Is Studio 1 the only realistic alternative to Cubase ?

[Scotty]

Don’t any of you desktop users also maintain a laptop?

[dellboy]

Don’t any of you desktop users also maintain a laptop?

How would that work if you have a powerful top of the range desktop and wanted to play back stuff on a laptop that was too under powered to handle it? And why restrict yourself to a small screen when you could have a big one?

[jamcat]

My M1 MacBook Pro is more powerful than my 8-core Extreme Edition Intel desktop.

[dellboy]

My M1 MacBook Pro is more powerful than my 8-core Extreme Edition Intel desktop.

Ok, granted, your laptop wins, but what about the 13 inch screen? Do you work with the small screen, or do you connect a bigger screen when you get into serious editing? I am baffled how many older Pros with bad eyesight could do serious professional work on a small screen.

[jamcat]

It has a 16" screen.

Also, it has HDMI out for another monitor, plus sidecar for my iPad Pro.

But I will get an M2 Mac Pro when they're out and that will be considerably more powerful.

[dellboy]

It has a 16" screen.

Also, it has HDMI out for another monitor, plus sidecar for my iPad Pro.

But I will get an M2 Mac Pro when they're out and that will be considerably more powerful.

It sounds great. It does everything you need, and yet you are upgrading soon? Why do you need more power?

Everything in life is Pros and Cons. An Apple laptops main Pro is mobility . Its main Con is lack of upgrade-ability, something that a desktop does with ease. More memory - easy - bigger internal hardrives - easy, and with no hubs or trailing wires.

[jamcat]

It has a 16" screen.

Also, it has HDMI out for another monitor, plus sidecar for my iPad Pro.

But I will get an M2 Mac Pro when they're out and that will be considerably more powerful.

It sounds great. It does everything you need, and yet you are upgrading soon? Why do you need more power?

Everything in life is Pros and Cons. An Apple laptops main Pro is mobility . Its main Con is lack of upgrade-ability, something that a desktop does with ease. More memory - easy - bigger internal hardrives - easy, and with no hubs or trailing wires.

Well, getting an M2 Mac Pro is more "aspirational" right now. The reason I would like to when that's an option is because I still prefer a desktop. My current desktop cannot handle the mixes I'm trying to throw at it now. My MacBook Pro, which I only got because I happened to need a new laptop, is easily outperforming my actual DAW, so it at least is a step up. But I haven't been able to see exactly where it stands yet because I'm still waiting on a bunch of plugins to go native, and I really would like at least 24 cores for doing full physically modeled orchestral accompaniment with a full band production, tape emulation on every channel, etc, etc, and I don't know if the MacBook Pro's 10 CPU cores can handle all of that at once without bounces or stuttering. I just know my Intel machine can barely do either a physically modeled string section, or a full band with tape on each channel, but nowhere near both at once.

[jamcat]

The M1 Max SOC GPU performance rivals Apple's Mac Pro with Afterburner cards. The M2 will almost certainly exceed it.

Says who? Where is your evidence? The Afterburner card is designed for video editing. It's about bandwidth, not performance.

There are plenty of benchmarks and YT videos showing direct comparisons. Apple has said the M1 Max is designed to take the place of Afterburner. The M1 Max has twice the bandwidth and GPU cores as the regular M1 Pro, and is only about $300 more.

Mac Pro is the industry standard. I'm sure You already know that.

Nobody is paying 10 grand for a basic MacPro any more. Two years ago we had 60 people on Mac at work, today we have zero. Everyone was moved to PC at the start of last year and that only happened because Apple have priced themselves out of the market. To get the spec we wanted would have meant more than $20,000 per workstation, as opposed to the $8,000 or so our HP Z Series workstations cost. Crucially, all but one of us are much happier on the new systems. We get more done in any given time period, we have way fewer dramas and noticeably better reliability.

Apple did price themselves out somewhat. Or rather, dual Xeon CPUs priced them out. That's a big part of their decision to create their own CPU. This is why I say the next generation Mac Pro is going to be considerably faster and considerably cheaper than the Cheese Grater. But you said so yourself, any movement away from Apple was due to price, not performance.

The larger part of what I'm saying, though, is everyone is going to be going the same route as Apple within a few years. They can't not. Apple is quickly making the current x86/x64 architecture obsolete. So it is evolve or die for Intel and AMD. That's basic market economics.

RISC is nothing new, it was around in the 1990s in the form of DEC Alpha. Used in a lot of servers but not much else. Intel purchased all the IP for it decades ago so they could have had a huge march on everybody with RISC if there had been any point in doing it. Microsoft have had ARM versions of Windows for years and guess what? Nobody gives a shit.

It's been a pretty common theme since Apple's inception that they have succeeded where others have failed, saw how to use and market technologies when others couldn't, and dictated the direction of the entire industry through disruptive innovation. The windowed GUI and the mouse are two examples of all of the above. ARM is just the latest.

[Sinisterbr]

In the future, current Intel machines will be "old Intel machines."
What I meant by "old Intel machines" is the current x86/x64 architecture. RISC is the future. Apple is already there, and Microsoft has ARM-versions of Windows as well. AMD and Intel will switch over to ARM, probably sooner than later.

