HOW MANY TRACKS!? M1 MAX TEST: Logic Pro Stock Plugins VS Kontakt

Strange, I’ve done a similar test to the one you’ve done here on my Mac Studio M1 Max ( standard config ) and using stock plugins ( Alchemy mainly ), I ran 425 tracks at a buffer of 128 cycles.
Using third party ( Kontakt, UVi, Romand, East West and Spectrasonics ), I ran just over 200 tracks at the same buffer size 🤔

M2 ultra Mac Studio here doing mostly cinematic scores. Throw Kontakt 7 on tracks and it just about scrapes 150 tracks. Throw Kontakt 6 on the tracks - you get about 200. Kontakt within Komplete Kontrol - reduce the track total by 25%. Admittedly these are spitfire audio and orchestral tools libraries etc, so disk usage is high too. Purge doesn’t help much either since RAM is fine. Btw I’ve also found things like Omnisphere, Zebra, Phaseplant and Cube etc work well vs even the stock VSTs in Logic which is weird. Multis in Omnisphere tend to go over double usage, so I’ll use it on two or three tracks than use multis. I honestly think VST manufacturers see better spec computers and push their software further, so better spec computers don’t always mean more tracks if that makes sense. I usually end up stemming the Kontakt tracks when I’m happy with them and leave the rest as VST and then bounce all stems before mastering. No real difference in my results between Logic and Live btw.

Now since time has passed would you go with m1 max 16inch 32 core 64gb 2Tb

Or M2 max16inch 64gb 1Tb

None of these test mean anything without knowing the sample rate and bit depth?

Thanks for making this video, we can really appreciate the comparison with the old intel configuration for our own utilisation !

Sorry to say, this is quite a weak video. Not actually a real life scenario situation. In real life you would use all kinds of sample libraries and other plugins all together. Each with various demands (memory, cpu etc). And it would be a complexer composition (with many things happening: cc data, midi data, audio data, processing of effects etc etc etc).

Hello, could this computer run 2 or 3 instances of heavy kontakt, such as Noire piano or Piano colors with buffer size 32 without cracking the audio? I am seriously considering buying a Macbook Pro M1 pro. Tell me something please. Thank you very much.

I am not a Mac guy, but this M1, damn son!

Helpful vid cheers! Getting the M1 max studio soon

When you add plugin effects to each track, does each effect tax the system as much as an individual instrument plugin track? For example, if you have 50 kontakt instrument tracks running, is that the same load as having 10 kontakt instrument tracks with five insert effects plugins on each?

Hi , thanks for this , do you need another soft wear to run Kontackt on M1 pro ,,, thanks

You are running the same 10 Kontakt libraries over and over so the same samples are used over and over again: hence not much RAM pressure.

I am about to score a full length film and will use a lot of large Sample libraries. Would you recommend 32 or 64 gb of ram for this? I doubt I will ever have over 25 kontakt instances at once, but because it’s a feature the project itself will be massive in length and size. Let me know your thoughts :)

How in the world do you work with 1000 audio tracks? 30 buses of 20 tracks each lol. Thats crazy. Has to be film scores

What are the specs on the computer you’re using? Did I miss it somewhere?

Would it be safe to say that the m1 pro would reach about 34 instances of kontact if the M1 max reached 70 instances?

Pretty nuts... for comparison I took a base model air (8gb) and added Serum tracks till it overloaded. I had to pass 60 tracks of Serum to do that. The air did have to grab 3 gb from swap to make it work though but it was a champ. I made sure the presets used were ones that activated both serum oscilators.

Thinking the pro with 32gb is more than enough for me I'm not gonna be using more than 30 tracks

One question What's the buffer rate?

I have a Max just like yours except that it only has 32GB memory. I would have happily bought the 64GB model but it would have taken another six weeks to arrive. I’ve crashed several apps by running out of memory. Given that Apple now has a workstation-class computer in a laptop form, they need to up their design model and allow users to upgrade memory and disk space after original purchase.

Dan.

P.s. I have an external 2TB drive, but there are issues. The memory is the big issue.

Any thoughts on the base model 14” 16gb and 32gb? Would the 16gb be sufficient with a 1tb ssd for most Logic Pro sessions? Thanks.

This is amazing, thank you! I’ve decided on the 64GB because of this.

