Getting ready to get a new Mac, and....

Tell Your Friends about Gear that you love

Moderators: admin, mdc, TAXIstaff

User avatar
andygabrys
Total Pro
Total Pro
Posts: 5567
Joined: Sun Jan 02, 2011 10:09 pm
Gender: Male
Location: Summerland, BC by way of Santa Fe, Chilliwack, Boston, NYC
Contact:

Re: Getting ready to get a new Mac, and....

Post by andygabrys » Sun Oct 04, 2015 9:54 am

mojobone wrote: I have a 12-core 2010 Mac Pro on order, and having done the research, it'll be very easy and cheap to do upgrades to the RAM and add hard drives at about $10 per GB and $100 per TB.
Aftermarket companies compete very fiercely for your upgrade dollar. With a dozen cores, 8 memory slots, three drive bays and three PCIe slots,
Not to totally beat this dead horse in to submission, but these 5,1 Mac Pros are available in a lot of places. They span the years of 2010 to mid 2013 and that is the last spec before Apple went to the trash can Mac Pro 6,1.

That was my choice of upgrade as well. Another composer friend of mine in Albuquerque did the same thing as well. He looked at the new prices and the prices of used stuff and it was just too good of a deal to pass up buying an older 12 core Mac Pro 5,1.

Pluses:

1) as powerful in CPU as new 6,1 mac Pro (or even more so as 12 core 6,1 is spec'd at 2.7 gHz and you can get upgrade processor trays up to 3.46 gHz for the 5,1 Mac Pro)
2) internal space for 4 HD / SSD in trays, plus space for 2 extra SSD's in a aftermarket chassis (OWC has them) to sit in one of the DVD bays (stock Mac Pros only come with 1 DVD anyways but 2 trays). That's a total of 6 drives internal.
3) RAM is dirt cheap these days. 32 GB or 64 GB or even 128 GB if you want to go there.
4) PCI slots allow addition of a USB 3.0 interface card, or PCI mounted SSD's (which run faster than SATA III specs), and internal plugin accelerators like the UAD PCI quad or octo cards.
5) USB 2.0 and FW 800 ports to hook up with a variety of new / old interaces and external hard drives.
6) huge number of units in existence makes it easy to source replacement parts if need be.
7) low price.
8) already qualified by Apple to run El Capitan operating system, and likely will have support for a good while.

and as Joy said
getting the Mac Model with the lowest amount of RAM and buying RAM cards separately!! Apple charges you an extra $600 for the 32 GB RAM but you could get that much RAM on Ebay for $150 and install it yourself. I installed my own RAM cards and it was actually totally easy! You can save yourself $450 right there. That's two years of a TAXI Membership or 90 submissions :lol: No need to pay through the nose for things like that 8-)
I have always bought aftermarket RAM from OWC http://www.macsales.com and they have a lifetime warranty. And pretty cheap.

The Mac Pros from version 1,1 to 5,1 spanned 2006 to late 2013. And were similar to PC's in a lot of ways near the end. So there are a huge number of aftermarket parts to upgrade RAM, CPU, Video cards, HD, SSDs, PCI stuff - often for cheap.

Minuses:

1) No Applecare. If you are handy enough to install your own DAW software and can upgrade the OS you likely don't need this - see #6 above as well.
2) No Thunderbolt. So you can't keep up with the Joneses if that is your game. You can't buy a universal audio apollo with only Thunderbolt connections, you would have to buy one of their Apollo Firewires.
3) internal drive bays are SATA II (3 gb/s) which is one generation behind current standard. As an audio drive, SATA II is fine unless you are streaming a HUGE # of tracks. As a system drive SATA II is fine. As a sample streaming drive, its still fine, but you can go faster using the PCI mounted SSD. See #4 above. Using PCI interfaced drives makes this a non-issue.
4) big and heavy - obviously not portable, but also hard to steal.

User avatar
mojobone
King of the World
King of the World
Posts: 11837
Joined: Sat May 17, 2008 4:20 pm
Gender: Male
Location: Up in Indiana, where the tall corn grows
Contact:

Re: Getting ready to get a new Mac, and....

Post by mojobone » Mon Oct 05, 2015 8:18 pm

Excellent summary, Andy, but are there no Thunderbolt PCIe cards?
The Straight Stuff; Roots, Rock & Soul

http://twangfu.wordpress.com
http://twitter.com/mojo_bone

User avatar
andygabrys
Total Pro
Total Pro
Posts: 5567
Joined: Sun Jan 02, 2011 10:09 pm
Gender: Male
Location: Summerland, BC by way of Santa Fe, Chilliwack, Boston, NYC
Contact:

Re: Getting ready to get a new Mac, and....

