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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

#91

Post by kergonath »

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…

If performance is really a problem, there were faster Intel Macs than a mini, as well.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#92

Post by cyberdelica »

renewiltord wrote: post #49
supernova87a wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same reason that people hire a mediocre DJ at a wedding instead of just having a cousin operate an iPod playlist?

And what's that? Ease and quality of improvisation? Does the musician here improvise? Slight variation in each performance?

Compare Jimi Hendrix's studio recordings, with that of his live performances.

The main song in Phantom of The Opera, in the West End, is/was done to a click track - and the performance is/was noticeably flat because of it, in my opinion.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#93

Post by cyberdelica »

sgt wrote: post #79
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.

That just gave me a nice idea. There's probably a market for "audiophile" eardrops, to lubricate the outer ear, such that the sound waves effortlessly glide through the fleshy waveguide, to hit the tympanic membrane at optimum velocity - or something like that.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#94

Post by nvrGiveUp »

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…

Entertainers are not Engineers.

They fall for marketing significantly easier and use Veblen goods to signal wealth and power.

Then they get used to a system and it's all they know. It's more effort to change and they get locked in.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#95

Post by sharpneli »

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…

I bet macOS audio API's are way better than on Windows. I don't have experience of them myself but I have been burned by Windows ones.

I have a small story to tell about this. Windows WASAPI has a way for it to tell you when, supposedly, the endpoint device started the recoding of a buffer. This is important if one wants to have a sync with precision of sub millisecond range.

Well. It doesn't quite work like that in reality. I noticed the hard way that if one gets a 2ms long packet. Queries the high performance timestamp, then queries the packet recording time, then queries the timestamp again. The packet was supposedly recorded after the first timestamp but before the next. And as the packet was 2ms long and the previous timestamp was way way way less than 2ms from the query it means that it was impossible for it to start the capture at that point.

So instead of returning the start of the recording as per docs state WASAPI just returned the current high precision timestamp. It's basically you asking someone "Hey, this 10 hour video you gave me, when did you actually start recording it?" "Now. I started the recording right at this moment".

This story has a happy ending though. I grabbed portaudio, hacked it's windows low level implementation to return the actual timestamp based on the register of the soundcard that points to the FIFO buffer and managed to get sub ms precision.

So if macOS audio API's are as good compared to Windows (which is a dumpster fire unless one uses some custom stuff dependent on manufacturer) as iOS api's are compared to Android (where only Pixel phones are not dumpster fires) I can easily see why Macs are the devices of choice.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#96

Post by yodsanklai »

jzwinck wrote: post #44
fab1an wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a little weird, especially since the musicians aren't visible to the audience - why would you play live?

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.

I agree. I've only seen a couple of broadway shows, and simply seeing there were actual people playing music in the pit enhanced the whole experience (occasionally music was played on stage too in the shows I've seen).

On a side note, these broadway performers and musicians were awesome and incredibly professional and talented. I didn't know what to expect (as a kid, I found these musicals so boring) but it was great.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#97

Post by zackify »

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.

Docker does run on Apple silicon already by the way :)

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#98

Post by swiftcoder »

mehrdada wrote: post #74
Reason077 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Audio folks tend to be fairly sensitive to all of size/noise/heat - this sort of setup is going to end up slotted into a rack of audio equipment, after all.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#99

Post by flyinghamster »

amatecha wrote: post #55
robbyt wrote: post #36

Programming has been my "day job" for a long time, but writing music has been my real passion. It's absolutely standard for electronic musicians to bounce tracks with computationally expensive plugins to static audio tracks while working. Otherwise, there is usually not enough CPU available to perform all the DSP for a complex song. (Additionally, bouncing tracks to audio gives more control over fades, cross-fades, t…

Yeah, when I started out with the first Intel Core Mac Mini, I bounced down most of my effects-heavy tracks, though I did this pretty begrudgingly. Fortunately Logic has a great feature where you can "Freeze" a track to a "bounced"/rendered audio file -- if you want to make edits to the effects, you can un-Freeze, make your changes and re-Freeze. Only downside is, this takes up precious time when you're trying to be…

> Regardless, most people in audio know you never buy the brand new hardware (especially when it's on a new processor architecture) and expect to be able to do everything as effectively before.

Worse, you also can't know in advance IF your existing hardware will be supported on a new system. That has bitten me once with an E-MU 0404 USB audio interface. The fine folks at Creative never bothered to release a production driver for Vista, let alone Windows 7 or later. Needless to say, I don't buy Creative products after that.

On the Mac side, I could only imagine them getting advance news of the M1 and going ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#100

Post by mikece »

josephg wrote: post #86
bluedino wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple should care more about this - web developers are a huge part of their brand

You don’t need docker to develop web apps.

There might not be an absolute need but the advantages of Docker are enough that, when removed, the pain is real.
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