Starise

14 hours ago, Sheens said:

speaking of hogs..

We've discovered one!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A hairless sasquatch!! OMG How do I erase short term memory.

What? I don't see any crickets?

Ouch! 

Emerald I suspect you would have been amazing at "your momma" comebacks.😬😁

In most earlier societies the arts were considered an indulgence. This was mainly because it took everything men had to gather food, protect their families, provide shelter and stay warm enough not to freeze to death in the winter. Somewhere in the hut or cave they might have a flute or drum and maybe on occasion they would gather in groups to make sound when all else was tended to.

When kings began to conquer and tax ,people began to take on more specialized roles and music came along as a "trade". Probably mostly payed by the king for his court music, and who knows? They likely had other less visible things they were required to do, even then. When a war came along they were required to march with the soldiers. Could have also been stand in soldiers if needed.

Music the way we know it is radically different than music once was. The 50's right up until online streaming began to kill artist income were a sort of golden age of music. Artists made millions in the late 60's through the 90's. Some still are making money but not many.

Most musicians I know who gig regularly do it as a sideline to a full time job because it just doesn't pay the bills. This was before the virus hit. Gigs are almost non existent now. In essence the public now only has one source to get music,  online.

It's a fact most musicians are not very good business people and wouldn't know their head from a hole in the ground when it comes to making huge piles of cash. They spent their lives learning to play not analyzing business practices. The main way these guys made money in the past was they had big business onboard via record companies who funded, promoted and pushed their acts. Sometimes the record companies begged them to sign up, other times they begged the record companies. They were the only ones who had the muscle to get you on an NFL half time show or promote you to magazines and radio stations. Now that everything is consolidated under Big Brother through streaming services, they can pretty much decide what's hot and what's not.

Music has been lobotomized  and the virus just made it worse. Now do you want the bad news? lol.

On 10/10/2020 at 5:54 AM, Doc H said:

So.... looking at this thread had me thinking again about Apple and their business practices. How those business practices are going to impact my business in the long run. And it really comes down to this.

I’m going to have to see how this all shakes out.
 

As a Pro Tools and Logic Pro based studio, Catalina (MAC OS X 10.15), caused issues with both DAW and plug-in developers. To the point that the migration to 64 bit code threw a wrench into Pro Tools for 6 months. It also created havoc within Apple’s own Logic Pro X for nearly 6 weeks. I decided to wait and see where things were going to shake out. (I still haven’t moved to Catalina and will skip it all together).
 

Here is the down side for me. At any given time I keep one machine in production environment and one machine in test. Meaning I will test any updates to OS, DAW and plugins in the test environment on personal projects. Once I’ve got a good idea of what bugs to expect and that there aren’t any session killers in the setup it gets moved to production. 
 

So where does that leave me?

It leaves me with two concerns:

1) How much are two machines going to set me back? Meaning machines that will meet my minimum specs to run a full Pro Tools Ultimate mix session with up to 384 voices. Or, a LPX project with up to 500 tracks with plugins. (Yes that’s happened).

2) What if any of my studio gear will need to be replaced due to lack of support or incompatibility? I’m certain my standby Focusrite Clarett will have to be swapped out at some point. (The Clarett series being a bit long in the tooth these days). But what about my so called future proofed Focusrite Red series? How future proof is it really in the scheme of Apple’s change?

There’s a bit of an expense that both hobbyists and pros alike have to consider whilst Apple goes about its changes to its master plan. Then there’s this whole Thunderbolt 3 issue that has many Mac users holding a dongle both literally and figuratively.

A company that once treasured its “creative” user base has managed to frustrate that user base to no end over the last 8 years. (The observation is that Apple has lost it’s way under Tim Cook - my opinion).

It seems you have a very good strategy for eliminating potential issues by using a tester machine although a potentially expensive option. Bypassing Catalina was also a good call in my opinion. I would suggest two things if it were me...

