2019 Mac Pro with Logic

[Dewdman42]

I’m sure your new purchase will be great. Multicore performance will definitely be significantly faster I believe I stated that. Single core improvement is also a good step up from the 2010 machine but not as much as other less expensive models. Which I also stated.

 

If you don’t understand the distinction about single core vs multi core then it’s a moot point to discuss, enjoy your new Mac.

 

It’s also a cost value thing. A loaded up 16 core is a serious chunk of change.

 

Hey listen in a couple years if I can acquire a used 16 core for a reasonable price I just might, but I wish Apple would make an i9 beast in a case with pci, with specs like the hackintosh above and a lower price. That would be preferable for daw work.

Edited December 23, 2019 by Dewdman42

[bonebones]

Thanks Dewdman, I understand the distinction better than you think. I make and consult on a wide range of audio software some of which I am confident you use. Don't forget we can replace the CPU, some of my peers already have. Buying the 8 core and swapping out the CPU within the next year is a very real prospect. Apple won't update this machine for several years.

[Dewdman42]

And in a few years we shall see what happens and I’ll look at it again.

 

I really don’t think I could reccomend an 8 core now though based on speculation about future upgrades. If you want the nMp get the 12 or 16 like you have done. The 8 core is an expensive choice with mediocre performance.

[Ploki]

mini is very... stubborn. I've seen my score 6k, and people scoring 6400 on it.

[Dewdman42]

might be related to thermal throttling? No idea here, I just pulled the data from Geekbench5 website.

[Ploki]

might be related to thermal throttling? No idea here, I just pulled the data from Geekbench5 website.

 

very likely, you can pull at least 20% out of it if you put liquid metal on the chip and open the enclosure to increase airflow.

 

Project to be.

[tomorrowstops]

mini is very... stubborn. I've seen my score 6k, and people scoring 6400 on it.

 

I’ve been meaning to ask you for an update on life with the mini - are you still happy with it?

[Ploki]

mini is very... stubborn. I've seen my score 6k, and people scoring 6400 on it.

 

I’ve been meaning to ask you for an update on life with the mini - are you still happy with it?

yeah extremely, happens from time to time that i want more juice from it, but its not really often and not enough for me to explore additional cooling yet.

Also had some FCPX projects -and gpu is really s#!+. but again , i dont run into the gpu problem enough to warrant for a 500€ eGPU investment because i rarely work in fcpx.

 

i have it on my temporary studio desk sitting a little behind the screen, and the fan doesnt bother me at all.

 

will stay on the mini platform if they update it regularly, mac pro is too expensive for my current business level

[facej]

my 2019 iMac 8-core i9 scores 1150/7569 while listening to music and generally crapping around -

Metal computes - 42548 OpenCL - 38388

 

BlackMagic Disk Speed test (internal 1TB SSD) - 1800 write/1500 read - about 3 times faster than my ancient Fusion drive, and 3+ times faster than any SATA SSD connected via USB3...

 

$3200 - fantastic display - quiet - price/performance leader?

[tomorrowstops]

yeah extremely, happens from time to time that i want more juice from it, but its not really often and not enough for me to explore additional cooling yet.

Also had some FCPX projects -and gpu is really s#!+. but again , i dont run into the gpu problem enough to warrant for a 500€ eGPU investment because i rarely work in fcpx.

 

i have it on my temporary studio desk sitting a little behind the screen, and the fan doesnt bother me at all.

 

will stay on the mini platform if they update it regularly, mac pro is too expensive for my current business level

 

Nice. I still haven’t pulled the trigger on one, but I’m glad to hear an actual user’s feedback. But the fan runs frequently? Thats probably my biggest concern, hearing the fan. My current system, although not very powerful, is dead silent.

[Ploki]

The fans are silent when not under load, when under load they are quieter and have less high frequency content than any macbook pro i worked with + you can just push it a little further to the back

[sboulogne]

I am reading this thread with much intrest. I also have the Mac Pro 5,1 (mid 2010) which have served me very well for 8 years. Multi core is good, but Single core is very poor. I am also eying the new Mac Pro. I think the 12 core is more than enough power for me and the audio projects I currently do. For me I don’t think I will gain much from the 16 core and better spent that money on RAM or a new 4k display.

[Ploki]

12-core in mid2010 is like 4 cores in 2019 mac pro

[Dewdman42]

Well not quite, let’s not exaggerate. The 8 core nMP Multicore is only 21% improved. I’d have to sit down and figure that out but it might be close to a hypothetical 7 core nMP in terms of multi core comparison. Well true for single core it’s much improved by 50% and the core count hypothesis is not relevant for that comparison.

