During 2019, it became steadily more apparent that Mike’s ageing Mac Pro 5,1 bought back in 2012 was becoming less reliable and would need replacing. The question was, what should he replace it with and secondly what other upgrade work would come with that change. This article is the story of his choices, decisions and challenges of that journey.

The Time Had Come…

Even though in 2016 I had upgraded my graphics card, added an SSD and in early 2019, upgraded the processors, there was no doubt that by the middle of 2020, my Mac Pro cheese-grater was no longer performing as well as I needed and the time had come to replace it, but what with?

The first consideration was to take a look at what I would need my studio to do over the next 3 to 5 years, to help inform what I would need to replace my trusty cheese-grater. 

What Else Might Need Upgrading?

Looking around the studio, most of the other gear is still serves me well. I had a 5.1 monitoring system made up from 3 PMC LB1s across the front and a pair of PMC TB1s for the surrounds, all bought secondhand giving me a real bang-for-my-buck. I had already made the decision to expand my monitoring to a 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos and had been acquiring more secondhand PMCs to match my existing 5.1 system. I did this by setting up ‘Watches’ on eBay and then waiting until the speakers I wanted, another pair of TB1s for the side surrounds and 2 pairs of DB1s for the height channels came up at a price I was happy to pay. By the end of 2020, I had the full set. Other than the upgrade to Dolby Atmos, everything else was pretty well OK.

Which Computer To Choose? That Is The Question

With that in mind, looking at what computer to replace my Mac Pro cheese-grater, the end of 2019 had brought the new Mac Pro 7,1, which would make an ideal replacement for my old cheese-grater but there was no way I could justify the expense of buying the new Mac Pro. 

That left the option to buy a secondhand Mac 6,1 trash can or a Mac mini 2018. Having seen a number of articles praising the humble Mac mini, I researched building a system around the Mac mini we used for our power tests. It was clear from others that the Mac mini 2018 was no slouch, and so it was settled, the Mac mini 2018 would be my next Pro Tools computer.

Where Would My HDX Card Go? Which Thunderbolt Enclosure To Choose?

However, if the Mac mini was to be my next computer, what would I do about my HDX system as there was nowhere to put my HDX card. I researched Thunderbolt enclosures from Sonnet and narrowed it down to either the egfx Breakaway enclosure or the Mac mini server enclosure that would house both my Mac mini and my HDX card. I was arranging to try both of these out when Avid announced their Desktop and Rackmount Thunderbolt 3 enclosures at NAMM 2020. 

What To Do About Storage?

I settled on the Avid Thunderbolt 3 rackmount chassis as it would also house my Mac mini in a 1U enclosure. That was the computer and HDX solution resolved. But what about all the drives that were in my Mac Pro cheese-grater and an external esata enclosure?

In my cheese-grater, I had 5 drives, 4 in the bays in the Mac Pro and one in the spare slot under the DVD drive (remember those).

• Angelbird 512GB SSD - Primary Boot Drive

• Time Machine Backup - 8TB 

• Work Drive 4TB - This is where my working Pro Tools Projects reside

• Storage 2 3TB - This drive started out as the drives on which my sound effects library and samples were kept, but it also became where all my video projects were kept too

• Crucial 512GB SSD which was a clone of the Angelbird so I always had a working clone of my boot drive in case it failed, a practice I developed when all my drives were spinning rust drives.

Then I had an external eSATA connected 5 slot drive bay, which was home for some more drives.

• Backup Drive 8TB - This is where I put safety copies of audio and video projects

• SSD Backup Drive - This was a 1TB spinning rust drive split into two partitions so that I had a further backup of my boot drives. This was to provide a copy of the previous version of the drive when I undertook an OS upgrade.

There had been more drives in here in previous iterations of my set up but several rationalisations had reduced the number of drives in this chassis.

If It Ain’t Broke Don’t Fix It

My first idea was to retain the 5 slot drive bay, after all, it was working fine, but the problem is that it depended on having an eSATA card in a PCIe slot, which I wouldn’t have in the Mac mini or be able to fit in the Avid Thunderbolt 3 chassis as there is only one PCIe slot. I did look at some esata adaptors or converting the unit to Thunderbolt or USB but following extensive research, I was not confident it would all work reliably.

