For other ignoramuses like me, the acronym DAW in the post stands for Digital Audio Workstation, being the general term for all these tools. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio_workstation
Basically the music equivalent of an IDE.
Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools
11–20 of 56 posts
Re: Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools
#12I’ve no need to upgrade from M1. Apple really needs to push out their own discrete GPUs to upsell which will eventually happen if they’re serious about AR/VR.
Re: Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools
#13I was going to trade in my M1 Pro for an M3 Pro (I love the black), but I'm seriously getting second thoughts. I guess you can make a product that's just too good, after all. Might keep my M1 until the M4 or M5 Pro.
Despite its 'anti-fingerprint' anodization, the black still shows smudges more than silver/space gray, fwiw.. do you really need to upgrade a ~2yr old laptop??
Re: Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools
#14I was going to trade in my M1 Pro for an M3 Pro (I love the black), but I'm seriously getting second thoughts. I guess you can make a product that's just too good, after all. Might keep my M1 until the M4 or M5 Pro.
Have the apps been recompiled yet?
Re: Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools
#15If you look at the specs of the regular, Pro and Max chips on the M1 and M3 generations, it's easier to see M1 Pro as a sort of "Max Lite" chip. You got identical CPU core counts on both the Pro and Max variants in the M1 and M2 generations, but that's no longer true with the M3.
Apple seems to have realized that people with only CPU heavy workloads won't buy the Max variant, so it seems to me they've weakened the Pro line on the M3 to push more people toward the Max.
Re: Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools
#16>How does a three-year-old CPU beat the latest Apple Silicon chip in terms of performance in many popular DAWs? Why do people keep saying the M1 Pro is 3 years old? It came out in October 2021 - it's barely over 2...
The M1 is three years old but some people don't remember/realize the M1 Pro came much later.
Re: Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools
#17> We can only speculate why the cores are used differently depending on the DAW. Since even Apple’s own DAW Logic performs worse with M3 Pro, the question arises as to whether it is due to the software itself or the operating system. However, this test is a clear indication for anyone who is still considering Apple’s new systems to take a closer look when making a purchase.
I didn't get an answer to the main question I had (sounds like they don't have one yet): is this because the DAW software has been optimized for M1 but not M3, and once they update it these scores will change?
Re: Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools
#18If you look at the specs of the regular, Pro and Max chips on the M1 and M3 generations, it's easier to see M1 Pro as a sort of "Max Lite" chip. You got identical CPU core counts on both the Pro and Max variants in the M1 and M2 generations, but that's no longer true with the M3. Apple seems to have realized that people with only CPU heavy workloads won't buy the Max variant, so it seems to me they've weakened the Pr…
Yeah, the changes they made to the M3 Pro were all about making it a less attractive option for people with CPU-heavy workloads who didn’t need/want the GPU horsepower. Unfortunately, it seems that in order to chase this product stratification goal, they actually made the newest generation chip perform worse than the previous generations.
Re: Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools
#19The methology used in these tests is utter nonsense.
Yes, there is something to be learned by his results but it has a the very least 50% to do with DAW internals and CPU vs the CPUs themselves.
He used large numbers of tracks to test which isn't a valid measure of CPU optimization across different DAW platforms. There is widely varying CPU overhead issues among the different DAWs. Running 300 tracks in Ableton is going to cause a bunch of different bottlenecks and inefficiencies to be pushed... not just CPU.
Clickbait. I'm not saying that the M3Pro is better or worse or trying to defend Apple, I'm just pointing out as someone with a lot of experience in DAW-land that this testing methology is bunk as a CPU test and as a DAW performance test.
Re: Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools
#20> We can only speculate why the cores are used differently depending on the DAW. Since even Apple’s own DAW Logic performs worse with M3 Pro, the question arises as to whether it is due to the software itself or the operating system. However, this test is a clear indication for anyone who is still considering Apple’s new systems to take a closer look when making a purchase. I didn't get an answer to the main question…
He is testing by running many many tracks at once -- different DAWs have very different performance profiles when running more than 50 tracks... and some DAWs (I'm looking at you, Ableton) have utterly bizarre performance, CPU-wise, most of the time that doesn't directly correlate to the CPU's performance but to do with their really old and idiosyncratic code base.