 

There are lots of posts on gearslutz and ither forums with concerning posts about the nMP not speed stepping to maximum cpu clock speeds enough ( ie turbo mode). It’s possible that this part of why it’s such a disappointing improvement over the 2010 pro. Perhaps Apple will yet be able to correct something that makes better use of the CPU’s capability but as of now this appears to be a very under utilized situation. You can throw more cores at the problem with 16 or 28, but as noted earlier this is not where most daw users need the power. I suspect that if Apple upgraded the motherboard firmware and/or OS X to push those cores closer to 4ghz the single core performance would shine a lot more and so would multicore. But my understanding is that some of these Xeon setups with many cores run into various problems when trying to do that, which is probably why Apple has them running closer to base frequency.

 

50% improvement in single core is still something! It’s just a question of whether it’s worth the price. At current pricing we are talking like 5x the price of a 5,1, for 50-60% improvement with the 12 core model nMP

[Dewdman42]

Imho they should have built the 8 core nMP as i9 instead of Xeon, with higher clock speeds. I think the 8 code nMP will be considered a dud in the future. But it does at least have improved single core performance over the 2010, by 50%. Multi core performance is not significant enough to justify anything with that 8 core model. But maybe to get better single core and pci slots, could be ok, but imho not for the price they are asking.

 

In a couple years I will buy a used 8 core from someone that wishes they had gotten the 12 core. When I can get an 8 core nMP for maybe $3000, I’ll definitely get one.

[Plowman]

I must say, this thread has taken some of the bloom off the Mac Pro rose. I was holding vigil for it for years, as I presently work on a 3,1 8-core, early 2008 with a humble 16 GB, running Mojave via dosdude's patch software. I'm now puzzling out a real-world decision as to the financial and computing truths of my musical needs, and I'm feeling a tug towards the highest end Mac Mini with a whole lot of (user-installed) memory.

 

Dewdman42, if you could, I'd like your thoughts on the following. [Comments from others are also welcome.]

 

1. The importance of single core performance with VEP.

 

The only audio I have done (and anticipate doing ) is human singing to a sampled orchestra. My wheelhouse is Vienna Instruments, my sample library is extensive, and my Logic sessions nearly always take place in Main, Piano Roll and Score. I know you know the VSL world, as I read your posts at their forum.

 

So is what you're saying about single core performance as applicable to those of us who primarily just run sampled orchestras? Perhaps even more so?

 

2. External sample playback.

 

The highest 2 GB SSD in a Mac Mini is not enough for my VEP / Kontakt needs. An external drive is inevitable, and it would need to stream the samples. I'm looking at drive bays to hold multiple SSD and standard drives -- 2.5 and 3.5 -- some of them transplanted from my 3,1 Mac Pro. Do you have any preferences regarding manufacturers or companies for external drive bays?

 

3. Four monitors.

 

I have two ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT cards in my Mac Pro, each with two ports. Could a Mac Mini drive four monitors (with HDMI, DVI, VGA ports)? I know I would need adapters.

 

Again, this is a meaningful if sobering thread, and I am grateful for your contributions here and on other forums.

[Dewdman42]

Just one man's opinion....

 

I must say, this thread has taken some of the bloom off the Mac Pro rose. I was holding vigil for it for years, as I presently work on a 3,1 8-core, early 2008 with a humble 16 GB, running Mojave via dosdude's patch software. I'm now puzzling out a real-world decision as to the financial and computing truths of my musical needs, and I'm feeling a tug towards the highest end Mac Mini with a whole lot of (user-installed) memory.

 

Almost anything you get now is going to be a HUGE improvement over what you have. Bear in mind that my comparison earlier in this thread was with a completely upgraded 5,1 MacPro, 12 cores at 3.46ghz. That is the max fast a 2010-era cheese grater could run after it had upgraded CPU and memory, etc..to the max of its capability. Your 3,1 8 core macPro will be substantially slower. What CPU is in it? You can always run geekbench5 yourself to get a score for your computer. copy the google spreadsheet I linked earlier...and then you can plug your own numbers into the first line instead of my 2010 MacPro, then you can see how the new machines compare to yours. All of them are going to totally smoke your 3,1 Mac Pro by a wide margin. So the question is whether you're ready to spend that much money or not. you would be getting a huge improvement over what you have.