First I would use a "wait and see" approach since Apple users are being told right now the older computers and OS will continue to be supported for as long as 5 years out.

Secondly, I would  be shopping other replacement  options, especially if I hear that things aren't going so well much past the "growing pains" stage usually expected in new computer/OS release. By "other replacement options" I mean a high end PC. That is unless you are willing to manage the expense in buying a new Mac setup.

There's a good chance many Macs will continue to work ok past that 5 year mark, but no absolute guarantee. Probably no reason to be overly concerned at this point. I think I might have a Plan B just in case ( if it were me).

20 hours ago, Jim Roseberry said:

We've got one client (scores Films) who's running a Cubase template with 2600 (that's not a typo) tracks.

He's not running at a 64-sample ASIO buffer size.

Similar to  comparing a formula race car to a Peugeot  in my case.  I couldn't come up with 2600 tracks even in my dreams. I guess maybe this is the appeal of Ryzen to the stereotypical "average home studio musician"  whatever that really is.  I just received my weekly Newegg sales flyer in my email. One of the sales is a 3000 series Ryzen chip that some are claiming comes close enough to an i9 in performance to rub the whiskers on it.. No it isn't an i9 but only marginally less so.Something like 3600 positive reviews on it. I read through maybe the first 10 pages of reviews and at least one person was using it for recording.  Don't misunderstand, I'm still solidly Intel when it comes to DAWs.  People trading up their old i5 machines are ecstatic.

I tend to be content with less if it works. In many cases I think even in a DAW situation Ryzen is ok for smaller projects ( like mine tend to be).  So it's sometimes a comparison apples to oranges. Probably depends a lot on available funds. To be fair, most who are using these and not complaining about the cooling fan are using water.

But yeah, for me, if it's only a little more money for Intel I'll always go Intel. If the margins were wider i.e. Apple computers .vs PC computers AND it works ok for my purposes I'll take the marginally lesser chip. So far Ryzen isn't leaps and bounds lower in price unless you consider a 100.00-200 difference something that would tilt the scales on a total DAW build IMO. I mean, you still need to consider connectivity, the mother board and the whole rest of it. Now a 500 difference. I'm listening.

5 minutes ago, Jim Roseberry said:

How does adding more cores affect latency and potential clock-speed?

Generally speaking:

• To make effective use of significantly more cores, you're talking higher buffer sizes.
• The more cores on the CPU, the harder it is to achieve high clock-speed
• Super tight enclosures mean low clock-speed (thermal limitations)
• Long Battery Life means low clock-speed 

 

AMD has 32 cores on 3970x Threadripper, but the all-core clock-speed is about 4GHz.

Intel 10900k has 10 cores, with all-core clock-speed of 5.3GHz.

• At large buffer sizes, the 3970x will smoke the 10900k
• At smallest buffer sizes, the 10900k will smoke the 3970x

 

In my experience, Mac laptops currently provide longer battery-life than most PC laptops.

When using a laptop, I'm almost always plugged-in.  🤷‍♂️

 

Good points Jim. I guess I really don't know how Apple plans to compete. If they totally dump Intel though, that only leaves a few more options especially given that they are planning all in house silicon. So far the towers are still on the Intel teat. My understanding was  Apple plan an eventual total break from Intel silicon. In order to do that they would likely, as you say, be running into some of the same kinds of issues Ryzen and Intel run into.

I guess anything could happen. Since Apple pretty much still command the small device market, even if only by a very small margin,  they might simply drop out of or cut back on the large computer segment. If they continue to develop their ARM line and have a more streamed line instruction set they might be competitive in larger computers even though they run against the same multi core limitations Intel and Ryzen have. 

