Help - MBO M1Pro for Music upg from mid-2015MBP

[drdr2]

Hello. I'm a teaching and performing musician.

I'm looking at the 16" MBP M1Pro, 32GB, 1TB.

I run Logic Pro X, Office 365 (in, Microsoft Teams), Zoom, Adobe Creative Suite and Zoom.

My current MBP is 15" mid 2015, 2.5 i7, 16GB 512MB. It grinds and sticks and is really unhappy in hot weather; the fans come on and the machine slows to a crawl. MSTeams is just a nightnmare.

Is the above the best spec for running logic sessions and teaching? I'm just fed up of the current box taking ages to do anything and crashing Logic all the time.

Thanks
DrDR

 

[Nbd1790]

Short answer - yes. PLENTY of power and will last you just as long (if not longer) than your current 15 inch did. I primarily use Ableton and saw an insane increase in functionality overall when loading large sessions. I opted for a similar configuration in the 14 inch model but put the M1 Max in it.

The only thing I'd advise is to double check if the 16 inch is too big. 14 was the sweet spot for me, and the laptops are much beefier in terms of size this year, so make sure you're comfortable lugging it around. If you decide to go with the 14, maybe spend the money you save and bump up the processor (just for future proofing purposes)

 

[drdr2]

That's part of the question - does the MAX make that much difference for music or would I be OK with the Pro?

 

[Fishrrman]

I don't think "Pro v Max" will make much difference, if any.

The configuration you specified in your OP above should do fine.

 

[drdr2]

Is the Max just for graphics users? I was hearing that there was a bandwidth increase for unified memory access in the Max vs the Pro - is that not true?

 

[TheRdungeon]

The Max is pointless, maybe even detrimental for music production. The GPU won't be used by Logic but the cores still run all the time, so it will run a bit hotter and the battery life will be a bit worse than non-max. The bandwidth increase of the memory won't be utilised either, so keep with the base pro chip and you'll have a better machine for music production. I've got a a 16" non-max on order for music production, I spent quite a bit of time looking into if the Max was worth it and I'd say for sure not. What you specced out already is perfect

 

[drdr2]

UPDATE 1

So a new MBP Pro 16", 32G 2TB arrived this week; I am still in the process of installing it but so far the difference between this and the old machine is night and day.

The old machine used to complain when I booted MSTeams, refusing to run anything else, dawdled about booting anything from the MS Office suite, regularly crashed Logic Pro, and would slow down on a hot day with the fans ticking into the red.

This machine did a zoom call whilst installing the entire sound library of Logic Pro and didn't bat an eyelid.

 

[drdr2]

UPDATE 2

It's crazy hot here in the UK today. Normally, my 2015 MBP would be sitting on an icepack as it complained and stuttered.

The new machine has connected to Zoom and shared a screen into a conference without even thinking about it.

The final test will be MS Teams.

The only thing that's a bit weird is that the 2015MBP will read an SD card that the 2021 one won't. If I plug the SD card into another device (sound recorder) and connect that to the 2021 MBP, it sees the content without issue. Might just be about formatting, I'm not sure.