The King Is Dead. Long Live The King! A Studio Computer Story.

[László]

Les,
When you compared the 34" curved screen and the Apple 27" flat screen, what was the cost difference, and who makes the curved screen?

In the not-too-distant future I'll likely bump up to the Apple Mini or Studio M2 with bells and whistles as well...and then just keep the unit well-maintained with the annual service contract.

The 27" base Apple monitor, which I'll admit has a more saturated and crisp picture, is $1599. Given the option to buy an Apple monitor that's got a wide screen, I'd have done it, but the size is 27".

I bought a 34" curved Philips monitor for $400. For my use, it's very efficient to work with (I've already started using it).

So I saved $1200.

Is it built a well as the Apple? Nope. Not even close.

All of the curved monitors I looked at felt a bit...well...let's just say 'inexpensive'.

The bezel and rear of the Philips are plastic, only the base is metal. The thing feels a little flimsy compared to the Apple monitor, but that isn't the point of using a monitor if you need something wider than Apple makes.

The Apple is lovely anodized aluminum that's very solid, hard to scratch, and the surface of the screen is glass instead of plastic.

On the other hand, I bought one of the new 3 meter thunderbolt cables Apple makes to connect my computer to the Apollo in my rack, and spent quite a bit on it. I also have them coming for my SSDs. Check out the next post as to why.

 

[László]

Why the new Apple Thunderbolt 4 cables cost a lot is well documented in this excellent video.

Why'd I spend $160 on the Apple cables? The answer is that in addition to the interface, which needs a 3 meter thunderbolt cable, I run two very high speed OWC Thunderblade drives that hold my sample libraries. These drives move thousands of megabytes of data per second, like 3000.

The Apple cable is unbelievably high tech compared to the cheap cables, and this video explains why they're worth spending that coin on, as opposed to a $10 cable:

 

[László]

Also here's a thing: I almost bought a new Apollo. Today they introduced a 'new and improved' Apollo.

I'm glad I didn't get one last week.

 

[CandidPicker]

Les,

You bought one 3' Apple USB-3 Thunderbolt cable for the price of $160 plus? FTR, I briefly viewed the video, and realized why the Apple cable costs so much. Am guessing there are a lot of companies wanting to retro-engineer the Apple cable in order to sell a less expensive cable...

 

[LunarRock]

Les has been into Apple since the Beatles

 

[Black Plaid]

Les,

You bought one 3' Apple USB-3 Thunderbolt cable for the price of $160 plus? FTR, I briefly viewed the video, and realized why the Apple cable costs so much. Am guessing there are a lot of companies wanting to retro-engineer the Apple cable in order to sell a less expensive cable...

Not 3 feet, 3 meters, which is like .. 10 feet!

 

[László]

Les,

You bought one 3' Apple USB-3 Thunderbolt cable for the price of $160 plus?

As BP said,I bought a 3 meter cable (about feet), which is longer than what's available in reliable form from other vendors, except for the glass fiber cable of a type that I was using with my Thunderbolt 1 stuff.

I needed the extra length to extend the cable from my desk to my studio rack, where the Apollo is installed.

The Corning glass fiber cable is also excellent, and they now make it for TB 3/4, but costs more than the traditional cable from Apple, and I no longer need a 20 foot operating length due to some changes in my studio layout.

 

[László]

Les has been into Apple since the Beatles

Excellent!

 

[László]

First, congrats on stepping into the Apple Silicon era. And this has to be one of the few forums on earth where the acoustic reflective qualities of monitors are discussed.

Thanks, and gee, doesn't everyone worry like crazy about the acoustical properties of monitors?

So what don't you like about your current monitor and what are the characteristics of your ideal monitor? Or perhaps you're lucky and you already have a great monitor and it just needs adjustment or calibration.

I bought a Philips monitor - and I just checked the spec and learned the price dropped nearly $100 since only last week, so thanks for making me look, I may ask for a price adjustment.

I have to thank you for the suggestion on calibration. I did some very simple stuff:

I set the monitor's blue light setting to filtered - it may be there to protect the eyes from blue light, but I think the color is better. It came with some kind of gaming color setup, so I just picked some type of RGB (sRGB? I don't recall, actually). And I chose the auto-contrast setting.

Now the color is more like the Apple monitor in my den, which simply is set to iMac and not RGB. But whatever, it's a noticeable improvement.