Post by andygabrys » Mon Oct 05, 2015 10:46 pm

mojobone wrote:Excellent summary, Andy, but are there no Thunderbolt PCIe cards?
nope. I have looked on many occasions, hoping. I would buy one in a heartbeat. well, in a heartbeat if they were somewhat reasonably priced - lets say $500 or less - as that is really the only thing (barring hardware failure) that would make me buy a newer Mac any time in the near future. There are some on PC motherboards, but only on the ASUS boards and only as an add on. There is a ribbon cable that connects from the PCI card to the motherboard (which seems strange but whatever).

I suspect the reason that there are no Mac thunderbolt PCI cards is because Thunderbolt technology is an Intel product, and the licensing to use it is probably locked up pretty tight (i.e. expensive). I also suspect Apple is helping Intel keep a tight lid on the technology.

It seems like it would be the easiest thing to do, have a PCI card with 2 (or 4) Thunderbolt 2 ports on it, but Apple would lose some market share - because there are HUGE number of people that invested heavily in the 5,1 Mac Pros when they were the best game in town and now need to buy new 6,1 Mac Pros to user thunderbolt. I am mostly talking about video and film people - they were the ones that dropped big cash on new machines with the faster 12 core processors and RAID arrays inside. Now you have hot swappable RAID arrays with SSD's like the Black magic Multi-dock which connects via Thunderbolt. https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/produc ... cmultidock

Just think if Apple didn't sell new Mac Pro 6,1 to all those people that had the top spec 5,1 cause they could just buy a thunderbolt card and then run things like the Black Magic Multi-dock for capturing video? Sure there would be a lot of really high end studios that wouldn't care and would buy new 6,1 mac pros to be current, but I suspect there would be a fair number in the gap in the middle who would be happy just to add a PCI card and use Thunderbolt tech.

who knows. just blowing smoke.

Len911
Total Pro
Total Pro
Posts: 5351
Joined: Mon Dec 07, 2009 4:13 pm
Gender: Male
Location: Peculiar, MO
Contact:

Re: Getting ready to get a new Mac, and....

Post by Len911 » Tue Oct 06, 2015 1:45 am

andygabrys wrote:
mojobone wrote:Excellent summary, Andy, but are there no Thunderbolt PCIe cards?
nope. I have looked on many occasions, hoping. I would buy one in a heartbeat. well, in a heartbeat if they were somewhat reasonably priced - lets say $500 or less - as that is really the only thing (barring hardware failure) that would make me buy a newer Mac any time in the near future. There are some on PC motherboards, but only on the ASUS boards and only as an add on. There is a ribbon cable that connects from the PCI card to the motherboard (which seems strange but whatever).

I suspect the reason that there are no Mac thunderbolt PCI cards is because Thunderbolt technology is an Intel product, and the licensing to use it is probably locked up pretty tight (i.e. expensive). I also suspect Apple is helping Intel keep a tight lid on the technology.

It seems like it would be the easiest thing to do, have a PCI card with 2 (or 4) Thunderbolt 2 ports on it, but Apple would lose some market share - because there are HUGE number of people that invested heavily in the 5,1 Mac Pros when they were the best game in town and now need to buy new 6,1 Mac Pros to user thunderbolt. I am mostly talking about video and film people - they were the ones that dropped big cash on new machines with the faster 12 core processors and RAID arrays inside. Now you have hot swappable RAID arrays with SSD's like the Black magic Multi-dock which connects via Thunderbolt. https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/produc ... cmultidock

Just think if Apple didn't sell new Mac Pro 6,1 to all those people that had the top spec 5,1 cause they could just buy a thunderbolt card and then run things like the Black Magic Multi-dock for capturing video? Sure there would be a lot of really high end studios that wouldn't care and would buy new 6,1 mac pros to be current, but I suspect there would be a fair number in the gap in the middle who would be happy just to add a PCI card and use Thunderbolt tech.

who knows. just blowing smoke.
What about something like this with say a firewire card? If thunderbolt works both ways and firewire works both ways like usb?
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1 ... se_ii.html

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1 ... 1394b.html

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpressse1.html

I know it says compatibility with a Mac with a thunderbolt port, but why wouldn't it work with an older mac with a firewire port, if the firewire pcie card was installed, and whatever equipment, say a thunderbolt Apollo connected to the thunderbolt port?
https://soundcloud.com/huck-sawyer-finn
Not an expert on contemporary music

Len911
Total Pro
Total Pro
Posts: 5351
Joined: Mon Dec 07, 2009 4:13 pm
Gender: Male
Location: Peculiar, MO
Contact:

Re: Getting ready to get a new Mac, and....

Post by Len911 » Tue Oct 06, 2015 2:13 am

If you only needed 2 thunderbolt and 2 firewire ports, for ~$365. 1 pcie slot. You'd only have the lesser bandwidth of the firewire, that may be why they don't advertise it as an upgrade to an older firewire mac, because most people are more likely to buy a firewire interfaced product if available than a thunderbolt?? I may be blowing smoke also,lol!


http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1 ... _pcie.html
https://soundcloud.com/huck-sawyer-finn
Not an expert on contemporary music

User avatar
ComposerLDG
Serious Musician
Serious Musician
Posts: 1737
Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2015 11:49 am
Gender: Male
Contact:

Re: Getting ready to get a new Mac, and....

