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Apple m1 macs with 16gb ram handling - Anyone tried?

It’s possibly still too early to find out the ultimate ability of these machines to “do an orchestra?”

AFAIK, Kontakt is still intel only and the Spitfire Player only exists in bleeding edge beta on Apple Silicon.

I think it’s already clear though, that unless you’re loading up mic after mic or running a huge template, you can do work on these machines, which is encouraging. At least we know Apple haven’t dropped the ball.
Both Kontakt and Spitfire run just fine in Rosetta. If you're going to use them in Logic you have to make sure Logic is also running in Rosetta, but other than that caveat it all works well.

I am looking forward to all of our software being written for M1; it will be interesting to see how much of a performance gain we get from not having a translator in the process.
 
I only just found out fabfilter plugs all support the M1 natively. (As of dec 2020 even!). Once izotope manages to get their products working on M1 (natively or even rosetta) I think we will have enough parts of our standard plugin set to do a trial run with one of these machines being an audio editing workstation (for sound post!). I've already successfully run some pretty big TV (5.1) mixes on one, but a bunch of the plugins wouldn't load so I just skipped over them. It seemed to handle the large sessions really easily. It bodes well for the future. Indeed, it seemed to run all the bussing even better than the mac pro (trashcans) that the session was originally made on.
 
Wow, I still haven’t seen the “tests” I was hoping to see, where an M1 with 16GB of RAM sputters to a halt with a “large” orchestral session that would normally use a “lot” more RAM on a Mac with an Intel chip.

Or even an M1 16GB Mac with a “large” VEP slave and oodles of RAM, running smoothly together.

Am I going to be forced to buy one to try this? :P
 
I only just found out fabfilter plugs all support the M1 natively. (As of dec 2020 even!). Once izotope manages to get their products working on M1 (natively or even rosetta) I think we will have enough parts of our standard plugin set to do a trial run with one of these machines being an audio editing workstation (for sound post!). I've already successfully run some pretty big TV (5.1) mixes on one, but a bunch of the plugins wouldn't load so I just skipped over them. It seemed to handle the large sessions really easily. It bodes well for the future. Indeed, it seemed to run all the bussing even better than the mac pro (trashcans) that the session was originally made on.
How many 5.1 tracks were in the session with the M1? Were they audio or MIDI (VEP)?
 
Wow, I still haven’t seen the “tests” I was hoping to see, where an M1 with 16GB of RAM sputters to a halt with a “large” orchestral session that would normally use a “lot” more RAM on a Mac with an Intel chip.

Or even an M1 16GB Mac with a “large” VEP slave and oodles of RAM, running smoothly together.

Am I going to be forced to buy one to try this? :P
It’s probably because most folks with that heavy of an orchestral setup/template wouldn’t really be interested in an entry level laptop in the first place. They’re probably holding out for the higher end systems.
 
It’s probably because most folks with that heavy of an orchestral setup/template wouldn’t really be interested in an entry level laptop in the first place. They’re probably holding out for the higher end systems.
Yeah. I guess I'd need to get my own Mini to satisfy my curiosity. :laugh:
 
Both Kontakt and Spitfire run just fine in Rosetta. If you're going to use them in Logic you have to make sure Logic is also running in Rosetta, but other than that caveat it all works well.

I am looking forward to all of our software being written for M1; it will be interesting to see how much of a performance gain we get from not having a translator in the process.
You don't have to run Logic in Rosetta to run Kontakt or Spitfire - both run just fine with Logic in M1-native mode. The one limitation is that Intel midi FX plugins (like Scaler/Orb/etc) don't seem to work with Logic in Native mode - they just don't do anything - so you do have to run in Rosetta mode for those.
 
Am I going to be forced to buy one to try this? :P
Why not go for the upcoming iPad Pro instead? It's probably gong to be just as good as a M1 Mac, and I'd be surprised if it won't run Logic, and have options for connecting external drives and all that. Who knows, maybe it will have more power than the current Ma Macs.
 
Why not go for the upcoming iPad Pro instead? It's probably gong to be just as good as a M1 Mac, and I'd be surprised if it won't run Logic, and have options for connecting external drives and all that. Who knows, maybe it will have more power than the current Ma Macs.
I think we'll have to wait about 24 hours to find out if this is actually an option.
 
I'd like to own a Mac Mini if it can handle around 300ish 5.1 audio tracks and a 2 dozen bus tracks for FX on Pro Tools.
 
I think we'll have to wait about 24 hours to find out if this is actually an option.
Sure, but I'll user the word 'when' instead of 'if'. It could happen at the Apple event tomorrow, and if not, it will happen later.