I think you're jumping off the boat waaay too early. We'll still see x64 chips/code around for quite some time (decades). And considering the current x64 generation already fulfills my processing needs, I'm quite confortable about the future.

[jamcat]

In the future, current Intel machines will be "old Intel machines."
What I meant by "old Intel machines" is the current x86/x64 architecture. RISC is the future. Apple is already there, and Microsoft has ARM-versions of Windows as well. AMD and Intel will switch over to ARM, probably sooner than later.

I think you're jumping off the boat waaay too early. We'll still see x64 chips/code around for quite some time (decades). And considering the current x64 generation already fulfills my processing needs, I'm quite confortable about the future.

x86/x64 computers may still be around for decades, but that's only because some people keep old computers around for decades. No one will force you to buy a new computer, though software for it will become increasingly difficult to find. Who is still developing PPC software, besides Airwindows?

I think you'll be surprised at how quickly the industry-wide changeover to SOC ARM comes. But you really shouldn't be. Slower, hotter, and more expensive is never a winning long-term strategy for a chip maker.

[BONES]

There are plenty of benchmarks and YT videos showing direct comparisons.

Really? Because none of the comparisons or benchmarks I've seen show Apple as anything but struggling to match Intel and AMD. e.g. This article says "According to a report by MacRumors, the first Geekbench 5 scores for the new Intel Core i9-12900K processor reveals that it is nearly 1.5 times faster than Apple's M1 Pro and M1 Max in multi-score performance." 1.5 times faster is a serious win for Intel, don't you think?

Apple has said the M1 Max is designed to take the place of Afterburner. The M1 Max has twice the bandwidth and GPU cores as the regular M1 Pro, and is only about $300 more.

Yeah but, as I said, the bandwidth is for editing 8k video at native res, which absolutely no-one does. It's the answer to a question nobody asked and shows how out of touch Apple is with the professional market.

Apple did price themselves out somewhat. Or rather, dual Xeon CPUs priced them out.

Absolute rubbish. What do you think my HP Z Series workstation is using, baling wire and chewing gum? It's running dual Xeons, just like a MacPro (only better).

But you said so yourself, any movement away from Apple was due to price, not performance.

When they are running the same internals, of course it comes down to price, although running nVidia Quadro was also a big consideration, as they outperform Radeons in pretty much all professional applications.

The larger part of what I'm saying, though, is everyone is going to be going the same route as Apple within a few years. They can't not. Apple is quickly making the current x86/x64 architecture obsolete.

Except that it isn't and never will. It's just the usual marketing bullshit that you crazies accept without question, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. As I said, ARM-based windows laptops and 2-in-1s have been around for several years already. Apple is just following in Microsoft's footsteps, knowing that they can just bullshit their way to success, as they always do.

It's been a pretty common theme since Apple's inception that they have succeeded where others have failed, saw how to use and market technologies when others couldn't, and dictated the direction of the entire industry through disruptive innovation.

Hardly. They were a decade behind Microsoft with mobile, they were two years behind the rest of the industry with 3G support and a year late with 4G. They succeed only through marketing, convincing gullible fools that their mostly average products are somehow worth a ridiculous premium.

The windowed GUI and the mouse are two examples of all of the above. ARM is just the latest.

Neither developed by Apple, they were first shown in The Mother of All Demos in 1968. And, the reality is that Microsoft built and sold their first mouse in 1983, having made Word mouse-compatible a year earlier, well before the first Macintosh computer. Apple yet again following in Microsoft's footsteps.

[Sinisterbr]

In the future, current Intel machines will be "old Intel machines."
What I meant by "old Intel machines" is the current x86/x64 architecture. RISC is the future. Apple is already there, and Microsoft has ARM-versions of Windows as well. AMD and Intel will switch over to ARM, probably sooner than later.

I think you're jumping off the boat waaay too early. We'll still see x64 chips/code around for quite some time (decades). And considering the current x64 generation already fulfills my processing needs, I'm quite confortable about the future.

x86/x64 computers may still be around for decades, but that's only because some people keep old computers around for decades. No one will force you to buy a new computer, though software for it will become increasingly difficult to find. Who is still developing PPC software, besides Airwindows?

I think you'll be surprised at how quickly the industry-wide changeover to SOC ARM comes. But you really shouldn't be. Slower, hotter, and more expensive is never a winning long-term strategy for a chip maker.

Ok, then.

[Super Piano Hater 64]

RISC is the future.

For whatever it's worth, RISC-vs-CISC has very little to do with the performance characteristics of Apple Silicon chips relative to their x64 competitors, and if you're a former PPC user you should absolutely know better. Decoding the x64 instruction set does take up a lot of space on the die, and its variable-length instructions do cause icache bloat (and make jumps less space-efficient than they theoretically could be), but that's not exactly low-hanging fruit compared to all the other ways a microarchitecture can be made more efficient. AMD engineers have said as much, and their achievements seem to have vindicated their claims. I hope Intel can manage to keep up.

