At the Experts we’ve been using Apple Silicon powered Macs since the release of the first MacBook Pro M1 last year. We also have a Mac mini and the newer more powerful second-generation MacBook Pro 14” and 16” models powered by the newer Apple Silicon M1 Max SoC processor. In this article we reveal our observations from real-world usage and testing - these are 5 things every audio engineer should know about Apple Silicon Macs.
1 - Rosetta 2 Makes Everything Easier
We’ve always been keen to point out that no working audio professional should make the leap to a new computer, OS or DAW version that is unsupported, especially when working on a mission-critical project.
To help the audio community we have both a compatibility guide and searchable database of Apple Silicon supported software and hardware as well as a macOS Monterey compatibility guide and searchable database of macOS Monterey supported software and hardware. If you want to know if your stuff is supported it’s worth checking them out.
However, when a manufacturer says something is unsupported that doesn't mean it won’t work. It means that if you go ahead and start using it then you can’t complain or seek support if it doesn’t work.
That said, enter the miracle of coding wizardry that is Rosetta 2. With a few exceptions, most software and hardware works out of the box via Rosetta.
Furthermore, in our tests, most applications and plugins perform as well if not better using Rosetta 2, compared to running on Intel-powered computers.
2 - Fan Noise
Put any older Intel Mac under stress for any length of time and soon it sounded like a 747 was about to take off in the studio. This made using Apple laptops and some of their desktops almost impossible in a room where you are tracking acoustic instruments, or you need quiet to mix.
Whatever Apple has done with Silicon, it is our experience that even under heavy loads the fans either don’t kick in or when they do are so quiet you can’t hear them.
On the original first-generation M1 Mac, Russ started to wonder if there is even a fan in his MacBook Pro M1, in a year he is yet to hear it.
If you are worried about fan noise, in our tests we have observed very little, if any, fan noise, even under heavy usage.
3 - DAW CPU Usage Meters Aren’t To Be Trusted
Even before the introduction of Apple Silicon we were skeptical about the usefulness of the CPU meters in DAWs like Pro Tools, Studio One and Logic Pro. For example, Micheal Carnes wrote an excellent article on the subject Pro Tools System Usage Meter - Can You Trust It?
In our tests using the new Apple Silicon SoC processor, it seems the meters mean even less.
When putting all of the Apple Silicon Macs under extreme loads we’ve often had the CPU meter showing red and indicating that the session is about to fall over. This is often not the case, we continue to throw more tracks at a session, we drop buffer sizes and despite what the meters are telling us the session keeps working.
In addition, currently, the CPU usage meters in Pro Tools only display the high-performance cores, it’s not clear why this is. It could be because Pro Tools doesn’t use the high-efficiency cores or it could be that Pro tools currently can’t ‘see’ the high-efficiency cores.
Based on our experience, we think that DAW developers should rethink their CPU meters for the new Apple Silicon Macs if we are to rely on them to tell us when things may need adjusting.
For the time being, take them with a pinch of salt.
4 - Graphics Are More Stable
An easier indicator of a session under stress in previous Intel-powered computers was seeing the graphics starting to slow down. Scrolling became stuttered, meter ballistics became sluggish and counters would miss frames.
In our tests, even under extreme loads, the new SoC chips with more powerful graphics and dynamic memory allocation that comes with unified memory, seem to remove any graphics issues even under heavy loads.
5 - DAW Specifications May Need A Rethink
For a long time, there’s been the received wisdom that a powerful DAW needs a lot of RAM and other components in a suitable computer.
The introduction of Unified Memory and other improvements created using the SoC architecture, would appear to tear up the rules for many of those old specs.
We would always recommend getting the highest spec you can afford when building a computer for your studio, however, what manufacturers and software developers regard as minimum specs may need a rethink. Once they do, you may not need to spend as much on your next studio computer as you think.
Summary
All in all, we are hugely impressed by the performance of the new Apple Silicon powered Macs. For many of us, they are the computer we’ve been hoping would be made. Apple may just have done it.
Even better, these Apple Macs are only going to get more powerful… watch this space.