Case ID: AG-002
Logic Pro X
Mac Studio M2
Unlocking M2 Ultra Performance:
The £10 Bottleneck
Disruption Score
Level 4
Status: Workflow Crippled
Tech Severity
Level 3
Type: Hardware/Cabling
Client Statement Transcript
“I just spent thousands on this M2 Ultra Mac Studio, but my Logic sessions take forever to load. It feels slower than my old Intel machine. I feel like I’ve wasted my money.”
FIG 1.0: Archive Snapshot
The client felt cheated. He had invested in the absolute pinnacle of Apple silicon—an M2 Ultra with 192GB of RAM—expecting instant performance.
Instead, he was watching beachballs. Large orchestral templates were taking minutes to load, and streaming performance was sluggish. He was convinced the Mac itself was faulty.
02. The Investigation
Diagnostic Log
Remote Session: 60 Mins
Test Protocol
Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
Target Drive
External Sample SSD
40 MB/s (FAIL)
> Result is reminiscent of USB 2.0 speeds.
> Visual Inspection: White USB-C cable in use. Identical to Thunderbolt in appearance.
The result was shocking: 40MB/s. I asked the client to show me the physical connection via camera. He was using a white USB-C cable that looked identical to a Thunderbolt cable. It was, in fact, a standard charging cable intended for an iPad.
03. The Solution
We swapped the charging cable for a certified 10Gb/s USB 3.2 Gen 2 cable. I re-ran the speed test.
Speed Restored: 980 MB/s
Logic Project Loaded Instantly
The “faulty” computer was effectively being strangled by a £10 piece of wire that lacked the physical data lanes to carry the M2’s bandwidth.
Why The Manual (and AI) Failed
This is a “Physical Layer Ambiguity.” The operating system does not warn you if a high-speed drive is connected via a low-speed cable; it simply throttles the speed down silently. System Reports listed the drive as “Connected,” giving a false positive that the hardware was fine. Only a forensic speed test could reveal the invisible throttle.