Mac Mini M1 advice

[SpaghettiLogo]

Hi, I'm looking at replacing my aging PC with a Mini M1 but I could do with some advice on one or two things as I'm not the most tech savvy.

I use Studio One with a Focusrite 18i20 (1st Gen) audio interface. The Focusrite website confirms this will be okay with the M1 chip but if anyone has experience of this and can confirm it would be useful.

Unified memory - Should I get 16gb or would 8gb be okay? The maximum I might use on any song project would be say 10 instances (in total combined) of Kontakt/LABS/Addictive Drums; the majority of tracks are usually audio. I don't do big orchestral things and rarely use much in the way of CPU intensive VST synths.

Storage - In terms of a quicker/smoother performance, should I shell out for Apple internal storage (although presumably more expensive) option?
Or would some sort of external drive do as well and if so, any advice/recommendations on external drives? I'm thinking 1Tb would be ample.

Thanks

[george]

I'd recommend to get the 16 GB RAM upgrade. More RAM probably gets less swap space used (aka virtual memory) and less read/writes on the SSD so the system will be a bit more future proofing.

You will be perfectly fine with 8 GB but I think not very much in a few years.

[FapFilter]

I'm fine with 8GB but I’m not into large sample libraries. And it's also my secondary machine. My main system has 16GB just in case (there was also no option for less, but I think I wouldn't have opted for 8GB, even if they were available for that system)

Regarding storage: USB devices are for whatever reasons a good bit slower on Mac than on other systems.
We're talking about the theoretical upper limits though, as in practical use cases you won't find much of a difference in speed, unless you are constantly moving >1TB files around.
This only affects USB though, as native Thunderbolt drives don't suffer from these (theoretical) limitations.
So in short: you"ll be absolutely way more than just fine with external drives

[Serhii Kot]

Studio One works great. 8gb not enough, for music production. I bought 8gb version first, and swap memory was in red zone almost all the time. I gave 8gb mac mini to my wife for office use, and bought 16 gb version. After that i bought macbook air with 16 ram and 1tb of storage and I love this machine! I thought I will buy 14” mb pro, but I don’t see a real reason for that.

[SpaghettiLogo]

Thanks for the replies so far

After that i bought macbook air with 16 ram and 1tb of storage and I love this machine!

Anything much in the way of fan noise with that?

[FapFilter]

M1 MBA has no fans

[Serhii Kot]

Thanks for the replies so far

After that i bought macbook air with 16 ram and 1tb of storage and I love this machine!

Anything much in the way of fan noise with that?

In more than 6 months, I didn't hear a fan noise once. In Mac mini m1.
MacBook Air with an m1 processor has no fans.

[SpaghettiLogo]

Sorry if these are dumb questions but I've only ever used a PC with an internal drive.

With a Mac Mini, can I store my Kontakt sample libraries on an external drive and if so, will they load/perform as well as if they were on an internal drive? Or will the performance depend on the external drive?

And the same with Studio One - if your song/audio files, etc are all stored on an external drive, will the performance (loading/saving/playing) be as good an internal drive or again, does it depend on the drive?

[DoktorTenma]

I am using a Samsung T7 2TB external drive with my M1 and I store all my sample libraries on that.

Load times are fast enough for me. The Abbey Road Modern Drummer Sparkle Kit Full which is about 500MB loads fully in 6 seconds for example.

[Serhii Kot]

Sorry if these are dumb questions but I've only ever used a PC with an internal drive.

With a Mac Mini, can I store my Kontakt sample libraries on an external drive and if so, will they load/perform as well as if they were on an internal drive? Or will the performance depend on the external drive?

And the same with Studio One - if your song/audio files, etc are all stored on an external drive, will the performance (loading/saving/playing) be as good an internal drive or again, does it depend on the drive?

I have used NVMe to thunderbolt SSD enclosure. Speed was 1200-1500 Mb/sec. Loading times were super fast.

[kingozrecords]

It gets a bit dicy with microphones. I did a video on this post:
viewtopic.php?p=8395394#p8395394

Mine has 8gb ram and a 256 or 512 ssd, I forget. I'm going to get this dock ($66 cad):
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001872627018.html

Hagibis-USB-C-Hub-for-Mac-mini-M1-with-SATA-Hard-D.jpg

Zoom In

I will put this 1tb sata ssd into it ($89.99 cad):
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B09JQMGHDW/

71yOeCQVTPL.jpg

Zoom In

I think, based upon the fact that this cpu has dedicated ram and also a gpu built in, that the front side bus will be too taxed to try and control the in out connections and cache of any conventional hard drive whether external hard drive or internal.

Only a usb or ssd will be stable enough for the m1 imo.

I was testing out My 2021 mac mini in the way of real time monitoring. It's a little better than asio, but not necessarily better than windows.
With windows there's some different workarounds, especially with the newer chips.

I notice (on My mac m1 mini) in the way of signals, as long as you use an input once and not twice (through only product at a time) it stays stable. Otherwise, not. It's only slightly better than asio on windows. My video makes that clear.

[jancivil]

Unified memory - Should I get 16gb or would 8gb be okay? The maximum I might use on any song project would be say 10 instances (in total combined) of Kontakt/LABS/Addictive Drums; the majority of tracks are usually audio. I don't do big orchestral things and rarely use much in the way of CPU intensive VST synths.

If you comfortably have the lucre for 16...
if not, that use case should be sufficient with 8.

I'm coming from almost the top end 2019 with 64GB, and the cheapest of the new generation MBPs, 16GB is outperforming it by quite a lot. Initially one of my VE Pro projects was making Activity Monitor show a lot of yellow for memory pressure, but I haven't looked at it since I've gotten back working. and my projects, which are resource-intensive af, simply playback with no hesitation or breakage.
I am not certain I can run as much, but ... It lets go of memory very quickly.

[jancivil]

Storage - In terms of a quicker/smoother performance, should I shell out for Apple internal storage (although presumably more expensive) option?
Or would some sort of external drive do as well and if so, any advice/recommendations on external drives? I'm thinking 1Tb would be ample.

If you love wasting money do it internally and pay Apple tha monay

No, I have two fairly fast (not top-end) NVME SSDs that combined cost me like 200 for my samples, and this is not any kind of bottleneck.
Get Thunderbolt 3 (there doesn't appear to be any such thing as a T4 SSD at the moment, I could be wrong) or USB3.2 at least though, get something that reads fast.

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B0874XN4D8? ... tails&th=1
this is one of 'em

[SpaghettiLogo]

Thanks
From what I've seen, many Thunderbolt 3 external drives are pretty pricey - not much difference to shelling out for expanding the internal from Apple, so maybe the Samsung T7 is a good option for a more reasonable outlay

[jancivil]

It definitely is, no maybe about it. I shelled out for a 2TB with the 2019 MBP but at that moment I didn't find anything I thought was viable for much less. I'm skeptical of external drives, certainly vs the Apple SSD.
This is pretty up-to-date. Reads 'up to 1050 MBPS'.