Digital audio workstation workloads are massively multithreaded, with hundreds or thousands of DSP processes. Performance scales almost linearly with core count.
These recentish AMD core improvements alone have made me considering rebuilding my VST collection for Windows and moving off mac for production. I'm not looking forward to tracking down windows VST versions of tiny apps. I can't imagine spending 3k for another Macbook when I can get way more interesting performance in Windows these days. I'd love to have a desktop for very heavy synth and processing work, freeze those tracks, and then be able to take it on the go with a similarly set up laptop (set up DAW that is, not 32 cores).
I was in a similar position, really tied to all my tools on OS X but didn't want to spent 3k on their desktop line.
Instead I built an awesome Hackintosh with 16gb ram, 8 cores, nvme drive and 1080 for like $1600 that runs High Sierra. It's definitely more work to set up initially but pretty low hassle afterwards. No regrets.
Yes I'm at the crossroads but I want to be able to have a laptop to take as well and the new mac line up is just not for me. Thats great info that the Hackintosh computers are still kicking because I had mostly ruled that out after not hearing much about them over the past few years. Mind sharing your build? :D
- Intel 7700k
- Geforce 1080
- Asus ROG Strix Z270E
- Samsung Evo 960 NVMe
The process is much easier than it was years ago - especially if you can find a few people that got it working with the same motherboard.
1) Make a standard install USB
2) Run Clover Configurator on the USB with standard settings + tweaks based on your GPU and motherboard (you can find suggestions on /r/hackintosh and the TonyMac forums)
3) Install and boot
4) Tweak the Clover configuration on the EFI partition to fix any random remaining issues you find like USB or audio.
Not my experience. I've had stutters with Ableton Live on a 4 core machine with 2 cores still idling around. Ableton cannot multi-thread a single track (at least in Version 9), and if you're using a single-threaded VST that does not matter anyway.
If a single instance of a VST can use 100% of a thread, you're using a woefully underpowered processor or a ludicrously inefficient plugin. Many composers regularly work on projects with hundreds of tracks and thousands of plugin instances. Projects of that scale used to require multiple computers and a bunch of DSP accelerator cards, but they're now entirely feasible on one high-end workstation.
It's not hard to find VSTs which will easily max out an i7, especially if they run on Max/MSP. Also, stuff from u-he, like Diva. If you run several instances on high-quality you'll usually need to start freezing tracks.