Help me choose a Mac for music

[holonology]

Hiya Mac fans. I'm looking to move to a new machine as I currently have an old iMac which is at the end of its lifespan as the main Drive is starting to give up the ghost. It's had a good run!

Meantime my focus is now on my next machine. I'll mainly be using it for producing music as a hobby in the evenings. However, I'm facing a bit of a challenge choosing the right one because I'm not yet 100% sure how my use case will change going foward. My budget is around £2,000.

With all the changes in the M1 lineup, I though I'd refresh myself with the basics of computing for audio production, and whether M1 changes anything. The general advice is that the GPU is less important than the CPU for music, although I have seen plenty of videos claiming that both M1 and M1 pro chips are perfectly capable; and that M1 chips use more RAM & increase their memory pressure, where the M1 Pros use the extra Multicores to help performance which places less stress on the RAM. And then on top of that, a sample based workflow tends to use more RAM, whereas a softsynth based workflow tends to rely more on the CPU.

My challenge is that my workflow and needs might change.

Most of the advice I've seen has been to say "check activity monitor and see what you need." But I can't do that yet because I've mostly used hardware for my music, which I usually record into the computer - and more or less any decent computer can handle that. The big "what if" here is that I've also bought a MIDI keyboard to experiment with my DAW and I might end up relying more on software & samples one day.

All this leads me to a couple of potential options within my budget.

1. iMac M1 upgraded to 16GB Ram & 1TB HD. The big pro of this machine is the fact that all the extras (keys/mouse/screen etc) are included for the price and it has reasonable power, plus as always with iMacs it's a plug & play thing. The downside is the lack of ports for things like USB-A accessories which are common in music and also no SD reader anymore. I'd also consider the Mac Mini in this category, and in many ways I prefer it for the space saving; but I also keep hearing a lot of reports that the bluetooth is machine hobbling depending on your specific WIFI. If true I'd probably still favour the iMac.
2. Mabook Pro base model with (maybe) an upgrade to 1TB. The big pro of this machine is performance. However, with my budget, I would not be able to upgrade anything on this machine other than the storage as the 32GB of RAM is too much. And at least initially I would not be able to add keys/screen etc which is something I would ideally look to do - so the overall cost would increase a bit as I add those extras in. Again not a dealbreaker, but something I need to consider as I rebuild my setup. And given the comments above, I also wonder if I actually need or would use all the power in this one.

If you were in my shoes (or if you've already made this choice yourself) as a hobbyist, which is the most sensible starting point in your view?

Thanks!

 

[jav6454]

Well, ask yourself if you need to be on the go with your Mac. Depending on the answer you have a more clear idea what to pick.

As per advice, always go with the highest memory configuration you can afford.

 

[BB1970]

Musician here. Personally I would go with the iMac. I know there’s a lot to be said about a powerful laptop, but you have to let the creativity guide you, not the hardware. What does this mean? Well… a laptop to me always feels like you’re living out of a backpack. An iMac feels more “dedicated” to the creativity. You sit down with in front of your iMac and midi controller and surrounded with the outboard gear.
its a different experience than being in front of a laptop (with a smaller screen). Yes, you can pick up any 4K screen and attach it to a laptop, but I personally want less clutter, especially if you’re already dealing with outboard gear and boxes and interfaces etc. Audio isn’t video. M1 iMac will do just fine, especially if ram is 16GB. Theres something nice about that 4.5K real estate on the screen to see multiple tracks without a hint of squinting.

 

[holonology]

Musician here. Personally I would go with the iMac. I know there’s a lot to be said about a powerful laptop, but you have to let the creativity guide you, not the hardware. What does this mean? Well… a laptop to me always feels like you’re living out of a backpack. An iMac feels more “dedicated” to the creativity. You sit down with in front of your iMac and midi controller and surrounded with the outboard gear.
its a different experience than being in front of a laptop (with a smaller screen). Yes, you can pick up any 4K screen and attach it to a laptop, but I personally want less clutter, especially if you’re already dealing with outboard gear and boxes and interfaces etc. Audio isn’t video. M1 iMac will do just fine, especially if ram is 16GB. Theres something nice about that 4.5K real estate on the screen to see multiple tracks without a hint of squinting.

