Mac Setup: Dual Thunderbolt Display Mac Pro Desk of a Music Producer
Jun 21, 2014 - 11 Comments
This weeks featured Mac workstation comes to us from Darren, a professional music producer with a great custom desk setup. Let’s check out the details:
Tell us a bit about your Mac setup and the hardware included
I use my setup to produce music, these desks were built to accommodate my equipment. The setup hardware includes:
- New Mac Pro (late-2013 model)
- Dual 27″ Apple Thunderbolt Display
- Apple Wireless Keyboard
- Apple Wireless Trackpad
- LaCie external hard drive
- Euphonics (now Avid) MC Mix and Avid MC Control mixing consoles
- Native Instruments drum machine
- M-Audio Axiom 61 Keyboard
- M-Audio Axiom 61 Keyboard
- Set of Yamaha monitors (speakers)
and 
mixing consoles
The walls are lined with acoustic tiles, and there are bass traps in the corners.
What are some of your essential Mac apps for music production?
On the software side of things, these get the most use:
- Logic Pro X is my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) of choice
- Spectrasonics virtual instruments
- Native Instruments suite
- Rob Pagen plug-in virtual instruments and effects
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Do you have an interesting Mac setup or Apple workstation that you want to share? Answer a set of questions about the gear, take a couple of good pictures of the setup, and send it all in to osxdailycom@gmail.com ! You can always browse some of the other Mac setup posts for inspiration too.
I was under the impression that the best music production set up is to have a slave machine running the music libraries to free up the DAW machine to process faster. Are you finding that the MacPro now provides enough power to eliminate the slave? What are the specs on your MacPro?
Hypercontrol works? :)
Took me a while to find the Mac Pro I forget how small they are a lot of power in that little enclosure
This is awesome. I don’t know much about music but it’s a great desk setup. Would the speakers be good for just listening or are they overkill for average users?
Can’t make double tap with two fingers work as you describe.
Tried with iPadAir and iPhone 5 both running 7.1.1
My understanding is that it won’t work if Safari is being used.
Hi Bruce,
It looks like your comment hit the wrong post.
All the best
Nice! What AD/DA conversion have you got going on there?
Hi,
I’m using a Lexicon Ionix U82S. It is a great unit.
Have a great day.
Looks like a great setup, can we hear any audio samples? What type of music is produced here?
How well does sound proofing the walls work? Could you do with a home office and mute it from the rest of the house? Or could you line a teenagers room in audio tiles and bass traps and make it so the rest of the world can live in peace?
Hi,
The sound treatment is more for the purpose of building the perfect listening environment by reducing reverberation and echo in the room. So while mixing the producer can accurately sculpt the sound.
The sound level outside the studio is reduced, but not by that much. It sounds like you need sound proofing.
Good luck
PS,
I have a few of my tracks here…
http://Www.whotune.com/steel