2013 Mac Pro vs. 2015 Macbook Pro for music studio

[kntntmusic]

Hey guys, new to the forums here. Would love some help. I'm looking for the ideal Mac for my professional music studio and am choosing between a 2013 Mac Pro and 2015 Macbook Pro.

I am currently using a mid 2015 Macbook Pro with 2.8 GHZ i7 with 16gb ram and a 500 GB SSD for both studio and personal use. I use an external RAID hard drive for data so internal hard drive size isn't of importance to me. The computer works solidly as the hub of my set up but still feel like there's some left to be desired performance wise.

Here's where the Mac Pro comes in. I'm looking into a 2013 3.7 ghz Quad Core Xeon E5 with 32 gb RAM for $2,000 to stay in the studio permanently.

My question is: will these specs make a big enough performance difference to warrant the purchase? Would it be a significant upgrade to my MBP? Is 32gb overkill for music production software?

Also one last question: Is there big difference in fan noise between the Mac Pro and MBP?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Venderious]

If you're serious about music production this upgrade is definitely worth it. From experience, RAM upgrades do up the performances, but this highly depends on what you intend to put in (amount of effects, instruments and plugins). The upgrade in processor from i7 to Xeon E5 will also greatly help, since music production demands a lot of CPU performance. About the fan speed, I'm not quite sure. I'd say the fan speed of the Macbook Pro will be more noticeable if it is right in front of you, but a Mac Pro is usually stored away a little further. My final advice would be the following, if music production is just a hobby that you occasionally engage in, stick with your MacBook. However, if it is something you do every day and are making money with or are dependent on, take the dive and upgrade.

 

[Fishrrman]

"Here's where the Mac Pro comes in. I'm looking into a 2013 3.7 ghz Quad Core Xeon E5 with 32 gb RAM for $2,000 to stay in the studio permanently."

I'd be leaning towards the Mac Pro.

But... if it's a "permanent" machine you're interested in... why not a 2017-model 5k iMac...?

 

[Howard2k]

First thing to check out is Activity Monitor in your current machine. When you’re system is doing heavy Work, see if you can figure out where the bottlenecks are.

Once you’ve identified the current bottlenecks you can then compare those features against the competitor.

 

[Naimfan]

That’s WAY too much for a 3.7 quad-core MP . . . It should be a little over half that.