@Another User said:
I'm using the early 2009 MacPro 4.1 you see in my sig.
It depends on what you mean by 'tracks' when you cite 100 tracks. Do you have a gigantic preset loaded in a track and heavy APP sequencer usage?
Does a track more represent one instrument well-articulated. In the latter scenario you're not being overly ambitious, though you can be.
I'm approaching about what this thing will bear in the current project with around 100 channels in VE Pro {bussed down to 14 stereo outs}, but I have a lot of FX and a whole lot of automation going on.
It's ~50 MIDI tracks I think. Some of what I'm doing is very resources-hoggy. I don't take MIRx as very hard on the machine from my demoing of it.
If you were talking about 70 MIR Pro, no, this machine is not going to support that unless it's all audio and there is just one or two stereo outputs in addition.
Thanks for this real life example. It seems very close to what I plan to do, which I'm writing below:
[Apologies for the novella-length post]
Here is a summary of where I'm at right now:
I use Logic Pro X.
I have a standard template of 70 tracks. In these 70 tracks, some of the VI instances have two slots filled (like two dimension violins). Since I use Dimension Strings and Brass as my main libraries, most of the samples are actually mono. But all of these 70 tracks have MirX on them. I don't have MIR pro. I don't usually use things like the APP sequencer in VI, and I don't really use anything fancy in VI except that I have humanization in all instances. I do some automation, usually breath and expression. And I automate the tracks in Logic from time to time. I also put one algo reverb, and a couple of eqs and compressors. I use effects on stereo busses that I route the instruments through, so, I probably won't have more than 24 such tracks.
Like I wrote above, I have a 2010 Macbook Pro with dual-core i5 2.4 Ghz, 8 GB ram, and a 7200 rpm drive. I run into bottlenecks into all these three areas (CPU, RAM, and HDD) so I'll try to write as detailed as possible about what I need.
The first problem I encounter is that, I can't really use Dimension Strings. I use them like this: I double each section with the transposition trick, so I have 16 First Violins, ....., 8 Double Basses. I really like the sound, but sometimes I can't even solo and play just the first violins. Even with high buffer rates. I think the most urgent solution to this would be to switch to using SSDs, at least for the Dimension Strings. But my computer has only sata II, and no thunderbolt, so I didn't do that kind of an investment yet. Even if I do, I will probably see an increase in the performance, but that probably won't be great since I will: (a) have the sata II speed as bottleneck, and (b) I will still have 1 (or at most, 2, if I replace my superdrive) disk to do all the work; another possible bottleneck.
So far, I have been working in a way where I freeze the dimension strings tracks. When I do that, I can actually work hassle-free with the rest of the orchestra. But of course, DS takes half of the template in this scenario. In any case, I think the most vital upgrade would be to a machine that can have possibly multiple disk drives, and sata III speeds. In a way, I guess I can actually do that with any mac machine with thunderbolt since that seems to be fast enough to use multiple drives though it, but a Mac Pro seems to be also a natural choice for such a task.
So, memory. 8 GB fills very fast of course. Recently, I tried this: when I load up my template, but don't load any samples, the 70 empty VI instances add up to 3 GBs (with the preallocated voices in the smallest setting, so 49 mb per instance). I tried loading samples until I come to the limit of the machine (when the OS starts compressing the memory). I could load 2,5 GBs, which corresponded to all stacc and legVib samples for all the instruments. I work around this limitation by using the optimize function in VI but sometimes that doesn't cut it, especially if I use a lot of articulations with the dimension strings, which I would like to. But sometimes, even with everything else loaded off, the samples I require for just the violins might end up forcing the OS to start compressing. And that compression and de-compression eats up the CPU cycles of course, resulting in a sluggish performance. Of course, if I start using SSDs, I can use a smaller buffer size and load more samples, but I'll still be limited to 2,5 GBs which doesn't seem to be enough in anycase (note that this is without Logic running), so I think I need a machine that can have a higher amount of memory, which can only be relatively recent MacBook Pros, Minis, iMacs, or Pros. Nonetheless, my gut feeling tells me that I should aim for a machine that can have the potential to go above 16 GBs of memory, since I feel like I'll hit that ceiling quite fast, and RAM is not so expensive anyway. Besides the Mac Pros, only the recent 27" iMac can go above 16, and that can only go to 32, and it starts from 1900 euros. It's not easy to find a second hand one anyway, since it's new itself.
Of course, my CPU struggles too. But sometimes, it's not the CPU itself that has a problem but it's a combination of above: trying to constantly stream from a 7200 drive (thus waiting for the drive to react), and constantly compressing and de-compressing the memory. Other than that, here is a benchmark: I loaded the demo project for MirX. It had 41 tracks, and I could play it back with a buffer of 1024 samples in Logic, and 4096 in MirX. Obviously, the latency is quite high, but it did work smoothly. The project was not very dense, and it only had SE samples, so the memory print was low, and there was not a lot of disk streming going on simultaneosly, so it allowed me to see what my cpu does when the machine is not suffocated by other factors. My machine has a geekbench score of 4093. Any machine that satisfies the requirements above has more score than mine.
So here is the bottom line after the long explanation: I think that an old Mac Pro is would satisfy these and it would be the cheapest way to address all my problems. But am I missing something here? If I go with an 8-core 2009 machine, it still has a lot of possibilities to upgrade later on, up to, I've heard, 12-core 3-something GHz and 128 Gb Ram. That looks like a more future proof solution than any mini or iMac I can buy now, not to mention the price is much lower. But on the other hand, essentially I'd be buying a 5 year old machine. And it's not going to have thunderbolt, which, honestly, I don't know what to do with right now.
So, the question is, should I go ahead and get an 8-core (or even 4-core, maybe) 2009 machine and upgrade as I can afford and as I need, or should I get a mini/imac with 16 gigs of ram and call it a day, and get a contemporary mac pro whenever I can afford? Are the 2009-2012 mac pros adequate for our kind of work, or if I go that route would such a machine be obsolete within a year or two?
Thanks for reading this long post, and thanks for all the help! 😊
Oguz.
