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Apple Mac Pro 7,1 - Everything An Audio Professional Needs To Know

Mike Thornton

In this article, we are going to take an in-depth look at Apple’s 2019 Mac Pro 7,1 new style cheese-grater and establish whether it is the right machine for every audio professional or whether other Apple computers might be more suited to some and the Mac Pro suited to others.

There is no doubt that the old-style Mac Pro cheese-grater all the way up to the 5,1 was a very popular machine and when the Mac Pro 6,1 trashcan came out in 2013, a lot of Pro Tools users were disappointed because there was nowhere to put the Avid cards unless you bought an expansion chassis. Added to that, the trash can wasn’t very rack friendly. All of which meant there are still a lot of Mac Pro cheese-graters in use.

When Apple announced that the new Mac Pro would be modular the consensus all the way up to the announcement of the new 2019 Mac Pro 7,1 was that it would be modular in the sense that you might be able to change some key components like the processor, memory etc. For example, when Apple announced the iMac Pro they said…

“In addition to the new iMac Pro, Apple is working on a completely redesigned, next-generation Mac Pro architected for pro customers who need the highest performance, high-throughput system in a modular, upgradeable design”

In February 2019, well respected Apple analyst Ming Chi Kuo informed investors that he is expecting Apple to launch the new Mac Pro in 2019. In a note, he stated that an "easy-to-upgrade" Mac Pro will launch in 2019.

But the general consensus was that the new modular Mac Pro would not have slots for cards, options for changing the graphics card - yes but options for other PCIe cards, not a chance. How wrong we were…

At the beginning of June 2019, Apple announced the new Mac Pro 2019 with no less than 8 internal PCIe card slots. Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing said at the launch…

“We designed Mac Pro for users who require a modular system with extreme performance, expansion and configurability. With its powerful Xeon processors, massive memory capacity, groundbreaking GPU architecture, PCIe expansion, Afterburner accelerator card and jaw-dropping design, the new Mac Pro is a monster that will enable pros to do their life’s best work.

There was even a functioning demo of a new Mac Pro 7,1 with Avid HDX cards in it.

The Price

Then there was the issue of the price…

No sooner had Apple announced the new Mac Pro 2019 and people were complaining about the high price, and in some cases, the much-maligned Mac Pro ‘Trash Can’ became the professional’s Mac of choice. It’s funny (as in odd, not hilarious) that people have been pleading with Apple to make a pro-Apple Mac that’s fit for the 21st century but they want it to have a prosumer, if not consumer price tag.

The new Mac Pro is aimed at professionals like large post houses, design agencies or games designers, not the average creative professional. The very fact that Apple has included so many PCIe slots should indicate that, mostly because in a world of more powerful native processing and Thunderbolt connectivity, the only businesses that need this kind of stuff really do NEED it and can’t rely on what 90% of Mac users can.

Following that podcast, we undertook some significant research on possible prices for the different options to give you a better idea of what the prices could end up being once the Mac Pro 7,1 was released.

The whole discussion about the price of the new 2019 Mac Pro continued to rumble on through the rest of 2019 even though, as we mentioned at the launch, the Mac Pro 7,1 isn’t for everyone.

To help we took a look at whether the Mac mini 2018 would meet the needs of those for whom the Mac Pro was overpriced or overspeced or both.

In this article, we look at the different options that will be available in the new cheese-grater style Mac Pro, which options would be most appropriate for a Mac Pro 7,1 Pro Tools computer and how much a new Mac Pro optimised for Pro Tools is likely to cost based on the information we had at that point.

We start by looking at the different processor options before moving onto RAM, storage, graphics cards, PCIe slots, the power supply, the inputs and outputs, and what will come in the box, before presenting two alternative Mac Pro 7,1 pricing packages for a possible Mac Pro 7,1 Pro Tools computer.

We also had a broader article looking at the pricing and specs of a wider range of Apple Mac computers for Pro Tools users.

In this article, we look at the different options for each Apple Mac computer model and explore which could be the most suitable as a Pro Tools computer. We also look at each Apple Mac computer, its strengths and weaknesses as a potential Pro Tools computer together two costed options, a basic option and a superior option, starting from the Mac mini, then looking at a secondhand Mac Pro 5,1 old-style cheese-grater, the all-in-one iMac, the Mac Pro 6,1 trash can, the MacBook Pro laptop, the iMac Pro and finally the new 2019 Mac Pro 7,1.

The Wait Is Over

Then on December 10th 2019, the wait was over, the new Mac Pro 7,1 was released and we finally knew the detailed pricing…

As promised, the base price was $5,999. but much more importantly we could put away the speculation of the pricing for all the option, we could now see the different pricing options in the build-to-order section.