Looks like this one is not much better than old 16”

Please some can help me make my mind up on getting a m1 14 inch in order to learn ableton and logic pro on.
As previously stated i know nothing so i am buying this Mac to learn from scratch.
Do i get the base 8 core and bump to 32 gb with a 1tbssd?
Do i bump to the 10 core and get the 1tbssd?
Do i bump all three
10 core
32gb
1tbssd?
Id like to either spend the money for either the 10 core and 1tbss OR is it better to keep those stock and bump the ram?

I wanna know what the heck you were doing with 1000 tracks?

Ate the new macbooks compatible with the drivers and vst for music production

No mention of your Pre load Buffer Size, Instrument count, which sample libraries, voice count, CPU Profiling Mode, Kontakt Multiprocessor Support, etc, etc…All of these things have a profound impact on Kontakt’s affect on the DAW, and SoC utilization.

This or the iMac 27 inch. Which one is stronger for production?

Great stuff, thanks for making and sharing. Easy for me to hot these "like" and "subscribe" buttons :-)

Changing the buffer size to Large, may have allowed it to go abit further. Either way great stuff.

I’ve seen many videos that test the new M1 Pro/Max on recording studio things but it’s always with Logic, can someone do these tests with Cubase? I’m really looking foward to get that new macbook computer but there’s no way to test everything I need before I need, I would hate to invest on a computer that would not be powerful enough for what I need (I work in super super heavy studio and video sessions)

How are you running any NI plugins? Whenever I load them, when I hit the stop button I just get a bunch of weird midi notes playing.

So the 16gb of ram will do it for music production regardless of which daw we’re using ? And I only use like 20 tracks at the most.

Try doing without the interface

Hey! Thanks for the lovely videos! 
I just want to add, there are 9 instances of Kontakt in a stack, so the numbers change a bit. And according to my tests, my 16gb air m1 is able to run 40 instances of unique libraries, in a busier MIDI region. And, this test duplicates libraries, so the actual number would be a little lower in a real world scenario.

Love your videos! Wish you luck.

Would you be able to do a remake of Ray J’s “Sexy Can I”?

This is the test I've been waiting for! Thank you, Adam!

Thanks for the video. Try with Avenger - it's so CPU intensive...

interesting. no pressure on the RAM, you still had 32gb available. pressure on the CPU in Activity Monitor seemed to be around 50%, so why would the system overload? any ideas? (maybe the Activity Monitor CPU usage is a broad average that's not picking up large spikes?)

Jacob and Finneas watching rn 👀

Nice review I wold like to know with 96 sample-rate or 88 sample-rate what wold be the performance

Great video!
I would love to see a more real life example, like a real project with over 100 tracks or so.
Cause i have a feeling that the system reacts differently depending on what each track is doing instead of having same midi track hitting the same notes.
Nonetheless very interesting video!🎶👋

Could we please check the ram usage after using the ‘purge’ and ‘dfd’ options in kontakt ?

Please remake SAInT JHN - gorgeous ....nexT

You’re not utilizing the 8th core. It’s dedicated to the one instrument track you have selected (because record ready instruments take up a full core). If you create a new audio track and have that selected, you can add +10% more processing power!

I can only afford Pro 14 with 8 core CPU n 16gb of ram do you think that one can also get the job done with no any issues if im just making beats and recording myself at my home rec studio

Thanks for that, solid test!

yo, we can't hear the playback ;)

Le M1 standard de l’an dernier était déjà très bien en multitrack. Les tests multitrack n’ont pas vraiment de sens en fait car dans la réalité, jamais personne n’a besoin d’autant de pistes pour faire un morceau. Ce qui serait intéressant de tester par contre, c’est la puissance réel en monocoeur car dans un projet musical c’est dans 90% des cas une seule piste avec des plugins gourmands et non optimisés arm qui font planter tout le projet. Sachant que les logiciels de musique ne savent pas répartir la charge de travail sur plusieurs coeurs par piste.Finalement les nouveaux processeurs m1 ne sont pas plus puissant en monocoeur que ceux des m1 de l’an dernier. Les projets avec le m1 standard qui plantent car une seule piste fait saturer le processeur, planteront tout autant avec les nouveaux processeur m1 pro et max car contrairement au discours marketing d’apple, ils ne sont pas plus puissant.

And can you test how many instances of Omnisphere you can run with the buffer size at 32?