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The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

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Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#71

Post by kevingadd »

marcan_42 wrote: post #43

They're going to have to wait until the synth industry gets their act together and ports to Apple Silicon though. The DAW/music ecosystem is notoriously bad at these kinds of transitions. Due to how VSTs work, if any of your plug-ins are not ARM compatible, you have to run the whole plug-in host and all plug-ins under Rosetta, with the performance drop and stability compromises that that entails. And a lot of plug-in…

Couldn't you run a VST host in the Rosetta environment for your x86 VSTs and run everything else native in ARM in a separate host? Or does the VST model require that all the VSTs loaded run synchronously within a single process?

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#72

Post by TylerE »

kevingadd wrote: post #71
marcan_42 wrote: post #43

They're going to have to wait until the synth industry gets their act together and ports to Apple Silicon though. The DAW/music ecosystem is notoriously bad at these kinds of transitions. Due to how VSTs work, if any of your plug-ins are not ARM compatible, you have to run the whole plug-in host and all plug-ins under Rosetta, with the performance drop and stability compromises that that entails. And a lot of plug-in…

Couldn't you run a VST host in the Rosetta environment for your x86 VSTs and run everything else native in ARM in a separate host? Or does the VST model require that all the VSTs loaded run synchronously within a single process?

It’s within one process.

There are ways to bridge it but basically you have a native plugin shim that talks to a process running the target arch and essentially passes protocol messages back and forth. Was common for a while on windows when many plugins were 32bit only and wouldn’t run in a 64 bit host

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#73

Post by dingaling »

marcan_42 wrote: post #43

They're going to have to wait until the synth industry gets their act together and ports to Apple Silicon though. The DAW/music ecosystem is notoriously bad at these kinds of transitions. Due to how VSTs work, if any of your plug-ins are not ARM compatible, you have to run the whole plug-in host and all plug-ins under Rosetta, with the performance drop and stability compromises that that entails. And a lot of plug-in…

> They're going to have to wait until the synth industry gets their act together and ports to Apple Silicon though.

Why is it their responsibility? Apple has literally billions in the bank, they should be running an incentive scheme if they want more native ports.

This reminds me of people complaining that Docker doesn't run on Apple ARM yet. Why should it? Apple are the ones that changed the architecture.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#74

Post by mehrdada »

Reason077 wrote: post #69
mehrdada wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a huge M1 fan but that statement is almost true, but not quite there yet. I have experimented with a number of prebuilt machines with AMD Ryzen 3600X/3700X, Intel i7-10700, and Apple M1. Those (esp 3700X) are often slightly ahead of M1 (esp in Rosetta) usually at slightly cheaper prices [often discounted too] compared to the base model Mac mini, admittedly at a much higher power consumption, noise, physical size…

As you say, you're comparing a far higher TDP chip here (Ryzen 3600X/3700X). I don't think those can realistically fit into the Mac Mini's form factor, right? Surely we should be comparing the M1 to the "U" series Ryzen chips?

I was comparing M1 to higher TDP chips, yes. If you take TDP into account M1 wins hands down, of course (unless your workload requires more than 16GB RAM). The context of this post is specifically the price-sensitive customer, not a TDP/space-focused one (compare to this[1] for example, once you upgrade RAM and SSD, and install a decent cooler). You also get better I/O in the PC world.

[1] https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/7814504/HP-Pavilion-T...

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#75

Post by top10 »

renewiltord wrote: post #51
jzwinck wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People go to Broadway shows to see live performances, and music is a big part of it (in some shows, the biggest). You may say the audience won't know the difference. But word will get out. Audiences may not be willing to pay premium prices for prerecorded content.

