Mac Users: Design recommendations for a new studio computer

[johncolumbo]

As far as I know it's always been a manual process in Logic. There's a keyboard shortcut mentioned in that article, I think on page 2, but I haven't tried it and am not near my machine to test it out.

[mojobone]

http://forums.taxi.com/post322591.html? ... h,#p322591

[Paulie]

Buffer under Audio Settings was set at 64 by default. I dropped it to 32 to see what the difference was and crackling started immediately. I increased it to 512 and made it through my trailer without any crackling.

THANK YOU!!!

[andygabrys]

if you are looking to compare different Macs and horsepower, the multi-core geek bench scores on www.everymac.com will give you a ballpark way to rank them.

Although the iMac with an i5 might seem like a good buy, there is no way (as in NO WAY) that its going to have nearly the same performance as the Mac Pro - especially since more and more apps these days are programmed for multi-threading.

Just for kicks - find the geek bench scores for a new macbook pro (with 4 core i7), a new iMac (with 4 core i7), a new mac pro 6,1 (with 6 core Xeon), a legacy mac pro 5,1 (with 12 core xeon), and a new mac pro 6,1 (with 12 core xeon). And look at the prices of each (noting that there are lots of used 5,1 mac pros on ebay and other places for sale second hand). There is also the Hackintosh market if you want to tweak your own machines. There are caveats to each approach.

This will get a relative assessment of power vs. $.

At some point if you build elaborate arrangements, you are either going to need slave computers, or a really powerful main computer (like 12 core), or be able to really miserly add tracks and bounce to audio once by one to keep CPU overhead down.

The trick of raising the process buffer to maximum (which is 1024 in logic) is an easy way to get more performance. And if you find the latency unusable when recording tracks at that setting use "low-latency" mode in Logic. That can be set up with a key command and it works great (especially on my machine where resetting the buffer size takes ages as a result of the UAD plugins I use. Its much quicker if you use stock plugins).

[jonnybutter]

Hey Andy,

I was wondering - what does 'low latency mode' in Logic X actually do? Is it just a toggle to switch between buffer sizes, or is it something else?

Just curious

thnx

[andygabrys]

Hey Andy,

I was wondering - what does 'low latency mode' in Logic X actually do? Is it just a toggle to switch between buffer sizes, or is it something else?

Just curious

thnx

I don't know for sure (as in how its programmed) but I do know that it does the following:

bypasses any plugin that has built in latency over X ms (where X is the latency limit that you set in the logic preferences). And it bypasses any sends (although you can force them to stay on)

so if you are using UAD plugins (in line on the channel and not through the Apollo interface) they will always be bypassed on a record enabled channel - which at first seems totally daft especially if its a guitar amp sim, but you can get around it by using "Live mode" on the UAD plugin.

It seems to me that what you said about buffer sizes also seems right - except it seems to be a low latency path on only the record enabled / input monitoring enabled channel. The other channels in the mix are unaffected. It seems to work a little better in Logic X as well, Logic 9 was a little more clunky. That's not scientific, just a "feel" thing.

Pro Tools vanilla has a similar Low Latency monitor path for record enabled channels but it will force all plugins and sends to bypass no matter how much latency they incur, so its a little useless in comparison.

[jonnybutter]

Yeah, that makes sense (bypassing plugs). Thanks AG.

[edmondredd]

So Paulie,
What did you end up doing?
I'm very curious because I'm facing almost the same thing right now, and would love to hear what did work out for you

@Andy, thanks a lot for your posts, they're extremely helpful

[orest]

Had the same problem, bought the new Mac Pro 6-core. Problem solved.
It's a monster machine for sure!

[edmondredd]

Had the same problem, bought the new Mac Pro 6-core. Problem solved.
It's a monster machine for sure!

Surely it is, but it comes at a high cost. I am trying to enhance my current set-up, and was curious to know how did Paulie did manage