In this article, we look at the official Apple pricing and spec an appropriate Pro Tools computer as well as see what the price is if you go all in and have everything…

In a series of articles, we took a look at different components that are now available for the 2019 Mac Pro…

These articles included…

Mac Pro 2019 With Pro Tools HDX Running 2019.12

At the beginning of 2020, we had our first look at a 2019 Mac Pro running Pro Tools on macOS Catalina, courtesy of Pro Tools Expert team member James Richmond…

James Richmond is a freelance producer/engineer/audio consultant working from his studio in Oxfordshire, UK. He chose to go for a new 2019 Mac Pro even though it wasn’t approved for Pro Tools at the time. In this article, he shares his experiences setting up a 2019 Mac Pro with Logic Pro X and Pro Tools 2019.12 running on macOS Catalina with an Avid Pro Tools HDX1 system. James continues…

When the new Mac Pro 2019 was announced I thought long and hard about going for a PC workstation. I work in Logic and Pro Tools and didn’t want to give up working in Logic unless I absolutely had to, so the day the Mac Pro was released I looked at the different specs and plunked down the cash for a 3.2GHz 16 Core machine with a 4TB SSD and base video and RAM. The order went in to with Apple with a date of delivery of around early January, but bless them they managed to get it to me a whole lot earlier than that, just 9 days after it was ordered and that included it getting lost in the delivery system once.

Yes, it was expensive- around £8,900 all up. Unboxing was an excellent experience - the box is super heavy-duty, the two sections are held together with velcro fabric, definitely a box to hold onto if you have space, should you ever need to transport it anywhere.

The new chassis is a work of art and design. The machine is effectively silent in a recording studio environment. If you put your ear right up against it you can hear the fan very slightly - from 1-2 metres away it is dead silent. You could definitely have this machine in your control room and still track vocals with a condenser microphone.

Pro Tools HDX Aux Power Cables

Prior to James taking delivery of his shiny new Mac Pro 7,1, he had been using an expansion chassis first with an iMac and then with a Mac mini. When James came to install his HDX cards in his new Mac Pro he found that the HDX Aux Power Cables from his expansion chassis did not fit the aux power sockets on the Mac Pro. To resolve this he bought ‘Belkin AUX Power Cable Kit for Mac Pro’ priced at £59.99.

We then had a number of comments expressing concern about this. Following some extended research, we have got to the bottom of this with the help of Adam Daniel from PointPost. When Adam shared an image of his first Mac Pro 7,1 with 3 Pro Tools HDX cards I took the opportunity to ask what was the situation with the HDX power leads. Did he need the Belkin lead kit? Or something else? Adam replied…

“Just the power leads supplied with the HDX cards, the ones that were in the old 5,1 cheesegrater”

The situation is that there are two Aux Power Leads that come with your HDX cards, one for the Mac Pro cheese-grater and one for PCs and expansion chassis.

The lead on the left is the lead from Adam’s system, the one from the right is the one Mike hasn’t used that came with his HDX1 system but kept in a box just in case.

Although looking closely at the images from James Richmond’s computer he has a different connector on his lead which required him to get the Belkin kit.

Using Pro Tools HDX Or Native Cards In The New Mac Pro - You Need To Read This

At the end of May 2020 Avid revised their advice on which slots to use for Pro Tools HDX and HD Native cards in the new Apple 7,1 Mac Pro 2019 computers. This is essential reading for anyone setting up Pro Tools HDX on a Mac Pro 7,1.

Read more in our article Using Pro Tools HDX Or Native Cards In The New Mac Pro - You Need To Read This

Apple Mac Pro 7,1 - Case Study 1 From Neil Parfitt

Across 3 articles and 6 videos, we presented a case study from Neil Parfitt who is a composer, music editor, synth sound designer based in Toronto.

In the first part of the first video, he set up his new rack mount Mac Pro 7,1 computer to show some real-world tests both about the fan noise and how well it handles a very large Pro Tools project and turns up some surprises during his tests. This is a great real-world test to help answer how loud the fans are and this is all with the computer running a very large Pro Tools session pushing the CPU usage up to 80% so this is a proper test of what Mac Pro 7,1 would sound like handling a major Pro Tools project.

In the second part of the first video, Neil shows the session in action with the System Usage meter open on the mother of all Pro Tools Power Test sessions, with hundreds of audio tracks full of audio files all running continuously with EQ, dynamics and reverb plugins on every track. In our article, Pro Tools System Usage Meter - How Much Attention Should Be Paid To It? Michael Carnes pointed out that the Pro Tools System Usage meters don’t tell the whole story.

In the second video in the first article or the series, Neil describes this video as “a candid unscripted Apple Mac Pro Rack unboxing and personal opinions/observations quickly cobbled together from my phone!!“

In the second article, in this 3 part series, Neil has now installed his rackmount Apple Mac Pro 7,1 new-style cheese-grater into his studio…

In the first video, Neil gives a tour to show how he has set it up and what it has replaced. He takes us through the cards he has installed into his Mac Pro 7,1. He has one UAD Octo card, instead of the Apple I/O card, 3 HDX cards, 2 for 128 channels of I/O and a 3rd for extra voices. in addition Neil has an M2 SSD card with 4 SSDs for media and sample drives, all in the box. Finally, there are two RME MADI cards with expansion ports, which take up 2 slots each, although they only plugin into one slot each.

In the second video in this article, Neil responds to some of the comments he has received as a result of making these videos about his experiences buying and setting up his new Apple Mac Pro 7,1 rackmount computer.

