KVR Audio

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Mon Nov 16, 2020 4:23 pm

The future of Logic and Cubase looks bright as more benchmarks come in for the new M1 Apple Silicon chip.

Etienne1973 · Post by **Etienne1973** » Mon Nov 16, 2020 4:31 pm

Seems Mac users get more hardware performance value for the money than in the past.

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Mon Nov 16, 2020 6:09 pm

Etienne1973 wrote: Mon Nov 16, 2020 4:31 pm Seems Mac users get more hardware performance value for the money than in the past.

It does seem that way... I believe it cause of my iPad Pro. It has no fan, and with comparable tasks, it does not get hot like my MBP. I've also left my iPad Pro playing textural multitrack audio compositions for a couple hours (and never quite repeating) in the background while doing other stuff and it handled it without issue.

Some people have complained that the new M1 chips are like iPads pretending to be Macs but to me that is a compliment! They are better at being Macs than Macs!

The excess heat is my one complaint about my MBP and it has just been addressed... I'll be buying a 16" MBP with Apple Silicon.

jonljacobi · Post by **jonljacobi** » Mon Nov 16, 2020 7:57 pm

The Mac has never been nearly as bad a deal as some people make out. Considering the quality of the integrated displays, especially. Price out a Mac versus a PC component by component (don't forget the display or Thunderbolt) and see what you come up with. They just don't make entry-level stuff, which bugs some folks looking for the absolute cheapest way in.

jonljacobi · Post by **jonljacobi** » Mon Nov 16, 2020 8:03 pm

I must admit, I was taking Apple's claims with many grains of salt. But if those Geekbench marks are accurate, I'm really impressed. Even running x86 translation it appears to be their fastest yet. I'm waiting for the youtubers to get their hands on them. What will happen when they up the core count?

https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Mon Nov 16, 2020 8:43 pm

jonljacobi wrote: Mon Nov 16, 2020 8:03 pm I must admit, I was taking Apple's claims with many grains of salt. But if those Geekbench marks are accurate, I'm really impressed. Even running x86 translation it appears to be their fastest yet. I'm waiting for the youtubers to get their hands on them. What will happen when they up the core count?

https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks

Yeah... it's looking impressive. Affinity mentioned a 3x improvement (not sure how they measure that) from the new MB Air over the previous generation in their own tests. Since their updates to native Apple Silicon apps are small free updates, they have no direct vested interest in overstating it.

And yes, it will be interesting to see how well Apples new chips scale up. I figure no more than 6 months before Apple announces an Apple Silicon iMac. They are also rumored to be working on a Mac Pro that is half the size of the current one.

machinesworking · Post by **machinesworking** » Tue Nov 17, 2020 11:08 am

pdxindy wrote: Mon Nov 16, 2020 8:43 pm
jonljacobi wrote: Mon Nov 16, 2020 8:03 pm I must admit, I was taking Apple's claims with many grains of salt. But if those Geekbench marks are accurate, I'm really impressed. Even running x86 translation it appears to be their fastest yet. I'm waiting for the youtubers to get their hands on them. What will happen when they up the core count?

https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks
Yeah... it's looking impressive. Affinity mentioned a 3x improvement (not sure how they measure that) from the new MB Air over the previous generation in their own tests. Since their updates to native Apple Silicon apps are small free updates, they have no direct vested interest in overstating it.

And yes, it will be interesting to see how well Apples new chips scale up. I figure no more than 6 months before Apple announces an Apple Silicon iMac. They are also rumored to be working on a Mac Pro that is half the size of the current one.

Cinebench is showing more reasonable improvements. Basically slightly less powerful (17%) than a 16" 8 core 2.3ghz i9 MacBook Pro. This is still from a laptop that traditionally had a four core in it, and we will likely see a 1.5x increase in power at the least with a 12 or 16 core version in a 16" MBP.

antic604 · Post by **antic604** » Tue Nov 17, 2020 11:17 am

jonljacobi wrote: Mon Nov 16, 2020 7:57 pmThe Mac has never been nearly as bad a deal as some people make out. Considering the quality of the integrated displays, especially. Price out a Mac versus a PC component by component (don't forget the display or Thunderbolt) and see what you come up with.

