How is the Black Friday Amazon special with Logic? (2023 Macbook Air, 15 inch, M2, 8gb Ram, 256 HD)

[Trevor Jackson]

I know that intensive work requires a machine with specs that would lead a power user to the Macbook Pro, but for a casual user who records exclusively on 1 or 2 tracks at a time and does not use a huge amount of plugins, how long can I use this machine before wishing I got something else?

Also, I see the USB C port on this thing has impressive transfer speeds. What is a cost-conscious external drive I can buy to keep my Logic-World on? For example, this is what is on sale this week:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=external+ssd ... _sb_noss_1

[Bombadil]

You'd probably want more RAM and storage. But, if not, the Samsung should suit. I'm thinking of getting the 4 TB version. I wanted one of the 2020 MB Airs, but my Missus said 'NEIN!'

[Trevor Jackson]

You'd probably want more RAM and storage. But, if not, the Samsung should suit. I'm thinking of getting the 4 TB version. I wanted one of the 2020 MB Airs, but my Missus said 'NEIN!'

You meant the Samsung SSD? Why did you pick that one?

[Bombadil]

Because I haven't heard anything bad about it. The SanDisk (I have a 1 tb) 4 tb ssd has had some significant issues lately, like all stored files disappearing.
I'm not an expert. The 1tb SanDsisk has worked perfectly since I bought it in 2021. no issues with sample streaming whatsoever.

[machinesworking]

I know that intensive work requires a machine with specs that would lead a power user to the Macbook Pro, but for a casual user who records exclusively on 1 or 2 tracks at a time and does not use a huge amount of plugins, how long can I use this machine before wishing I got something else?

Also, I see the USB C port on this thing has impressive transfer speeds. What is a cost-conscious external drive I can buy to keep my Logic-World on? For example, this is what is on sale this week:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=external+ssd ... _sb_noss_1

A couple things:
First off learn from my mistakes, Bombadil is right there are issues with Sandisk, not just missing files, which is probably a result of a bad firmware.

USB C is a hardware protocol and it gets confusing because USB 3.2 is the standard most drive enclosures are using, any drive that says it can hit 1040MB/s is in a USB 3.2 enclosure, and it's more like 550-800MB/s tops. The big negative for Mac OS users is there's issues with SMART detection on NVME drives over USB 3.2 and lower,so the OS and even third party software like DriveDX cannot read the SMART reports off of a NVME drive in a USB 3.2 enclosure.

I bought a 4TB NVME Sandisk in a 3.2 enclosure, and so far it works, it's infinitely slower than the NVME drive I put in a USB4 enclosure. USB4 can work with Thunderbolt, and the new macbooks have thunderbolt ports. You get two important advantages with USB4/Thunderbolt enclosures as mentioned earlier. The first one being you get SMART readings out of USB4/Thunderbolt enclosures with NVMNE drives in them, so you can actually get some understanding of when your drive might fail. The second thing isn't as important and more fun, NVME drives are insanely fast. to where the cheapest NVME drive is faster than the fastest port protocol, so with them you get speeds up to 2800MB/s.

Side note, that 2800MB/s speed is not really the one that matters to audio people, the 4k random read is the more important number, we're constantly abscessing drives with sample libraries asking for hundreds of 1000MB or less even samples, but the faster MB/s drives at the gigibyte level always have faster read speeds at 4K.

Anyway the point of all this is build your own drive with a USB4 enclsoure and you'll get a much better experience all around than with Sandisk or any NVME drive in a USB 3.2 enclosure. Apple has decided they aren't bothering to fix the USB 3.2 issue with SMART support and WD and other manufacturers are selling everyone overpriced USB 3.2 enclosures that bottleneck the NVME drives in them, don't support SMART, and have issues with mounting etc.

So, build your own drive, which literally just means buy a USB4 or Thunderbolt enclosure, a NVME drive and put it in the enclosure. It will be cheaper than the Sandisk etc. drives, faster, and support SMART detection. You will have far less issues.

[kidslow]

I would reccomend get more RAM and get a bigger HDD. I have 256GB internal in an M1 MacBook and you really have to manage space. I have 90GB free, but I am ruthless about what goes on the internal drive. Pretty sure neither of those components is user upgradeable and they will be the 2 bottlenecks that cause frustration first. With at least 16GB RAM and a 1TB drive, you will have 5-10 years of life out of it. As spec'ed, might hit the wall in less than a year.

so you can actually get some understanding of when your drive might fail.

