! I'd love to see how it deals with waves H-Reverb - That's general the main 'kill switch' for my old tower mac pro - about 4-5 instances of it are enough. Surprising how well the trashcan mac handled it.
can it handle plugging is the biggest question
What was your buffer settings and RTL during those tests ?
Thanks for sharing this -- interesting to see. While I appreciate elements of the cloning process may be considered competitive advantage by your vendor, it would be really helpful to understand what they did to "seamlessly" move your system from the cylinder to the iMac (even if a high-level overview of the steps). As one contemplating this at some point, the move across with all the configuration/plugins/apps/etc. is a bit daunting.
I'll ask them for you, all I did was plug in a hard drive and give it to a DPD guy, left my studio for an afternoon and boooom! Awesome !
Thanks Christian!
Ed Masters : they used Carbon Copy Cloner. It makes creation of bootable clones really easy. Lots of info on their web site. I cloned my Mac Pro last month. bombich.com
Thanks
Ed Masters : you're welcome!
I would rather stick with the Mac Pro, really not a fan of iMacs.
Btw I'm getting some Harry Potter vibes with this testing part on Logic.
Just put the new iMac Pro behind the desk and connect that great ultrawide monitor to it. =D
Thanks, Christian! I'd love to know the specs of the iMac Pro that you are using.
This iMac is over £9000, so would expect performance for that!
Mac = Rolls Royce of computers.
Capable of anything!!!!
I would love to hear your thoughts of buying this version of the Mac Pro today and if you think that the machine is still viable in lets say the upcoming 5 years? As someone in need of a new machine probably before the new Mac pro comes out, it would be appreciated to hear your thoughts.
thanks for the videos and looking forward to the upcoming tests!
Somebody show him how to shift+click to select multiple items and cmd+d to duplicate
How do you like the OP-1? Always wanted one but to pricey for my taste.
is it safe to say that the Mac Pro cylinder is still viable?? Or should I wait for a 32gb MacBook Pro?
Can you please put all the tech specs of both the old and the new mac in the description?
Would it be possible to confirm how many cores you're running on the Mac Pro. I'm on the 6 core and am running into all sorts of CPU issues.
6 core too
I wonder why you chose a 10 core instead of the 18 core? Does a10 core out perform an 18 core model?
I have a late 2012 iMac with an i7 3770 cpu and 16 gigs of ram. It really is incredible how much it can handle still to this day. I never feel like I’m hitting any limits other than memory.
Harrysound I’m in this same club, am grateful it has lasted me this long and still goes pretty well! Won’t last forever though, just hoping I have a spare £8k in my wallet when the time comes to move on...
Rob Northcott Apple are starting to take the piss with their 20% price hike after Brexit. That’s all the thanks the uk customer gets for letting them pay no tax. I just pretended I went to Telford university and saved £300 :)
I have the same machine. It's held up quite well.
so you dont use any dsp accelerator here?
Does the speed of the external drive matter in performance of the workstation? I.e will a HDD work just as smooth as a SSD?
It is (IMHO) the single most important factor.... SSDs all the way and fast ones!
Seems like you asked for suggestions for a nuttier test for your new Mac... if so, possibly slap in LOADS more TRACK AUTOMATION, as well as some ZEBRA and OMNISPHERE patches, to see if you can choke it out... or get it on the verge. Really great A&B though, of these tow machines!!! Many thanks!
Oh yeah! And if you can "play in" a part from a CPU heavy *anything* (and possibly a "mult") on top of a track count like this. And a sheetload of Altiverb. Maybe adjusting some parameters in real time, during playback?
Didn't intend to make that word bold, lol.
YES! I want to see "the worlds biggest orchestral template"- bench test. (With lots of automation and lots of notes!)
Now please make the same exact tests NOW. Just tinder how much speed macs lose over time
If you’re really interested in hearing the fan noise, just heat the cores from Terminal command line:
yes > /dev/null &
Up arrow and repeat for as many core instances as needed.
killall yes
to terminate the stress test.
What keyboard controller are you using "006?"
great video, I am glad I came across your channel it really made my day.
I like videos but I would also love to see more tutorials on composition and Logic Pro.
Is this a Harry Potter musical clip?
What an amazing set up! Could you please share the model of the arm for the IMac?