So the eSATA chassis would have to go and I would need to replace it with something I could connect directly to the Mac mini, via USB-C, which meant it could be either Thunderbolt 3 or USB-3.

To help decide what I would need, I reviewed all my drives, with what was on each of them, what I was using them for and how long I had them for. What it showed, is that the only SSDs I had were my Angelbird boot drive and my Crucial 512GB SSD backup boot drive. All my other drives were still spinning rust drives, at least one of which, was coming to the end of its life, as I was getting reminders from Tech Tool Pro that there were a growing number of bad blocks.

I Need Some SSDs

However, it wasn’t as bad as it might look. Over successive Black Friday and other sales, I had been collecting SSD drives when they came up for silly prices to the extent that I had 2 x 2TB and 2 x1TB SSD drives from Crucial and Samsung. In reviewing my use of my drives, Storage 2 was a case of too many eggs in one basket, as what had started out as a Samples and Sound Effects storage drive had grown into a video media drive as well.

Looking at my SSD drive collection I decided to split the contents of Storage 2 into 3 SSD drives…

• Sound Effects - Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB

• Samples - Crucial BX500 1TB

• Video Media - Crucial BX500 2TB

My 4TB Western Digital Work Drive became a Crucial MX500 2TB drive and I chose to retain my 8TB spinning rust backup drive as I had only recently replaced it and as a backup/archive drive, I decided that it wasn’t necessary to pay the SSD premium for an 8TB SSD drive. My 8TB Time Machine drive was the drive that was failing so I took the opportunity to replace to with a 12 TB Toshiba spinning rust drive. Lastly, I retained my Angelbird SSD and repurposed it as my backup boot drive. All in all, I needed an enclosure that could accommodate at least 7 drives, and handle a mix of 2.5” SSDs and 3.5” spinning rust drives.

Having established I needed a Thunderbolt 3 or USB 3 enclosure with at least 7 slots, my research led me to the OWC Thunderbay 8. It also had the advantage that it could handle both 3.5” and 2.5” drives without needing adaptors and you can read more about this in our article OWC ThunderBay 8 Tested - Thunderbolt 3 Storage Solution - Our Verdict.

The one thing I nearly forgot about was that the Mac mini no longer has a DVD drive. I looked around and settled on a genuine Apple USB Superdrive, so I could still read and burn CDs and DVDs if the need arose, which it did before Christmas.

Now that I had a solution for a new computer in the Mac mini 2018, somewhere to put it and my HDX card with an Avid Thunderbolt 3 rackmount enclosure and to be able to accommodate all my hard drives in the OWC Thunderbay 8, I turned my attention to an interface.

Which Interface To Choose To Support Dolby Atmos Monitoring?

My decision to upgrade my monitoring to a 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos system, meant my trusty Avid HD Omni would need to be replaced. The question was, with what?

We have seen several of our team go for a Focusrite Red 16Line including Graham Kirkman go for his Dolby Atmos Equipped Garden Studio and Alan Sallabank with his An Alternative Workflow Using The Dolby Atmos Audio Bridge. It was a serious contender but for me too, however, the missing feature was the lack of speaker calibration. My current 5.1 system had a miniDSP DDRC-88A With Dirac Live Room Correction, but like my HD Omni, it would not be capable of handling the channel count required for Dolby Atmos monitoring.

Then the Avid MTRX Studio came along and although it was more expensive than a Focusrite interface, the combination of being an Avid interface with complete Pro Tools integration, as well as the feature set, IO layout and the integral SPQ card made the Avid MTRX Studio interface the right choice for me, enabling me to be able to replace both the HD Omni and miniDSP units with the Avid Pro Tools MTRX Studio.

So that was settled, my new interface would be an Avid MTRX Studio and my Hardware Product of 2020. 

All Set?

That was it, I had all the big pieces in place and in June 2020 (check the dates) I ordered the Avid Thunderbolt chassis and Avid MTRX Studio and the OWC Thunderbay 8. I also knew that I would need to extend the IO of my Mac mini 2018 so I was also in the market for a USB-C Dock.

Whilst I was on the OWC site I also settled on the USB-C Dock, so that went in the basket too, because they understand Apple devices and they confirm the compatibility of each product and which Mac computer it will work with, giving me the confidence that if I bought it it would work, the first time. 