I'm not one of those to not have my laptop plugged in either so it usually isn't a concern for me. My i7 usually has at least 2 hours of battery in the event I would be forced to use battery power.  So yeah, that benefit is missed on me as well. As I understand it, the architecture of the  new ARM core layout will have capability if needed and throttle back if it isn't needed.....so if you only surf Amazon and Facebook it'll probably last quite awhile. OTOH if you're running complex programs more cores ramp up which I'm sure uses more energy. The hype is always tilted to the positive in any marketing plan it seems. The only things I know right now are

- Apple is dumping Intel.

-ARM computers will be out end part of this year sometime.

The rest is "extrapolation" on my part  I do wish we seen more of a game plan from Intel, especially some word on how they plan to break past the next computing barriers.

1 hour ago, Jim Roseberry said:

Just a couple of points:

 

"Long Battery Life" and "High Performance" are diametrically opposed.  You can have one or the other... not both.

 

General-purpose use (Office Apps, Surfing the Internet, etc) doesn't require much in the way of CPU.

ARM CPUs are already fine doing these tasks (iPads).

 

We work with a lot of Mac users who were essentially abandoned (as power-users) by Apple.

Most often they're professional composers... who need specific components in a high-performance machine; a machine that can be expanded/upgraded as need demands.

The new Mac Pro???  7k for the base model.  Specs our composer clients need would be ~$10,000... and still not offer the same speed/performance and custom/expansion/upgrade options.

 

I agree  it appears only more light weight hardware is going to  be forthcoming initially. If they can bring higher spec'd Macbooks into this i.e Macbook Pro, then maybe they are onto something.  ARM chips apparently exist as controller chips in existing Macbooks, so it seems they are simply taking things a step further.

Probably the thing that peaked my curiosity some was the "simplified instruction set" in a new Mac OS. Simplified instructions probably mean faster processes which translates to more streamlined computations using less energy.  Essentially doing  more with less. While Intel has been adding more cores and using smaller diameter connections and to a lesser extent Ryzen, Apple's instructions sets could possibly make better use of ARM processors.  There has been talk of a 10 core + eventual ARM processor. That doesn't sound like small device territory any more. 

In any case, I'll be staying a PC guy for the foreseeable future. I'm not going to spend 2X the money to see a negligible gain. Not only that  but all of my present software and plugins are PC. Bapu would have to call like 5000 plug in companies to get changed over 😨

If in the future Mac started letting their chips out to anyone who wanted to buy one at similar prices to Intel. If they suddenly let Gigabit and others make mobos we would truly be onto something interesting. We know that won't happen. Intel will stay viable one way or the other....maybe they will get a contract making vaccination droids. Something to take a shot at?

On 10/4/2020 at 7:57 AM, msmcleod said:

I've been reading about this is on the Avid & Steinberg forums, just to get any indication as to what plans they have, but its pretty much all speculation at this point.

Going by past upgrades though  (i.e. PPC to Intel, and also the OSX compatibility cycles), it's likely that the Intel Mac's will continue to be supported for around 5 years after the ARM macs start hitting the streets.

The more worrying issues for those tied to the Apple platform are:

- Will DAW companies, and more importantly plugin companies be able to make the switch?  I mean, there's a lot of codebase there that may or may not be easy to port over. Some will simply be able to recompile for ARM, others may have DSP specially tuned for Intel and will require more work. Also differences in chip architecture / OS could mean major changes to their threading  models. DAW companies that target both PC & Mac may have a tough decision to make here if they're looking at maintaining a divergent codebase moving forward.

- Will the audio interface companies be ready with drivers for the ARM macs?  Presumably Apple will also need to come up with some new Thunderbolt 3 solution for ARM too, unless they ditch Thunderbolt and come up with some new proprietary interface.

- People who rely on bootcamp to run Windows will be out of luck. This feature was only viable because both OS's ran on the Intel architecture.

So even if the DAW companies manage to make the transition, there's a pretty good chance that you'll have to upgrade your audio interface and say goodbye to many of your plugins.

I can envisage a lot of pro studios moving over to Windows to avoid this pain.