Curious, how many drives have you had fail on you during use in your lifetime? I've had 1 WD Red spinning platter drive fail in my NAS under warranty maybe 8 years ago, and the other 3 in there have been going for 10 years. I can only remember another single drive failing maybe 20 years prior. Seen a lot more die in business use or when I was doing tech support, and quite a few others of mine have failed to boot up after decommissioning. I might have as many as 2 dozen drives in my house right now ranging in age from 1 to 30 years, and I haven't tested them all, but I would bet less than 10% would be unusable. Drive failure is overrated, except when you're the victim of it.

I like the WD My Passport SSD USB-C drives. Fast enough to edit video, so certainly sufficient for audio.

[machinesworking]

I would reccomend get more RAM and get a bigger HDD. I have 256GB internal in an M1 MacBook and you really have to manage space. I have 90GB free, but I am ruthless about what goes on the internal drive. Pretty sure neither of those components is user upgradeable and they will be the 2 bottlenecks that cause frustration first. With at least 16GB RAM and a 1TB drive, you will have 5-10 years of life out of it. As spec'ed, might hit the wall in less than a year.

so you can actually get some understanding of when your drive might fail.

Curious, how many drives have you had fail on you during use in your lifetime? I've had 1 WD Red spinning platter drive fail in my NAS under warranty maybe 8 years ago, and the other 3 in there have been going for 10 years. I can only remember another single drive failing maybe 20 years prior. Seen a lot more die in business use or when I was doing tech support, and quite a few others of mine have failed to boot up after decommissioning. I might have as many as 2 dozen drives in my house right now ranging in age from 1 to 30 years, and I haven't tested them all, but I would bet less than 10% would be unusable. Drive failure is overrated, except when you're the victim of it.

I like the WD My Passport SSD USB-C drives. Fast enough to edit video, so certainly sufficient for audio.

You named the reasons why your take on it shouldn't be taken seriously,

Drive failure is overrated, except when you're the victim of it.

I've had two SSDs fail and three spinners fail. Mac OS has in the past had issues with USB drives and sleep. The computer goes to sleep and the drive would lose power, upon waking the OS would say you haven't shut down your drive properly etc. This only really affected the SSDs in USB3 enclosures in an earlier version of Mac OS, but it sure did. Spinners die, not all the time, but after 5+ years it's always possible.

Again, as with your own words, arguing against safety is terrible advice. I was a bike messenger in SF CA in the 80's, none of us wore helmets, I lived and never got a brain injury. I still think I was an idiot for not wearing a helmet. At least one messenger died during the time I was a messenger, and without a doubt it was a head injury that killed him, 30mph is about as fast as you can drive downtown.

[kidslow]

You named the reasons why your take on it shouldn't be taken seriously,

Drive failure is overrated, except when you're the victim of it.

I've had two SSDs fail and three spinners fail. Mac OS has in the past had issues with USB drives and sleep. The computer goes to sleep and the drive would lose power, upon waking the OS would say you haven't shut down your drive properly etc. This only really affected the SSDs in USB3 enclosures in an earlier version of Mac OS, but it sure did. Spinners die, not all the time, but after 5+ years it's always possible.

Again, as with your own words, arguing against safety is terrible advice. I was a bike messenger in SF CA in the 80's, none of us wore helmets, I lived and never got a brain injury. I still think I was an idiot for not wearing a helmet. At least one messenger died during the time I was a messenger, and without a doubt it was a head injury that killed him, 30mph is about as fast as you can drive downtown.

I don't care if you take me seriously or not, but I do care that you misunderstood me. I wasn't arguing against safety. That is your improper interpretation. I didn't say don't make backups and test them. Everyone should do that regularly. I just said that drive failures are less common than you were suggesting, which is completely true, as per your own words. You've had what 5 drives fail in how long, 30 or more years? Not so common. I also research and buy high quality drives and avoid low quality manufacturers, which probably has helped me over the years.

[machinesworking]

I don't care if you take me seriously or not, but I do care that you misunderstood me.

You literally say, drive failure is overrated, then claim that less than 10% is an acceptable amount of failure for your old drives. It's like you're not even paying attention to what you're writing, I'm sorry if that's harsh to you, but you literally contradict your own assertions in the same paragraph.

Let's be clear here, it's OK, it's OK to be wrong. You state you haven't had many failures, then admit to an around 10% chance of older drives failing, " and quite a few others of mine have failed to boot up after decommissioning", that in no way backs up your claim. This is EXACTLY why it's great to have things like SMART detection available, and why I wouldn't recommend anybody on Mac OS buy a USB3.2 or lower enclosure with NVME, knowing if a drive is close to failure is never a bad thing.

I'm not arguing that SSDs and Drives in general aren't mostly reliable, but you should NEVER count on that, things happen, it's hardware, you can get a lemon at any time.

[kidslow]

I don't care if you take me seriously or not, but I do care that you misunderstood me.