Concerns About Overheating - Change Of Plan

As I started to plan out in detail how I would rearrange my computer board for the Mac mini based setup, and in the light of Jamey Scott’s experience of overheating a Mac mini I considered what measures I would need to take to keep my Mac mini cool enough so as not to fry it, even though my computer cupboard already has forced ventilation with fans sucking the warm air out my rack and computer cupboard.

I started by looking at cooling systems, including leaving the lid off the Avid Thunderbolt 3 chassis and buying a rack mount fan solution. It was then that I realised I would also need longer USB-C cables to run from my rackmount enclosure to my Thunderbay 8, and USC-Dock, to enable me to pull any of the items out of my cupboard with them still connected. In this scenario, longer cables could mean slower data rates. The rackmount idea wasn’t working. I needed a rethink. 

The solution I came up with, was to dump the rackmount enclosure for the Mac mini and HDX card and go for an Avid Desktop enclosure. I returned my rackmount chassis and swapped it for the desktop version. I designed and built a ‘crate’ to take the Mac mini, HDX chassis, Thunderbay 8 and USB-C Dock, which could be lifted out of the computer cupboard in one. This solution also meant that all the interlinking USB-C cable could be very short as everything was in the same unit.  Much better!

In case you are wondering what the second Mac mini is for, it is my office-related File Server with additional SSD Drives and in the computer cupboard tidy up, I took the opportunity to move it up onto a shelf, together with its external SSD drives.

The Setup

To make sure downtime was kept to a minimum, I set up the Mac mini using another screen so I could do a full clean install of everything. I started my wiping the internal hard drive and installing macOS Mojave, having decided I didn’t want to go through the pain of macOS Catalina and eliminating all 32-bit applications and having to work around the limitations in Pro Tools when dealing with video. 

Problem With Apple’s Migration Assistant

The basic setup went well. However, as my Pro Tools computer is also my office computer, even though I had done a completely fresh install of all my software, I wanted to transfer all my email from my Mac Pro to my Mac mini. Something that Apple’s Migration Assistant is more than capable of doing. However, I could not get it to work at all. I did some digging on Google and found that there was an issue with an Apple update that had broken Migration Assistant.

Back to the research and with Google’s help, I established that Apple had released an update, which fixed it and so I was able to undertake the process of moving all my email, music and photos across from my Mac Pro to my new Mac mini.

For anyone, like me, who hasn’t used Migration Assistant for a while, I found that since macOS Mojave, to improve security, Apple has made it a lot more difficult. The additional security measures mean that both computers are effectively out of action for the duration of the transfer and even though I was effectively doing very little more than moving the data from Apple’s Mail, iTunes, and Photos across from my Mac Pro to my Mac mini, it took around 8 hours to complete the transfer! Just as well I had a laptop to enable me to keep working!

Not All Adaptors Are The Same

Once that was done, everything went to plan with the exception of getting my Mac mini to work with my Samsung 24 inch screens, which use DVI cables from my computer cupboard to my desk. The plan was to feed one monitor off the mini DisplayPort on the OWC USB-C Dock, with a mini DisplayPort to DVI adaptor and the feed the second screen using an HDMI to DVI adaptor plugged into the HDMI port on the Mac mini. What I found, however, is that not all adaptors are the same.

For example, I tried 3 different mini DisplayPort to DVI adaptors, 2 different HDMI to DVI adaptors as well as USB-C to DVI adaptors and got different results from no output, or the wrong resolution (my screens’ native resolution is 1920x1080), through to an almost working solution, which sometimes, when booting the system up, the Mac mini would not ‘see’ one of the screens until I unplugged it and plugged it back in again. Not ideal!

An Opportunity From An Unexpected Failure

However, by the run-up to Christmas, I had a working system and then on Christmas Eve one of my Samsung 1920x1200 screens stopped working. After doing some tests it turned out the backlight had died. What to do? 

Time for more research. I first looked to see if I could simply replace the existing Samsung screen, however, I have had them for at least 5 years and it turns out that have been discontinued for a while. I would need to change both screens. That would have the advantage that I wouldn’t be waiting for the other screen to fail, something that was more than likely in the light of what had caused the first one to fail.

