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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

#221

Post by mehrdada »

swiftcoder wrote: post #98
mehrdada wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

macOS/CoreAudio alone probably justifies Mac mini before performance comes into play at all. To say Mac mini is cheaper than alternatives matching in CPU performance is however still incorrect, though dangerously close. That’s all.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#222

Post by mehrdada »

TheCowboy wrote: post #194
mehrdada wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ran a multithreaded poker solver (a Windows executable) on top of Wine on Rosetta on base MacBook 13 M1 and it beats the performance of base MacBook Pro 16 inch (Intel 6-core) with Windows running on bare metal by a small margin. (M1 fan actually turned on, which is a rare occurrence; at the same time MacBook Pro 16 Intel would be frying my laps. Ballpark estimates on the internet seem to pin it down beating MBP16…

What solver are you running? What kind of performance do you get with these setups? I'm curious because I only hear about more core-heavy builds for piosolver. Thanks

I tried PioSolver free version with identical settings on all machines and targeted a certain exploitation level and compared the time it took to finish the task. Performance on M1 is close to a desktop 3600X (admittedly weak cooler was installed on that machine)

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#223

Post by fartcannon »

Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #161
fartcannon wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dream that at some point, everyone will get their heads out of their asses and abandon this abusive relationship.

The abusive relationship trickles down no matter which platform you choice. Even on Linux you don’t have full control of all the driver binaries, control of the silicon of everything running on your rig. Even if you were to go RISC V chances are you are going to have to rely on some binary blob for things like your WiFi card. And even if we over come all those hurdles we still have to convince the avg joe to adopt th…

Agreed. We should all standardize on the most open systems that permit the most users to use the machines as we see fit. For example, on an open system, you can make special systems for Mac users. Or for Windows users. Or LSARS users.

That way we don't duplicate effort for an ever closing dictated by one greedy body.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#224

Post by kmeisthax »

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…

Flash has an HTML5 equivalent. Alongside the Animate rebrand (years ago) they released HTML5 tooling that lets you export animations for the web.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#225

Post by count »

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?

20 hours of battery life...and no fan noise.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#226

Post by dagmx »

vimy wrote: post #160
dagmx wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To clarify, when I say native, I mean both arm and x86.

Switching to x86 emulation for compatibility, will be a performance hit against running native ARM

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#227

Post by dagmx »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #158
dagmx wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tho…

A lot of hardware still has "drivers" (more just hardware specific software) for their devices though that only support Mac/windows.

The bigger point isn't that audio production isn't possible on Linux, it's that you have to make significant compromises to make it work. I count switching DAW as a significant compromise.

The cost difference between a Mac mini and Linux hardware of similar performance isn't worth those compromises to many creatives, outside of CG

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#228

Post by Talanes »

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…

Variation is absolutely a huge part of the draw. Broadway fans absolutely see the same show multiple times and compare the different performances/actors.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#229

Post by saagarjha »

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…

See https://lemire.me/blog/2020/12/13/arm-macbook-vs-intel-macbo... for SIMD performance. M1 is fairly competitive even under Rosetta. Also, if your audio code is self-modifying, I really have no idea what you could possibly be doing.

Re: The impact of Apple Silicon Macs on Broadway

#230

Post by megameter »

smoldesu wrote: post #217
palimpsests wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It doesn't have to be Windows. Linux has had the superior audio stack for the past two decades, and it's considered the standard for most A/V work. Just as there are "Mac exclusive" apps, many Linux/*nix audio tools are never ported to MacOS (for example, the industry staple CALF tools are not actively maintained for MacOS). The larger point here is that the M1 is not as revolutionary as it's being made out to be. Th…

There's an element here of being led to the proprietary stack only because of paper-cut UX considerations. They aren't going micro-budget here - which they could do, by simply eliminating all the equipment and doing the show a capella - so much as they are looking for impact for money, which means something that works reliably for the current talent pool in live scenarios.

Audio on Linux can definitely work well, but other comments here mention Mainstage as the live performance software driving this decision, and offhand I can't think of a comparable app on Linux; you'd either live with different/worse UX, or have to code up something, which is not really in the scope of the quoted budgets.

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