Thanks for the comment. I don't use anything really GPU intensive, so that also feels somewhat wasteful with the Ultra chip.

I guess I'm a little surprised that my current machine is choking up when it's mostly external gear. I'm using 12 inputs and 10 outputs between synths and outboard fx (running thru RME Fireface 802 FS). In theory shouldn't that really limit the hit on CPU?

I'm not recording/printing to HD often, just running live using external instruments/effects plugins in Ableton.

Looking again at Activity Monitor it does seem I'm using more of my RAM than CPU on a percentage basis.

I could get by with 1TB storage, so maybe M4 Max with 16 core cpu, 128gb ram, 1TB for $3699 is sweet spot?

Note, I am going to trade in my MBP for ~$1k value and am also eligible for education discount, so some additional savings there.

I’d probably do with the M3 Ultra…

More power, sufficient ram…

For me there's no way I would buy a M3 new when the M4 is available, unless I would use the GPU mainly.

M4 Max probably then. The config you mentioned with your discounts and trade-in should be fine.

More cores, slower clock speed. Depending on what you're doing, it's not more power.

For recording/mixing I'd recommend the M4 lineup every time. For AI/Graphics/score composition workloads that can use an absurd amount of parallel processing and RAM, the M3 Ultra makes more sense, but for anything realtime where buffer size is also a critical issue, clock speed wins.

Thank you. I am leaning toward the M4 given my need to keep buffer size low with all the hardware instruments.

Sorry for a dumb question, but where exactly is the processing hit with external synths and effects? Is it mainly CPU with the low buffer size and so many active I/O or how does RAM factor in here?

As user who has been waiting for a new Mac Studio for a long time, I am now quite pi$$ed off. I use enough VST instruments and effects to put my MBP M4 Max almost to its limits. On the other hand I use a lot of Kontakt libraries, so I can't have enough of fast memory and cores.
Now with the new Mac Studio I am being forced to choose: either single core performance of M4M (which I already have with my MBP, or more of the faster memory and weaker cores of M3U. Seems like I have to wait a while until M4 Ultra (or just M5 Max) appears to get both things I need.

Choosing between peak core speed and max core count has been a bind for years. It was always thus with the intel chips. We’ve only had one previous release of Ultra chip, so hard to tell whether the current pattern is a blip or part that update cycle,

In an ideal world it would be great to have it all an M4 Ultra.Apple could have sat on the M3 and just added the Ultra. Or released the M4 and we wait another year with M2 Ultra.

So what would we buy if m3 ultra had not been announced? Would we be happy in that choice blissfully ignorant of any other option?

Sometimes they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

Besides if you’re maxing out a single machine then have you considered AudioGridder, VEP to offload to a 2nd machine?

Will not be an M4 Ultra - doesn’t have the interconnects

It is curious why that is so. Have Apple decided after the M3 Ultra that it is not worth making high end chips beyond the ‘Max’ as their desktop sales are small? Or have they decided on a different better approach for scaling up? I’m hoping it is the latter.

M5 Ultra or a different thing altogether is probably coming in the Mac Pro, but I suspect it won’t be released until the end of this year or early next. It will also be ludicrously expensive.

I would not buy the M3 Ultra unless you absolutely need something now and require the RAM.

If you do any AI/ML development on the side, it’s important to know that the M3 does not support SME only AMX which for the most part must be invoked using Apple’s proprietary CoreML framework. SME is an ARM industry standard that Apple had a hand in developing and it’s in the M4 and wholly replaces AMX.

Here’s a link showing that the base M4 beats the M3 Max in some tests that leverage this functionality: https://blog.roboflow.com/putting-th...s-to-the-test/

I’d be real pissed buying a $5,000-$15,000 computer that is obsolete out of the gate and will never get those instruction sets.

There’s even an xcode feature that shipped last week that is only compatible with M4 and above (source: https://developer.apple.com/document...ace?changes=la). I don’t know what the hell they are doing and I think what happened is they built the M3 Ultra for their private cloud, needed to ship something now and have the process node free and thought let’s throw a bone to the AI crowd who want to run large local models.