I looked at my options and as I really wanted to keep the 1920x1200 resolution that narrowed my choices. In addition, I had a specific space between my left and right speakers that constrained the physical size of my screens and further constrained my options.

After many hours of research on Google and Amazon, I had made my choice and was about to press the button when Russ called and I told him the saga and what I was planning to do and he asked if I had considered ultra-high-resolution screens. I had but had quickly rejected it because Pro Tools doesn’t support screens with a  resolution higher than around 1920x1080.

The Opportunity - Ultra High-Resolution Screens - But Would They Work?

However, Russ had recently changed one of his screens and was very happy with it. I followed Russ’ advice and did much more research into ultra-high-resolution screens with a resolution of 3840x2160 and also whether they would work with a Mac mini 2018 running macOS Mojave.

What I found was that the Mac mini would support them and also work well in a scaled mode, which would give me an effective screen size of 1920x1080, whilst giving me a ‘Retina’ experience with 4 actual screen pixels to every 1 pixel of my ‘1920x1080’ screen. Even better, was I also was able to find some 24-inch screens that would fit perfectly between my front speakers.

I ordered two LG UHD 24UD58 24 Inch Monitor 4K IPS screens. However, these screens support HDMI or DisplayPort and not DVI, which is what I had been using with my Samsung screens. This would mean I would also need to replace my 15m DVI cables between my computer and desk with new ones.

My research also showed that if I wanted 60Hz refresh, I would need to use DisplayPort rather than HDMI with my Mac mini and in my research, for 15m DisplayPort cables, I came across fibre optic cables, which although more expensive would make sure I didn’t lose any quality because of the cable length. So I ordered two 15m DisplayPort fibre optic cables as well as a USB-C DisplayPort adaptor and a mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort adaptor for the Mac mini end of the setup.

Initial Tests Very Promising

Because I would need to open up all my cable ducts and pull out the old cables and pull in the new cables I decided to test everything before I started. Unfortunately, initially, I only had one DisplayPort fibre optic cable. I tried it out and then used a short conventional cable that came with the screen for the other screen and it all worked. I could get the predicted 60Hz refresh and the screens looked amazing, they gave me the ‘retina’ experience I was looking for, that had so impressed me when I had upgraded my laptop to one with a Retina screen.

It was time to pull the studio apart. The first stage was to get into the cable ducts and remove the redundant cabling. I took the opportunity to remove more than the DVI cables but also the VGA cables that had preceded them as well a number of other cables that were no longer in use.

All of that took a full day as because the ducts go round the edge of the room there are a lot of corners to pull things round!

The next day, I pulled in the new fibre optic DisplayPort cables, as well as a second mini DigiLink cable ready for the Avid MTRX Studio, which to get the full I/O count needs 2 mini digilink cables.

Towards the end of the second day I connected every up and I was back to a hit and miss setup, with the second display only running at 30Hz refresh and on having to unplug one of the screens to get the Mac mini to ‘see’ both screens. It seemed to be another case of not all adaptors being the same.

Back to Google and research, led me to look into using a USB-C to two DisplayPort adaptors and came across one from OWC. Based on my experience that OWC understands and publish their Mac support, to give me the confidence that this adaptor would work with my setup, I ordered an OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dual DisplayPort Adapter, which is available from MacSales in the US and MegaMac in Europe.

It Worked

When it arrived, I plugged it in and after I had cleared the PRAM, success, both screens working reliably with 60Hz screen refresh on the both.

In Conclusion

There you have it. It has been a long journey, but all the planning and research paid off, with only a couple of changes, one of which came up in the detailed planning stage, which meant I was able to send back the rackmount chassis ‘unopened’.

The adapter sagas confirm that you need to be confident that the adapter will do what you want it to do and that sometimes buying 3rd party adapters may not work.

The change of monitors was not part of the plan but the time spent researching as well as talking to people has meant I have an excellent pair of screens that are so much easier on the eye.

All in all, my new Mac mini based computer system is working very smoothly, none of the issues I was having with the Mac Pro cheese-grater, everything feels more responsive and the screens look amazing.

What’s Next?

The next job is replacing the HD Omni, with the MTRX Studio, which is currently in the detailed planning stage as there will need to be significant changes to the studio wiring. After that, it will be installing the extra speakers and amplifiers. Once each of these stages are completed, I will share my experiences with you all.