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FlowerPower

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    MacBook Pro (M3 Max)

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  1. No, but there's a discussion about it here – where a somehow useful workaround is mentioned: https://vi-control.net/community/threads/can-you-move-notes-diatonically-in-the-logic-score-editor.149556/
  2. Hi. I rarely rely on battery power, but I haven't been traveling since I bought it. "Hope your machine is serving you well-is it?" I've had some serious with noise bursts, but I don't know if this has to do with the OS, the Mac itself, or the sample libraries I use. It could be compatibility issues, since I've used Kontakt 6 and 7 even if they aren't officially supporting Sonoma. Opening existing projects based on Kontakt 5 is also troublesome. I wish Logic had built in emergency solutions. In my kitchen there's warning if it's too hot around/above the stove, or to0 wet under the sink + the stove is disconnected from the power – and the water is automatically cut off if needed, but loud noises, feedback, unexpected noise bursts etc aren't automatically muted in any DAWs yet AFAIK. Other than the above (which may not be the MBPs fault at all), I'm still very impressed with what the M3 MBPs can do.
  3. I don't actually know if it's Logic or the OS (and/or other apps and background activity) which uses the E-cores, but the advice I've received has been for this Mac is to start with using either use automatic mode or to set Logic to use all the P-cores. Automatic mode in Logic has "Recommended" next to it, and so far, this has worked well. The info here is also useful: https://support.apple.com/en-us/101921 "Many factors influence how macOS distributes the workload to the cores on your Mac. The optimal value for the Processing Threads setting can vary depending on the apps you're using simultaneously, your hardware, and your Logic Pro projects. Selecting the highest number of processing threads may not always be the best choice. Experiment with different settings to determine the best balance of performance and reliability. * Hyper-Threading is a feature of Intel-based Mac computers."
  4. I'm pretty sure that the hardware/software tries to deal with situations where users need to handle more samples/data than 64 gb og a 64gb Mac, but the main two reasons I went for 128 gb is that I don't plan to buy any more Macs (128 gb is more future proof than 64) – and that those I have been in touch with who have a M3 Max recommended that much RAM. It costs a little more, but selling a Mac and buying a new one also costs money. Regarding using automatic core distribution mode: I tried a few things, but I'm convinced that the Apple coders and this Mac knows a lot more than I do about which core distribution config that's best for this kind of work. Here's my core distribution options in Logic: For the kind of work I do, a Mac with as many Performance Cores as possible is the best solution. The first five options on that list allows me to not use as many P-cores as possible – but I don't need that now. Should need it in the future (eg. due to running other performance intensive apps in the background, like VEPro or Dorico), I'll still trust that automatic mode knows what to do – and if not, I'll try to instruct some of these apps to user more/fewer cores. The 12/12 option in the list above says that Logic will user 12 P-cores, but no E-cores. The 14/12 option means that 12 of the 14 cores Logic is set to user are P-cores, meaning that the two last one are E-cores. So, both the two options at the bottom lets Logic grab 2 or 4 Efficiency Cores as well in addition to the 12 P-cores. But not only do I trust that the automatic mode takes care of this for me, I have seen in the Activity Monitor several times that there's more activity* in the E-cores than in the P-cores (used by the OS it seems, not Logic). *related to how much power each of these cores have, P-cores are a lot more powerful than E-cores. I don't want to interfere with that, because If I/Logic would force the system to use E-cores, especially if I'd go for Logic using all cores (12 High Performance Cores + 4 Efficiency Cores), the OS and all it's background tasks would (according to people I know who have more experience with M3 Macs than me) struggle. Or, if I understood this right, it would struggle if using 14/12, and more or less explode if I used 16-12.... kind of. Well, not really, but even when just writing some text right now, this is how the four first cores (the E-cores) look (when Logic is open in the background, but not playing anything: Here's what it looks like after Logic has been in Play mode for a couple of minutes: "But by the sounds of things you seem to be very happy with your purchase, which is great!! " Sure! Just for fun I even tried running it with two external monitors in addition to the built in Retina display AND using a 5k iMac as a fourth monitor (wirelessly), and this also worked well – even on battery. It probably wouldn't last that long, but I'll never need to use that amount of monitors. While I plan to not replace this Mac ever (hence my configuration), those who buy a new Mac every few years may be better off with a more modest configuration, if they don't not need all that power/memory etc in the foreseeable future. Good luck with your Mac!