 

[CandidPicker]

Not 3 feet, 3 meters, which is like .. 10 feet!

Yup, the video compared a 2m Apple cable, and now I see my error...not 3', 3m. Something of that type might require a powered USB hub (15' is usually the required cut-off length above which requires a powered hub), but if Les' Mac Studio is anything what I'd expect it to be, the cable length is already covered.

 

[László]

Yup, the video compared a 2m Apple cable, and now I see my error...not 3', 3m. Something of that type might require a powered USB hub (15' is usually the required cut-off length above which requires a powered hub), but if Les' Mac Studio is anything what I'd expect it to be, the cable length is already covered.

Here's the blurb on the 1 meter version, per the Apple Store. Should work with any Type C connector device, I think.

Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) Pro Cable (1Â m)

Thunderbolt 4 Pro Cable provides superfast data transfer, charging, and connection to your compatible Mac. The braided design avoids tangles. Buy now.

www.apple.com

 

[Prina]

I have to thank you for the suggestion on calibration. I did some very simple stuff:

You're quite welcome.

If you want to get the adjustment even more accurate, you can bring your iMac down to the studio and put them side by side to use it as a reference. Then after documenting the iMac saturation level and showing the same type content that you normally use the monitor for, turn the saturation on both monitors to 0 so they're purely black & white and adjust the brightness (sometimes called backlight), contrast, sharpness and gamma to closely match the iMac since you like its picture.
After the black & white settings are optimized you can bring back the saturation to match the iMac and tweak the other adjustments like tint/color temp and balance and other settings depending on the options that the Phillips has and how much the color settings matter.
As with audio where you use your ears dialing in tone, with this procedure it's fine to tweak to taste to get the picture you like. The main advantages of it are having the 'reference' and getting the b&w look good first since it can be difficult to try and optimize everything at once in color.

There's also real calibration where you use a hardware calibration tool helps get true reference quality accuracy but that isn't always what looks best in a non-pro video of photo workflow like yours and usually the Macs that have monitors like the iMac or MacBook have screens that are pretty well adjusted out of the box.

 

[László]

You're quite welcome.

If you want to get the adjustment even more accurate, you can bring your iMac down to the studio and put them side by side to use it as a reference.

I kinda-sorta did that in my usual inefficient way, by running up and down the stairs!



"You actually mean grunting and groaning all the way up and down the stairs slowly instead of running, don't ya?"

"I call that running now."

 

[László]

Not that this is unexpected, but this computer absolutely screams. Booting Logic used to take what seemed like forever in this day and age. Now the program boots up and opens even a complex project in a tiny fraction of the time it formerly did.

I also ordered and am picking up more of the pro Apple Thunderbolt cables I mentioned above.

When I installed the first one between the computer and the Apollo, it made switching between sample rates is less glitchy. It wasn't unusual for me to have to switch the Apollo off and back on in order to change sample rates from 48kHz to 96kHz. Now it's instantaneous. I don't have to do that.

The communication between the two machines seems to be improved simply with the new cable.

So I ordered them for my external drives as well; the OWC Thunderblade SSDs I use are crazy-fast. Might as well get the most out of 'em.

 

[László]

Not that this is unexpected, but this computer absolutely screams. Booting Logic used to take what seemed like forever in this day and age. Now the program boots up and opens even a complex project in a tiny fraction of the time it formerly did.

I also ordered and am picking up more of the pro Apple Thunderbolt cables I mentioned above.

When I installed the first one between the computer and the Apollo, it made switching between sample rates is less glitchy. It wasn't unusual for me to have to switch the Apollo off and back on in order to change sample rates from 48kHz to 96kHz. Now it's instantaneous. I don't have to do that.

The communication between the two machines seems to be improved simply with the new cable.

So I ordered them for my external drives as well; the OWC Thunderblade SSDs I use are crazy-fast. Might as well get the most out of 'em.

Here's how weird I am:

When I got to the Apple Store to pick up the cables I ordered, I got an extra one for the computer monitor, even though it's only USB-C.

"That's stupid."

"I figured while I was there I might as well get the extra cable. Maybe I'll add another drive. I figured I'd use it with the monitor until I add another fast drive, which will have to be soon, since I'm almost out of room on my two 4TB drives with all these sample libraries."

 

[László]

Rooms and studio speaker monitor setups do the darndest things!

