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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

#201

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

aluminum96 wrote: post #197
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been at the heart of Linux audio for more than 20 years. The situation on Linux is not "not good". Most people who comment on it simply don't know what they are talking about. It is fair to say that Macs are easier to get good results with.

My experience with linux audio as a casual user (hobbyist composer and arranger) was awful . This was about two years ago -- I remember trying to install Jack, completely screwing up my audio configuration, and then spending days mucking around trying to get Pulse Audio working again at all. I never could get my sound card working, and had to nuke my Fedora installation and reinstall. It was a nightmare. (This was ar…

CS degrees are generally not useful with system configuration, and they demonstrably do not cover the concepts associated with audio on computers.

I know dozens of people who've had experiences isomorphic to yours on OS X/macOS, so the truthfulness of this anecdote isn't particularly useful in establishing anything.

But yes, as a casual user who doesn't understand or want to understand the design decisions that led to the current state of audio on a typical Linux machine, macOS will provide a much smoother experience.

I wrote JACK. I know the guys who wrote SoundFlower. I asked them why they wrote SoundFlower when JACK already existed. They said it was because 90% of their user base never wanted 90% of what JACK made possible, so they cooked up a really simple version. "But it barely does anything!" I insisted, grumpily. "Precisely", they said.

If you don't understand the engineering mindset that says that you probably shouldn't do this, then certainly, macOS will look like a much better idea (along with SoundFlower).

That will likely remain true until you run into a situation involving one of the many things that JACK makes possible (note however that I generally advise most new/casual users against using JACK these days, not because it is broken but because as your comment demonstrates, it doesn't make sense to the mindset/workflow that they bring to the table).

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#202

Post by rock_artist »

mrpippy wrote: post #180
rock_artist wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I believe Xcode 12 can only target back to 10.9. (Xcode throws an error when you try to go older, I think the command-line tools can still go back farther though)

1. Also 10.9 needs SHA1.

2. We've been able to input down to 10.7 and didn't see any issues. The issue is productsign/codesign linking Security.framework which I assume changed.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#203

Post by medium_burrito »

aluminum96 wrote: post #197
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been at the heart of Linux audio for more than 20 years. The situation on Linux is not "not good". Most people who comment on it simply don't know what they are talking about. It is fair to say that Macs are easier to get good results with.

My experience with linux audio as a casual user (hobbyist composer and arranger) was awful . This was about two years ago -- I remember trying to install Jack, completely screwing up my audio configuration, and then spending days mucking around trying to get Pulse Audio working again at all. I never could get my sound card working, and had to nuke my Fedora installation and reinstall. It was a nightmare. (This was ar…

Pulse Audio, the virulent gonorrhea of user-facing audio software!

Seriously, that drove me away from Linux last time. When basic stuff like that just won't work, there's a real problem.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#204

Post by chipotle_coyote »

ksm1717 wrote: post #177
vimy wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well if it’s just as fast, what is there to be excited about?

Insert "not sure if trolling" GIF here, but you get that what the OP is saying is that when M1 Macs run x86 code in emulation they're often running it as fast as comparable x86 processors run it natively, right?

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#205

Post by palimpsests »

eggy wrote: post #184
simonh wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 MacO…

Those seem like good points, however you can build a PC with name brand parts and keep them consistent and going for a decade. AMD has made sure you don't need a new motherboard everytime they move to a new generation of CPU compared with Intel for example. Yes, Apple stores are all over, but rapid support and repair are not inexpensive, which was one of the arguments for why they chose Mac Minis. FTR, I am intereste…

building a PC with name brand parts does absolutely nothing to address the critical factor mentioned by the GP:

> 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.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#206

Post by chipotle_coyote »

Joeri wrote: post #189
mistersquid wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple killed flash. Apple didn’t kill Flash. Adobe did. By failing to deliver a performant and secure version of Flash (under any architecture, but especially mobile), Adobe ensured Flash would be not be viable for the web as it evolved.

Security was indeed an issue, but I feel flash’s performance reputation was largely undeserved. Yes, it was cpu-hungry, too intense to run on the mobile hardware of the day, but that’s because it did things html5 couldn’t. You could do smooth animations and complex games in flash easily that were hard to impossible to do with regular web tech (pre-webgl). When flash died, web animation and web gaming mostly died alon…

I still largely blame Adobe here -- they were the ones who should have been responsible for fixing Flash's performance. The complaints about it being a CPU hog weren't limited to mobile; even in the early 2000s, Mac users, at least, generally hated being forced to deal with Flash-based UIs. Adobe never seemed real concerned with optimization, I suspect precisely because of the advantages you listed, e.g., things that were hard-to-impossible to do without Flash.

At this point, at least, I'm pretty sure WebGL can do most or all of what you could do in Flash. It's possible that the tools have never caught up, but it also seems possible to me that the space that used to be occupied by Flash games has largely been filled, ironically, by mobile gaming.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#207

Post by palimpsests »

andromeduck wrote: post #109
cyberdelica wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's far crazier out there. https://englishelectric.uk

I think this is for music “streaming” applications described here:

https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/audio-networking-explained...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_(networking)

versus the streaming associated with Spotify et al

IOW a legitimate (non—audiophile) piece of gear

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#208

Post by chipotle_coyote »

messe wrote: post #85
bluedino wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> web developers are a huge part of their brand Are they? Maybe in HN's niche community—and it is niche—but I suspect the vast majority of Apple's customers don't remotely associate web developers with the brand.

I think it would be accurate to say web developers are a part of their market more than a part of their brand. I don't know if I'd say "huge," but I suspect a financially significant chunk of MacBook Pro sales, specifically, go to design and engineering groups in tech companies.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#209

Post by samatman »

marcan_42 wrote: post #165
vimy wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well yes, x86 macs in those classes were using underpowered Intel CPUs :-). That said, I've yet to see any serious benchmarks of this kind of workload. We know the M1 is fast for single threaded UI code (fast as heck atomics sure help with ObjC reference counting), but that says nothing about SIMD and floating-point heavy audio processing. Rosetta adds overhead to that, potentially a lot vs native ARM code, depending…

These kinds of questions are why the post you're replying to asked if it was personal experience or speculation.

You responded with some technically-detailed speculation, which, fair enough. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#210

Post by rock_artist »

emcq wrote: post #193
rock_artist wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Check out sse2neon as a way to substitute your x86 SIMD instrinsics for ARM neon. Perf was good enough to ship in one of the past projects I worked with.

Thanks! Interesting. I'll look it up. What I know one of our devs didn't find equivalent to is ippsPowx_32fc_A11
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