If you could share your experience, would be so much appreciated.
Thinking of getting one with M2 Ultra (glad I passed on M1 Ultra last year)
My maxed out intel chip mac mini is almost done good with its serving…
curious how much difference it would make though on Cubase!
Hopefully I don’t need to render time to time anymore…!
So I just started setting my m2 ultra with 192gb ram up yesterday. Im using an RME UFX, and to be honest, my cubase session starts with ASIO hovering around 20% at 512 samples with nothing loaded. Not sure what to think about it, or what to do about it!
I did some limited testing, and ASIO is always up on the performance meter.
It seems I’m having particular issue with Eastwest Play libraries. Hollywood Strings began to peg the ASIO. Something is clearly wrong here.
In terms of Kontakt, I loaded an instance of Abbey Road 70s drummer and did a simple midi beat. Again, ASIO started at about 20%. I was able to duplicate the track 180 times before ASIO crapped out.
At 180 instances @ 512 samples, the ASIO was just about pegged, but it everything played properly and navigating during playback was still quick and snappy,
It’s hard to know what is causing the ASIO to be elevated, but I was able to add tracks and it would rise incrementally, but still work up to the limit described above.
In my previous Mac Pro 5,1, seeing the ASIO up this high would be downright terrifying. Somehow with the Studio Ultra, the ASIO is operating and displaying differently. On the other hand, I definitely have an issue with the Play libraries.
I need to check out the forums to see what may be the cause.
Ah! ok… definitely a warning sign for me before I spend about 10k on it!..! I may get underwhelmed a bit then!
My main concern is actually, not running heavy sample based Kontakt libraries but for better/faster mixing workflow.
At the moment, I render tracks about 3 times before finishing up a song (about total 100 tracks including VOX + INST) but um, if Mac Studio m2 Ultra can handle multiple instances of VST mixing plugins… then I’ll be pretty stoked.
Definitely a heavyweights those are! Sample-based Kontakt libraries.
I mostly use, waves, softubes, izotopes, the usual ones for mixing + mastering tools.
But I tend to insert+bypass+a/b compare a lot! so like… CPU burden can be a huge deal for me 
I will wait for some more reviews
Thanks!
I just bought an off the shelf M2 Ultra (64ram,1tb storage).
So far so good. I did need to round trip to a few plugin sites to get updates as I’m coming from a PC.
Fairly new to Mac for production so it’s been interesting getting used to the Mac work flow. Using my Fireface UCX with CB Pro 12.0.70. I’ll report back with some numbers once I’ve got I get quite a few hours up with it.
I will say that Native performance is better than rosetta, but not by a lot, maybe 5%. Rosetta load times are significantly longer than Native. The responsiveness of the instruments feels better native, kontakt 7 libraries load up super fast, slate drums, Waves v14, Roland Cloud, spectrasonics, arturia v collection, all work well natively. Slate virtual mix rack takes a while to load initially, thanks ilok! A few Roland Cloud synths end up on the vst black list which is poor form from Roland.
I normally run 24bit 48k,i always leave buffer at 128, I’ve not tried lower (but I will next to get numbers) , i direct monitor all my inputs for vocals, Axe Fx, etc.
Ohhh, ok ok! Hows 64 ram feel…?
I may be finally getting myself M2 Ultra base model just like yours! 64gb ram and 1tb SSD haha…
I never felt short on 64gb ram even now on my mac intel mini (maxed out model).
You reckon 64gb ram is enough for me who never choked on 64gb ram intel mac mini…? (not a kontakt heavy user at all here)
Hello! I am installing fresh on M2 ultra mac studio (64gb ram, 1tb) but um…
I opened Cubase 12 pro as native apple silicon, and surprisingly, ASIO-GUARD is about at 3rd filled spot with NewFangled Elevate plugin (vst3) inserted on one audio track… is this normal…?
haha, I am a little concerned about this… how does Asio-Guard work…?
*actually I have not connected my audio interface yet, just testing plugins one by one after installing
(so, mac studio audio is set as audio interface for now)
Shall I not worry too much about Asio-Guard metering being so high…? (normal, 64 bit precision, turned on, 48k, 32bit float)
I’m actually having to go back to my PC after a long and only slightly painful move of all my assets onto a MacBook Pro M2 Max. The ASIO Guard meter is bonkers when compared to the overall and peak usage meters. It constantly peaks on projects that my now aging i9 9900K handles with aplomb.
This happens even if I raise the buffer to its max of 2048, on an Apollo Twin X.
I can run the same project at 64 samples on the PC…
No idea if this is a Cubase 12 thing or a UAD thing? But it’s a right pain…
Anyone else running UAD hardware on Apple Silicon and having similar problems?!