Actually, what is the reason for that? If we had computer-linked humans act a scene, then record all of their interactions, and then have them perform that ten nights in a row as live marionettes replaying their original actions from the computer, is that worse or better? Does the potential for failure and variation attract the audience? Or just the fact that the medium is much higher fidelity: stage actors are human…

The reason for that is that most humans like other humans.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#76

Post by Sholmesy »

dingaling wrote: post #73
marcan_42 wrote: post #43

They're going to have to wait until the synth industry gets their act together and ports to Apple Silicon though. The DAW/music ecosystem is notoriously bad at these kinds of transitions. Due to how VSTs work, if any of your plug-ins are not ARM compatible, you have to run the whole plug-in host and all plug-ins under Rosetta, with the performance drop and stability compromises that that entails. And a lot of plug-in…

> They're going to have to wait until the synth industry gets their act together and ports to Apple Silicon though. Why is it their responsibility? Apple has literally billions in the bank, they should be running an incentive scheme if they want more native ports. This reminds me of people complaining that Docker doesn't run on Apple ARM yet. Why should it? Apple are the ones that changed the architecture.

It's naive to think that Apple needs Docker more than Docker needs Apple.

If Docker didn't support Apple devices going forward, they would lose a significant amount of users.

If Apple doesn't support docker going forward, they lose a tiny percentage point.

That being said, its mutually beneficial, so Apple should be putting their best effort to making the transition smooth (which I think, at least from an outsiders perspective, they are)

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#77

Post by archi42 »

I'm puzzled why there is such a strong dependency on Mac? I mean, the M1 looks pretty nice; but if the author is budget constrained AND the hardware is too slow, wouldn't "normal" computers with Windows/Linux make much more sense anyway?

I fondly recall how a good friend of mine was impressed by the compute performance of the Apple based workstations at her university. I convinced her to get a PC for the same cost as the Mac, and then she complained how slow the university Macs suddenly felt. (That was ca 2014).

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#78

Post by sgt »

archi42 wrote: post #77

I'm puzzled why there is such a strong dependency on Mac? I mean, the M1 looks pretty nice; but if the author is budget constrained AND the hardware is too slow, wouldn't "normal" computers with Windows/Linux make much more sense anyway? I fondly recall how a good friend of mine was impressed by the compute performance of the Apple based workstations at her university. I convinced her to get a PC for the same cost as…

Windows is a complete mess these days from a usability perspective and even Microsoft doesn't seem to care much about it. As for Linux, rock stable once you get it running (at least the OS itself) but lack of software support and other quirks makes it less desirable on the desktop.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#79

Post by sgt »

mahkoh wrote: post #58

Wow so it turns out that Broadway (!) had really bad digital sound until Apple came out with its revolutionary new design. When you go to a show next year, you'll be able to hear the quality of the M1. And it will only get better with the M2, the M3, and the M4.

In fact, it'll eventually get so good we'll be the bottleneck. We're gonna need new ears, folks.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#80

Post by cyberdelica »

gamblor956 wrote: post #19
forrestthewoods wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many professional audio software suites have historically only run on macOS. I think that’s started to change over the past 5 years. But moving from macOS to Windows is a big, big effort for most orgs.

Most audio software suites were historically dual-OS, or Windows only, for example, Cakewalk, AVID ProTools, and Ableton. Even Logic started as a Windows-first DAW. Indeed, the whole point of Apple buying Logic (and discontinuing the Windows releases) was that they needed a DAW on MacOS to get audio professionals to consider the OS. People don't remember this any more, but the Apple versions of Logic were very much i…

> Even Logic started as a Windows-first DAW.

I hate to be that guy, but your entire comment is full of wrong.

Firstly, Emagic "Logic" started on the Atari and Mac OS platforms. I'm not sure when it appeared on Windows, but it certainly wasn't a Windows first DAW. The Apple versions of Logic were never "very much inferior" to the Windows versions. In fact, it was the other way around.

> Indeed, the whole point of Apple buying Logic (and discontinuing the Windows releases) was that they needed a DAW on MacOS to get audio professionals to consider the OS.

The fact of the matter is, practically all "audio professionals" of the time period of which you refer, used Apple computers - either for MIDI sequencing, or Digital Audio Workstations. Windows computers weren't even a serious consideration. Those who didn't, still used Ataris, or hardware sequencers/recorders.

Pro Tools, originally by Digidesign, was Mac only for years also.

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