Best apple laptop product for music production

[chris979899]

Not massively clued up on laptops but know the basics. Basically would like to know whether to get a mac book for music production or is an air with good ram enough? Run ableton, hardware synths, drum machine, effects etc through current one but want upgrade.

[chk071]

The most expensive one i guess? Considering you want to have as much processing power as possible.

[thecontrolcentre]

Macbook Pro seems to be the laptop of choice for musicians that I know personally. I'm happy with my Win laptop from SCAN. It runs Live10, with as many plugs as I'll ever need with no issues.

[Zexila]

Get Pro if you can, CPU is more important than RAM.
https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks

[Tj Shredder]

Personally I am happy with my i7 Macbook Air 11”, but processing power is limited, max 8 GB ram...
Unfortunately if you want a powerful machine you almost can’t avoid a 15”. Why? The price/performance ratio for the 13” is too bad. If you add specs like the necessary ram, the faster processor etc. to a 13”, you end up in the same price range as the equally speced 15”, but get only 2 cores, the 15” have four... and both would be around 3000 $/€
Two options, Macbook Air in max config, or 15” in low config, or if you want the best, 15” max config...
If I need more power on the road, I carry my Mac Pro and use the Air as monitor/keyboard/trackpad... That outperforms a fully blown 15”...

[chk071]

This fall, Apple is supposed to come out with new Macbooks, Mac Mini, and other devices, so, it might make sense to wait.

[Tj Shredder]

The only thing I wonder about new stuff from Apple is eventually a new Mac Pro, the Macbook line will be in principle the same, but a bit faster. If you start out, it is wise to not to invest into the fastest for future needs, as you don’t know yet your limits, or when you reach them. If you get a 3 year old computer, you pay half the price, but you are only about 10 to 20% slower... At the end of its life cycle you will know your needs much better. If you get to the limits faster, you sell the computer and then get what you need...

[commuter]

Macbook pro's were updated last month, the current 13" line (touchbar) is now quadcore, so they're as powerful as last year 15" (and 15" are hexacore)

[kovacs]

I have used Macbook Pro for audio production for a long time, it works great.

Currently I have a Macbook Pro 15" with touchbar from December 2016. It has more than enough power for Logic Pro X with lots of plugins. But it was horribly expensive.

If you're on a budget but want something brand new, I recommend looking at the 13" Macbook Pro without touchbar. The touchbar is really just hype and not needed at all.

The main gripe with Macbook Pros is the small harddrive size, so you'll either need to order one with a larger capacity or get a thunderbolt external drive.

For production purposes a 13" may be a bit on the small side if you'll spend a lot of time working on it. So perhaps you should consider a second hand 15" MBP from 2015 or so if you can find one at a reasonable price.

[fmr]

Macbook pro's were updated last month, the current 13" line (touchbar) is now quadcore, so they're as powerful as last year 15" (and 15" are hexacore)

More important than the number of cores (although that may be important too) is the clock speed at which the CPU runs.

Anyway, a MacBook Pro will always be a bad deal, IMO - poor price/performance ratio.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

Not massively clued up on laptops but know the basics. Basically would like to know whether to get a mac book for music production or is an air with good ram enough? Run ableton, hardware synths, drum machine, effects etc through current one but want upgrade.

Us music guys get a lucky break when it comes to computer needs. If you're a gamer who needs everything at max settings, or a video producer who needs 4k, things can get pretty expensive. However, for music, any decent speed quad-core from the last few years, and 16gig ram should cover it, as long as you are willing to freeze/render once in a while.

I'm still using a 6-year-old MBP (2.33 quad, 16g ram, 1tb ssd), and there's still nothing I want to do that I cannot do (I wouldn't mind a tad more video ram for gaming, but I still have tons that I am able to play). Some synths are getting close to the limits, but their are normally workarounds (draft mode, freeze etc.).

.

[sureno]

Just got the new mbp touchbar 15 fully loaded, other then having 3 days of hell migrating from my old 2012 mbp I can definitely notice a difference but not as much as I was hoping for, but regardless of you are considering a laptop MacBook Pro for sure

[Arvis]

For sure if you can afford top or nearly top of the line macbook pro gives you peace of mind on heavier projects, a bit less fan activity which is good, faster processing power and overall reliable performace....

[V0RT3X]

Considering lots of people on KvR are on a low budget I’d avoid going with any cheap laptop recommendations.

You want to buy a decent system. Depending on your needs, I would look into a fast expensive system with multiple cores and lots of ram.

I have a 2017 MBP quadcore i7 with a 2.9 Ghz processor and it works great for most things. I might end up upgrading to the 6-core 2.9ghz MBP soon.

Buy software cheap but dont buy a cheap ass laptop..

[V0RT3X]

Oops turns out this is a necro post