• tdc
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Topic: M1 Monterey experience - Music Studio of the Future

2021 was the year I migrated all my recording gear over to the RME AVB system, and whilst I did experience a little of the bleeding edge at the start the system has been completely reliable, fantastic to use and has exceeded my expectations of sonic integrity.

This week I begun tests with a new M1 Max MacBook, and I have been completely blown away. Obviously there are many applications and utilities that are not ready yet, but for me there is enough important ones to consider moving over. Huge thanks to RME for leading the way with their M1 support.

I have been setting up for some live recordings with my 32 channel AVB system, so setup Reaper and Pro Tools to run at the same time ( for a single machine style of redundancy) I would prefer to record and track into Pro Tools as that's what I prefer to edit/mix in but its notorious for stopping during a take. Following some advice about Avid plugins to avoid, I got Pro Tools 2021.10 running and it seemed the most fluid and relaxed I have ever seen it. Even EuCon runs well and is smoother than any other machine I have used it on.

With Pro Tools in the foreground recording 32 Tracks, and Reaper in background recording 32 Tracks for hours happily I decided to dos some tests. I duplicated the tracks and watched the CPU. It hardly moved. So I continued this until I got to 1024 tracks in Pro Tools, and 4096!!!! Tracks in Reaper. This is on battery, and the fan is barely running - and is silent.

Obviously this is a very basic test, but it hints at some spectacular developments in the next year.

I think the RME marketing team were very prescient in their claims.
https://www.rme-audio.com/avb-walkthrough.html

  • Max
  • Max
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Re: M1 Monterey experience - Music Studio of the Future

Hi Tony, thanks for sharing your experience. We were similarly excited about the performance of M1, also or especially with AVB. When you find the time, could you share a bit more detail about how you recorded those thousands of tracks? Did you use a Digiface AVB or the native AVB implementation of Apple?

3 Reply by tdc (edited by tdc 2021-12-11 09:23:02)

  • tdc
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Re: M1 Monterey experience - Music Studio of the Future

Hi Max,

In that instance last week, I was using my recording AVB rack with the 2 x 12Mic's and 2 x AVBTool's which has been running from a  M1 13" Big Sur system for the past 6 months. As a safety backup for live performance recordings, I have my AVB routing configured so all Mic Inputs from all network devices are patched to each device’s MADI output, so I can connect my MADIface and backup machine to any of the 12mic or AVBTool devices and get all 32ch’s, and it was this MADI side of the system I used for this quick test. 32 Mic inputs, then assigned to the DAW tracks in groups of 32. ( I thought that the MADI I/O on the AVB gear was overkill at the start, but it has become such an integral part of my workflow. Invaluable!)

I tried to get the RME AVB Controller onto the new 16 M1 Max but it boots and then shuts down. Connecting the AVB gear to the Ethernet on a CalDigit T3S I can control the preamps, and using Apples AVDECC AVB Controller I can make patches but no way of getting the AVB to appear as an Audio I/O as yet.


Cheers,

Tony

  • tdc
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Re: M1 Monterey experience - Music Studio of the Future

As a follow-up. With the newly updated AVB Controller installer .pkg, I have the AVB Controller app now running as intended on macOS 12 / M1 Max.

  • Registered: 2019-04-21
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Re: M1 Monterey experience - Music Studio of the Future

I have a similar setup for mobile recordings but with m32 pros. Everything works nicely with native AVB, which means M1 Laptop, Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 and then Thunderbolt 2 to Ethernet.
I like to use HIVE; I get all the AVB I/Os as a audio device, which is fantastic. CPU usage is minimal.

  • tdc
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Re: M1 Monterey experience - Music Studio of the Future

You have motivated me to grab a TB3 -> TB2 adapter to try this out. Previous trials of this AVB method using a 2019 Intel MBP was less than ideal as it seemed to really load the CPU resulting in heat and fan noise.