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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

#151

Post by avianlyric »

eggy wrote: post #143

Couldn't you use a PC box built for less than $600. Sound does not require near the bandwidth of video, and I am sure you could get a decent rig setup for that price. I have been doing low-latency audio on Windows for over a decade. I have used Ableton on Windows with my Novation X-Station 25 from 2005, and I play with Extempore[1] for livecoding, and Windows has been more than adequate. I used the X-Station as my so…

My understanding of this has been that OSX has always had much lower audio latency than Windows or Linux.

Apple have put quite a bit of effort into making their audio sub-systems both performant and reliable. Something that isn’t true on Windows and Linux at the moment.

I also assume that part of if is driven by audio professionals using Macs elsewhere, and you don’t want to be using an unfamiliar system when running a live performance. That’s the one place where “just let me Google that” doesn’t fly.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#152

Post by Wowfunhappy »

rock_artist wrote: post #128
EamonnMR wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that synth makers need to 'get their act together' is a bit unfair. Nobody asked Apple to invalidate all binaries, they just went ahead and did it.

I work for an audio company. Indeed, that's unfair. Unlike the PPC to Intel transition. This time it's a little easier since most modern toolsets require much less changes in code. Having said that some consideration to keep in mind: - audio code needs to be optimized for real time thread constrains. Many optimizations usually made by vectorizing rather than threading that would've lead to locks and synchronization n…

> With Big Sur Apple seems to break SHA1 signs making builds from Big Sur work reliably only on 10.11 or newer. (The first release to support SHA256 codesigns)

Affinity Photo is an Arm/Intel universal binary that’s also compatible with OS X 10.9. Maybe look into what they’re doing?

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#153

Post by strogonoff »

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…

Musicians[0] (electronic and otherwise) do absolutely perform live with real-time AU/VST synths and effects.

There are some constraints on how much complexity a single machine can handle but MIDI sync, Ableton Link etc. allow to combine multiple computers and hardware synths in one setup.

Anecdotally, I don’t perform live but I write music as a hobby and I rarely if ever bounce to audio to free up RAM or CPU. I do bounce for artistic effect though (such as reversing a drum loop or shifting it up/down an octave).

[0] Like Caribou: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8s7Z3vMUGrs

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#154

Post by dagmx »

vimy wrote: post #108
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…

> 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 Is this your personal experience or are you speculating? I haven’t noticed performance drops or stability issues under Rosetta so far. A truly impressive feat of software engineering.

I believe they mean performance drop versus native.

Let's say you have a DAW with ARM and x86 binaries but a VST/AU/RTAS that's x86 only. You need to run the DAW as x86 under Rosetta, which will result in reduced performance versus a native binary, assuming the native processor was capable of equal performance.

Given how zippy the M1 is, that performance penalty may well still put you ahead of where your x86 perf was, but still slower than native.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#155

Post by dagmx »

yummypaint wrote: post #149
eggy wrote: post #143

Couldn't you use a PC box built for less than $600. Sound does not require near the bandwidth of video, and I am sure you could get a decent rig setup for that price. I have been doing low-latency audio on Windows for over a decade. I have used Ableton on Windows with my Novation X-Station 25 from 2005, and I play with Extempore[1] for livecoding, and Windows has been more than adequate. I used the X-Station as my so…

Yes, Im kindof baffled why they insist on a mac mini with such a tight budget. There are linux options too

Linux is not really an option. There are very few DAWs with support, next to no drivers for common hardware, and next to no support for popular VSTs. Linux is not a good platform for audio work.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#156

Post by simonh »

yummypaint wrote: post #149
eggy wrote: post #143

Couldn't you use a PC box built for less than $600. Sound does not require near the bandwidth of video, and I am sure you could get a decent rig setup for that price. I have been doing low-latency audio on Windows for over a decade. I have used Ableton on Windows with my Novation X-Station 25 from 2005, and I play with Extempore[1] for livecoding, and Windows has been more than adequate. I used the X-Station as my so…

Yes, Im kindof baffled why they insist on a mac mini with such a tight budget. There are linux options too

I think there are several dimensions to this. These are mission critical systems with extremely high uptime expectations. Therefore using highly standardised easily available identical replacement parts with solid vendor support is a must. There are probably several Apple Stores within easy reach of Broadway and Apple Care will get you rapid support and repair if needed.