 This is one thing I hadn't considered. That DAW and plugin makers might struggle with the changes. It would seem Apple is making the jump easier by providing a developer kit to anyone early in the game before the ARM comes out. Apple has already essentially locked  in a more dedicated process inside their current OS with relation to how it communicates with Logic as compared to any other DAW.  

True blue Mac fans will probably roll with it in the hopes the advantages outweigh the liabilities, but yeah, if I owned a studio for $$  there would be a breaking point where I would say enough is enough. For what will likely only be a much hyped "marginal" gain it probably isn't worth it. If the switch could be made fairly painlessly then it's an option to go to PC. The other considerations might be if you only used a Mac OS or Logic for the last 20 years you need to learn a new OS which probably doesn't look too appealing. Also changing all of those Kontakt libraries and plugins over to PC from Mac would be a hassle if you had not prior run dual platforms in the studio.

Either way they will need to make changes, so maybe it's an opportune time for some to make the jump.

1 hour ago, antler said:

If they are faster, quieter, and cooler, I'm sure Apple will be happy to price the entry models at $7999. Given that people seem happy to pay for the latest, greatest iPhone, I'm fairly sure they will be happy to pay.

This was one point raised by most who are following this- You won't gain any financial benefit with future Macs. Any savings made from changing over to in house chips goes into someone else's pocket. I don't think the prices will be quite that high unless we are talking a Mac high end tower. So far ARM is only slated for laptops. This could change.

Is there an Intel answer to Mac Arm based laptops said to be out later this year?

Imagine a laptop that doesn't need a cooling fan, can last for 20 hours on one charge and is faster than anything we now have.

Anyone else following this? 

On one side of it, ARM Mac manufactured chips have been in ipads and iphones for a long time. Looks like they are scaling things up  to add Mabooks to the lineup.

The smaller Macbook would be a good candidate for the first try because it isn't as powerful so you could basically add the insides from the latest ipad and have a good result.

Moving on to the better Macbook pro line Apple will make a new version of the ARM chips especially for the Macbook pro. Developers can buy a special mac mini to prototype software on. Things haven't really hit the fan yet though in terms of real world actual use. In order to remain competitive Apple will need to show at least some perfoamnce gains over x86 architecture.

I haven't heard much about what Intel has in mind to counter this. They are working on ARM chips as well...but I am concerned their integration might be a problem.  Apple will obviously be going through some growing pains  with this transition. When the bugs are ironed out though Intel will have some very real competition on their hands for the laptop market if performance can be shown to out class them on ARM Apple devices. 

The tech from Apple looks mainly like regurgitated PowerPC architecture taken to a different ( maybe better) level. If it works well though, and I suspect it will,  I would look for a response of some kind from Intel. If performance gains are only 2% it won't break the bank. Comparisons might be sketchy at best because we are then comparing apples to oranges. Adobe and Microsoft are on board with early development . This might make a reasonable litmus as a comparison. Of course, anything Apple writes will be streamlined for their computers, the reason Logic works just a little better than a Mac version of Cubase.

LOL. Kenny you are a riot man! 

Those look like the results 8 hours later of the world record hot dog eating contest.

I thought I seen a picture of my poo online. As it turns out  it was  that  picture NASA took  of the elongated asteroid headed for earth . There are some truly large aliens out there

Oh, that must have a different meaning where you're from.  Just know that if you get the nickname "pokey" or farm animals run  you might be over doing things a little bit 😬

Just sayin'.....where was this all going? I forget now.

Well these are all pretty good, and funny.......I'm basically brain dead today ( no this isn't a regular occurrence nor is it as some suspect...ongoing) Can't seem to think of anything at the moment. Earth calling brain............. earth calling brain.

This would fit right in a David Bowie concert.  God rest his soul.

I think if he went with the bald look and a wax job he would be the coolest looking president ever. 

Congrats on retirement Jacques!

Please don't rub it in on us poor working stiffs.  I do the car thing in winter as well but with me it's not intentional.

