KVR Audio

vanKloot · Post by **vanKloot** » Fri Dec 01, 2017 4:24 am

Hi all,

Pretty much forever, I've just done music on my normal every-day boot volume. I haven't bothered with a pristine "clean" startup disk or anything, and for the most part I haven't noticed any obvious issues working this way.

But as apps get more and more powerful, and my machine ages (mid-2011 iMac, 32GB RAM, SSD Boot drive), I'm starting to wonder if maybe I should go with a super squeaky-clean music system.

Does anyone specifically run a separate startup volume and have any concrete experiences/info to share regarding it? Or is it in fact just utterly unnecessary these days? Oh and I'm talking primarily about Ableton Live 10 since I'm currently playing with the Beta, and have noticed performance being not so great (but keeping in mind it's still in early beta...) I have a fair number of extra plugin instruments and effects, and a large sample library (many hundreds of gigs) though I tend to think those don't matter much unless they're actually in use on a track.

jonljacobi · Post by **jonljacobi** » Fri Dec 01, 2017 4:31 am

My 2013's have problems at times and the CPU usage shows as way high, but I still manage to get things done. One's a 4-core i7, the other a dual-core. I have considered a Hackintosh.

vanKloot · Post by **vanKloot** » Fri Dec 01, 2017 4:40 am

Yeah I've been thinking about a Hackintosh again lately as I would like to soup things up, but the last time I used one for a few years it was very VERY twitchy. Granted that was in like 2009 and I wasn't doing any music on it at all... but if it was twitchy already, I can only imagine what using it as a music rig might be like.

Then again maybe the hackintosh scene has gotten a ton more stable... I'm just way out of touch with it. I'm running Sierra (not High Sierra) now and have no idea how that is on a PC. But it is awfully tempting seeing as how relatively cheaply you can build an insane PC rig. On the other hand though my 27" d display is my iMac, so I'd have to factor in a new monitor too. Not likely I'll go this route but I can't help but wonder...

jonljacobi · Post by **jonljacobi** » Fri Dec 01, 2017 7:36 pm

I was monkeying with the idea of using a Skulltrail NUC. It has slots for two NVMe drives which would surely eliminate any possibility of storage being an issue. At least in terms of speed. You don't get Bluetooth (or, I think Wi-Fi), but other than that reports have been quite good. I think things have improved quite a bit in 8 years in terms of stability. At least that's what I see.

vanKloot · Post by **vanKloot** » Fri Dec 01, 2017 9:53 pm

Wow I hadn't heard of NVMe before. Damn that looks amazing... SSD right on your motherboard. I love it.

This one at NewEgg comes with both BT and WiFi so it seems you don't have to lose either of them:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... lsrc=aw.ds

Man I wonder if/how well MacOS would run on that puppy. Mmmmmmmm...

Jace-BeOS · Post by **Jace-BeOS** » Sat Dec 02, 2017 3:36 am

I do a dual boot between Snow Leopard and El Capitan, mostly because i haven't yet switched to Logic X and have a couple of pieces of defunct software that wont run on El Capitan. I also have other stuff installed on the Snow Leopard volume, but i don't have issues with performance (though just the last couple of days my audio is dropping a bit in Logic; probably the M-Audio device, but no idea why this would just start now when I've changed nothing). Frankly, i find Snow Leopard to be the most efficient Mac OS ever and El Capitan is kind of bloated. I wont really have strong evidence for the impact this has on my music work one way or the other until i upgrade to Logic X and start moving everything to El Capitan. I probably should do that sooner than later, so i am not forced to Sierra or High Sierra by way of the minimum specifications being boosted to push users up to a newer OS...

While i was on Windows PCs, i once kept two systems to separate the audio work and music work... ultimately, it didn't help. Windows is Windows and PCs are PCs. I don't find the same cesspool issues with Mac OS, but Apple keep adding more plugin shit to their systems (iOS is becoming a cesspool with stupid extension shit that no one actually needs)... But there's no registry to corrupt.

jonljacobi · Post by **jonljacobi** » Sat Dec 02, 2017 4:32 pm

It's not the hardware, it's what hardware OS X supports. If it doesn't have a driver, the hardware won't work. I believe the issue there is that Apple doesn't support the Intel wifi/bt chip used in the NUC. There's a couple of sites that list what's working and what's not. Can't remember the names, or I'd list them.

Practical necessity of separate boot volume for Ableton Live on Mac?