Need help selecting a mac for cubase

Cubase startup is fixed - but what I have done makes no sense!
I gave up, but today updated Spectralayers from version 7 to verion 10. This still uses the old usb licence key, so I got messages to update steinberg download, steinberg activation manager and did them all, entered the usual licence keys and started the project that spurred the update. Later, I clicked on Cubase and sat back for the long wait. A few secs later it's up and running. Restarte computer to check, and start up time is really quick.

I have no idea what fixed it, but the two software updates and the new spectralayers has fixed it!
 
I was looking on Craigslist and there's a MacMini M1 with 16GB/512GB for $400. That might almost be worth taking a plunge just to play with GarageBand. If I ever ran across another 16x08 for a good price, I could use them as a 16 channel aggregate device, based on the conversations in another thread.
 
Well, I might still be getting my teacher discount on another subscription software package, but I’ve not tight a class fit ten years……….. but apple need some now impossible for me to get documentation now. What annoys me is that the price in pounds is higher than the price in dollars. So if you convert it to pounds it feels like you are being ripped off, but I discovered that Amazon have a link to the Apple Store, that knocks quite a bit off - nearly 200 quid. If you try to order from Apple abroad, you get hit with 20%VAT on top of the US price.

im sort of using ‘slow payer’ money. My VAT bill was pretty high, based on what I’ve earned but it means that you pay the government, even if the customers don’t pay you! If the dates work against you it costs, but then three months later you get it sort of ‘released’ for spending!
 
Is this your first Apple Silicon model, Rob?

I'm coming up on 3 years on my M1 air and feeling no need at all to upgrade.
Felt strange replacing a 12 core xeon 'powerhouse' with something the size of a magazine but no regrets. It's been flawless.

I've no doubt M2 Pro will be capable of anything you'll be asking of it. (y)
 
Got an m1 MacBook Pro, and it’s always been good. I’m in a bit of a quandary though. What spurred my actual buy was sitting in the audio studio at home, and waiting and waiting for the sluggish PC. I thought I’d perked it up, but it fell behind again. It doesn't crash, once going, but more often now after waiting ten minutes, it lost the licences, so you have to force it to shut, then start it again, and this time all is ok. It seems that the cubase server time out waiting for it to respond, during boot up.

this has become very annoying, so I decided apple got the order, not Microsoft.

yesterday, in the video studio, half a mile away in the office, the editing pc annoyed me again. Adobe update, as I have mentioned, wont update it any more, but this has also extended to Adobe audition which I do use with premiere. I know I don’t need to constantly update, but that’s what I pay for? Now I’m stuck on the current versions.

I’ve spent the money, so it will really annoy me now to be editing video on a machine that is old, and three years is ancient I suppose.

the new computer has to be for audio, because that is broken, but I now need two! Ironically, the new Mac would also be ideal for editing. Maybe I should build it into a portable rack, and just make it portable? I suppose I could put the computer and the external drives and the interface, to avoid having to repeatedly swap it in the software, and simply use it in both places?

i suppose a motherboard and chip swap would be the cheapest solution for the video machine, but what a pain on a pc that works!
 
Oh yeah, I forgot you had the M1. I've read back over the thread now.

These are the same issues you're talking about for months now?
It shouldn't really be all that hard to find out what's going wrong.
Initially your description sounded like it could have lined up with a failing hard drive but I didn't see an aswer from you about verifying that with DriveDX.

With what you're describing that would be the first thing I'd do, following by letting memtest run over night at full capacity.
If you prove the memory and storage to be sound, then we move on to other things. (y)
 
Drives all appear to check out OK, but it's just the computer start up time - once cubase is up and running, it works fine - but was two attempts and seven minutes this morning - C drive has plenty of space and is an SSD - the other drives are all spinners, and removing each one, makes no difference. I guess I could reinstall Windows and start with a clean machine, but that's a pain, and loads of the stuff I'm not sure I could actually re-install, having never been good at keeping stuff. What I could do, would be when the Mac is up and running, to then see if the PC is OK with adobe? Then I could perhaps swap this one to try on video?
 
How do you mean, 'check out OK'.
DriveDX gives a very detailed set of indicators with multiple status options for each, plus short, and long, self tests.
You can export any drive's health report. Maybe attach that here?
 
I'll do it next time I'm on the machine. I can't use DriveDX of course as its mac only?
Crystal disk info - which is what I use reports all the drives categorised as good - C drive is a bit hotter, after its been on than the others, but all the parameters suggest nothing weird happening.
 
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I haven't seen a system take 10 minutes to boot for ages, and that was a low end system with 4GB ram that was doing an update, so it took forever to get to the starting screen.

It sounds like something is trying to update, but is getting stuck, either by a bad site, or something is corrupted or hitting for a bad address. Perhaps a program that was deleted, but never completely removed from the registry? Is this a Win7 system? I see that its got a SSD for the boot drive. My old Dell system was getting like that, 4 or 5 minutes to boot, but once I put in the SSD, it immediately dropped to about 20-30 seconds max with no changes, just a cloning of the drive.

Have you run a bootlog to see if there is a fault showing up?
 