The speakers needed to be a little farther apart to accommodate the wider screen. I started by moving each speaker 3” farther toward the side walls, and further from me by a bit more.

The idea was to keep that isosceles triangle configuration between my head and the two speakers. Generally having them equidistant is the ideal place to begin.

Alas, the audio lost some definition, and the bass was a little tubby. Inches matter when it comes to this stuff! Change anything by an appreciable amount, and the audio sounds funny.

I was hearing too much “room”, too much reflected (as opposed to direct-from-the-speaker) sound. After more experimenting what actually worked was a bit counter to expectations:

Moving the speakers a couple of inches farther apart than my starting point, but closer to my listening position than the start point (instead of farther away) reestablished the focus and detail I was getting before; it may have improved the bass a little. The monitors are also toed in a little more due to the change in position (they're designed to be toed in so that the face of the speaker aims at your head).

I suspect reflections off the desk have changed with the extra width and closer front-to-back distance, and that’s kind of a thing in audio.

Anyway, here’s the setup with the wider screen. There’s oodles of screen real estate now. I’m already spoiled!

The Mac Studio is behind the keyboard and below the screen on the right side of the desk.

The four USB ports on the rear of the screen meant I could finally ditch the clutter of a freestanding usb hub. the Mac had USB ports that were available - I'm using those as well.

Everything is working perfectly and the audio is excellent. I have nothing to complain about at the moment, but with any luck I’ll find something.

 

[Black Plaid]

The last time I did any serious mixing was on a 24x8 console, so reflections off the work surface weren't really a consideration as there was a lot of knobs to break up things.

I agree you did just happen to hit one of those distances with the change in position of the speakers that was just right to enforce or cancel out something critical off your desk.

Do they make desktop diffusors? That might be interesting to play around with. Or just get some legos or wooden blocks to scatter around your desk, ruining your clean asthetic, to solve the problem!

The truth is that as long as you know your room, and can hear what you need to, having some kind of "perfect acoustic space" is really not only a pipe dream, but unnecessary.

 

[László]

The last time I did any serious mixing was on a 24x8 console, so reflections off the work surface weren't really a consideration as there was a lot of knobs to break up things.

Indeed. It helps not to have a flat surface bouncing audio to your ears. Of course, even consoles have reflections. I spoke with Russ Berger about it many years ago, because I had a 64 input console sitting in the room. Console reflections are something the big shooters take into account when setting up monitoring systems.

Sadly, Russ told me he wouldn't design a studio in a basement due to the problems with concrete walls and floors being notorious problem-creators, even behind insulated drywall and beneath carpeting. He asked if I had a garage to use. I had an attached garage, but my wife nixed the idea.

I agree you did just happen to hit one of those distances with the change in position of the speakers that was just right to enforce or cancel out something critical off your desk.

It helped.

Do they make desktop diffusors? That might be interesting to play around with. Or just get some legos or wooden blocks to scatter around your desk, ruining your clean asthetic, to solve the problem!

They had some small gobo-like panels designed to surround the rear of computer monitors. I tried some, but they ate all the space and screwed up my workflow.

The truth is that as long as you know your room, and can hear what you need to, having some kind of "perfect acoustic space" is really not only a pipe dream, but unnecessary.

I honestly feel that the sad truth is that you can't know your room if you can't hear what's going on. It becomes merely educated guesswork, no matter how well you feel you know your monitors and room.

Then there's the question of clients coming in for a listen and they don't have your experience in the room. So you have to make excuses. It really helps when huge problems are reduced, even if the result can't be perfection.

Now the only excuses I need to make are for the room's appearance!

 

[László]

I’d be a lot wealthier if I’d spent my life being able to resist stuff like this wood box for my JZ mics, with its fitted foam and compartments underneath the mics for mic clips, stand mounts, etc.

But I have never been able to. This box was too cute.

Great sounding mics, by the way. The small diaphragm BT-202s and the Vintage 47 have a similar old school vibe and compliment one another.

 

[Black Plaid]

I’d be a lot wealthier if I’d spent my life being able to resist stuff like this wood box for my JZ mics, with its fitted foam and compartments underneath the mics for mic clips, stand mounts, etc.

But I have never been able to. This box was too cute.

Great sounding mics, by the way. The small diaphragm BT-202s and the Vintage 47 have a similar old school vibe and compliment one another.

To paraphrase what others have said here, the luggage has it's own special draw!