Would moving to an M1 Air from a Mac mini i7 be a worthwhile upgrade?

[keyman_sam]

I have a 2018 i7 Mac mini, which is doing well as an audio DAW. But for video editing it does lag a little bit when I add video effects on clips.

I also have a MacBook Air M1 as my home computer. I'm wondering if its worth going through the trouble of wiping my M1 and making it my primary DAW?

I'm running Logic. The logic benchmarks show that there isn't a significant bump from i7 to M1 (91 tracks to 110 tracks which is ~20%). So will it even be an upgrade worth doing?

Has anyone else made this jump?

[FranklyFlawless]

Make the jump, 20% is substantial. How else are you going to get better performance?

[sqigls]

why would you need to totally wipe the M1 Air if you want to install your DAW on it too?
Could you just install a projects worth of plugins on that machine and take it for a spin first?
sometimes the benchmarks don't tell the whole story, as far as i see the tighter integration of the M1 chips allows for a smoother/faster general flow of the machine.

[keyman_sam]

why would you need to totally wipe the M1 Air if you want to install your DAW on it too?
Could you just install a projects worth of plugins on that machine and take it for a spin first?
sometimes the benchmarks don't tell the whole story, as far as i see the tighter integration of the M1 chips allows for a smoother/faster general flow of the machine.

I have installed logic and done some light work on it, but not transitioned fully yet.
I generally prefer a clean install of a DAW. I tried migration assistant but sadly the plugins are in a half-baked state. So I think a clean install is the only way forward.

[Michael L]

connect your mini as a slave via thunderbolt or ethernet; combine processing power. the minis were designed to be linked in that way, eg as a server or render farm. that's why minis have an optional 10 Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45) port

[keyman_sam]

connect your mini as a slave via thunderbolt or ethernet; combine processing power. the minis were designed to be linked in that way, eg as a server or render farm. that's why minis have an optional 10 Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45) port

Yeah that's another idea, though I kinda moved away from that workflow a few years ago. I was hoping the M1 would be the only machine kinda like my Mac mini, but it doesn't hurt to have more CPU power.

[jancivil]

Can't speak to Logic's performance, but Cubase Pro 12 and Nuendo 12 perform spendidly on my M1 Air (OS 13.6 currently).

[kingozrecords]

I had a mac m1, wasn't impressed. I'd only use i5,i3,i9 but not i7. You might be better to go with the newer pro mac mini m2. Too bad that the graphics aren't very impressive though. TBH, I prefer the iris xe graphics better in i5's for pc. Nice fps in most games for a 60hz monitor also.

I wouldn't be comfortable using a mac mini m1 with logic; not enough wiggle room, and making videos with obs simultaneously has issues with stutter. Just wasn't designed to be a workhorse. The new mac mini pro looks like it has the power to do that sort of thing. I really miss modifiable mac's, would've gone the mac route if they had stuck with that. Nice that the logic daw has so little latency. I guess there's reaper for that on windows for those who can't afford the more expensive stuff. Then again though, reaper has the right idea in making everything really simple and fast.