Post by ComposerLDG » Tue Oct 06, 2015 3:56 am

A major issue now is Native Instruments incompatibility with OSX El Capitan. NI has been warning people not to upgrade until the problems have been fixed. Apparently, the libraries won't validate. So for the time being, a new Mac prevents you from running Kontakt...


*edited for pre-caffeine typos!
Loren DiGiorgi
Uniquely piano-inspired Orchestral | Tension | Hybrid | Trailer
lorendigiorgi.com
www.taxi.com/lorendigiorgi
www.soundcloud.com/ldigiorgi
YouTube
Instagram

User avatar
mojobone
King of the World
King of the World
Posts: 11837
Joined: Sat May 17, 2008 4:20 pm
Gender: Male
Location: Up in Indiana, where the tall corn grows
Contact:

Re: Getting ready to get a new Mac, and....

Post by mojobone » Tue Oct 06, 2015 9:24 am

Len911 wrote:
What about something like this with say a firewire card? If thunderbolt works both ways and firewire works both ways like usb?
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1 ... se_ii.html

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1 ... 1394b.html

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpressse1.html

I know it says compatibility with a Mac with a thunderbolt port, but why wouldn't it work with an older mac with a firewire port, if the firewire pcie card was installed, and whatever equipment, say a thunderbolt Apollo connected to the thunderbolt port?
I'm pretty sure all of the above require a Thunderbolt port. http://www.infoworld.com/article/261581 ... ewire.html

There are adapters to provide FireWire connectivity to Thunderbolt ports, but not vice-versa. It's no trick to upgrade a Mac Pro to add USB3 ports, that's easy and cheap thanks to widespread USB3 adoption on the PC side, and FireWire RAID devices are still widely available. It might help to keep in mind that UA still sells a FireWire version of its snazzy Apollo interface. My refurb Mac ships with Yosemite, so I reckon I dodged a bullet, there.
The Straight Stuff; Roots, Rock & Soul

http://twangfu.wordpress.com
http://twitter.com/mojo_bone

User avatar
andygabrys
Total Pro
Total Pro
Posts: 5567
Joined: Sun Jan 02, 2011 10:09 pm
Gender: Male
Location: Summerland, BC by way of Santa Fe, Chilliwack, Boston, NYC
Contact:

Re: Getting ready to get a new Mac, and....

Post by andygabrys » Tue Oct 06, 2015 9:53 am

Can't say for sure len911 but my research to date indicates exactly what Mojo says.

And the Apollo FireWire model (or the older Apollo quad with the thunderbolt card installed) do not seem to function as a multi interfac device - you either connect up via FireWire and have the use of the two ports on the unit for daisy chaining, or you use the thunderbolt ports for same. I am pretty sure if you use one you cannot use another, which is a shame.

Loren - there is a workaround for installing the NI libraries on El Capitan (google it), and there are also ways to get a copy of Yosemite either on eBay or via someone who already has it and install that on the new machine instead of using El Cap.

As an idea I have found that downloading a copy of each new Apple OS X and archiving it had been time worth spending as it allows you to be flexible in your setup. Naturally now that El Capitan has been released they have removed the download links for Yosemite, but it's still available via the above links.

Kolstad
Serious Musician
Serious Musician
Posts: 4620
Joined: Tue Jun 02, 2009 7:19 pm
Gender: Male
Contact:

Re: Getting ready to get a new Mac, and....

Post by Kolstad » Tue Oct 06, 2015 10:37 am

andygabrys wrote: 2) No Thunderbolt. So you can't keep up with the Joneses if that is your game. You can't buy a universal audio apollo with only Thunderbolt connections, you would have to buy one of their Apollo Firewires.
Actually, UA is coming out with a USB 3.0 version of their Apollo Twin this October
http://www.uaudio.com/interfaces/apollo-twin-usb.html
Ceo of my own life

User avatar
andygabrys
Total Pro
Total Pro
Posts: 5567
Joined: Sun Jan 02, 2011 10:09 pm
Gender: Male
Location: Summerland, BC by way of Santa Fe, Chilliwack, Boston, NYC
Contact:

Re: Getting ready to get a new Mac, and....

Post by andygabrys » Tue Oct 06, 2015 11:30 am

Kolstad wrote:
andygabrys wrote: 2) No Thunderbolt. So you can't keep up with the Joneses if that is your game. You can't buy a universal audio apollo with only Thunderbolt connections, you would have to buy one of their Apollo Firewires.
Actually, UA is coming out with a USB 3.0 version of their Apollo Twin this October
http://www.uaudio.com/interfaces/apollo-twin-usb.html
Yes - PC only - crazy huh? and won't run on USB 2.0 at all.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 5 guests