  5. I have, and wrote something about it here:
  6. You’re welcome! Here’s a copy if something I wrote on another forum, in response to someone who wondered if these Macs could handle the 200+ tracks he’s working with: I've done some experiments now. I made a test project which is different from having 200+ Kontakt instances, but which had 14 libraries/presets, but with a twist: most track had 5 voices of polyphony, all done with legato presets, and most of these tracks used two or three mic options. I used libraries like SSS, Berlin Strings etc, Modern Scoring Strings – most of them had 4 or five dynamic layers. On each track there was CC1 automation – five times, one for each instrument section (V1. V2 etc). For Synchron Strings and SF Appassionata I had only one section. While doing this I looked at both Logic's own Performance Meter and the Activity Monitor in Sonoma, and the results were quite interesting. First of all, Logic's Performance Meter for all the 12 cores showed that all these cores generally used 25% or less of their capacity. Logic was set to Automatic core distribution, and that resulted in a mode where it 'only' used the 12 performance cores, but the Activity Monitor showed activity in the 4 efficiency cores as well, and in general there was more activity in the e-cores than in the p-cores. Logic itself didn't use more than 15-20% of the CPU power, but "AUHostingService (Logic Pro)" used a little more than 200%, whatever that means. In terms of memory, Logic used only 8-900 mb, but "AUHosting Service (Logic Pro)" used circa 72 gigabytes. There was no disk activity according to Logic's Performance Meter, but that's probably because all the needed 70 gigabytes was in RAM already. I don't know how the performance and RAM these 50+ instruments used compare with your 200+ track projects, but for what I do, this is good news. Remember I didn't play back a real piece, there was activity on all track all the time, including CC automation and multi-mic setups. Normal music has lots of pauses, so all instruments never play all the time. My impression, so far, is that this Mac would be able to run a 200 track project too, especially if it was actual music on the tracks and not the nonsense I put on these tracks. The reason I think 200 tracks would work well is that with the 50+ Kontakt/Sine sections I had in test, the Mac used less than 25% of its power. OTOH I didn’t have any fast runs or vibrato automation, so this isn’t fully documenting a real world scenario. Btw, I did this while in normal power mode, plugged into the wall, but I can try a battery based experiment also, and Low Power Mode. Btw, I used a 4k iMac as a monitor, wirelessly, when I tried this – which eats some some performance as well. This test project ran well with both a 32 buffer and a 256 buffer, but with the 32 buffer, it had some hiccups during the first playthrough. The only downside I can think of with this M3 Max MBP is that that the latency is higher than on the 2020 Intel iMac I came from. This is kind of important, because in real life we don’t just open test project’s of course – we experiment with many different sounds, layers etc, and we certainly don’t want hiccups while doing that. This means that using the 32 buffer may not be a good choice when recording stuff.
  7. Sure, the default behavior is this: ...and if you for some reason have altered the key command for Force Syncopation, or used the factory key command Control-Shift-Y, you may have forced that look onto that bar without actually wanting it. You can also achieve this look by entering these settings... ...but it's unlikely that someone does that without noticing it – unless they have entered these values in some previous project and turned that project into a template. Most likely, you have activated Syncopation, here...
  8. IMO the black one looks better, but I went for the silver version. From what I've heard there will be more fingerprint marks etc on the dark one (even after some improvements since earlier dark-ish models), and when traveling with it, I want it to look more like a regular MBP than one of the more expensive models in case there are someone who would be tempted to try to steal it. If I would have been doing a lot of life stuff I would have ordered the darkest model, since it stick less out on stage, and maybe the dark one is easier to sell at some point than the silver, but I'll keep it. If I ever should buy something similar in the future, it would be an M3 (or M4, M5 etc) based iPad. Btw, there are many YouTube clips discussing which of the M3 models that are worth investing in – and I remember several of them suggests that the M3 Pro models may not be such a good investment. If ay of you are considering the M3 Pro MBP, maybe it's worth checking out some of these clips. This one, OTOH, seems to be a lot more than just promising, and I keep discovering brilliant improvements over earlier models – like not only better audio quality in the headphone outputs, but also that the headphone outs are loud enough to drive high impedance cans.
  9. Sure, and the two 2020 iMacs are the two Intel iMacs with highest single core performance (according to Geekbench) – but are now superseded by 40 Apple Silicon Macs. Btw, the 16-core M3 Max read speeds are also better than the results I posted for the 8tb model, and when working with large orchestral sample libraries, read speed is more important than write speed. OTOH, if you mainly work with audio and/or a reasonable amount of synths, you'll probably be fine with 64 gb – and as mentioned, much faster freeze/unfreeze also makes life easier with computers with specs like these. The new Macs come in many different configurations, with various amount of memory bandwidth, cores etc., so make sure you order the model that's best for you. Remember that performance cores is more important for music production than efficiency cores (which is why I went for the 16-core and not the 14-core). Also (when your Mac arrives): increasing buffer sizes don't work the same way on M-Macs as they do on Intel Macs. Using the default settings and a 128 or 256 buffer may give the best results (unless you can go even further down), and some say that in some situations, it may be a good idea to lower (!) the Process Buffer Range from Medium to Small – and/or forcing Logic to use only the Performance cores.
  10. Hi, I ended up with M3 Max with 128 gb RAM and 4tb internally. For some reason, it isn't as fast (mainly for write) as the 8tb Geekbench-mark I shared earlier, but still absolutely good. First, for comparison, here are the results from the 2020 i7 iMac (since I'm on that Mac right now): Edit: this was the first post I wrote!