In the third and last article in the series, we featured two more videos from Neil Parfitt. In the first video in part 3, he tests his workflows with his new integrated Mac Pro 7,1 setup in which he uses both Logic Pro and Pro Tools.

Watch as he demonstrates his workflow with VEP Pro, Logic and Pro Tools all working together on one computer instead of multiple computers.

In the final video of the series, after putting this beast through its paces, Neil shares his thoughts as well as a quick demo of it doing all the things he needs. The video focusses on VEP and Logic - but Pro Tools is indeed running underneath it all.

Case Study 2 - Mac Pro 2019 & Trash Can Processing Power Available Compared - Mac Pro 7,1 & Mac Pro 6,1 Go Head To Head From Michael Carnes

In this article, composer Michael Carnes demonstrates the power available in the new Mac Pro 7,1 compared to a Mac Pro 6,1 Trashcan with the same Pro Tools session.

One of the things that is not so well known about Michael Carnes, (yes the Michael Carnes that designed all the Exponential Audio reverb plugins), at least in the pro-audio world, is that he was trained as a classical composer (of the non-tonal variety). He also had a lot of experience in early computer music and spent a couple of years in the old MIT computer music studio (pre Media Lab). He had some success as a composer in years past, but that fell by the wayside as his tech career ramped up. One of the exciting things about moving into semi-retirement is that he can dust off those skills and combine them with what he has learnt since.

Michael had a Mac Pro Trashcan and explains…

“I record classical music regularly, sometimes in formal sessions and sometimes live.  Either way, they rarely involve more than 6-8 mics, but I do record at high sample rates (192K) so that’s the equivalent of maybe 32 disk channels at 44.1.  Because of my strong interest in immersive audio, those mixes are done in stereo (for the clients) and in immersive (for me and perhaps for future client delivery).  So we can throw in a few immersive reverbs, busses and other bits and bobs. I’m wasn’t killing the Trash Can, but I was getting closer. Throw in the Dolby Atmos native renderer and things get more interesting.”

In this article, Michael explains how he was able to compare the performance of his old Mac Pro Trashcan and his new Mac Pro 7,1 using the same session…

“I had MIDI and other sound files for an old piece (about 25 minutes in duration) that was symphonic in scope. I decided to adapt that piece to an immersive world, moving the tracks to modern VIs and mixing the whole thing in Dolby Atmos. I also used several of my immersive reverbs and a couple of Excaliburs. Total track count was a little over 200. Could the Trashcan Handle it?

I found I could do the Atmos mix, but only just. I had to freeze all the instrument tracks (about 100 MIDI tracks) except for tracks I was editing. Load time for the session was typically 15-20 minutes, most of which was fetching the VI data. I filled up nearly all of the 64GB of RAM and took just about every available CPU cycle. “

Once he had set up his new Mac Pro 7,1 he loaded up the same session…

“The first thing I noticed was that the session load time was just under two minutes (as opposed to over fifteen minutes with the Trashcan) with all VIs active—not frozen. The mix was something like 69 objects in total. This was a pretty busy spot in the mix and you can see audio all over the 3D field. This display is a lot of fun to watch.

At a busy moment in the mix, Pro Tools is using 301% CPU and Dolby is using another 213%. That’s a total of just over 5 cores of CPU load—on a system with 16 cores, with the VIs frozen as they had to be when he was using the trashcan. Once Michael unfroze all the VIs he was hitting 75%-80% on the first 8 cores and perhaps 55%-60% on the rest.  There’s still considerable margin. “

Read more in our article, Mac Pro 2019 & Trash Can Processing Power Available Compared - Mac Pro 7,1 & Mac Pro 6,1 Go Head To Head.

New Apple Mac Pro - Our Tests Show The Computer Avid Pro Tools HDX Users Dreamed Of May Not Need HDX After All

Production Expert has had a chance to test the new 2019 Mac Pro with Pro Tools, both in HDX hardware and native modes and here’s the ultimate irony: For many, the need for HDX cards is gone!

Has The New Apple Mac Pro Really Made A Difference For The Audio Community?

For many studio owners, it was perhaps the most anticipated Apple computer for a decade, most of all because it offered both the power and flexibility that were looking for… albeit at a price.

6 months on from the long-awaited Apple Mac Pro 7,1 hitting the streets, we wondered how many who waited for the new Mac Pro stuck to their guns and now own one, are saving to buy one, or simply took a different route, so we asked the community in a poll and here are the results from the poll taken in June and July 2020…

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33% of respondents have either bought one already or are saving up for a new Mac Pro 7,1. whereas 15% have chosen to buy a Mac mini instead. Then we have similar numbers who have chosen to move to Window, buy a used Mac, or buy a MacBook Pro.

If you want help on which Mac to choose then check out our article Which Apple Mac Should You Choose As A Pro Tools Computer? Specs And Prices.

Everything You Need To Know About The Mac Pro 7,1 In Professional Audio Workflows

There you have it, a very comprehensive set of articles on the 2019 Mac Pro 7,1 computer for audio professionals covering the launch, the pricing debate, options for using other Apple computers is the Mac Pro is too expensive, the release, a variety of case studies and tests and the results of our recent poll on what options people have chosen.

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