In this video for Pro Tools Expert, Technical Edit James Ivey leaves the comfort of his home studio for a trip into central London to the Soho HQ of UK pro audio reseller Jigsaw24.  They arranged for James to run the Pro Tools Expert Power Test session on a brand new, fresh out of the box Apple iMac Pro.  Watch and see how this new machine fares and see if James could push it to the limit. 

iMac Pro Specification

The machine James tests is a base model 2017 iMac Pro with 27-inch retina display.

• Storage: 1TB SSD

• Processor: 8-core Xeon W 3.2GHz

• Memory (RAM): 32GB

• AppleCare: No AppleCare

• Keyboard: Apple Space Grey Magic Numeric Keyboard

• Dedicated Graphics: 8GB HBM2

• Graphics: AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 8GB

And all this can be yours for a mear £4079 + VAT in the UK or $4999 in the US. 

Results

The final numbers are as follow running Pro Tools HD 2018.3 software using CoreAudio and a buffer size of 64 samples which is the lowest available using the internal CoreAudio "soundcard".

• 128 Audio Tracks with Avid ChannelStrip and D-Verb enabled. 7 of these channels with Avid Eleven running.

• 256 Instrument Tracks with Avid Boom enabled

Pro Tools ran smoothly with normal levels of response and normal screen re-draw.

Although this is not a cheap machine, as you will see the new iMac Pro really does pack a punch when it comes to running Pro Tools.