 

I did not buy my 2010 macpro when it first came out, I bought mine in around 2015 I think, something like that. In 2010 I could not justify for myself the price of a new MacPro, just like I can't now. Maybe I'm just a cheapskate! I hate overpaying for stuff. I do drive around in a rather expensive car I bought new, so I don't know.. hehe..

 

In any case, for me it always comes down to evaluating the value. Any of the new Macs are going to be a mad improvement over what you have. Actually if you even bought a refurbished machine just like mine, for under $2k, it would probably be a big improvement over what you have now. that's not a terrible idea except Apple officially deprecated these from further OSX versions...so... You'd have to think of it is a temporary solution really, which might be well worth $2k to run for a few years to wait and see what happens with apple or these new macPros are more affordable... Or maybe its worth it to just pull the trigger and get one. (shrug). Everyone is different. I know if I were going to buy a new one I could not stomach paying something north of $6000, especially after upgrading ram and SSD, to get an 8 core nMP. For me I'd rather pay a bit more and have the 12 core model. But seriously, all fit up, we're looking at something north of $8k for that. So for me...not only am I perfectly content using my 5,1 macPro a few more years, but I would still heartily recommend buying a refurbished one! Just realize, in 3 years you'll be ready for something new most likely.

 

1. The importance of single core performance with VEP.

The only audio I have done (and anticipate doing ) is human singing to a sampled orchestra. My wheelhouse is Vienna Instruments, my sample library is extensive, and my Logic sessions nearly always take place in Main, Piano Roll and Score. I know you know the VSL world, as I read your posts at their forum.

So is what you're saying about single core performance as applicable to those of us who primarily just run sampled orchestras? Perhaps even more so?

 

first all, you could get by for many years using a 2010 MacPro for what you're doing! You may be stuck on Mojave the entire time for it, but that computer can absolutely keep up with everything you are doing, and so will any of the new macs, with room to spare.

 

Secondly, when using VePro and VSL, the concerns are probably more about running out of ram than cpu. When you run instruments through VePro, you are adding extra latency. Will single core performance matter that much? Probably not for what you're running through VePro. Where you might notice is when you're tracking live vocals and only if those performers need to hear themselves through heavy FX while they sing, which for the kind of stuff you're doing I bet they aren't listening to themselves much at all and if so, dry. With better single core you might be able to get the sample buffer down to 64 or something have basically no noticeable latency. if singers listen to themselves through headphones while singing through a DAW with latency, what happens is they can hear phasing effects in their inner ear. I bet your singers are only listening to VSL samples while they sing....so non issue really.

 

In short, I wouldn't make a mountain out of a mole hill there. You don't need that powerful of a machine to do what you're doing but more RAM would be nice and I think you'd probably notice more breathing room in VePro too with more cpu power...regardless of whether its a 2010 mac, or something even newer...you don't need a top of the line mac.

 

2. External sample playback.

The highest 2 GB SSD in a Mac Mini is not enough for my VEP / Kontakt needs. An external drive is inevitable, and it would need to stream the samples. I'm looking at drive bays to hold multiple SSD and standard drives -- 2.5 and 3.5 -- some of them transplanted from my 3,1 Mac Pro. Do you have any preferences regarding manufacturers or companies for external drive bays?

 

Its one of the main reasons I am using a cheesgrater instead of say an iMac. It has drive bays and PCI slots and yes I'm using SATA3 ssd's on SATA3 pci card, with currently 4tb of space, but soon to expand to 6 or 8 tb. For me this is an important reason for a PCI based motherboard. Other people will disagree in a few minutes and say they love using thunderbolt based chasis some kind of external box for the extra data, but basically that is what you will be forced to do with MacMini, MBP or iMac. Performance wise they can achieve great results also, its fine, I just like having everything inside one box

 

 

3. Four monitors.

I have two ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT cards in my Mac Pro, each with two ports. Could a Mac Mini drive four monitors (with HDMI, DVI, VGA ports)? I know I would need adapters.

 

I have an upgraded video card in my 2010 MacPro. it has metal in order to run Mojave. I do notice a difference in performance and its a very great card. I am not running 4 monitors yet and I'm not sure what the limit of this card is, whether I would need two cards to run that many monitors or several at 4k or whatever. For now its more then enough power. Unfortunately I am not familiar with the limitations of the current MacMini's GPU, some others will hopefully comment. But I suspect that it's limited and you would need to get an external chassis to host PCI based GPU's in order to drive 4 monitors, but I could be wrong and look forward to hearing from others. If I were in your shoes, that would be a prime consideration to look at PCI based motherboards, which means either 2012 macPro or the new one just out.

