Upgrade DAW hardware - soliciting advice

[AlanHall]

This might help you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz5JpUC ... RKOverload

Thanks for the video, Mark! A good watch. Which brings up a couple other questions, if you've used the mini very much.
Do you use a docking station / hub? If so, why did you choose that one? Do you use the additional NVMe slot?

and a general question, if you don't mind. Currently I have a SSD for the system disk (500GB) and a different internal SSD (1TB, I think) for all my project files, including recorded audio. I've heard recently that a separate disk doesn't really improve RW performance. Your thoughts? My samples and Kontakt instruments are all on yet another HDD, and a fourth internal drive for general archiving. This does not include the two external drives (one for time machine, and another for 'deep archiving' such stuff as installer packages and whatnot. What kind of setup have you found that works for storage, backups, and archive?

Thanks for any info that you can share.
-Alan

[cosmicdolphin]

Thanks for the video, Mark! A good watch. Which brings up a couple other questions, if you've used the mini very much.
Do you use a docking station / hub? If so, why did you choose that one? Do you use the additional NVMe slot?

It belongs to my wife, she's a photographer so I've only used it a little although I did used to demo and sell Macs back on the day.

Yes I did get her a dock to go with it, hers is an M2 Mac Mini from a couple of years back which replaced her old i5 Intel Mac Mini. I got it the dock from Amazon although it says no longer available they do have their own website.

https://minisopuru.com/en-gb/products/201a

It'd be a different model for an M4 Mac Mini as the chassis is a different design to the M2. I chose that one because it made sense where she wanted it to have the Mac Mini on it's side and it also had the card slots for her camera memory cards. Speed isn't really a thing for her particularly as she transfers the shoot to the internal storage first, works on it and then sends to the client via the cloud and archives it.

Yes I did put an NVME drive in it as well, think it was a 1TB.

and a general question, if you don't mind. Currently I have a SSD for the system disk (500GB) and a different internal SSD (1TB, I think) for all my project files, including recorded audio. I've heard recently that a separate disk doesn't really improve RW performance. Your thoughts? My samples and Kontakt instruments are all on yet another HDD, and a fourth internal drive for general archiving. This does not include the two external drives (one for time machine, and another for 'deep archiving' such stuff as installer packages and whatnot. What kind of setup have you found that works for storage, backups, and archive?

Comparison speeds for Mac storage point towards needing a Thunderbolt 4 dock if you want similar performance to the internal drive. On the base M4, you get: 2× Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C ports (up to 40 Gb/s) or you get 4 of them on the Pro

Summary Table
Configuration Vs Real-World Speed
Internal SSD (256 GB) ~2,800 MB/s read / ~2,000 MB/s write
Internal SSD (512 GB / 1 TB) ~30% faster than above
External NVMe (Thunderbolt 4 dock) ~3,100 MB/s both read/write
External (USB-C hub enclosure) Typically <500 MB/s

As I built my own PC it has 7 hard drives ..some are internal , some are external. I have an NVME as the main system drive, a couple of SSDs for projects and sample libraries, two spinner drives off my previous system that has all my older documents and my sample collection and two external drives for backups etc.

Looking at the current Apple lineup, if you have the budget the Mac Studio with the M4 Max looks to be the winner to me. More base ram, better connectivity - seems to make more sense than pumping up the Mini

[AlanHall]

Yes

You go above and beyond, Mark. Thanks!

[BradGray]

Fascinating discussion!

I too have been looking at building a new workstation. My current system is an intel I7 10700K (if I recall correctly), 8 Core, 32 GB Ram, and several internal HDs. Its been a good system, but I'm finding it struggling with a number of modern plugins. I have it paired up with a UAD Apollo Twin USB, which has worked very well.

I was "tempted", perhaps still, to move over to apple as their M4 chips have looked tempting. One of the things holding me back would be that my interface won't work on MAC, I would need to change that out too.

But specs wise, it was an interesting conversation to read about the previous MAC Pro specs. Xeon processors? Those are server class processors; that surprised me. While they have many cores, they are performing at a lower clock speed, and from the homework I've looked into with DAW's is that single core clock speed is still king (please, correct me if I am wrong). Core count is great, very important, but so is clock speed. Xeon's are slow in comparison to desktop processors.

But I digress. The M4's do look pretty good spec wise, but I could build a system with a higher core count, and faster clock speed than what I'm likely to get with the M4, with more features at a lower price point. That said its not quite apples to apples (all puns intended) as I'm not considering the GPU that would come with the apple unit, as its a feature that audio software really doesn't leverage properly; at least not in Ableton 12.

...still, its tempting. Does UAD have a trade in if I move over to mac? That would be the thing that would have me change. =)

Cheers!
Brad

[AlanHall]

Fascinating discussion!

I also found the single core/multiple core speed reports interesting, compared both across processor generations and similar model types. Most surprising is that according to geekbench the Mac Pro 2019 that I was lusting after is actually quite slow compared to the more recent Mac Mini offerings. I had fallen for the trap that "if it looks powerful, it must be powerful". Going by the geekbench ratings, I've convinced myself not to buy anything that's not 4x..5x faster than my current rig. The fact that the computers I'm looking at are paperweight-size is simply amazing.

I don't need to get a new workstation right now, but maybe that's the best time to upgrade?

[BradGray]

Also if you were too choose a non-mac system, be cautious of the intel vs amd chips.

Intel has a high core count, however they have their (P) Performance cores and (E) efficiency cores. What it means is that you can have a 16 core CPU, and 8 cores (P) could be working at full clock speed for the chip, while the efficiency cores (E) could be working at a slower clock speed to save power. I don't believe AMD does it in this way.

It's never straightforward.

[AlanHall]

I've read about the performance and efficiency cores worth respect to the apple silicon chips. Can't say i understand either the design choices or how it works in practice.