Well, quite a bit faster, in ways that are relevant to my interests. Stands to reason designing a thing like this together onto a bespoke board allows for some optimizations: it's hilarious that it's apparently faster than any other Mac anywhere ever, for single-core things that suit it. Including Mac Pros and iMac Pros… I just think that's amusing.
I'm now wondering if VCV Rack is sufficiently multicore that it will perform better on more expensive Mac boxes, or whether this little thing has now set the bar for ability to run demanding modular synth software live. That would be really convenient.
Building a PC mothership is certainly cool as hell and I'm not knocking it, but there's something to be said for 'this is my live performance rig, it's stable as a rock and it fits in my pocket. And it's cheap enough that if I'm headlining Coachella with my modular jams, I'll buy a second one and clone it so I have a backup, there onstage ready to be plugged in if there's a problem'.
I'm with Marco on this one. Looks nice. I know what I'm getting with a Mac of this type, and this definitely looks nice to me.
And it still has real USB A ports so you don’t have to hop your audio interface through a C to A dongle thing. Though I don’t know if a C->A adapter is just rerouting wires, or has circuits with their own latency - either way, it’s a bit of mess you don’t need with one of these.
(Assuming you use a typical USB A audio interface rather than something more exotic)
FWIW, I also do electronic music, though just as a hobby.
Nah, my audio interface is more exotic. Thunderbolt MOTU 16 channel in and out, 192k/24. So I love that it has so many thunderbolt ports, because they're spoken for. I think you might well be able to run two MOTU 16As and have 32 in, 32 out. You'd start to have issues with drive space but the computer can probably handle it.
Yeah, that's a bit beyond my hobby "Behringer" type stuff. Recently upgraded from 2-in/4-out to 4-in/4-out. Still plenty of bandwidth on USB 2 for that.
I'm now wondering if VCV Rack is sufficiently multicore that it will perform better on more expensive Mac boxes, or whether this little thing has now set the bar for ability to run demanding modular synth software live. That would be really convenient.
Building a PC mothership is certainly cool as hell and I'm not knocking it, but there's something to be said for 'this is my live performance rig, it's stable as a rock and it fits in my pocket. And it's cheap enough that if I'm headlining Coachella with my modular jams, I'll buy a second one and clone it so I have a backup, there onstage ready to be plugged in if there's a problem'.
I'm with Marco on this one. Looks nice. I know what I'm getting with a Mac of this type, and this definitely looks nice to me.