Have had some close calls up here in Eastern PA in the snow. I sort of found out anti-lock brakes should really be called anti-stop brakes.

I have a very good comeback to my wife. She has JAS ( junk acquisition syndrome) . At least I can use the stuff I buy.

Biggest mistake I ever made was when I bought a Variax. I told my wife, " This is like 26 guitars in one".   Now if I ever mention another guitar........................

Sorry to hear this Bat. It's a travesty for sure. In thoughts and prayers. Doesn't seem too serious there yet. *thankfully* Hope you get your voice back again.

This is maybe a future thought for a future time, but I'll be darned if I would build my house out of wood in those parts. Stick built homes are pretty common everywhere in the US. Even homes that look like stone are simply resin coated wood structures. Better yet, underground houses.  Lots of homes in California are stucco with a ceramic roof are they not? Stucco isn't the same as solid stone or concrete though. It's just a wood structure with a coating. That would seem to offer at least some protection.

Here in the east almost all houses are stick frames with vinyl siding. Once it catches , there isn't much you can do unless the fire company gets there  FAST and strategically hits the fire. I lived through a house fire once and it was amazing the amount of heat even at 50ft away.  All they could do was knock holes on the roof and dowse it. Total loss. 

In this case, if the fire gets close it isn't like you can always run to safety. A grim reminder of how very fragile most things in general are.

I think we might need to come up with a new term for a more extreme form of ugly.  FuglyX10.... second thought, sounds more like a halloween facial product.

I digress, express and regress. Nuf said....well ok it was a little too much all depends on how you measure it. Any worse and I'd rather be looking at feces.

You look a little young to retire. ...oh wait that might not be you!!! 😮

Not sure if this is an issue or not, but if you manually copied them as opposed to letting an installer do it, this might be your issue. I would opt to let the installer from the plug in maker add the plug in along with any accreditation you need to use the plugin. TBH I haven't touched the SINE player or any of its plugins in quite awhile.

I had been moving my midi one note at a time when necessary, but sometimes there is cause to move an entire midi track up or back a few clicks to the timeline.

I saw someone doing this in Cubase with a few fast keystrokes and was curious how I would do this most efficiently in Cakewalk?  I know this is probably in the online manual but my eyes usually glaze over before I can find what I need. Anyone here do this on a fairly regular basis who would care to comment?

Thanks!

Not sure if it really matters but you don't really need an mp3 for upload to SC.  I almost always upload a wav file.  SC will then convert to mp3. Also you can then download it as a wav later on. Not sure if this is SC subscription dependent or not? Might only apply to the higher tiers. If you upload as mp3 that's all you'll get for downloads.

Oh yeah that's right were talking about air quality and I brought bigfoot up and somehow that led to us talking about being hairy. I think that was my fault too, and  bigfoot rub and then I mentioned having just tried a rub not long ago ....then I think sheens somehow tied farting into all of this. Maybe it wasn't sheens. 

You don't really want to get me started on farting because I could tell you a few campfire stories. 100% true but 200% TMI.  Heck I could probably write the TMI book but I don't want to put any of you through that.

I live in a sort of denial....no it's not a river in Egypt.

When I'm in denial I try to ignore that my studio has needed some shall we say "re organization".  My present excuse is that I'm  moving to another space I'm working on. My projects tend to take awhile. The space I'm eyeing is full of my wife's stuff and some of mine too and I honestly don't know what to do with all of it. I have been contemplating sneaking a some of her stuff at a time out in the weekly trash but I'm afraid she would be on to me. She's  *ahem*  a collector of various items. I'll leave it at that. Most of it is left over from a yard sale that didn't do very well. I would love to give it all away. More likely I'm going to pay someone to help me get rid of it. That is, if I can talk her into parting with it. We still have her dads car from 8 years ago in the driveway. One one level it's sweet.  Suffice it to say I have room if I could just utilize it.

Hats off to you Bat on getting things set up better. I am envious.