Well, you don't have to make that effort yourself. Just compare Mac laptops to high-end PC laptop equivalents like Razer, Dell XPS, Surface laptops, Lenovo's ThinkPad line, etc. and the price difference becomes negligible.

Also, I think Linus tried to rebuild last year's Mac Pro as a PC and he ended up with very similar price.

jonljacobi · Post by **jonljacobi** » Tue Nov 17, 2020 8:29 pm

The big issue I’m going to have is the inability to run Windows as I can now on my Intel iMacs. But to be honest, I have zero reason to upgrade. There should be some great deals on used Intel Macs as bleeding edge types that have to have their M1 stuff ditch them.

RugerioDelStereo · Post by **RugerioDelStereo** » Tue Nov 17, 2020 8:51 pm

jonljacobi wrote: Tue Nov 17, 2020 8:29 pm The big issue I’m going to have is the inability to run Windows as I can now on my Intel iMacs. But to be honest, I have zero reason to upgrade. There should be some great deals on used Intel Macs as bleeding edge types that have to have their M1 stuff ditch them.

You might be able to run Windows on ARM Macs by running it through VMWare Fusion or something like that, using Rosetta 2...not 100% sure but it seems not unthinkable:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/24/2130 ... -boot-camp

telecode · Post by **telecode** » Tue Nov 17, 2020 9:01 pm

FWIW.. I am a Mac and Cubase users. I will be moving to Windows this year. The Cubase DAW seems to be more optimized for Windows.

good luck

machinesworking · Post by **machinesworking** » Tue Nov 17, 2020 9:30 pm

telecode wrote: Tue Nov 17, 2020 9:01 pm FWIW.. I am a Mac and Cubase users. I will be moving to Windows this year. The Cubase DAW seems to be more optimized for Windows.

good luck

I would hold off. move to Windows next year after the dust has settled. Nothing worse than switching just to watch the familiar platform you switched from trounce the unfamiliar new platform. If you're luck is anything like mine, this is exactly what will happen.

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Tue Nov 17, 2020 10:01 pm

In another test, the new M1 13" MBP compiled Webkit in just over 20 minutes... which is only 30 seconds longer than the 2019 Mac Pro (default model I assume)! The new Mac Mini was 30 seconds faster than the Mac Pro. The M1 MBP is also well under half the time of the intel 13" MBP... and the new M1 MBP still had 91% battery life left compared to 24% for the 13" Intel MBP.

Really impressive mobile performance! The MB Air was 25 minutes as it started slowing down due to some throttling... so that shows a difference between the Air and MBP. So the fan and better cooling system made a significant difference once under load for a longer time. The MB Air was still 2 minutes faster than the 2019 16" MBP.

jonljacobi · Post by **jonljacobi** » Wed Nov 18, 2020 3:23 am

RugerioDelStereo wrote: Tue Nov 17, 2020 8:51 pm
jonljacobi wrote: Tue Nov 17, 2020 8:29 pm The big issue I’m going to have is the inability to run Windows as I can now on my Intel iMacs. But to be honest, I have zero reason to upgrade. There should be some great deals on used Intel Macs as bleeding edge types that have to have their M1 stuff ditch them.
You might be able to run Windows on ARM Macs by running it through VMWare Fusion or something like that, using Rosetta 2...not 100% sure but it seems not unthinkable:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/24/2130 ... -boot-camp

I’m sure you will be able to use a VM eventually but Rosetta 2? T’would be nice. We’ll see.

Thanks for the link.

I didn’t think there were any surprises left for me in the computing world, but the Apple silicon has proved me wrong. Delightfully so.

RugerioDelStereo · Post by **RugerioDelStereo** » Thu Nov 19, 2020 11:01 am

Ok so Codeweavers is already doing advanced virtualization/emulation on the M1:

https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/jwhite ... ially-cool

from the article: "I can't tell you how cool that is; there is so much emulation going on under the covers. Imagine - a 32-bit Windows Intel binary, running in a 32-to-64 bridge in Wine / CrossOver on top of macOS, on an ARM CPU that is emulating x86 - and it works! This is just so cool."

Even if some applications NEVER get ported to ARM/Apple Silicon there is always some freak making it work.

Future of Logic Pro and Cubase on Mac