Can't comment yet - but I'm still moving stuff from one computer to another. More annoying than I expected though. First thing was the old computer had lots of extra drives in it - so the mac mini with 500Gb drive, I'd planned to use with external drive, and I bought one of those extra socket gizmos with front SD card that looks like the mac, and discovered it has an SDD socket inside, so popped a 1Tb card in, and an extra 4Tb drive - Mainly native instrument samples and spitfire and some older Garritan stuff - despite carefully copying the sample files over, and checking they come up in native and spitfire management applications - most were silent, the samples and the vst .dlls not picking up the new drive letters - so most of them involved the repair or reinstall feature - I did a speed test, and my fibre line wizzes aking a around 900-950, but downloading from the servers was much slower than that. I started at 6pm and at 1.30 in the morning, I had to go to bed, and that was around 3Tb of installed and working sounds. Lots of stuff involved serials, and copy and paste images but I found most.

There is a bug in the Cubase software dealing with Rosetta - the way a mac silicon can be tricked into working like the old intel for apps and plugins that have not yet migrated to new silicon routines. Cubase starts in rosetta mode, even though the 'rosetta' mode tick box says don't. The cure is to reboot into ticked rosetta, then unticj, then shut down and reboot and then next boot up, the sploash screen no longer says rosetta but silicon. I lost so far, 12 plugins - the non silicon compatible ones just get blacklisted. Two are a real shame, I use them lots, but I do have alternatives I guess. Lots of old Korg synth VSTi I collected have gone too - but they're years old. Cubase's licencer also didn't like the extra computer, so I had to deactivate my laptop, and when I finally unplug the PC, I'll deactivate that and put the laptop back. Guy Michelmore - a composer I really admire on his youtube channel warned the transfer wasn't totally smooth and he was right. So many things I've upgraded and added, and no doubt I won't catch them all. I can't be certain yet, but the load speed in both modes is amazing vs the old PC. Some of the sample stuff - could take 30 seconds to load, now they just whiz in and up. I haven't yet used it properly, so can't be sure if I'm seeing better general performance yet, as I'm still not complete enough to use it and retire the PC. Cubase at the moment thinks all my drum stuff is unlicenced, and I'm working on that, but it is looking positive - but the migrating from one music computer to a new one is a real pain - far more time consuming and fiddly than I had imagined.

I am, however, impressed enough already to have discounted the using it for video.


The most annoying feature so far is that I have lost all my Microsoft Office stuff - I cannot find the right user account, so Word and Excel are no more I fear. I also can't remember the passwords for quite a few apps, so they're a pain, and I normally use a NAS drive system, and that means installing apps and more passwords to make these all sync. I'm not sure how long these little things will take, but the other thing is the Mac is silent! My computers are all in a large cuboard in the studio but the PC fans still could be heard. The only real annoyance is in the studio I use a Firepod interface - so I have nearly got a pile of adaptors organised to let me plug it in. Time will tell when I find the last missing one. More info on the success or not will follow.
 
The Pages and Numbers apps in MacOS are pretty good and can import most of the Word and Excel stuff without major problems, if you have a need to edit things. Also, the Google apps on Google Drive are not bad for conversions. I had to leave Office behind because I was using a version (11!) that I only had the 32-bit disk for, and the old Mini was the only one still running the last MacOS with 32-bit support. It's kind of liberating, though you won't have the 3-gazillion unused features in Office, and maybe there will be some formatting that doesn't transfer, but I've found I can do what I want with new stuff just fine using the Apple apps, or converting to Google if I want to share.
 
I have been using Open Office or Libre Office for years. Unless you are doing macro driven worksheets, they work pretty darn well, and the price (free) is very good.
 
Well - most of my sample stuff is now on the Mac, a few I can't get working because they're older and the silicon Mac doesn't;t support them. Rosetta for a few rarely used sounds is daft. However - there is a problem. Despite trying to hang my favourite old Presonus Firewood FP10 on it, no joy - despite different cables and adaptors. I've bought a Behringer UMC1820. This worked fine in the office on the older iMac there with Pro 12 Cubase on it - and I did a video on it. The first comment was "you didn't mention drivers?" I hadn't because I plugged it in and it popped up in Cubase. I went back and checked - the old iMac was running at 11ms. A bit more than I expected. I took the UMC1820 home and stuck it on the Mac mini M2Pro. Just over 9ms - similar to my old PC. Making the 256 buffer smaller, down to 128 brought the latency down to just over 6 - so I'll run it at that, and see if I get issues. If I do, back to 256.

The Presonus might be usable in the office, on the PC, if I can get a firewire interface installed - I must have one somewhere.

It's going OK - but I had totally underestimated the time involved. I now need to do some serious er, tidying.

 

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Today is a bit up and down - Up, because the Presonus is now in the video studio, happily working with no tweaking on the imac - on Cubase there. The firewire card I have doesn't fit the PC's available slot left - so tyhat's staying on the iffy Tascam. The real downer for the home studio is that there is no Mac version of Sound Forge. When Sound Forge was Sony - there were Mac versions, but when Magix took over, they ceased development after High Sierra - so they won't work. So My Magix software is useless, which is a great shame, because I liked it. Adobe Audition seems to be the future, but I've had less than 8 months use out of Soundforge 16. It just didn't even occur to me that it was not a dual OS product?

I've put the critical things in this video - but it's dull. Maybe useful, though, if you're considering swapping OS to Mac - and have a big sample library?
 
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