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Building a new DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) based around 2014 Mac Pro
As I mentioned recently in another post I'm putting together a new DAW (well, actually it will be used for more than that, but the DAW aspect is a big part of the configuration choice, particularly as regards storage and connectivity).
Because of the extensive experience I have with Macs in this area, and at this point also some key hardware like the Metric Halo LIO-8 which only configures and functions fully with a Mac (DSP based virtual mixer, for example), some decisions and options I consider tend to be skewed, relative to those who work mostly with PCs, as I did before 2005.
What audio tasks am I going to be doing with this system? A number of things, actually, though acting as a music player for entertainment won't be one of them! :W
Mamba Patch Bay from DB25 connectors
This has taken a long time to pull all these pieces together... slow work takes time.
In addition, I expect to use this system for photography work, power systems simulation, PCB CAD, technical writing and training materials, etc. And with a drive for Windows 7, I'll run some specific Windows Apps like LspCAD, MathCAD, SIMetrix, Altium Designer.
So, nothing really all that complicated, but taxing enough that the flexibility and expandability of the new Mac Pro does appeal, over say, an iMac. I'd give more consideration to an iMac if they had a wider gamut backlight for the display, but the Apple displays can't do AdobeRGB1998, so I end up sticking with NEC and Dell... yes, Dell. You should see or read about their new 4K displays. Hope Apple has something coming out like that soon...
My choice of a Promise Pegasus J4 for a "primary external drive" likely seems strange at first glance, and perhaps warrants some explanation.
Thunderbolt based storage and accessories are still in an early stage of development. Particularly, there's not so much choice available yet in user configurable units, compared with say, a configured drive assembly like a Western Digital Velociraptor Duo (which I have two of- two high speed (10K) server drives in one enclosure). I looked at some other units, like the Dobro Mini (perhaps the most direct competitor) but decided to go with the Pegasus. It came in yesterday, and I assembled and set it up and tested it, and I'm not disappointed. But it's not for everyone.
So, what are the strange points or down sides of the Pegasus J4?
The HGST part I chose:
So, how does it work?
In summary, not for every one, and if you use it in striped raid like I am, use high reliability drives, and back it up regularly. I read a number of online reviews by users who have been using these since they first came out and have even upgraded the drives for capacity reasons, and have had no issues, and been very pleased with performance. I've also read online reviews by people complaining that the bought it and thought it would work with Windows.... I guess not every one reads the brochure or online descriptions very carefully.
I would recommend this for any heavy disk user for video, music, or photograph, and actually, if you're doing a Mac Mini music server, this would make a great companion disk for putting both conventional and high res files on (how long to you want it to take to load your album from a quad rate 4.7GB file?)
Because of the extensive experience I have with Macs in this area, and at this point also some key hardware like the Metric Halo LIO-8 which only configures and functions fully with a Mac (DSP based virtual mixer, for example), some decisions and options I consider tend to be skewed, relative to those who work mostly with PCs, as I did before 2005.
What audio tasks am I going to be doing with this system? A number of things, actually, though acting as a music player for entertainment won't be one of them! :W
- Capturing quad rate PCM digital audio streams over S/PDIF from a Fireface 800 connected to modified Universal/SACD player, Oppo and Pioneer, using Audiofile Engineering Triumph
- Editing PCM digital audio from these captures into music tracks and adding in meta data for use on music server
- Recording and multi-channel mixing using Metric Halo LIO-8 and Logic Pro X (I can't say enough positive about the value proposition and performance of the new version) and Garageband (which GF is comfortable with)
- Acoustic measurements using Spectre and Fuzzmeasure
Mamba Patch Bay from DB25 connectors
This has taken a long time to pull all these pieces together... slow work takes time.
In addition, I expect to use this system for photography work, power systems simulation, PCB CAD, technical writing and training materials, etc. And with a drive for Windows 7, I'll run some specific Windows Apps like LspCAD, MathCAD, SIMetrix, Altium Designer.
So, nothing really all that complicated, but taxing enough that the flexibility and expandability of the new Mac Pro does appeal, over say, an iMac. I'd give more consideration to an iMac if they had a wider gamut backlight for the display, but the Apple displays can't do AdobeRGB1998, so I end up sticking with NEC and Dell... yes, Dell. You should see or read about their new 4K displays. Hope Apple has something coming out like that soon...
