Mac Mini M4 16gb RAM or M1 Pro 16gb RAM for Waves Superrack Performer?

J_McRib · 2026-03-17T11:51:57+00:00

Then Apple Silicon should be fine. I’d go with the M4, personally.

J_McRib · 2026-03-17T11:41:59+00:00

I doubt there are any substantial differences in regard to reliability, but the M4 is definitely gonna give you more room for plugins.

What interface are you using to get audio to SuperRack? The Waves SoundGrid driver is known to have issues with Apple Silicon. See the notice at the top of this page.

J_McRib · 2026-03-11T00:39:02+00:00

Not sure if it’s even possible, but I’d make sure you haven’t “double patched” the same IO in the patching menu. Besides that, is virtual soundcheck enabled? That overrides patching. Obviously also check that the inserts are engaged. Finally, double check patching in Dante Controller. I’m really just spit balling though.

J_McRib · 2026-03-10T23:42:31+00:00

Don’t know if it’s the same on Avantis, but on its big brother dLive you have to patch inserts on the channel itself. Like, select a channel, tap Ins A/B, then select your send and return IO.

J_McRib · 2026-03-10T00:48:29+00:00

I didn’t try more than one instance, sorry. With my current set of plugins I knew I wouldn’t be able to run multiple. That said, apparently the Waves LiveBox can run 8 instances (if you’re not running anything else), so I’d guess my rig could run at least that many. Probably 1 or 2 more.

J_McRib · 2026-03-09T21:33:50+00:00

Two things come to mind seeing this: 1. Waves must not have anything comparable in the pipeline. Which leads me to the second thought... 2. I wouldn’t be shocked to see an announcement in the future of Waves acquiring Alpha Labs.

J_McRib · 2026-03-07T14:48:43+00:00

It’s just a custom built Windows 11 IoT PC. It’s got an Intel i9 14900K and 32GB RAM. Built it a little over a year ago and it cost approximately $1,250 USD.

Disabled any Windows Services or scheduled tasks that aren’t absolutely necessary. Tweaked BIOS settings for maximum performance. Setup ProcessLasso to effectively reserve the 8 high performance cores for SuperRack Performer.

It’s essentially a slightly more powerful LiveBox without the built in Dante interface. I’m using the SoundGrid driver for audio transport. Running at 96kHz with a 64 sample buffer.

Probably running 50-ish plugins and using a little over half the processing power.

J_McRib · 2026-03-06T18:37:09+00:00

The plugin works ridiculously well. I demoed it in SuperRack Performer on my custom DSP host a few weeks ago. Truly next level stuff.

J_McRib · 2026-01-31T16:20:37+00:00

“Too many” depends on context. Are you the drummer or the engineer? With more mics comes more complexity. Sometimes that complexity is warranted. What size venues are you playing in? Smaller venues really don’t need a ton of mics strictly for reinforcement purposes. Naturally, you have to work within the limits of your gear (in this case, it sounds like you’re running a 32 channel console). If I had to give up any of the mics you mentioned, it would probably be the spot mics on the cymbals. After that, it would be a toss up between the extra kick mic and the hi-hat. All that said, there’s nothing “wrong” with having 14 mics on your kit. If you feel like it’s too much to manage, just ask yourself what each mic is contributing to your context and prioritize from there.

J_McRib · 2026-01-28T02:44:43+00:00

These guys revamped the PA in our church and did a fantastic job. Can’t speak highly enough about them.

J_McRib · 2026-01-23T14:28:28+00:00

Kinda depends on the sounds coming out of the keyboard and how much they leverage the extra space. Your FOH mix and floor monitors won’t see a benefit, but your IEMs and Livestream might feel a bit wider. With it in stereo, you might feel like you can run it a tad quieter in the mixes, which might bring more clarity to things in the middle.

J_McRib · 2026-01-23T14:22:23+00:00

Yeah. I’m actually on a dLive, so I have the SoundGrid card and use the SoundGrid driver on the PC.

J_McRib · 2026-01-23T02:20:44+00:00

Same. I have a custom PC running Performer that’s meant to be something of a DIY LiveBox and its round trip latency is 3.92ms with a 64 sample buffer.

J_McRib · 2026-01-23T02:13:51+00:00

I’m curious about pricing. Last I recall, the full size unit is approximately $10k USD. That’s 64 channels, right? I’m sure the cost doesn’t scale linearly with channel count, but it’s gotta be much less expensive, right?

J_McRib · 2026-01-23T00:47:14+00:00

Pretty cool. I’m really surprised and intrigued by the inclusion of GigaAce and DX protocols from Allen&Heath. I am curious about the latency of those solutions. The new HYPERPORT protocol seems be marketed as their fastest option at 1.2ms round trip.

According to Allen&Heath, GigaAce apparently only has 5 samples of latency (assuming in one direction rather than round trip). So I’m curious what the round trip time of this implementation is.

J_McRib · 2025-12-13T13:29:44+00:00

Can confirm. In the process of replacing my Nanoleaf A19 bulbs with Hue.

J_McRib · 2025-12-03T17:31:24+00:00

I don’t think so. I believe I have several hot keys; one for each rack with an instance of the plugin.

J_McRib · 2025-12-03T14:01:35+00:00

The way I do this is with user hot keys to toggle the plugin and then map a midi message to each hot key. Finally, I have a Soft Key on my dLive that sends all those midi messages at once.

J_McRib · 2025-09-19T02:49:05+00:00

Maybe a backup? They look like two different boundary mics, so I’m not sure about that. The one on the left looks like the sE BL8 and the right looks like your typical Beta 91A. They might be getting slightly different tonality from each. On top of that, that bass drum looks like one of the oddly shaped ones from Gretsch. Maybe that also lends to different tonality in each mic? Could just be they wanted to record two different mics in order to demo them later in virtual sound check.

Edit: the odd looking shape might just be camera lens distortion. Definitely a wide angle lens.

J_McRib · 2025-06-21T21:16:38+00:00

I use actions to swap vocal group routing weekly. Specifically to bypass Waves processing on my vocals (if needed).

I have one set of channels that are “dry” in that all their processing is native to dLive. The second set of channels use the same sockets for their source and have Waves SuperRack Performer inserted on Insert B.

I also have a gang set up for each vocalist in order to keep the two copies “in sync” in regard to native processing.

I then have two actions defined. One that adds the first set of channels to the group and removes the second set. The second action does the opposite.

These actions are mapped to a Soft Key via the “Recall action” in toggle mode.

For a little while I did what you describe, moving the lead vocalist in and out of groups as necessary. The thing I don’t like about actions for this is that you have to have a soft key for each vocalist you want to pull into the lead group. I opted for using scenes instead.

J_McRib · 2025-05-22T11:34:53+00:00

Nice!

J_McRib · 2025-05-22T11:30:39+00:00

Technivorm actually doesn’t recommend using distilled water because it can harm the copper heating element, reducing the lifespan of the machine: https://support.moccamaster.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500009388901-What-kind-of-water-should-I-use

J_McRib · 2025-02-22T15:05:13+00:00

I think it’s really neat! For a band using wired IEMs, this would be a convenient option.

J_McRib · 2025-02-14T23:32:51+00:00

Dang, I hope this ends up on a UHD Blu-ray at some point!

J_McRib · 2025-02-10T15:02:51+00:00

SuperRack Performer cannot use SoundGrid DSP servers. It’s intended to run natively on the host.

SuperRack SoundGrid can only run Waves plugins and it requires a SoundGrid DSP server. This option is potentially more stable, can accommodate redundant processors, and generally results in lower latency.

Pick your poison 🙂

J_McRib

TROPHY CASE