Your other statements comparing VST2 to 32-bit processors are a ridiculous false equivalence. The 4GB RAM ceiling was no big deal for some users, but it was make-or-break for enough people that the whole ecosystem benefits from having everyone on 64-bit machines. (Backwards compatibility with 32-bit plugins is a separate issue.) VST3 has no such global improvement to hang its hat on. It makes things a little easier in a small number of ways for Cubendo engineers. For almost everyone else, it's either the same, or worse, in every way that matters to a user or a developer.

[jamcat]

There are plenty of benchmarks and YT videos showing direct comparisons.

Really? Because none of the comparisons or benchmarks I've seen show Apple as anything but struggling to match Intel and AMD. e.g. This article says "According to a report by MacRumors, the first Geekbench 5 scores for the new Intel Core i9-12900K processor reveals that it is nearly 1.5 times faster than Apple's M1 Pro and M1 Max in multi-score performance." 1.5 times faster is a serious win for Intel, don't you think?

I'm talking about comparison between the M1 Max MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro Cheese Grater with Afterburner. MacBook Pro performs better for graphics, and close for audio. Also, the Apple Silicon MacBook Pro outperforms a similarly spec’d Intel MacBook Pro by quite a lot, while using a fraction of the power and running cool and silent. So there’s that too.

It's been a pretty common theme since Apple's inception that they have succeeded where others have failed, saw how to use and market technologies when others couldn't, and dictated the direction of the entire industry through disruptive innovation.

Hardly. They were a decade behind Microsoft with mobile, they were two years behind the rest of the industry with 3G support and a year late with 4G. They succeed only through marketing, convincing gullible fools that their mostly average products are somehow worth a ridiculous premium.

You're literally the first person I've ever seen that prefers the Windows Phone to the iPhone. You are a true believer.

The windowed GUI and the mouse are two examples of all of the above. ARM is just the latest.

Neither developed by Apple, they were first shown in The Mother of All Demos in 1968. And, the reality is that Microsoft built and sold their first mouse in 1983, having made Word mouse-compatible a year earlier, well before the first Macintosh computer. Apple yet again following in Microsoft's footsteps.

Well that's entirely the point. Apple didn't invent either the mouse or the windowed GUI. Xerox did. But Xerox didn't see the value in either. We'd all be posting from Xerox machines if they had.

[BONES]

I'm talking about comparison between the M1 Max MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro Cheese Grater with Afterburner.

That's like saying the Cadillac CTS is the fastest car in the world, when you've only compared it to other Cadillacs. There is a whole wide world of computers outside Apple's walled garden and the rest of us aren't so blinkered that we are blind to this glaringly obvious fact.

MacBook Pro performs better for graphics, and close for audio.

No, it doesn't. In fact it's in graphics performance related tests that Apple Silicon is trounced. CInebench is a benchmark that uses Cinema 4D, a 3D modelling and animation application, and Apple's new chips do quite poorly, even compared to last gen Intel CPUs. Even with OpenGL, which PCs only use for cross-platform compatibility - DirectX offers way better performance and features - Intel and AMD trounce Apple's offerings.

Also, the Apple Silicon MacBook Pro outperforms a similarly spec’d Intel MacBook Pro by quite a lot, while using a fraction of the power and running cool and silent. So there’s that too.

All the more reason not to buy a MacBook Pro, I'd have thought. But it's unsurprising because Apple's machines aren't optimised for anything, they are set up for general use with no ability to extract more performance. That's why anyone with even half a brain chooses a PC if they are after better performance and/or care about not spending any more money than they need to.

You're literally the first person I've ever seen that prefers the Windows Phone to the iPhone. You are a true believer.

And how many people do you know who even used Windows Phone? Because I can tell you that my first Android phone was a massive step down in every way from my last Windows Phone, and yet it was still a much better option than an iPhone. WP is actually a classic example of Microsoft's total ineptitude when it comes to the consumer market. They had a better product in every way, especially after they got Nokia on-board, and a 10 year headstart and still couldn't make a go of it. They even had market dominance in Europe and still managed to completely f**k it up. Their ineptitude beggars belief.

It was the same with Zune - Microsoft had a viable streaming service in 2008, before Spotify even existed, with a bigger catalogue than iTunes at the time, and they couldn't make that work, either, despite also having the all-time best digital music experience through the Zune app. My 13 year old ZuneHD remains my all-time favourite gadget and I have a box full of spare parts for it, so hopefully I will be able to use it for the rest of my life. In some ways it's even better than a record collection.

Herein lies the difference between you and I. Everything you say is filtered through your bias towards anything and everything Apple, whereas I f**king hate Microsoft and I will never, ever trust them - they have tried their best to f**k over Windows with W11 - yet I don't allow that to cloud my judgement. I remain open and objective.

Well that's entirely the point. Apple didn't invent either the mouse or the windowed GUI. Xerox did. But Xerox didn't see the value in either. We'd all be posting from Xerox machines if they had.

Xerox weren't doing it for themselves, beyond trying to build a patent portfolio. They were happy to let the wider world use their ideas and they are probably still collecting royalties from all of us.