 

But I am also interested to hear what can be done with the Mini with lots of monitor pixels to render.

 

In my case I have also opted to use a PCI based audio device with absolutely no intention of changing it. Its a fancy Lynx card that connects to an X32 mixer and gives me very low latency with incredible flexibility through the X32 for my studio monitoring. So for me, if I were to consider an iMac or mini, I would also be looking at external PCI chasis and all the rest and hell at some point it costs as much as a nMP, so might as well just drink the koolaid and get one. But me personally I am perfectly content with my 2010 upgraded to the max MacPro and will use it probably 3 more years....I expect the landscape to be completely different by then.

[facej]

The Mac mini can drive 3 displays - https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/specs/

Maybe if you could put a 10GB Ethernet card in your old MacPro you could use it as the disk array and shove the bits across the network - all depends on what read rate you need from your disks...1GB Ethernet can do 100 Mbytes/sec. 10GB should be faster by at least 5x. USB3 can give you 500Mbyte/sec with appropriate adapters. The Thunderbolt ports can give you better disk speed...

 

Maybe you could run BlackMagic Disk Speed Test and see what you actually can achieve from your current Mac. The internal SSD on the new mini should be able to give you read performance over 1,000 Mbyte/second.

 

WRT to PCIe audio...I use Dante to connect my Mac's in the studio - 4-6ms latency - there are Dante cards for many things these days, like X32/M32 and others.

 

Many issues, many solutions, just bring money

[Plowman]

“Bear in mind that my comparison earlier in this thread was with a completely upgraded 5,1 MacPro, 12 cores at 3.46ghz.“

 

Indeed. My Mac Pro is 2 x 2.8 GHz, Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5462.

 

“In 2010 I could not justify for myself the price of a new MacPro, just like I can't now. Maybe I'm just a cheapskate!” And I didn’t buy Geekbench because it’s five dollars….

 

Speaking of which: according to the free download version of Geekbench:

 

SINGLE-CORE

My Single-Core Score: 335.

Mac Mini @ 3.2 GHz (6 cores) : 1129

2019 Mac Pro’s 12-core: 1106.

 

Difference: nMP is about 330% faster.

Difference: Mac Mini is about 335% faster.

 

Price difference between Mac Pro / Mac Mini: approximately 5000 dollars!

 

MULTI-CORE

My Multi-Core Score: 1742

Mac Mini @ 3.2 GHz (6 cores) : 5675

2019 Mac Pro’s 12-core: 11662

 

Difference: nMP is about 669% faster.

Difference: Mac Mini is about 325% faster.

 

“Or maybe it’s worth it to just pull the trigger and get one. (shrug).”

 

Yes. * shrug * When the matter gets over-thought, a common reaction is to just throw money at it. The statistics grow obscure — I can see a percentage, but in real-world composing and orchestrating, who knows what it really means?

 

Such matters become pressing and vital because, in part, we don’t like spending money. It’s as much an exercise in psychology as math. Buying a car or a house are similar in this respect.

 

“Where you might notice is when you're tracking live vocals and only if those performers need to hear themselves through heavy FX….”

 

Exactly. That’s really the only time I’ve had latency issues: sending FX to the singer. We worked precariously at a 256 buffer, slight phasing, sort of wet, and they soldiered on. Generally I can work with the orchestra alone at 512, though with Synchron, everything but the short sounds are nearly impossible [unless I use Room Mix].

 

“I just like having everything inside one box.” Hence my long vigil for the Mac Pro, and that’s why I’m a bit deflated by the thought of a Mac Mini.

 

Regarding internal drive bays, as I’m sure you know, the 3.1 takes a different drive sled than the 5,1. The 3,1 sleds were increasingly hard to find, but swapping them out has bought me time and worry-free OS upgrades.

 

Again, you’ve made a real impact on my approach to this purchase. Thanks for your time.

 

Here’s a link to an article that echoes praise for the 5,1 Mac Pro for creatives, as well as a discussion of upgrade paths.

 

https://create.pro/blog/mac-pro-51-best-system-creative-professionals-2018-internal-expandability-unparalleled-workstation-customisation/

[Plowman]

"Maybe you could run BlackMagic Disk Speed Test and see what you actually can achieve from your current Mac. "

 

Cool. I've never known exactly what read speed I'm getting. I can run a reasonably full orchestra with numerous articulations without stuttering, even with MIR Pro, which is remarkable considering the computer's eleven years old.

 

Thanks.

