In October, this magazine turns 40, and it says a lot about SOS that despite having been part of the team for two‑thirds of that time, I’m not even close to being the longest‑serving employee.
When I joined the company in 1998, a new world was dawning. Steinberg had introduced Cubase VST, and my G3 Power Mac was the first personal computer capable of natively recording and mixing multitrack audio in real time. Frustratingly, though, for most of the next two decades, it felt as though the progress gained courtesy of Moore’s Law was nullified by the ever‑increasing demands of music software. As clock speeds rose, memory expanded and bandwidth was opened up, plug‑in developers responded with real‑time convolution, sample streaming from disk and other envelope‑pushing technologies. It always seemed to be that you needed a cutting‑edge computer, even if you couldn’t quite afford one.
Today, at last, it feels as though we’re coming out the other side. As this month’s in‑depth look at the current generation of Apple machines confirms, most audio‑related technologies no longer tax modern computers all that much. If you’re making music in Atmos, or your template features hundreds of tracks of virtual orchestral instruments, you’ll be all over the new M3 Ultra Mac Studio. But if you’re merely doing what would have been considered an epic mixdown back in 1985, a Mac mini will shoulder the load with barely a shrug.
Back in the day, it felt as though you had to be an elite hacker just to route audio from one program into another, or install a soundcard driver.
The fact that this sort of power is now available for a three‑figure sum is incredible, but it’s not just hardware development that has made computer audio better. Back in the day, it felt as though you had to be an elite hacker just to route audio from one program into another, or install a soundcard driver. That began to change back in 2003, when macOS 10.3 quietly introduced a new API for sound handling. Core Audio has since undergone more than 20 years of continuous development, and is now a mature technology. It’s a remarkable and underappreciated achievement, taking care of everything behind the scenes with effortless grace.
And if there’s a key takeaway from Mark Wherry’s benchmarking exercise in this issue, it’s that hardware breakthroughs such as Apple Silicon don’t happen in isolation. The revolution in computer audio is a holistic one that has been enabled as much by vertical integration, OS‑level support and long‑term planning as by breakthroughs in chip design. It’s been made possible because, whatever else they’ve done, Apple have been pretty constant in their commitment to understanding and meeting the needs of musicians. And when I say that’s one thing this magazine has in common with the world’s richest company, I speak from experience — all 26 years of it...
Sam Inglis Editor In Chief