Single core performance is paramount for audio workloads as well, generally speaking until you get into extremely large VI projects like full orchestration, and then you’ll also want the extra memory so maybe a few composers will buy this thing too but I think it’s a ridiculous product.

"There will be no m3 Ultra because m3 max has no interconnect." - they told exactly a year ago.

I think someone pointed out it was speculation by analysis and industry watchers that made that statement, not Apple themselves. Though I could be wrong.

M3Ultra is a completely new designed CPU, not 2 x M3 Max CPU's interconnected.
It took a while, thats why it comes now late to the show when the M4 is already there for months.

I'd be very surprised if you're DAW was using that much ram and cpu on what sounds like a very straight forward setup. What plugins are you using? How much ram is Ableton using in Activity monitor?

My guess is that there is a plugin not playing nice.

I use the M1pro with 32gb all day on all sorts of projects.

Even if you’re just an armchair marketing critic, the prospect of the M3 Ultra is kinda ridiculous. My guess is Apple is finding a somewhat clever way to recoup the costs of R&D and overstock of M3 Max chips that weren’t very successful.

I personally wish the M4 Max Studio started with 48gb Ram and a 1tb drive, but obviously Apple has played the nickel and dime game with us for a long time, so it is what it is.

That's exactly the configuration that I ordered.

One thing to keep in mind for the Max is the upgraded CPU / GPU for +$300 includes 2 more performance cores, I think it’s worth the price if you’re keeping the machine for a while.

Logic works primarily with P cores for example so 20% more headroom overall is pretty nice and equivalent to what an entire generation does sometimes.

I don’t really see why they bother with anything other than p-cores on a computer that is incapable of running on a battery. I get that for the Pro and Max that they share with the laptops that it makes sense to cut down R&D and manufacturing costs. But in future when they aren't bolting two laptop chips together could they not make a full bore desktop chip that uses more energy (so can get higher clock speeds) and maxes out the p-cores? Surely the whole point of a desktop is to have it as fast as it can be! Maybe the market is too small to justify.

I'm failing to see a problem with the m3 max...

elucidate? or are you just talking sales...?

$1,999 + $300 = $2,499

So I tried to configure Mac Studio Max M4 and at the first step I opted for 16-core CPU (that is +$300) - SHOCK, total price went $500 up.

Took me a while to figure out what happened, cos I thought that something was wrong with that page, or my computer, or I was going crazy.

you get more more ram with that 16 core so that's why.

the one on the left has 36Gb, on the right 48GB



M

Yes, it took me a while to figure it, as I also chose 64 GB of RAM, so it was not obvious.

I think it’s because RAM isn’t separate but rather part of the processor, they don’t make all permutations.

I'd reassess what plugins you want to use. Acustica is known for being inefficient in terms of RAM and CPU. It's even worse if you're using a low buffer size.

That's what I ordered, except with 4 TB SSD.

Very nice - had 4tb on my 2019 Mac Pro - only used the space one time for a large movie… Congrats!! Very nice machine…

If there were a way to do that but keep power consumption, and therefore heat, down so that the fans aren’t blasting all the time, that would be great. I don’t want a liquid-cooled, heat-generating behemoth on my desktop. I would build a desktop PC if that’s what I was looking for.

The M3-ULTRA is not for us. It's targeted for AI related work. Having 512GB of unified RAM available to the GPU/NPU is a Really Big Deal. There isn't another computer short of Nvidia enterprise stuff offering that. Still a very niche product given the platform limitations.

It will not sell in big numbers.

$2969 ?? Ouch… over here in The Netherlands that same config costs 4154 euro. Even 1TB / 48GB is 3400 euros.

Still… when picking the base model (14/32 cores), default 32 GB ram, 1TB SSD, the Studio is actually a bit cheaper than an equally specced Mini-Pro (48GB ram then), and that, dear fellow Gearsl0tz, is insanely great news that I've been waiting for since when the M4 mini came out. Really stoked about my predictions being proven right and about this machine in general…