ROAD
TEST
Apple MacBook Pro with Touch Bar
By Dajaun Martineau
T
he 2016 MacBook Pro boasts a
sleek, light design, plenty of pro-
cessing power, and some cool new
features – so how does it stack up
in the studio?
Getting Started
The first thing that I noticed when I began
using this computer is its power. I’ve been
mixing records on Mac Pro towers with Avid
HD3 Accel systems for over a decade and they
don’t even come close to the plug-in count
and responsiveness of this computer. The MBP
changes the game when it comes to digital
mixing. DSP enhancers may soon be a thing
of the past.
The newly redesigned audio system is
louder, clearer, and better than anything I
would expect out of such a small system; un-
fortunately, being an audio professional, the
amount of times I used the built-in speakers
can be counted on one hand. The laptop still
sports one piece of 19 th century technology: a
3.5 mm phone jack, to the joy of many users.
While 44.1, 48, and 96 kHz sample rates are
still supported, it appears that the built-in au-
dio device no longer supports 88.2 kHz. I can’t
fathom why, though if you’re using any external
audio hardware, this won’t affect you, unless
you’re trying to do some quick edits without
your hardware on a portable computer.
22 • C A N A D I A N M U S I C I A N
In Use
I’m sure by now you’re all begging the question:
What about the Touch Bar?! My first instinct was
to think of the Touch Bar as more of a gimmick
than a feature, but as I worked with it more and
more, I’ve found it incredibly useful.
The Touch Bar is entirely context sensitive
and almost predictive in nature. Not only does
it change the available functions as you switch
from application to application, but also based
on what you are doing. If I open a PDF, it gives
me some basic rotation options, but as soon as
I make a selection, a highlighter display appears
with different colours or strikethrough options.
Apple’s DAW, Logic Pro X, had a bit of a head
start developing for the MacBook’s new Touch
Bar and has really done a fantastic job of inte-
grating it. The new functionality is perfectly in
line with Apple’s notoriously intuitive design.
Once I got into using it with Logic Pro, I rec-
ognized the potential for this as a musical tool.
When you click on any instrument track, the
Touch Bar automatically offers you Smart Con-
trols for everything from level, reverb sends,
and tremolo controls to compression or EQ
options. It even lets you cycle through presets.
The sliders, while basic in nature, are incred-
ibly responsive and feel very natural. Actually,
using the Touch Bar is very reminiscent of using
a real fader on a console. Some software allows
you to customize which options are displayed
by default on the Touch Bar, but that’s not an
option in Logic yet.
There are three other modes you can flip
the Touch Bar into while using logic. The first
is a Timeline Overview that provides an over-
view of your entire session and lets you zoom
around quickly. The Touch Bar is too small to
provide any real usefulness here but it is still a
good effort in trying new navigation options.
The next is Key Command mode, which of-
fers customizable banks of keyboard shortcut
buttons.
The last is Instrument and Track Controls,
offering a virtual keyboard, drum kits, or audio
track settings. Despite being tiny, the keyboard
and drum pad are incredibly powerful. The key-
board allows you to set it to key specific pat-
terns so that there is no such thing as a wrong
note as long as you have a basic grasp of music
theory. The drum pad offers a velocity slider
and a note repeater, making it feel a lot like
using an MPC.
Unfortunately, Avid’s Pro Tools and Ableton
Live haven’t rolled out any functionality for the
Touch Bar yet but I am really looking forward
to what they put together because I can see
this becoming a formative creative tool. My
dream request is for someone to create an app
that would allow me to easily program my own
functions into the Touch Bar.
Some engineers have been vocal about the
lack of port diversity on this model, so let’s have
a look. This Mac is loaded with four Thunder-
bolt 3 (aka USB-C) ports. Thunderbolt 3 is truly
one port to rule them all. USB-C boasts back-
wards compatibility to USB 1 and 2, FireWire,
Thunderbolt 1 and 2, display port, HDMI, and
also supports power charging. One USB-C can
handle two displays at 4k resolutions.
Many have complained that you have to
buy adapters in order to connect some current
devices, which is true, but if you can look to
the near future where all devices are USB-C,
then you’ll anticipate the beauty of only need-
ing one type of cable. It won’t matter if you’re
connecting a hard drive, consumer audio in-
terface, or PCIe chassis that contains an entire
Avid HD3 system to run a whole studio; you’ll
only need one cable. I think I spent maybe
$50 for adapters to get everything connected.
In Summary
I’m fairly impressed by this computer and I
think that despite the large price tag, it’s worth
every penny. The most expensive thing in the
computer is the PCIe-based flash memory and
when you consider what you’re getting as far
as dollars per gigabyte and operation speed, I
think it is entirely worth it.
After using this computer for a while, I
have to say this may be the most “pro” Mac-
Book Pro yet.
Dajaun Martineau is a producer/engineer/writer
based out of Toronto, ON, who spent the better
part of a decade as a Senior Staff Engineer at
Phase One Studios before going freelance. For
his full discography and more information, visit
www.dajaun.com.