  11. I already posted a reply (twice!), but it doesn't seen to have popped up yet. Anyway, here are the M3 Max results: I'm not done transferring everything I need from the Intel Mac yet, but so far it looks very promising. Since both Macs are on Sonoma, I've started using, for now, the iMac as a wireless 27" sidecar (since the 16 inches I have on the MBP is way too little), and it's very well implemented, no noticeable lag and lots of different resolutions to choose from. Since this M3 reads at 5900 and writes at 7200, opening large projects, freezing/unfreezing etc of course is much faster. The iMac reads @2800 and writes @ 2300, but the speed has more than doubled – since I (on the iMac) had the samples on an external OWC m2 enclosure which reads/writes at 1500. The price for the MBP was massive, but If I'll have it for 10 years, I decided to think of it as what it would cost me to have it per year. If I need more than 4 tb, I'll keep the most important stuff internally, and use the drive I mentioned earlier (ZikeDrive Z666). Edit: I just had a look at the Geekbench benchmarks, and the fastest Mac on that list had single core performance at 3128, and multi core performance at 21321. Some claim that the Cinebench benchmarks are more real life oriented, and I don't even know how relevant these numbers are for someone who mainly uses the Mac for composing music with sample libraries. Anyway, since the M3 MBP I have has multi core performance at 21240 and single core at 3232, these numbers are to my surprise better than the best multi and single result on those Geekbench lists for Mac. It's still possible to overload single tracks of course, but this is the first time I've had the feeling that I'll just keep this Mac forever. If it gives me overload messages, I'll just spread things over more tracks (if that helps), or maybe even better: write something with fewer notes instead 🙂
  12. Not as far as I know (although it's an old function I often forge that exist). Logic has one really good and one good (it doesn't feel complete yet) functions related to writing eg a four voice vocal arrangement. The good one is IMHO explode polyphony: "You can “explode” polyphonic parts in Logic Pro for Mac, displaying all voices on separate staffs, regardless of staff style settings. (Other voice parameters remain valid.) This makes it easier to add notes using the pointer. If you add a note to a staff style that uses MIDI channels for voice separation, it’s automatically assigned the corresponding MIDI channel (of the staff that you add the note to). When you’re finished adding notes, turn off the Explode Polyphony setting so all voices are displayed correctly in one staff. If you add notes to a polyphonic staff without turning on the Explode Polyphony setting, the notes are assigned the MIDI channel set in the Insert Defaults of the Event inspector (but only if that channel is used by one of the voices in the staff)." It's a lot more brilliant than what most users think it is (well, most users don't know what it does or how it does it). The other one is that if you assign the Singer A to channel 1, Singer B to channel 2, C to 3 and D to 4, the notation will look the way it should on screen/print, which makes it a lot easer to read (requires some editing). These two functions makes life a lot easier in many situations. Unfortunately, dealing with polyphonic voices the way Logic does has a disadvantage and partially feels like a workaround. Why? Because they used the existing MIDI channels numbers instead of adding a dedicated parameter for Voice number. This is important, because there are many situation where one would need both. Nevertheless, the Kontakt function above can be useful, but the big thing about all this is that the use of Explode (and implode) polyphony means that you can record one voice at a time, making sure each of them get a separate MIDI channel, and then (with a click) between seeing the choir or string arrangement the way it would look if it was a piano piece ('imploded, all inside one region with a piano staff) or exploded – with one staff for Crosby, another for Stills, and third one for Nash and the last one for Young. The reason so few people user this is IMHO that it hasn't been easy enough to record four voices into the same region, combined with the sad fact that Logic still shows, by default, polyphonic material in Score in a rather chaotic way without an amount of manual editing. Performer, for instance, has always been better at this – and Dorico is better at this and also has a separate parameter for voice numbers – independent of MIDI channels. When using the above Kontakt version, Kontakt does nothing when experimenting with exploding/imploding – after all, they are on separate tracks already and therefore cannot be imploded. One could merge them later, of course, but there are several good reasons to switch between explode and implode mode in the arranging/composing process.
  13. Thanks, Dewdman! That's a function with a confusing name (if it doesn't initiate a 'record', it shouldn't IMHO have 'record' in it's name) that I hadn't tried until now.
  14. Someone helped me with a script which would force incoming notes from a MIDI keyboard to access another MIDI channel than the channel the MIDI keyboard was using, and that somehow worked. Still, it doesn’t (currently), since all the incoming notes end up as Channel 1 notes in the Event List – even if they are forced to act as channel 4 notes in my Kontakt Multi. This means that I can’t use explode polyphony, they will all play back on the instrument who is assigned to channel 1, and nothing is shown polyphonically correct in Score. The only thing which works is that if I force eg. Channel 4 onto the incoming notes, I can hear whatever is assigned to channel 4 while I record it. Due to all that, it’s not really a useful time saver, and not a useful way to work this way. I guess that of Logic got another MIDI-plugin, or a way to change the MIDI channel of the stored notes (and not only those who are played in real time), that would be a good improvement
  15. Thanks Dewdman – none of them are easy, and that's why I suggested, in this context, that an easy way to switch from channel 1 to channel 2 should be implemented in Logic in order to eliminate anything reminding about scripting. I know this isn't the right place to do so.
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