New Macs for audio

[pascual]

Im in the market for a new Mac. No need to bully. Just a simple search for people’s experience with the newer models. M1- M2- M3. MBPro or Air options. How are this performing with 8g of ram vs 16-32?
Etc. I’m guessing any new model is gonna outperform my dying 2016 MBP.

I run Ableton, some waves and Arturia plugins. Plus I plug some external hardware here and there but not excessively demanding stuff.

Gracias.

[Uncle E]

This chart is handy. Basically, you'll want to get as many performance cores as you can afford. I've personally been looking at used MacBook Pro's with M2 Pro's for this reason. That seems to be the sweet spot for price-performance.

[mdstudio]

I would not go lower than 16gb, despite Apple trying to convince everybody that 8GB is enough because of fast paging, which is false, the computer will slow down to the point of being unresponsive if RAM is a bottleneck. Also, plugins and apps keep getting bigger over time, it's better to be safe IMO.

How much RAM does Ableton use in your current setup?

[cryophonik]

This probably isn't too helpful, but I just bought a Mac Studio M1 Max (32GB) as an upgrade to my 2017 iMac (i7/8GB) that I literally just bought this past Friday. I wiped out everything over the weekend and I'm in the process of doing a clean install of everything (i.e., not transferring anything from my old iMac). I got Logic, Final Cut Pro, Ableton Live, NI, Izotope, Arturia, Soundtoys, and a ton of other things up and running this weekend and I constantly monitor my system resources on all of my machines. My M1 hasn't broken a sweat or even shown much of a blip in RAM or CPU usage when I've tested out some CPU hogs, like Diva or Pigments, but I have not opened a full project to really put it to the test yet because I'm still installing and configuring my plugins and hardware. I'll have a better idea of how much things have improved later this week.

[BONES]

You might want to rethink, given the email I just got from Kilohearts -

"Unfortunately, we have to join the chorus of audio software developers advising users against upgrading your MacOS to Sonoma 14.4." Honestly, why anyone puts up with that shit beggars belief.

[Jac459]

I would not go lower than 16gb, despite Apple trying to convince everybody that 8GB is enough because of fast paging, which is false, the computer will slow down to the point of being unresponsive if RAM is a bottleneck. Also, plugins and apps keep getting bigger over time, it's better to be safe IMO.

How much RAM does Ableton use in your current setup?

Got a mbp M2 pro since 1 year+ and never went out of performance.

I have 16gb of ram the memory pressure is low at 12.5gb average.
Not sure if I ever used the full 16gb but not something I monitor since in this case it would be transparent and it would just be using the SSD.

On that note I used to have a MBA with 256/8gb. It was ok to do music and no major performance concern BUT I noticed after 1.5 years that it was swapping 100% of the time meaning using more than 100% of the physical RAM, always.

I am not sure if it is an actual concern and it was fine for me but it can be a concern in the long run with SSD wearing out faster maybe. (This MBA is still working perfectly and used everyday by my daughter by the way).

[Jac459]

You might want to rethink, given the email I just got from Kilohearts -

"Unfortunately, we have to join the chorus of audio software developers advising users against upgrading your MacOS to Sonoma 14.4." Honestly, why anyone puts up with that shit beggars belief.

That's a good point and I am pretty pissed about it but to be fair, it is the first time I see such issue since I moved to Mac in 2021.

[jancivil]

I'm actually using the entry level model M1 with 8GB. I am more limited than what I'm used to w. 64GB RAM but not to the scale the numbers suggest. It is by_far faster, moreso with native silicon everything, than my older machines. I would if able go to 32GB of course.

My orchestral use is pretty close to all VSL, which in what I use is significantly more efficient than other vendors' offerings. If I'm bringing in one of my Kontakt libraries I'll be much more limited in what I can have in realtime, no doubt.

[jancivil]

I run Ableton, some waves and Arturia plugins. Plus I plug some external hardware here and there but not excessively demanding stuff.

Unless your ways are going to change in a foreseeable future, you don't have reason to throw a lot of money at RAM amounts. I run into limitations with 8GB almost strictly from sample library use.
However I wouldn't run say Chrome browser at the same time because it's using a lot. Or two intensive applications, say a video editor and Cubase with VE Pro at the same time, regardless of whatever is claimed about the thing.

[revvy]

You might want to rethink, given the email I just got from Kilohearts -

"Unfortunately, we have to join the chorus of audio software developers advising users against upgrading your MacOS to Sonoma 14.4." Honestly, why anyone puts up with that shit beggars belief.

That's a good point and I am pretty pissed about it but to be fair, it is the first time I see such issue since I moved to Mac in 2021.

BONES isn't wrong (swoon), is he? It does suck, for sure.

Avoid updating straight away is obviously the best way (yeah, tricky if your brand new Mac has the offending OS version)

Anyway, FWIW:

UA discussing the issue https://help.uaudio.com/hc/en-us/articl ... 4-4-Update

PACE mentioning that they and Apple are aware https://help.ilok.com/faq_licenses.html ... _4_plugins

[Jac459]

You might want to rethink, given the email I just got from Kilohearts -

"Unfortunately, we have to join the chorus of audio software developers advising users against upgrading your MacOS to Sonoma 14.4." Honestly, why anyone puts up with that shit beggars belief.

That's a good point and I am pretty pissed about it but to be fair, it is the first time I see such issue since I moved to Mac in 2021.

BONES isn't wrong (swoon), is he? It does suck, for sure.

Avoid updating straight away is obviously the best way (yeah, tricky if your brand new Mac has the offending OS version)

Anyway, FWIW:

UA discussing the issue https://help.uaudio.com/hc/en-us/articl ... 4-4-Update

PACE mentioning that they and Apple are aware https://help.ilok.com/faq_licenses.html ... _4_plugins

When I am saying that it is a good point, you should understand that I do agree with Bones, isn't it?

Clearly this is an upsetting situation because I don't like to wait for updating an OS.

[BONES]

That's a good point and I am pretty pissed about it but to be fair, it is the first time I see such issue since I moved to Mac in 2021.

Wow, a whole couple of years without being f**ked over by Apple. That must be some kind of record. Go and have a look at all the threads about the upheaval of moving to Apple Silicon - that was 3 or 4 years ago now and there are still some plugins that need Rosetta. Go back a bit further to Catalina and the clusterfuck that was for so many users.

OTOH, you have to go back 17 years, to Windows Vista, to find anything anywhere near as troubling for PC users. Microsoft learned a very valuable lesson back then and won't be keen to repeat it, where Apple know that they can bend their customers over on a whim and they'll be more than happy to take whatever rogering Apple feels like giving them.

[revvy]

When I am saying that it is a good point, you should understand that I do agree with Bones, isn't it?

Course. It's an obviously fair point.

'Tis a rare thing for me to agree with the sexual analogy-obsessed bones.

[uOpt]

UA discussing the issue https://help.uaudio.com/hc/en-us/articl ... 4-4-Update

PACE mentioning that they and Apple are aware https://help.ilok.com/faq_licenses.html ... _4_plugins

So the whole hoopla is about that iLok crap, again?

And it is deceptive to claim that Apple will fix the issue. That's just not gonna happen and iLok will be the ones changing their so-called software.

[zvenx]

Screenshot 2024-03-15 at 10.40.50 AM.jpg

Except... one developer, Kilohearts, also report issues and they don't use ilok so it may not just be ilok related only.
rsp