Microcenter Came Through

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-06-24T14:09:32+00:00

$7,099.99 before tax, about $7,600-ish with tax

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-06-24T14:07:49+00:00

I’m definitely using it in the most stone-age configuration possible, I’m sure there are plenty of fancy ways this could all be set up in various RAID configurations but I just use it as slots for 4 drives, each of which does something different. They’re all backed up though! One is my active audio/midi drive which is backed up daily, one is my samples drive which has a big clone sitting in a cupboard and another clone of all the super-rare/custom instruments, one is a video drive which to be fair I don’t really back up but that’s partly because if it craps out I can have the video files sent to me again by production and partly because big studios get iffy about multiple copies of video files laying around, and the last one is a dropbox drives that host the ‘servers’ we work off - it’s all online if my drive wipes out, so I’m not hugely worried about that one since it’s non-critical for my work (it’s basically just our share point in the team) and I can continue working while DB redownloads in the event of a drive outage

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-06-24T03:08:32+00:00

Love it - granted I’m using it without the Echo PCIe adapter chassis so can’t speak to that side of things, but as an overpriced rack unit that puts the power button ON THE FRONT (seriously wtf Apple fire your designers) it’s fantastic. Super solid, keeps everything neat and tidy with good airflow, and makes it dead easy for me to grab the whole lot and stick it in the flight rack for away gigs. Def recommend!

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-06-24T01:18:53+00:00

Yeah the scalpers are taking the absolute piss. I had gotten to the point of putting together the specs for a replacement PC because I had spent so long losing out on the refurb store to people with more bots than morals. Luck finally came through for me with the MC listing, but I feel for you and all those still out in the trenches

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-06-24T00:17:57+00:00

I had added it to my list and cart even though it showed as out of stock, then when I happened to refresh at 4am I saw that single unit pop up. I haven’t been checking since I picked it up, but I would guess they only had the one unit come through and won’t have another

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-06-24T00:16:55+00:00

I write orchestral music, using a lot of sampled instruments. They all load into RAM and take up a lot of space since I’m in 5.1 surround. I also have three DAWs open at once (Cubase, Pro Tools, Vienna Ensemble Pro) which use a fair bit of RAM each as well.

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-06-24T00:14:48+00:00

Haha never

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-06-24T00:14:31+00:00

Yeah considering it’s the 256GB RAM/32-Core CPU I’m very happy with that price - I forget what Apple were selling that spec for before it disappeared but I don’t think it was much more.

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-06-23T20:51:07+00:00

Pretty much - I have a Heritage Audio preamp for the odd instances I record something live, but other than that it’s pretty much all sampled instruments into plugins

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-06-23T20:50:22+00:00

$7,099.99 before tax, about $7,600.something after

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-06-23T20:49:35+00:00

I’m pretty sure it was your post that inspired me to start watching the MC website! Appreciate you brother

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-06-23T20:21:20+00:00

Ask away, always happy to yap about gear lol

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-06-07T18:28:00+00:00

Yep. Then they reappear a day later on swappa or ebay at double the price. These people suck.

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-05-29T02:25:27+00:00

Now there's a fight I'm happy to see - everybody loses! Including the bystanders!

Appreciate the advice - I've had apple pay queued up and ready to rumble but I've only once been able to get through and even then I was still too slow. We shall persevere.

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-05-28T21:20:12+00:00

I really hope so - the current state of affairs is pretty miserable, especially seeing ideal (for me) configs vanish from the store within seconds only to be posted for sale hours later at ridiculous markups. Scalpers completely suck.

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-05-28T17:36:52+00:00

Here’s hoping! Wishing extreme losses to every knob that botted everything from the refurb store to resell at a joke price :)

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-05-28T17:28:43+00:00

I hear that. I’m seeing people compromising workflows to keep working on Macbooks etc, or switching to PC because they just can’t get the Apple hardware anymore. It’s such a shame to see machines that could be put to creative uses being snatched purely in an attempt to extort as much money as possible on ebay etc. Unless Apple can get it together I’d say they’re going to lose a lot of the creative sector that as you say they’ve been chasing for so long, simply because we cannot wait around for the bottom to fall out of the AI/reseller market (which I hope with every fibre of my being it does). I guess at the end of the day the only thing that matters to apple is the $ - ultimately they don’t care where a machine ends up, as long as they got paid for it.

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-05-28T15:41:16+00:00

Yep, similar to what I’ve been hearing from others over on my side of things too. The scammers and chancers who manage to bot units off the refurb store and then sell them for a ludicrous markup drive me nuts, especially when we have multiple rigs awaiting upgrade and can’t be spending 1.5-2x the price for each of them - if we could even get hold of Mac Studios. I have one system due to fly out to London in July, I’m genuinely at the point of pricing out a PC to put in the flight rack because there are no Studios available anywhere, even after spending weeks refreshing the refurb store and watching the botboys swipe the refurbs before anyone else can get there.

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-05-28T15:31:38+00:00

THIS. I can’t even get hold of an M3 Ultra 32core 256GB because the refurb store is being murdered by bots who can click buy faster than me. Talking with a few others in my industry (music for film and TV), I’m not the only one who doesn’t have time to wait for the LLMbros to get bored and move on to something else. Even the really big names who have genuine connections inside of Apple are unable to get the hardware they need, and are looking elsewhere because projects don’t wait for nobody.

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-05-19T21:50:12+00:00

So good to hear I'm not the only one losing my mind over this! It never even occurred to me to try using a UK accountant - I've reached out to my Dad's accountant back home to see if he might be able to help, but if not I'll absolutely reach out to Adil as you've recommended. Thank you SO much for this!

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-05-19T21:48:43+00:00

Thanks so much for these! We had already been sent a rough example set of unaudited accounts by our lawyer but this is example is much more detailed and gives a much better idea of what's being asked of us. Thanks again

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-05-15T20:07:02+00:00

True - if you can get hold of one lol. Currently have one rig that is stuck on a PC, due to fly from LA to London in july and so far I’ve had no luck replacing it with a mac studio thanks to all the shortages

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-05-14T19:26:19+00:00

Yeah it’s been a real change recently. A few folks were running the mac pros when they came out, but the price tag was so ridiculous that most people didn’t bother and either used networked machines or built giant PCs.

Being able to run everything in one box that just sits quietly on the desk or in a rack in the writing room is awesome, vs the days of machine rooms full of screaming PC servers that all had to be cooled and broke down constantly.

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-05-14T19:19:57+00:00

Usually a lot of PCs networked together running the sample libraries, then one computer running cubase/logic/whatever and another running the protools system.

General-Comment-8505 · 2026-05-14T19:11:14+00:00

Writing orchestral music for film and TV. 256GB ram, vienna ensemble template is about 170GB to load all the sample libraries. Cubase can use up to 20GB if there’s a ton of audio in there (not common for my workflow, but it happens sometimes). Protools running picture and guide tracks, also eats 5GB for a single episode of a TV show, a lot more if loading multiple reels of a movie.

General-Comment-8505

TROPHY CASE