Apple announces new Mac Mini, Air + 13" MBP featuring their own M1 chip.

[Ploki]

Thanks very much - so, the message is that the Mini is really very good for the price, but some of the benchmarking showing it as better than any other Mac was a bit too good to be true when it comes to DAWs.

iMac 27 2020 i9 3,6Ghz 10-core reaches 317 Alchemy tracks.

Mac Mini 2020 M1 8-core reaches 126 Alchemy tracks.

I'm close to tears. Straight disappointment this real-world comparison.

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-c ... audio.html
how?
this guy did the "new logic benchmark" from logic pro forums and the MBA (passively cooled) pulls 60 tracks!
My Mini i7 pulls around 85 on the New Logic Benchmark project... And the 2018 i9 crapped out before 80?

[spacepluk]

I am not sure I agree with you at all for two reasons.

1) open your daw.. one instance of Repro -5.... play eight notes simultaneously at the highest upsampling Repro-5 has, try it with and without Repro-5 multicore enabled...... Huge Difference in whether it glitches or not... Huge. night and day.

Yeah, inside a plugin some audio paths can be parallelized if they they are actually parallel (e.g. separate voices). I believe this is up to the plugin and not the DAW.

2) as I mentioned before, recorded tracks the daw knows what is happening bars ahead of what you are hearing...

Even though the DAW knows what happens ahead of time, its knowledge is limited to the DAW's own data in tracks, automation lanes, etc. It doesn't really know what the output of a specific plugin will be. It could be all random values. So, look-ahead can help to some extent but the same limitations apply AFAIK.

Anyway, the screenshots and Markus are there.
rsp

Would love to hear from someone that has more experience with these systems and can give a better explanation. But it seems to me that single core performance is very important for audio and multicore doesn't help with serial audio chains.

[Markus Krause]

It seems that beeing a full-time plugin-developer for nearly 20 years is 'not experienced' enough to know how plugins work.
Please do note that I also got an A-grade university degree in IT and deep knowledge about operating systems and hardware.
I support multicore CPUs since 15 years now. Tone2 has been one of the first companies who supported it in plugins.

[agharta]

iMac 27 2020 i9 3,6Ghz 10-core reaches 317 Alchemy tracks.

Mac Mini 2020 M1 8-core reaches 126 Alchemy tracks.

I'm close to tears. Straight disappointment this real-world comparison.

That's not even using Rosetta2 is it?

[Cinebient]

I saw someone at gearslutz posted that you should set Logic manually to use 8 cores (and not the default automatic) and then he gets 128 tracks in this Logic benchmark.

[agharta]

Logic isn't indicative of general performance as it's optimised being that it's Apple's baby.

[jancivil]

I don't know what 'because audio is entirely serial' means [EDIT, interjecting: I don't know what it means to the actual issue discussed, not this is baffling strictly speaking]. Distribution to cores isn't so much about how the audio is experienced or achieved live. You're right about certain applications but axiomatic that certainly isn't. A number of things happening at the same time but standing in line for the one shot at CPU time is not so viable for too many things.

But that is precisely what's happening in the scenario I described above.
Want to process your synth's output with a chorus? Can't be done in parallel, your signal will have to finish the synth's processing before it gets to the chorus.
The very same is true for the internal architecture of the synth. A voice has to be generated before it gets sent into a filter. [...]

Sure, you could possibly jump between CPUs, [...]

Fwiw, I'm have no idea about programming, so there's possibly something I'm getting wrong, but as said, most of this is dictated by rather simple logic - you simply can't process distortion and delay parallely in case you want your distorted signal to run through a delay. Not even the fanciest code will get around that.

Well, there is one developer here who does code and apparently he's not getting that simple logic.
The goalpost I saw and took exception to has as the conclusion <single-core performance is more important>.
It can be, for me it isn't, there is no clock speed that's going to make up for the lack of distribution of cores.

What you have there seems pretty much non sequitur to me, ie., the notion of how/why distribute to cores relying wholly on the premise of serial vs parallel. I don't see the relevance of that.
I'm not a programmer either, but my experience is evidence of a major difference in performance. I came from Duocore machines during a long rough patch after the death of my MacPro [8-core].

I have been schooled that there are things which hammer on one core, a standalone modular synth I forget the name of but I don't think I have anything like that.

[Ploki]

Logic isn't indicative of general performance as it's optimised being that it's Apple's baby.

lol. i wish.
logic got retina support later than pro tools back in 2012.

[Sascha Franck]

Alchemy 2 should be native because part of the Logic software. Diva as we speak I guess is translated Rosetta 2 stuff.

It pretty much looks as if Alchemy isn't native yet (pretty poor results in comparison). Maybe it's using Rosetta - and maybe the reason for that might be that it's still developed by Camel Audio.

[zvenx]

Hmmm.. Camel Audio no longer exists and at least Ben works for Apple afaik.
So it should be (but may not necessarily be) silicon optimized at this point.
rsp

[Sascha Franck]

Well, there is one developer here who does code and apparently he's not getting that simple logic.

That is true. Quite unfortunately. Because you can't beat simple logic. An overdrive supposed to run through a delay cannot be processed parallely by any means. There's absolutely no way around that.

[Sascha Franck]

Hmmm.. Camel Audio no longer exists and at least Ben works for Apple afaik.
So it should be (but may not necessarily be) silicon optimized at this point.
rsp

Well, I could pretty much imagine there to be some delays here and there, especially when it comes to 3rd party "hijacked" developers - and that they couldn't wait for Ben to finish because those M1 machines were ready to launch.

[zvenx]

Unless the DAW can 'look ahead'.......which they can do once it isn't a live track.
rsp

[zvenx]

Hmmm.. Camel Audio no longer exists and at least Ben works for Apple afaik.
So it should be (but may not necessarily be) silicon optimized at this point.
rsp

Well, I could pretty much imagine there to be some delays here and there, especially when it comes to 3rd party "hijacked" developers - and that they couldn't wait for Ben to finish because those M1 machines were ready to launch.

Apple has bought many companies, and I am not sure if they do any at gun point .

At this point I have no idea if Alchemy is or is not native to Silicon in Logic 10.6. But as an apple employee I am sure Ben et al had access to the M1 chips etc long before it saw the light of day publicly.
rsp

[Ploki]

Unless the DAW can 'look ahead'.......which they can do once it isn't a live track.
rsp

Logic has an option to do multicore on live-input tracks as well tho.

I just wish apple finally disabled auto-arm for instrument tracks, it can really murder computers on track stacks when you just navigate around the project.