Current System Recommendations

[Freddy Komp]

Season's greetings y'all!

Just checking in on what would be the most recommmended kind of system these days for QLab 4 - there was certainly a time when I heard horror stories about issues with Big Sur and Monterey when it comes to i.e. pro audio device support, and 2-external-display limit; With all that in mind, is it (still) worth seeking out a machine that supports Catalina? Or is either of these systems - with or without Apple Silicon - now deemed widely OK/recommended/safe for show use?

I know it is a wide net and a wide question, so I fully expect some "your mileage might vary" answers, but both official recommendations from Figure53 as well as testimonies would be greatly appreciated, as I am to advise a place to spec a new, solid, future proof show machine, and personally I have even held off on Catalina (as I did not want to cut off 32bit support), but of course getting new machines with warranty is becoming an issue, so one needs to step with (or only marginally) behind the times, as I understand...

Thank you in advance for taking the time in this busy season to respond, and Merry Christmas to all,

Freddy

[Sam Kusnetz]

Hi Freddy

Just checking in on what would be the most recommmended kind of system these days for QLab 4 - there was certainly a time when I heard horror stories about issues with Big Sur and Monterey when it comes to i.e. pro audio device support, and 2-external-display limit

Neither Big Sur nor Monterey have a limit on the number of displays that a Mac can use. There are such limits in hardware on some new Macs, though:

• The M1 iMac, 13” MacBook Pro, and 13” MacBook Air all have a limit of one external display, although that single display could be a datapath HX4 or FX4 or a Matrox TripleHead2Go or QuadHead2Go, which would allow you to turn that single display connection into three or four displays.
• The M1 Pro 14” and 16” MacBook Pros support two external displays.
• The M1 Max 14” and 16” MacBook Pros support three external displays.

Additional display-related caveats:

• None of the Apple Silicon-based Macs support eGPUs
• All of the Apple Silicon-based Macs support Blackmagic devices, which allow additional displays to be connected. QLab supports direct video output to Blackmagic devices.

Apple Silicon is very, very fast. The slowest of the Apple Silicon Macs will outperform almost any Intel-based Mac in almost every task. The fastest M1 Max MacBook Pro will outperform almost any personal computer in almost every task.

For serious audio people, one big problem remains: Dante Virtual Soundcard is not yet compatible with Apple Silicon Macs. They say early next year.

I think the only reasons to prefer an Intel Mac, from the point of view of QLab, are:

• You absolutely need to use Dante Virtual Soundcard
• You absolutely need card slots (i.e. you need a Mac Pro)
• You absolutely need to use an eGPU

As to OS versions: I’ve been using QLab with Big Sur for months now and found no problems remaining with QLab or anything else I use regularly. If you’re a Vectorworks user, you’ll need to be sure you’re up to date.

I’ve been using Monterey for only a few weeks now. It seems pretty much fine, but it’s early days. The most recent release of QLab, which is 4.6.11, fixes a problem that prevented QLab from accurately reporting crashes to us when it was running on Monterey, so we now feel comfortable saying you can run a QLab show on Monterey, and while we cannot guarantee there are no problems, we can at least expect to be able to see the problems in order to fix them.

Best

Sam

—

Sam Kusnetz (he/him) | Figure 53

s...@figure53.com

[aroom]

Hello Sam,

The M1 Max is supposed to support up to 4 external displays, as stated by Apple :

"Up to three external displays with up to 6K resolution and one external display with up to 4K resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors (M1 Max)”

Do you think that the fourth display at 4k resolution - presumably from the HDMI output port - is somehow limited and not to be counted in a real life situation?

aroom

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[Sam Kusnetz]

Hi aroom

Ah, you’re absolutely right… I interrupted myself in the middle of writing that email and when I returned to continue writing, I accidentally left off the fourth display at a lower maximum resolution.

The way I interpret Apple’s statements are as follows:

• The M1 Max-based laptops can connect to a maximum of four external displays regardless of resolution, presumably because of physical features of the architecture (i.e. the video controller circuitry can only handle four connections.)
• The total pixel count for all external displays must be equal to or below 69.36 million pixels (three 6K rasters plus one 4K raster), presumably due to the physical limitations of the GPU, memory system, and overall system bandwidth.
• No single individual video connection can support more than 6K resolution.

All three rules must be abided by simultaneously.

Best

Sam

—

Sam Kusnetz (he/him) | Figure 53

s...@figure53.com

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qlab/F7DC7602-8C2B-4462-AC45-D21A07A1D119%40ik.me.