Mac Studio M1 MAX Performance Report

[songseeds]

If you're wondering what the real world increase in performance is, I've got news.

I upgraded from a Mac mini Intel i7 6-core to the Mac Studio M1 MAX.  When purchasing I upgraded the Mac Studio RAM to 64GB and the storage to 1T.

After installing in my studio I brought up a project I had been mixing with the Mac Mini into Logic on the Studio to do more work.  Because I still have a few plugins that aren't yet Apple silicon ready, I'm running Logic under Rosetta.

Here's some details of the project:

 

The song has 36 tracks.

There’s:

• 4 software instruments (Logic Vintage B3, Logic Studio Strings), UVI Workstation, Sonic Academy ANA 2 (5 instantiations)
• 31 FabFilter Q3 EQs
• 1 FabFilter L2 limiter (with 4X oversampling set)
• 8 Sonnox Limiters
• 1 Waves Reel ADT (a processor heavy plugin)
• 2 iZotope de-essers
• 2 Apogee Clearmountain reverbs
• 2 Soundtoys reverbs
• 1 Logic Space Designer reverb
• 2 Soundtoys micro shift
• 1 Soundtoys phase mistress
• 1 Soundtoys Devil-Loc
• 5 FabFilters Saturn 2
• 4 Slate Virtual Tape Machines
• 2 Waves CLA-2 compressors
• 12 Slate FET compressors
• 2 Slate VCA compressors
• 2 Slate Distressor compressors
• 1 Slate custom EQ
• 1 Slate buss compressor
• 1 D16 delay

I initially had the queue set to 1024 (which I often do for mix down).  Just for kicks I thought I'd lower it to 512 and see if my Performance Meter started showing increased load.  It did NOT.  So I lowered it to 256.  No change.  128.  Same.  OK, now I'm starting to freak.  Surely I'll see some increase in thread load at 64 but NO.  OK, taking it ALL THE WAY now to 32.  AND STILL NO CHANGE IN THE THREAD LOAD!!!!!!!

This project would barely play on the mini with a queue at 256 and would occasionally stop at 512 just to give you some perspective.  

Here's a screen shot of the project running and you can see how low the thread load is with the queue at 32.  

So, if you're thinking about getting a Studio I can say with first hand experience that for me, it definitely was well worth making the change.  I can't wait until all the software companies are running on silicon.  The Mac Studio is awesome.  

 

Edited May 19, 2022 by songseeds
unfinished sentence

[David Nahmani]

Thanks a lot for sharing this case study with us! 😀