Upgrade from Early 2008 Macbook Pro to Mac Pro 2.1/3.1 for live mixing in a DAW

[htevents]

Hello all,


Till now I always use a (digital) outboard mixer for mixing the band I work with, but I would like to use my Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) as mixer. It is a software based recording/mixing platfrom, but mostly used for recording and mix recorded audio. Because I will use it as a realtime mixer, it relies on CPU power, not so much on disk speed and RAM.

At this moment, I have a Macbook pro 15 inch 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 duo processor and 4GB RAM. I run Presonus Studio One 3 Professional as my DAW and have an audio roundtrip latency of 16 milliseconds with buffersize at 128 samples and a sample rate of 48.000Hz. This is with 24 input channels, all containing at least compresion and EQ, some have a Gate on top of it. 3 FX channels with Reverb and Delay and a few mix bus channels. At this moment, it stresses my CPU at 60% with spikes over a 100%, so my Macbook Pro is a little too weak for handeling it.

How much of a difference will it make to buy a refurbished Mac Pro 2.1 or 3.1 with a minimum of 2x 2.8 GHz/3GHz Xeon quadcore processors with a minimum of 8GB RAM and use that machine for my goal. More RAM will not decrease the latency, CPU is all it needs, but ofcourse this project has a budget, that is why I was thinking of a Mac Pro 2.1 or 3.1 instead of the newest version. If my performance is only doubled, it will be enough.


Here are all the specs on a row:

Macbook Pro Early 2008 (current)
- Processor: 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Dual Core
- Memory: 4GB DDR2 667 MHz
- DAW: Studio One 3 Professional (roundtrip latency: 16ms)
- Audio interface: Dante Virtual Soundcard connected to a Presonus RM32AI (<4ms latency)

Mac Pro 2.1/3.1 (Upgrade option)
- Processor: 2x 2.8 GHz Intel Xeon Quad core
- Memory: 8GB DDR2 667 MHz (2.1) or 8GB DDR2 800 MHz (3.1)
- DAW: Studio One 3 Professional (roundtrip latency: unknown)
- Audio interface: Dante Virtual Soundcard connected to a Presonus RM32AI (<4ms latency)

Please give me your thoughts. I hope I gave you enough info to know what my situation is.

 

[harryb2448]

The Mac Pro 1.1 is a 2006 model with 2GHz or 2.66GHs CPU's. The 2.1 is a 2007 model with 3GHz CPU's. Make sure you get the 2008 model with the 2.8GHz CPU's. The first two are severely hamstrung by having 32bit EFI and natively can only run up to Lion OS X.7. Remember both 2008 machines are old with pretty slow memory and graphics.

Personbally I don't think any ten year old computer is an 'upgrade' but economics rule.

 

[htevents]

Thank you for your reply, as you said, for todays standards I know it is not an "upgrade" but my current machine is a 2.4GHz dual core MBP from Early 2008. With the setup I need the machine for, I now run the CPU at 60% with spikes that max the CPU. So I want to know if my suggested Mac Pro will be an upgrade from what I have now and what to expect from it, also because even my MBP is also almost 10 years old, it still runs everything I need (the same software, but for mixing recorded tracks that need less CPU because my buffersize can be set higher because latency isn't a real issue then), exept the realtime audio for this project because it hasn't enough CPU power.

From what I understand from some other forums and reviews, the 2.8GHz dual quad core Mac Pro (like you suggested) can still compete with a lot of Windows machines, iMacs and MacMini's from these days in terms of CPU power (wich is what I need).
(fast)Memory is not that important, only to have some data ready to run the software (wich it already does quite stable) and Graphics are not that important to, because it only displays a often static layout of the DAW with only some VU meters updating almost realtime, so CPU is what this "upgrade"is all about.
And from what I heard, the Mac Pro's are designed to be workhorses and for the time they came out, they where miles ahead of the competition.

So in the comparison with my current MBP discribed above, what improvements can I expect with the Mac Pro in therms of CPU usage, power and speed if my MBP with the dual core runs my setup with 60% CPU usage, but also have spikes to a 100% every now and then.

 

[lclev]

Going from a MB Pro with a dual core to a MP with 2 - quad cores? Yes, you definitely will have more CPU power. If your current MB Pro runs at 60% with spikes to 100% then the MP should run right over those numbers and yawn. But as Harry said it is a ten year old computer but it is all in what you can afford.

Lisa

 

[htevents]

Thank you Lisa for your reply, this was the answer I was hoping for. And yes I know its a ten year old machine, but it is just for starting up the project. It's not ment to last forever and not our goal, thd machine is a start up to know what we can or can't do with the setup we have in mind. If everything works and we know it is what we want, than the budget is there to do this with recent machines. But as with many things, why invest a **** load of money, just to find out it is not what or how we want to do it. Thanks for all your help.