BBC with Apple ore Windows

MichaelPilipp

Dear Team. I use BBC Pro with at least 3 microphone variants. I always load all instruments. I use a Windows 11 computer with the following data:

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Intel i9-10900x 3.70GHz with 256 GB RAM

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Basically everything works. However, it takes almost an hour to fully load the library. It also takes a long time to unload.

I have following questions:

- If I switch off the Cubase process in Windows using the Tastmanager, it ends immediately. Is that harmful? Can I do that?

- Is it worth switching to Apple?

- Would a MAC Studio run better with the Apple M1 Ultra chip with 128GB of RAM?

- Is Cubase and Spitfire audio natively compatible?

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i love BBC! It's the best sounds in the world! What I wish:

- A layer of dynamics more - especially with the brass.

- The Hans Zimmer piano with Spitfire audio.

Thanks!

Michael Pilipp

PeterRaymond

Hi - I'm not an expert with Apple products, but it seems that an hour to load a template is not a problem with your PC specifications as listed. Also I don' t know what you mean by unloading the library, closing the project takes this long?

I'm hoping some big template users might jump in here to see if this is normal.

The few times where I've had issues with a long load time of a project, I narrowed this down to something being corrupt with the file or initial template, and started with a clean instance of my DAW. Sounds like recreating the template in your case would be a big job!

MichaelPilipp

Peter, the template is Ok. My question is: is a MAC better, than Windows? :-)

nee50n

Please, I would also like some buying advice. I currently use a windows PC but have found it is starting to struggle a little using Dorico and BBC Pro. The PC is about 8 years old (i7 4cores).

i see the new Mac studio but I think the cost of storage and ram is so high it just puts me off out of principle. Also what’s the point of having a sleek looking box if you have to hang loads of SSD drives out of the back? Nevertheless I quite like the idea of using Logic (I’ve been a Cubase user for many years) - so thinking about switching or using a combination. I also have a Roland Fantom 8 and I hear it has good integration with Logic Pro.

I reckon I can afford about £4K.

so my choice is either a Mac studio or a PC (with maybe a Ryzen 5950k, been looking at some builds on Scan.co.UK ). Benefit of PC is it is a lot cheaper and I can get a lot more for my budget (including a pretty fast processor with 128gb ram and lots of internal storage). Advantage of Apple Studio is I can get an education discount (so minus 10%) and I quite like the OS. Biggest issue with Macs is storage though and is something that really annoys me with my MacBook Pro.

but really I just want the best computer that will work with a full BBCSO Pro template with a little bit to spare for other plugins, and made up to a dozen or so audio files for additional sounds.

I should say I’ve never come close to using a full orchestra, but that is the ambition.

p.s. I know this can be quite a tedious topic, but really just want to know whether both options would be good. Also, especially in the case of the Mac studio, what is going to be the best build? With a PC I can just overspec a little and the financial damage is not that severe. By contrast with the Mac, I feel I’d be looking more for minimum viable product.

MichaelPilipp

Dear community. I've actually done it now after having troubles with Windows and Cubase/BBC again and again. I made the effort and completely switched from Windows to Mac. I had the following system before:

Windows 11 PC / newer Intel 256 GB RAM, 2 TB hard drive

BBS SO Pro with approx. 800 tracks (each articulation individually)

I had the following problems:

- very long loading time

- relatively long latency (1024)

- still hanging notes with more than 10 instrument tracks at the same time

- always crash when closing the project

I now have a Macbook Pro M1 (16 inch) with 64 GB RAM, 2 TB hard drive.

I no longer have any problems!

- extremely fast loading time (times 10 minimum)

- no more latency problems

- no more hanging notes

- the unloading of the project works very quickly and easily

Conclusion

I would do this step again and again! I can only advise everyone to switch to MAC. Another advantage of the Macbook is that I can take my system with me to my vacation home.

Krisp

Hello

For my part, I have never used the libraries that I have on a PC environment and I will therefore not comment on the comparison between these two operating systems.

On the other hand, medium-range mac question, I can give you my feedback between a 2018 Mac mini with 32 GB of ram and a 16 GB macbook pro M1 (13-inch model from 2020).

On large sessions (reaper) comprising 150 or 180 tracks, the mac mini begins to tire, especially if the frequency is higher than 48 khz. With the mac book pro 13 M1, no problem, to go up to high audio resolutions (192 Khz for example). No creaking no slowness.

The initial loading problem, on the other hand, is less logical: my libraries are stored on an external Samsung T7 SSD, I use several libraries such as BBCSO pro, Appassionnata or Solo string among others and this at each large orchestration (not to mention other libraries occasional sometimes).

So, curiously, the initial loading time (ramming) of a large session is a little longer on the macbook pro 13! This surprised me a lot at first. I investigated!

It turns out that this difference is linked to a lower quality of the USB c controller which is a little slower on the chipsets of the M1 architecture. I think it may be the same problem with the newer Macbook pro 14 and 16 with the same ARM architecture.

But this difference is perhaps minimized between Intel and Arm, thanks to better resource management.

This problem is not too annoying because it only occurs at the start of a session.

But I must say that it was a little disappointing when I realized that Apple had not taken care of this point. (typically, the upload and download speed of SSDs is slower with M1 than with Intel).

Mario

The speed issue is probably due to the fact that the Samsung T7 has a USB C connection and no thunderbolt 3 or 4 I am using a Samsung X5 2TB which has thunderbolt and it is nearly as fast as the internal SSD of my M1Max MBP. As reported above BBCSO works very well indeed with the M1 although activating the complete library with all articulations on separate tracks is not so efficient. As they load very fast especially if it is only one articulation per track, it is probably more efficient to start with only the main articulations longs or legato activated and activate the others if needed.

I now returned to one track per instrument in my template to make integrating in Dorico (one staff per instrument)) easier but it can be also be done in Dorico with multiple tracks per instrument on separate channels all « reading ». from one staff using keyswitching. What is an advantage of this method is that you can tweek the balance between long and short note volume better (shorts always stand out at the same volume and expression setting). You do have to work a lot on the articulation sets to make this work properly.