Page 3: Diary Of A Mac Pro Upgrader

Software & Support

Meanwhile I began the onerous, time-expensive task of downloading and installing a large amount of software. From past experience I was ready for the frustration of lost usernames, email addresses and forgotten passwords. I actually kept a written record of these this time. The fast internet connection made software downloading much less time-consuming than I thought it would be, helped no doubt by the faster processor.

As suspected, a few pieces of software couldn’t be downloaded and installed. These included:

• Enzyme — an intriguingly unpredictable synth, discontinued.
• Nicki Romero Kick 1 — a surprisingly hefty upgrade to Kick 2 which I will pay if only for the clicks.
• iZotope Alloy — discontinued.
• iZotope RX — I have RX2, it is now onto RX7; a $99 upgrade which I’m thinking about.
• iZotope Nectar 3 — a large, slightly unjustifiable $199 upgrade which I won’t be paying.
• FXpansion BFD 3 — my go-to drums software for acoustic drums. Gutted that it’s not yet compatible with Catalina. Yes, it must be frustrating that Apple keep changing things that don’t need changing but six months into a new OS I would have expected leading software companies to have caught up. FXpansion assured me that it should be ready within a few weeks.
• Spectrasonics needed me to buy new licences for Stylus, Omnisphere and Trilian; $10 each which is acceptable and unavoidable.
• Waves — asks for a monthly fee for me to use software I have already bought outright. So I won’t be using Waves products anymore!

BFD 3 was a concern [see solution later - Ed.]. Though I have Superior Drums, and Slate SSD, for me, they just don’t deliver the results that BFD 3 does. Generally though, the software I can no longer use on Catalina won’t be missed too much.

I spent at least a week trying to buy an upgrade to Ozone 9. I am used to Ozone 5 -- it just worked for me. I use my own interpretation of Stem Mastering and I had a template set up that worked perfectly every time and it was familiar.

Familiarity is important. Familiarity affects speed of working. I don’t want to experiment. I just want to feel comfortable that the software will do what it is supposed to without me having to think about it too much. But on this occasion there was no option but to buy the upgrade and reluctantly spend valuable time learning it and trying to get it to do what the old version did.

The Ozone 9 upgrade was a reasonable $66, which makes the $199 upgrade to Nectar 3 puzzling. But what followed was a frustrating week of trying to pay for it. Whenever I tried to check out I would be taken to something that looked like a landing page. Over and over again the same thing. Never have I had so much trouble trying to give money to someone.

After many messages and screenshots sent to and fro, Support seemed to be all out of ideas. I casually mentioned maybe setting up a new account? They said: ‘Ah yes, that would work’. And so it did.

During the past three months I have needed a lot of support. Gratifyingly, the vast majority of it has been of the highest quality and I would like to thank all of those who helped me. I would like to single out Paul Kopf of VSL whose responses were almost instantaneous.

UAD support got back to me. After a week or so of rather slow responses I had to admit to an embarrassing schoolboy error. I had plugged the cables from my instruments into the outputs of the interface. In my red-faced defence, I like to plug in and forget, and as the last time I did that was eight years ago…

Making Mac Music

Nearly three months after deciding to purchase a 2019 Mac Pro, I finally began to feel optimistic and excited about actually using it for producing music. With all of the important pieces of software installed and working I could really dive in and properly test my Mac.

My main goal was to get the new studio working exactly the same way as the old one did — or at least as close as possible. I didn’t want workflow to be affected by having to learn new stuff.

BFD 3, optimised for Catalina, was thankfully released earlier than expected. There are quite a few kit pieces missing though. I assume Support are probably inundated with tickets with the new release and are slow to respond. At least it is usable albeit slightly limited.

The only software that will take some time to get used to is Ozone 9 in a stem mastering template. But all in all, it is very close to the setup that I have been using for the last eight years.

The Mac Pro itself is as quiet as everyone says it is.

The Mac Pro itself is as quiet as everyone says it is. In fact, the external drive I use for backing up is noisier. Logic Pro X felt fast and snappy and projects loaded quickly. It took a while to adjust the key commands to resemble what I was used to but eventually it felt like home.

Hungry software instruments load in a fraction of the time they did on the old machine. I can load an obscene amount of these instruments without fear of over-stretching the Mac Pro. These were two of the things that I hoped would happen with the new Mac and I’m not disappointed.

The everyday Cmd+S save seems to take longer to complete in Logic. When I say longer, it’s two or three seconds longer which is nothing really. I’m guessing I will soon get used to it.

Logic has crashed a lot more than it used to. I wasn’t surprised by this and I’m expecting it to happen for the foreseeable future. Catalina seems to have been a big OS change and it could be years before everything is updated and solid. Let’s hope Apple can resist tinkering. But, importantly, with fast-loading projects, fast-loading software instruments and Auto-save, crashing does not seriously affect or interrupt my workflow.

I was excited by Melodyne ARA when I first discovered it about a year ago. The idea of it instantly importing audio and being able to mute and move regions around seemed like a revelation. Unfortunately, it didn’t work well for me in Logic Pro X. On my old machine it was very unpredictable and lots of strange things happened. For me, the only obviously reoccurring thing was that when you saved, most of the edits you had just spent ages making disappeared. It was so frustrating and time-consuming, I stopped using it.

On Catalina, Melodyne ARA works a whole lot better. Not once did any edits disappear on saving. I am moving, muting, copying and pasting regions with gay abandon.

On Catalina, Melodyne ARA works a whole lot better. Not once did any edits disappear on saving. I am moving, muting, copying and pasting regions with gay abandon. Occasionally I get messages saying ‘Regions cannot be processed’, and sometimes it just won’t import audio. I suspect the slow saving mentioned earlier may be due to Melodyne ARA on that particular project. Also, again, on that project I can’t load a new project directly. I have to close Logic, then open a new project. However, I feel much more confident in at last welcoming Melodyne ARA into my workflow.

Using Ozone 9 is going to be something that will take time. It is a very different animal to Ozone 5 and I feel ever so slightly at sea. Trying to find settings on Ozone 9 that match familiar Ozone 5 settings is going to take some trial and error, and time. But so far, client responses to my masters have been gratifyingly enthusiastic.

Summary

It has been an expensive and stressful journey but I’m really glad and feel very fortunate to been able to purchase a 2019 Mac Pro. Sure, it is expensive but that power is a huge advantage, and should not be viewed as a negative. I am quietly confident that I am future-proofed, hopefully for the next 10 years at least. And I, for one, am thoroughly looking forward to it.

For more buying advice, Neil Parfiit has created a very useful Pro Audio And Music Buyer's Guide video to the 2019 Mac Pro tower, for the Production Expert site. Watch it below: