"...use a high-speed camera and measure display frames" - yep, that would be empirical.
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M1 MBA vs Studio Max : empirical observations from a home producer
- Thread starter MajorFubar
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It’s possible but you won’t have the full resolution/ color reproduction going through so for me it’s a no go option.
Woop woop, here comes the science police trying to be unnecessarily critical.
OP's post is empirical. There's no direct empirical data, but that doesn't mean it's not empirical. The definition of empirical isn't exactly that well defined anyway. You'd be hard pressed to argue OP's post is not empirical.
You're saying "empirical", but you mean "rigorous" or, more likely, "quantitative". OP never claimed the later two.
Empirical just means "learned through observation". I'd argue that if what you're testing is whether a certain machine can do a certain job that you're familiar with and do regularly, then actually doing that job with that machine is a far more empirical approach than running benchmarks that actually test something else and then try to link them to your workflow through a theoretical relationship.
OPs observations are empirical, subjective and qualitative. It's the human part that's missing from the benchmarks-- and it's the part that really matters in the end for the tasks that are hands on and not pure computation. You can quote multiply accumulate per second metrics 'til the cows come home and it says nothing about how it feels to make music on the system.
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Actually it's wired, and so is the trackpad and third-party mouse (which is not visible). Too many bad experiences with BT devices, wouldn't touch them in my studio with a ten foot barge pole. The only thing I own that are BT are headphones when I'm going out.
Thanks @MajorFubar for your observations. We seem to be reaching a point where most Macs can do most things, and the only waits that are left in the system are on rarer tasks such as exports. I’ve yet to test my M1 iMac with some big project compiles, but I fully expect that what were 5 minute cycles to compile-and-run on a big code project will have come down considerably.
Thanks. It's something I always promised myself. Obviously it makes zero difference to the actual final sound of the mix, but I am definitely one of those older guys who grew up shoving faders and enjoy the hands-on experience.
Thank you so much for this fantastic reply. Sounds like we work in similar fields. It does make me rather compelled to grab an M1 Max 14” MacBook Pro with 32-64GB of RAM. I will rewatch the videos from ArtIsRight and make an informed choice. Thanks again.
And they would not be wrong. It also annoys me that to get the full array of external display support you have to go all the way to the M1 Max that you might not otherwise need. With the vague specs of "up to 6K 60 Hz" I can never know what MacOS supports for e.g 4K 120+ Hz, ultrawides and so on.
empirical: based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.
What he did was very emperical. It was based on experience and didn't contain any theory.
I’m a graphic designer and I still use my 8-core iMac Pro as my daily work machine. I have this connected to a 27” BenQ display. I also have a 16” M1 Max (32GB, 1TB). I did run the MBP with the BenQ but I really missed the 5k resolution of the iMac. I guess I could go and purchase a Studio Display but the iMac is still a very good machine.
Apple's argument would probably be if you want to connect two monitors to a cheap* Apple computer we got you covered with the Mac Mini, which during its next refresh is obviously destined to get the M2 SoC.
*by Apple standards.
Or maybe they know the simple truth, which is that—aside from occasional projectors/presentations—the vast majority of MacBook Air users will never use any external monitors, and that the loud proponents of multi-monitor setups are a tiny minority of people who this product is aimed at, so single external monitor support is all this machine needs, and supporting more is not worth the tradeoffs.
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Well there's definitely that aspect too. Actually I've been surprised by how many people have bemoaned the lack of multi-monitor support (mostly in other threads) on a bottom-of-the-range laptop. Not too long ago people didn't even expect an MBA to run resource-intensive apps like Logic and Final Cut without tripping over itself, and now we're bemoaning why you can't run a suite* of UHD monitors from it.
*an exaggeration, but the point stands.
Thanks for your wonderful review. I love your studio layout! I'm a former certified Logic Pro trainer (retired) from the early days of Logic X. I actually studied Logic 9 and just when I was ready to certify, Boom! Logic X. Anyway medical complications have strapped me for money, but (due to water damage) my 2015 (Loaded) 15" MBP died and all I could "afford" was a refurb base model M1 MBA. This was about 6 weeks before the M2, but I have no regrets (saved $350). I still use Logic, but just me. I'm a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, just doing it for fun now.
With all that said, I wanted to commend you on your wonderful "empirical" * post and thoughts. I will check out your blog. Keep on keepin' on.
*couldn't resist.
Exactly. Plus, the vast majority of time the computers are idle. You only feel any speed difference when you stress the system fully. I have a 2018 Mac mini i7 and there is really no perception of it being slower compared to my M1 Pro. It's an excellent system for day to day use. However when I have to run certain python scripts to process hundreds of gigabytes of text files for a ML model, then the slowness and bottlenecks of this 4 yo i7 system are very clear.
Yeah, if I were concerned about battery life I'd stick to M1 pro but its your machine. The XDR screen is jaw dropping! Honestly my favorite thing so far with M1 is adobe products feel natural and snappy- like they were made for Mac. They've never felt like that for me in the past 20 years of using Mac + adobe
The better things get, the more you want out of your hardware. Ok, you might say it's Apple's lowest end laptop but it's not a cheap product by any means. Lack of multiple monitor support seems like a very forced on limitation when even a cheap Chromebook can support dual monitors. Afaik older Intel MB Airs also supported multiple monitors so Apple has taken some deliberate steps back to limit the Apple Silicon devices to upsell you a higher end model.
Made my Sunday reading that. I'm so glad it turned all right in the end.
If you go back long enough, the Mac is all they ran on
It's more likely a design consequence of the M1 hardware. The bus throughput is clearly limited (as shown by the M1 mini monitor support) - basically it can support two monitors / Thunderbolt / USB4 at full speed (where on a laptop one of those is the internal display). The M1 Pro and Max have additional bus throughput (probably replicated SoC). The M2 range seems to be following the M1 (so probably just replacing the CPU part of the chip design). It's possible that Product had some input into this, but it's equally likely that the design issue was eg cost/size/thermal properties.
This is coming into focus because higher end users seem to be finding that the M1 offers enough performance to allow them to use lower end systems than they would previously have purchased.
Please keep in mind that you can add additional monitors to the M1/2-based MacBooks through DisplayLink interfaces. There is at least one docking station that I'm aware of that features two DisplayLink HDMI ports, so you could add three external displays to these MacBooks. Utilizing the built-in display would give you four.
https://www.startech.com/en-us/cards-adapters/usb3dockh2dp
Granted, there is an extra cost in purchasing the adapters/docking stations and you probably wouldn't want to game on the DisplayLink-connected monitors, but it is very doable.
I've seen it theorized that the limitation is that the Mseries keeps its display buffers on chip rather than in the Unified Memory to save power. The base M chips apparently only have two display buffers and one is used for the integrated display. I don't have any hard evidence, but it make sense given how power optimized the Mseries is, and it would explain why restricting the display count would be an important system optimization.
I'm guessing that DisplayLink works around this by putting the buffer at the display interface? I don't know much about how it works, but from what I can see it looks like the image is rendered, compressed and sent over USB to the DL adapter which then drives the hardware, so I'm guessing the USB interface is just to fill the display buffer (with some frame to frame compression to minimize data traffic) and the display side reads out of that buffer.
Well, what do you know! Their observations were indeed, without a doubt undeniably empirical. I’ve learned something today (and I’m glad I wasn’t the one using ‘empirical’ without knowing what it meant!)
Holy crap, the internet needs more people like you who can accept new information with grace. Kudos!