You literally say, drive failure is overrated, then claim that less than 10% is an acceptable amount of failure for your old drives. It's like you're not even paying attention to what you're writing, I'm sorry if that's harsh to you, but you literally contradict your own assertions in the same paragraph.

There is nothing contradictory in what I put out there. You just have a mind that draws conclusions that were never intended. It's like you're not paying attention to what I wrote. The whole thing about drive failure being overrated was f'n tongue in cheek or did you miss the smiley? I know never to make a joke with you again. I see you ceded my point about how uncommon drive failure actually is, because I don't see you arguing it anymore.

Did you miss the part where I wrote that I have probably two dozen drives in the house? I literally have drives that are 30 years old that have not been booted up for decades. They are IDE and SCSI. When's the last time one of those was manufactured? I bet that 90% of them still boot up, even the ones that were on the shelf for 20+ years. Yes, 10% failure rate for those is acceptable. I would call it low.

I apologize that I wasn't more clear. Clearly I shoulder some blame that you misinterpreted me. And I apologize that I made a made light of something as serious as drive failure. That was a joke again.

[machinesworking]

I don't care if you take me seriously or not, but I do care that you misunderstood me.

You literally say, drive failure is overrated, then claim that less than 10% is an acceptable amount of failure for your old drives. It's like you're not even paying attention to what you're writing, I'm sorry if that's harsh to you, but you literally contradict your own assertions in the same paragraph.

There is nothing contradictory in what I put out there. You just have a mind that draws conclusions that were never intended. It's like you're not paying attention to what I wrote. The whole thing about drive failure being overrated was f'n tongue in cheek or did you miss the smiley? I know never to make a joke with you again. I see you ceded my point about how uncommon drive failure actually is, because I don't see you arguing it anymore.

Did you miss the part where I wrote that I have probably two dozen drives in the house? I literally have drives that are 30 years old that have not been booted up for decades. They are IDE and SCSI. When's the last time one of those was manufactured? I bet that 90% of them still boot up, even the ones that were on the shelf for 20+ years. Yes, 10% failure rate for those is acceptable. I would call it low.

I apologize that I wasn't more clear. Clearly I shoulder some blame that you misinterpreted me. And I apologize that I made a made light of something as serious as drive failure. That was a joke again.

I'm still trying to figure out how you're trying to be helpful here? OP wanted information on drives, what to buy, I provided my insight. I'm still not sure what you think you provided?

You're at the same time, trying to say you were joking but still defending your position that drives don't fail that often. In my experience they fail more often than any other part of the system besides maybe monitors, and even that's debatable. I concede that drives are not built to fail, but they definitely fail. Saying they're mostly reliable =/= they don't fail that often. Is this really up for debate? it's the weakest part of the chain by far.

Anyway this is just clutter on this thread, so let's drop it.

[kidslow]

I'm still trying to figure out how you're trying to be helpful here? OP wanted information on drives, what to buy, I provided my insight. I'm still not sure what you think you provided?

Nope nothing helpful at all, just answered the very questions that were asked

I would reccomend get more RAM and get a bigger HDD. I have 256GB internal in an M1 MacBook and you really have to manage space. I have 90GB free, but I am ruthless about what goes on the internal drive. Pretty sure neither of those components is user upgradeable and they will be the 2 bottlenecks that cause frustration first. With at least 16GB RAM and a 1TB drive, you will have 5-10 years of life out of it. As spec'ed, might hit the wall in less than a year.

[...]

I like the WD My Passport SSD USB-C drives. Fast enough to edit video, so certainly sufficient for audio.

I'll leave it at that.

[elxsound]

I know that intensive work requires a machine with specs that would lead a power user to the Macbook Pro, but for a casual user who records exclusively on 1 or 2 tracks at a time and does not use a huge amount of plugins, how long can I use this machine before wishing I got something else?

Also, I see the USB C port on this thing has impressive transfer speeds. What is a cost-conscious external drive I can buy to keep my Logic-World on? For example, this is what is on sale this week:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=external+ssd ... _sb_noss_1

I don't know remember exactly what it is, but there's a performance boost, or maybe memory read/write boost if you get the MacBook Air with 512 GB drive.

I have the one with 512 and augmented with a Sandisk 2 TB drive, connected through a 4 port Belking USB hub: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BY2 ... UTF8&psc=1

Both of these things are velcroed on to a cheap case I bought for the MacBook. It keeps everything extremely portable.

*I had no idea there were issues of missing files and stuff with the Sandisk. I formatted the drive and have used it seamlessly with Live, Logic, Reaper, Cubase and LUNA.
I have Live's library, UAD instrument and Kontakt library data all on the 2TB drive, with space to spare and no hangups yet.