New Mac: CPU? Speed? RAM? optimize for WL

WaveLab
21

Justin, I was looking at this today as well.

I figured the 8 core model as its base CPU is faster.
PG, is the base Spec Graphics card plenty good enough for WL?
Does the Mac Pro come with Catalina. Did it originally ship with Mojave or is Catalina the earliest OS it will run.
Not blowing the budget on cores and upgraded graphics cards leaves more for RAM and discs.

I think there are apps that will let you control the Mac Pro fans.
That means if your audio card has a noisy fan (Hello Avid) you can get the Mac to increase air throughput (which I am told is inaudible) So your audio/DSP card doesnā€™t spin its turbines up.

Peter

22

PG, is the base Spec Graphics card plenty good enough for WL?

Yes. WaveLab is not doing 3D graphics nor complex 2D rendering, hence the base card is good enough.

Does the Mac Pro come with Catalina. Did it originally ship with Mojave or is Catalina the earliest OS it will run.

A new Mac always come with the latest OS.

23

Are you saying a 2018 mini i7 wonā€™t run WL? I was going to upgrade from WL Elements which works on mine. Iā€™m not going to be doing massive batch rendering, and will be doing less than I do in Cubase which runs fine on my mini with a whole lot of VIs, FX plugins and tracks.

24

Are you saying a 2018 mini i7 wonā€™t run WL?

It will run, but the graphics (eg. meters) wonā€™t be as reactive as on a big mac. And since some CPU is used for the graphics, not 100% can be used for the plugins. If you work mostly at 44.1/48 k, that should not be too noticeable.

25

Good, thank you! I work at 48k and will definitely be using very very few pluginsā€¦much much less than I do in Cubase Pro by comparison.

26

Update: My Sonnet eGPU puck just died after one year and they no longer make them. It seems like right now, nobody makes anything similar so Iā€™m either going to get an OWC Thunderbolt chassis and put in a graphics card myself and hope it works, or finally do the new Mac Pro and move the iMac Pro to my home setup so the Mac Mini isnā€™t a stress point for me.

27

Their new (non Pro) iMac, 27", 8 core i7, seems to be a good deal.

28

Yes. I have been looking at that too. It only has two Thunderbolt ports compared to 4 on the iMac Pro but maybe a dock could solve that.

29

Hi all- @Justin_P what did you end up doing? (Iā€™m in a similar spot with Nuendo 11 on a maxed out 2018 mini)

30

I went with a new Mac Pro 12-Core for the main room so I could move the iMac Pro home and retire the mini. The lack of graphics card in the Mini is an issue in my experience for anything more than internet/admin work.

The eGPU on my Mini failed after a year and at the time I couldnā€™t even get a new one. I think Sonnet or somebody JUST came out with a newer model eGPU.

The new Mac Pro is a very inspiring machine and itā€™d dead silent. Especially since all my hard disks are SSD. No fans, no mechanical noise. Total silence. Itā€™s fun to be able to put RAM and other stuff in in the PCIe slots. No more Thunderbolt chassis and adapters/dongles etc.

I keep hearing great things about the Apple M1 Mac Mini and laptops so that might be an option now too once your required audio software starts to be supported by it.

I know some guys already up and running with their stuff on the M1 but Iā€™m not aware of anybody using WaveLab and the M1.

I did just put Big Sur on my laptop and WaveLab Elements at least opens, but I havenā€™t tried opening WaveLab Pro on Big Sur yet or trying to do anything.

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