GMC:er Posts: 25.297
Joined: 23-December 09
From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Folks have been using the new M1 Mac Mini for Music Production despite the fact that the unit currently maxes out at 16gb of ram. This is because its’ pretty much based on the phone platform which is also limited to 16gb of ram (not storage, but actual ram). This will increase in the future but for now, will it work?
There are lots of vids talking about this. This guy is using LOGIC X and using only 8 GB of ram on his M1 mac. He is using only native plugins which is worth mentioning. He doesn’t do anything crazy, he just loads a standard project that he would work with and there are a LOT of VST and plugins going. He shows how quick the interface is to respond and it does seem very snappy.
He’s got it at 12.2 ms rount trip latency which is pretty snappy. He also has the same project running on a 2016 Macbook Pro with 16gb of ram. My own Macbook pro is a 2012 with 16gb of ram.
It’s a CPU heavy test as it’s so packed with VST instruments and not just recorded audio. He shows us how the project performs on his intel MBP first and it fees about like my laptop. Then the m1. The m1 barely breaks a sweat. It’s very smooth on the m1 and there are no glitches and the cpu is only at about 30 percent. He is using several ALCHEMY native vst instruments which can be cpu heavy but they don’t make a dent in the m1.
The thing to remember is that the LOGIC X is written for the M1. if you run some non native DAW, it has to be translated in real time by something called Rosetta. The same thing goes for non native plugins. Eventually all of the plugins and daws will be native for the m1 but not yet. So until then, you will be running your other daw and any non logic plugins in emulation which one would expect to wreck it’s performance. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case. However, he puts in several non native plugins and it’s pretty darn snappy.
REAPER now has a beta version which is now native to the m1!!! All of the major plugins are working hard to get compatible. But even with emulation. Keep in mind, he is running OBS and LOGIC at the same time on his M1 Mac. From this vid and the others i’ve seen, the M1 seems to be crazy fast even when running non native software.
The good news is that eventually everything will be Native to the M1 as developers adopt it for music production. It’s worth noting that you can over stress the machine by using just tons of tracks/plugins/non native stuff/etc. But then again, it’s possible to over stress just about any macbook pro no matter what chip is based on if you bury it under enough load. The macbook pro has been a favorite platform for music creation for well over a decade due to it’s power and portability. Keep in mind that it was up until a few years ago that no macbook pro of any kind could support over 16gb of ram and yet people had been creating music on them since the MBP was introduced. Of course, this is a “Mac thing” and not relative to Windows folks. Still, it’s important as so many music producers rely on the MBP platform.
GMC:er Posts: 25.297
Joined: 23-December 09
From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA
The M1 macs are gonna get a big discount on the used market as soon as the M2 hits imho. Also, Apple are already not allowing certain features to not work at all on intel machines and the new os will turn some intel machines in to a BRICK. One nasty bit is that after Catalina, you can no longer refuse individual updates. it's no longer up to us