[Dewdman42]

“Bear in mind that my comparison earlier in this thread was with a completely upgraded 5,1 MacPro, 12 cores at 3.46ghz.“

 

Indeed. My Mac Pro is 2 x 2.8 GHz, Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5462.

 

 

Here are comparison graphs for your machine, I left my 5,1 machine config in there to compare that also.

 

 

Yes. * shrug * When the matter gets over-thought, a common reaction is to just throw money at it. The statistics grow obscure — I can see a percentage, but in real-world composing and orchestrating, who knows what it really means?

 

If you aren't having any problems with your 3,1; then don't buy a new one. Don't buy more then you need. A lot of people get hung up on thinking they need to have the fastest computer and they aren't even using the one they have to full capacity.

 

And personally I think you might be as strong candidate to pick up a refurbished 5,1 like I did. As long as you don't mind staying on Mojave for a few years.

 

“I just like having everything inside one box.” Hence my long vigil for the Mac Pro, and that’s why I’m a bit deflated by the thought of a Mac Mini.

 

I understand.

 

Regarding internal drive bays, as I’m sure you know, the 3.1 takes a different drive sled than the 5,1. The 3,1 sleds were increasingly hard to find, but swapping them out has bought me time and worry-free OS upgrades.

 

The new MacPro doesn't even have drive bays at all. It just has more PCI slots. The future is to use SSD drives directly mounted to PCI cards. If I were going to build up a brand new MacPro, I would put a PCI card in there with 4 m.2 drives on it. Totally different approach, but that also means i can't use any of my old hardware while building up the machine, which renders it even more expensive.

 

In the 5,1 machine, there are drive bays, but they are kind of antiquated sata2 ports. Its fine, I have mine booting from an SSD that way, its works fine, but when I added more storage I did it with a sata3 PCI card and mounted the SSD's directly to that card, not even using the drive bays in my 5,1 system. In the new MacPro, if you were going to try to mount a bunch of drives you already have, guess you'll have to also buy PCI cards to mount them with. There are a couple sata3 sockets on it, but I don't think there are any places to actually mount those drives...and there is something about the power for those also, its non-standard in some way.

 

I want to say also, that the 5,1 MacPro, even though its officially deprecated by Apple, p[eople will be running Catalina on them, and probably the next version of OSX also, just like hackintosh users will. It has effectively become itself a hackintosh in a way, for anything newer than Mojave. I actually don't have an issue running Mojave though, I have no plans to ever upgrade this box past Mojave. All things considered, the best value IMHO is to keep running the 5,1 MacPro (fully upgraded).

 

For you the big thing is you can set one up with 64gb of RAM, with 3.46 12 core processor, and it will be more than enough power to do everything you've been doing.

 

 

Here’s a link to an article that echoes praise for the 5,1 Mac Pro for creatives, as well as a discussion of upgrade paths.

 

https://create.pro/blog/mac-pro-51-best-system-creative-professionals-2018-internal-expandability-unparalleled-workstation-customisation/

 

 

Great article thanks and personally I think when it was written, it was absolutely correct. Now, its not clear other then cost. Someone might go ahead and make the leap to a new MacPro, and plan to run it 6-8 years. I personally think it will be unbelievably expensive. I can't justify it. I can easily justify running a machine like the one I'm using, which can be had for around $2k or maybe a little less, even including a refurbished warranty. My own plan is to run this a couple more years and then I will see what the situation is. I am not sure whether I will buy something from Apple or try to build a hackintosh, or switch to windows. Too early.

 

In my case, the only time I wish for more power is that sometimes when I'm using a hungry instrument plugin with some FX, I have to bump up the buffer to 256 or sometimes more, to avoid drop outs, and I'm not super happy with the latency at that setting. But that is really pretty rare that I have to do that. My machine can mix down 100+ orchestra tracks with only 25% cpu utilization and lots of room to spare. I haven't even tried to go bigger to see how big it can get, but it can do that and most of the time I don't have any problems with live mode. But a new mac would handle lower latency settings for sure and that is somewhat interesting, but not for the price tag Apple currently wants, so for me...the 5,1 is still doing great and will continue for a long time.

[Plowman]

"Here are comparison graphs for your machine...."

 

Suitable for framing. Very cool. It underscores how far behind I am.

 

"Don't buy more than you need."

 

To clarify, this purchase is driven by VSL's Synchron, whose four channel streaming has finally overstepped 3,1's ability to keep up. So "need" may be too strong a word, as VI Pro still chugs along, but Synchron is elegant and simpler, and I would like to migrate in that direction in the coming season.