OTOH, they could also sell Mac minis with iMac specs, for a much lower price than the iMacs of course, but have decided not to do that, so it's also a question about how far they will go in competing with /outpricing their own (more pricey) products.
 
I tend to get the best overall performance and stability when running Logic in Rosetta mode, but 3rd party developer progress has been really impressive so far (this extensive M1 Native List keeps growing by the day). The main holdup right now is devs that use iLok for their copy protection. Because of PACE's sluggishness about half of my plugins still aren't native and even if their plugins are ready to go, without native iLok support they can't release them.
 
Why not go for the upcoming iPad Pro instead? It's probably gong to be just as good as a M1 Mac, and I'd be surprised if it won't run Logic, and have options for connecting external drives and all that. Who knows, maybe it will have more power than the current Ma Macs.
The iPad Pros have been head-scratchingly overpowered for such a long time now. I would definitely like to see Apple finally released some truly "pro" level apps to take advantage of their capabilities like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. If only Aperture could be resurrected (sigh).
 
I ended up getting the MacBook Air 16gb ram. I taped a 8tb ssd to the back cover. And have so many libraries at my disposal.

I realized I don’t stream that many samples all at once.
But if I need any then I do need them to go fast.
bo matter if it’s my 1tb Of sfx for movies or spitfire chamber strings.
Or a hiphop hat loop.

I gave up on the idea of moving to laptop once the i9 MacBook intel 64gb ram was such a let down w noise and heat.

I’m sure Apple will pull off the m1 equivalent. But now I just need something to replace my old 2012
That the USB ports fails, pad doesn’t work and it cannot do more than 4 tracks at once.

if there is any test anyone would like to do let me know.
I’ll see if I can load a crap load of Kontakt samples in update sample pool and play them one at a time and loop to see how far it can go and this new memory swap thing.
 
if there is any test anyone would like to do let me know.
I’ll see if I can load a crap load of Kontakt samples in update sample pool and play them one at a time and loop to see how far it can go and this new memory swap thing.
It would be super helpful to know how many Kontakt tracks you could run. And Spitfire player and SINE if possible.
 
I ended up getting the MacBook Air 16gb ram. I taped a 8tb ssd to the back cover. And have so many libraries at my disposal.

if there is any test anyone would like to do let me know.
I’ll see if I can load a crap load of Kontakt samples in update sample pool and play them one at a time and loop to see how far it can go and this new memory swap thing.
Yes, I want to see a ton of Kontakt libraries available to play and record MIDI. If you have them all in Update Sample Pool, I guess I’m curious about how many notes it takes to fill (what remains of the) 16GB lol!

Can you have 20 notes each of

WINDS x5 x2 x2
p,f,o,cl,b longs & shorts, ens & solo

BRASS x5 x2 x2
t,fh,tb,basstb or euph,tuba longs & shorts, ens & solo

Harp

PERC x5
Cym,snare,toms,bd,aux

STRINGS x5 x2 x2
v1 v2 vla vc cb longs and shorts, ensembles and soloists/fc
 
It would be super helpful to know how many Kontakt tracks you could run. And Spitfire player and SINE if possible.
Yes, I want to see a ton of Kontakt libraries available to play and record MIDI. If you have them all in Update Sample Pool, I guess I’m curious about how many notes it takes to fill (what remains of the) 16GB lol!

Can you have 20 notes each of

WINDS x5 x2 x2
p,f,o,cl,b longs & shorts, ens & solo

BRASS x5 x2 x2
t,fh,tb,basstb or euph,tuba longs & shorts, ens & solo

Harp

PERC x5
Cym,snare,toms,bd,aux

STRINGS x5 x2 x2
v1 v2 vla vc cb longs and shorts, ensembles and soloists/fc

I was able to load like 50-70 instruments maybe more. It was into ram using the update sample pool. 9gb of stuff. mostly cinesamples, albion, symphobia and few others.

I had issues with some random things like Kontakt not updated library location.
I used an old multi so it wasn’t that smooth sailing locating libraries.
Basically i have to trouble shoot some issues.

so far the memory swap was working. Ram load remain about the same 9gb no matter what I threw at it. never got a ram notice or error.

the bottle neck is due to streaming from one disk so much stuff at once. My ssd sata is 6g/s so i heard crackling and stopped at around 20 or so instruments playing at once and each playing 20 note blocks. somtimes before getting there. it wasnt that consistent.

the guy from sounds and gear seems to had better luxk than me with 64 at once but playing one note.

For now the test didnt go that well as i expected. Much better than my old 2012 macbook of course.
But between some issues with kontakt, streaming, drive and random things my test wasnt that helpfull this time.
Ill try later some other tests to see.
 
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