Another aspect is that the audio stack on MacOS is truly outstanding, with a whole host of professional audio applications and utilities on the platform. Hardware drivers are up to date and also well supported. Connectivity is also well supported by audio hardware vendors.

Finally Mac Minis have had a stable hardware form factor for well over a decade. If you go for a small form factor generic Pc system there’s no guarantee anything like it will even exist a year or even 6 months later. Hardware specs and specific component choices change with the breeze as availability and relative pricing fluctuate continuously.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#157

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

avianlyric wrote: post #151
eggy wrote: post #143

Couldn't you use a PC box built for less than $600. Sound does not require near the bandwidth of video, and I am sure you could get a decent rig setup for that price. I have been doing low-latency audio on Windows for over a decade. I have used Ableton on Windows with my Novation X-Station 25 from 2005, and I play with Extempore[1] for livecoding, and Windows has been more than adequate. I used the X-Station as my so…

My understanding of this has been that OSX has always had much lower audio latency than Windows or Linux. Apple have put quite a bit of effort into making their audio sub-systems both performant and reliable. Something that isn’t true on Windows and Linux at the moment. I also assume that part of if is driven by audio professionals using Macs elsewhere, and you don’t want to be using an unfamiliar system when running…

> My understanding of this has been that OSX has always had much lower audio latency than Windows or Linux.

Your understanding is wrong, at least with respect to Linux (which technically has lower latency than macOS/OSX has ever had).

One can debate the ease of use (and to be fair, macOS will likely win), but from a technical perspective, if you want the absolute lowest latency, Linux is the system to use.

At least ... that was true for PCI audio devices. At ardour.org we've been playing around with an M1 mini, and the ease with which it gets to 16 sample buffer size with a stock USB audio device is astounding and envy-inducing.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#158

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

dagmx wrote: post #155
yummypaint wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Im kindof baffled why they insist on a mac mini with such a tight budget. There are linux options too

Linux is not really an option. There are very few DAWs with support, next to no drivers for common hardware, and next to no support for popular VSTs. Linux is not a good platform for audio work.

No drivers are needed for "common hardware", because iOS forced most "common hardware" to be driver free i.e. actually compliant with the USB audio standard.

It is true that if you're (still) using PCI devices, drivers can be an issue, but there are several high end companies, including RME, with PCI device support on Linux.

Ardour, Mixbus, Bitwig and Reaper all run natively on Linux. Yes, that's a tiny subset of those available on proprietary platforms.

"Popular VSTs" feels like a wierd thing to say. I would doubt there is enough overlap in people's plugin use to every really create particularly popular ones. There are thousands of plugins available on Linux, both libre, gratis and proprietary. And even if I do not recommend the approach, many (not all) Windows VST plugins can be used on Linux. Yes, you cannot use plugins from companies that choose not support Linux without some hurdle hopping, and yes, that means that "well known" and not-easily replaceable plugins like those from Izotope and Native Instruments are generally out of reach.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#159

Post by woah »

sgt wrote: post #78
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.

Rock stable?

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#160

Post by vimy »

dagmx wrote: post #154
vimy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Is this your personal experience or are you speculating? I haven’t noticed performance drops or stability issues under Rosetta so far. A truly impressive feat of software engineering.

I believe they mean performance drop versus native. Let's say you have a DAW with ARM and x86 binaries but a VST/AU/RTAS that's x86 only. You need to run the DAW as x86 under Rosetta, which will result in reduced performance versus a native binary, assuming the native processor was capable of equal performance. Given how zippy the M1 is, that performance penalty may well still put you ahead of where your x86 perf was…

That’s what I’m saying. There is no performance drop compared to x86 macs, the M1 is _that_ fast.
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