My choice of a Promise Pegasus J4 for a "primary external drive" likely seems strange at first glance, and perhaps warrants some explanation.
Thunderbolt based storage and accessories are still in an early stage of development. Particularly, there's not so much choice available yet in user configurable units, compared with say, a configured drive assembly like a Western Digital Velociraptor Duo (which I have two of- two high speed (10K) server drives in one enclosure). I looked at some other units, like the Dobro Mini (perhaps the most direct competitor) but decided to go with the Pegasus. It came in yesterday, and I assembled and set it up and tested it, and I'm not disappointed. But it's not for everyone.
So, what are the strange points or down sides of the Pegasus J4?
- This is a Mac only peripheral- (not that that has much impact, considering the miniscule number of Windows PCs with Thunderbolt ports.... hello out there? (crickets chirping...)
- It is not bootable, and in current form requires a small device driver to be loaded to work.
- It does not include a built in RAID controller. This can be viewed as a downside, or on the Mac, as an upside... (Mac OS is very capable for configuring RAID0, RAID1, and JBOD just through the OS with whatever attached storage is used).
- The size duplicates a Mac Mini, and while the build quality is not quite as high as a Mac Mini, by user configurable drive standards, it's actually quite high
- Market price is very inconsistent- selling for $767 without drives on Amazon, down to $339 on OWC MacSales (where I bought it, along with 4 HGST 1TB 9.5mm high drives)
- Which brings up the other point, in order to hit that form factor, it only works with notebook sized 2.5" drives, no more than 9.5 mm high. That's less of a drawback these days, with parts like the HGST 1TB high rel drives available, but at introduction, only 500GB HD's and a selection of consumer SSD's would fit- the larger capacity enterprise grade 2.5's need not apply
- The original pre-loaded configuration used Toshiba 500GB drives, 5400 RPM. Performance was pretty good, if you were only familiar with HD based computers in the past.
The HGST part I chose:
Travelstar™ 7K1000 is the industry's only seventh-generation 7200 RPM mobile hard drive and ideally suited for notebook PC upgrades and portable, high-capacity personal storage products. At 500GB/platter, this 2.5-inch hard drive offers a 1TB capacity and leverages Advanced Formant, which increased the physical sector size from 512 bytes to 4,096 (4K) bytes to improve drive capacities and error correction capabilities. The Travelstar 7K1000 is the industry's first high-performance 1TB 2.5-inch HDD with a 6Gb/s SATA interface (with OWC 3Gb/s enabled firmware) and delivers the highest mobile HDD performance in PCMark© Vantage benchmark testing.
So, how does it work?
- It's very fast to disassemble and mount the four drives, which can be a mix and match setup if you wish- only one screw to secure each drive
- Software driver installation is trivial and has worked on every Mac OS I've tried it on from Snow Leopard through Mavericks.
- There is a provided software tool for firmware installation, which could come in handy considering they promise a major firmware update with booting once all the work for the new MacPro peripherals is finished.
- Configuration of a RAID1 setup took almost no time at all- initially, this unit looks like four separate drives, and can be used that way, but with Mac OSX, you can setup mirrored or striped arrays quickly using the Disk Utility. I think even my daughter could do it, it's that easy... easier than setting up a new convenitonal drive on Windows 7.
- Now, this last part depends on the drives you use... with the HGST drives I bought, this thing is fast- transferring folders with many small fles (thousands) it still manages 300-450MB per second through put from the SSD on my Macbook Pro.
- Quiet. No more noise than a Mac Mini, which means you have to listen close to hear the fan.
In summary, not for every one, and if you use it in striped raid like I am, use high reliability drives, and back it up regularly. I read a number of online reviews by users who have been using these since they first came out and have even upgraded the drives for capacity reasons, and have had no issues, and been very pleased with performance. I've also read online reviews by people complaining that the bought it and thought it would work with Windows.... I guess not every one reads the brochure or online descriptions very carefully.
I would recommend this for any heavy disk user for video, music, or photograph, and actually, if you're doing a Mac Mini music server, this would make a great companion disk for putting both conventional and high res files on (how long to you want it to take to load your album from a quad rate 4.7GB file?)
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