 

"...you might be as strong candidate to pick up a refurbished 5,1 like I did." I wouldn't mind staying on Mojave, and the 5,1 adds the benefit of hard disk bays (though to swap, I'd need those new sleds).

 

"If I were going to build up a brand new MacPro, I would put a PCI card in there with 4 m.2 drives on it. Totally different approach, but that also means i can't use any of my old hardware while building up the machine, which renders it even more expensive."

 

After I read this, I researched the m.2 drives. Not cheap. I'd likely use a Thunderbolt external bay, even if it is not optimal, as I have about 15 TB of drives, including three SSD's.

 

"There are a couple sata3 sockets on it, but I don't think there are any places to actually mount those drives...."

 

This thing looks bizarre. Hey, it's only 2,300 dollars. What a steal. But this doesn't use the sockets.

 

 

This one attaches to the SATA port and power connectors. It's 400 dollars.

 

 

"... the 5,1 MacPro, even though its officially deprecated by Apple, people will be running Catalina on them...."

 

Would they do this with third party programs, like dosdude's patch software?

[Dewdman42]

By the way, when I first started using synchron I found some performance issues also but then I changed some preferences and got it performing much better and closer to vipro performance. I will have to look around to find out what I did.

 

I haven’t been following that closely what people are doing to install and run Catalina on the 5,1. Catalina is still not reccomended for audio work my many software makers so even if the 5,1 officially supported it I wouldn’t be running it. But I do know some people have got it running on the 5,1 so it’s only a matter of time until it becomes a mainstream thing to do. Not sure yet if dosdudes stuff will be needed or not or perhaps it will be the easiest way to do it. It will not require a firmware hack or anything. I think it may require a hack to the Catalina installer if I recall correctly and it’s possible wifi doesn’t work.

 

In the future I expect the next version of OS X or perhaps the version after that to not work on the 5,1 or be worth the trouble. I expect a lot of hackintoshes to break also.

[Dewdman42]

for Synchron, make sure to go into settings and check the box for "Lite Convolution". Bear in mind that Synchronized libs especially are applying convolution in order to get the room. Many of the presets also use an algorithmic reverb on top of that. But when I was trying to get it to perform better, turning Convolution to "Lite" seemed to make the biggest difference. Bear in mind that ViPro is not doing any convolution.

 

You can also increase the preload sizes a little bit and might get some cpu relief there.

 

I use MirPro myself, I generally disable convolution entirely inside Synchronized presets....so synchron player becomes in effect the same as ViPro...but with prettier colors and slightly easier GUI to work with. ViPro provides quite a bit more power in terms fo controlling humanization, the matrix and other stuff like that, I so still prefer it, but I did get a few synchronized libs to check them out..I still kind of prefer VI stuff through MirPro though.

[Makzimia]

@Dewdman42 Thank you for the comparisons, most useful!. I’m on my 2018 MBP now after stupidly giving up on my 2012 5.1 Mac Pro. It’s amazing how little the MBP handles compared to my 5,1, even though I’m now on thunderbolt 3 instead of FireWire for example. Definitely suspect single core speed as the issue. Logic Pro decides regularly to spit the dummy out on a very light project. I was going to go the new Mac Pro, lovely wife was fine.., I’m not. Leaning more and more to i9 iMac (pro?). I just really wanted drive bays again too...

[Ploki]

Using thunderbolt vs firewire shouldn't affect anything regarding performance tho

[Makzimia]

Using thunderbolt vs firewire shouldn't affect anything regarding performance tho

It does when you use an UAD Apollo .

[Ploki]

Using thunderbolt vs firewire shouldn't affect anything regarding performance tho

It does when you use an UAD Apollo .

 

oh, the UAD crowd.

[Makzimia]

So far, I love my UAD devices on TB3. I hate my external drive bay though, the MBP keeps losing it for a split moment at random times. It’s why I want internal slots and storage... arghhh..

[Dewdman42]

@Dewdman42 Thank you for the comparisons, most useful!. I’m on my 2018 MBP now after stupidly giving up on my 2012 5.1 Mac Pro. It’s amazing how little the MBP handles compared to my 5,1, even though I’m now on thunderbolt 3 instead of FireWire for example. Definitely suspect single core speed as the issue. Logic Pro decides regularly to spit the dummy out on a very light project. I was going to go the new Mac Pro, lovely wife was fine.., I’m not. Leaning more and more to i9 iMac (pro?). I just really wanted drive bays again too...

 

What are the specs of your 2018 MBP?