Well, ask yourself if you need to be on the go with your Mac. Depending on the answer you have a more clear idea what to pick.

As per advice, always go with the highest memory configuration you can afford.

Thanks for the advice @BB1970 - I tend to agree. Ideally you want the machine to "disappear" and just work - which iMacs really do. OK so it looks like M1 might be the ticket at this early stage and that M1 Pro might be too much.

As for the question from @jav6454: hmmm, I'm not mobile as such. As @BB1970 says the only caveat here is that "less clutter" is potentially very useful for putting music hardware on the desk (my setup is 3 boxes - synths, samplers that sort of stuff). When I started looking, I noticed these "floating" screen setups that allows for a lot of desk space, which is why the Mini came into my thinking.

With this setup I could potentially spring for a nice 27" screen on an arm which would be decent real estate for mixing/editing, but also with enough space to get all the gear on the table. There's also the fact that the Mini does have a couple of USB-A ports, which a lot of music gear still uses, so there's a small advantage there. And add to that, this setup would also allow me to let others use my desk by simply plugging a work laptop into the screen.

However, my hesitation with the Mini (and it's a hesitation that's a possible dealbreaker) is that I've heard about several issues with the Mini on here and other places. These can be around the Bluetooth, issues with screen connectivity (eg: mouse cursors being jumpy, screen flickering) and seemingly not just on one or two isolated incidents. To add a little more confusion, it sounds like these issues can be machine crippling or none existent depending on your specific WIFI network and other localised factors.

On balance I'd take the plug & play nature of the iMac in place of the minimalism of the Mini if the iMac would need less troubleshooting overall.

 

[Fishrrman]

"My budget is around £2,000."

Easy answer:
Mac Studio, base model.

One thing you DO want to be sure of before you jump to the m-series CPUs, is that all your current software/hardware will work with it...

 

[jav6454]

Given you are not as mobile, then I'd suggest an iMac. However, do wait until October to buy one. Rumors have it that we will likely see them updated by then.

 

[holonology]

Probably should have mentioned the budget is total, so while that Mac Studio looks very (very) juicy, that is my total budget spent - so I might not have much to look at

And @jav6454 - ah yes, this is the oldest chestnut right? I've not looked at the release cycles since the Intel days. I don't know if there's anything to read into this; but the first 2 machines out of the block on M1 (Pro 13 - 584 days, Air - 605 days) had pretty lengthy runs before getting M2. Looking at the Air it seems like the base model was launched and then kept with M2 being an addition, rather than replacing the old machine. If that follows through, the base level iMac could remain at £1,249, with the M2 version coming in at £1,499.

I know we're literally in the RumorShop - but I've heard everything from M2 to M3 to Pro machines are coming but also the chances of no update at all. Is there anything concrete about the updates? Not sure how the release cycles run these days. I can probably wait up to a point, but do we have any indication of when (if at all) any updates could be announced?

 

[jav6454]

We know the M2 updated Mac Pro I coming. Wisdom would show that Apple would focus on their desktop lines during this event and possibly update the Mini, Studio and iMac.

 

[Pugly]

The M1 really shines with Audio... really the most important upgrades will be storage and RAM. If I wanted the cheapest I'd max out a M1 Mac mini, if I needed it to be portable max out a M1 Air and if I need a nice clean setup with a screen the iMac is great. The iMac and a budget limits the SSD you can get, though you can use external storage pretty easily in a desktop.

Audio switched to being a really light weight task with the M1 series I think. I ran a test on my M1 Air with 16GB of ram, I loaded up as many tracks as I could. These were simple sample instruments with a couple standard Logic effects. I was able to play 800 tracks! The most Logic can have is 1000. I thought it would stop at 200 or so.

I've also started to use Logic as a effects unit for movies and games. I played an emulated game and ran the audio through Logic and used some effects to process it to sound like an old TV sound system. I was able to play the game no problem, Logic buffer was set to 64 and I had no glitching. I did the same playing around with the Dolby Atmos processing movies's stereo audio in real time. All these experiments barely blipped the CPU use.

You could possibly need more RAM depending on if you get into huge sample libraries... I think for certain workloads even when the M1 is fast enough you could still use more RAM. But this would be an extreme use only in certain professional work loads... but in that case a Mac Studio starting with 32GB seems like a great choice.

 

[holonology]

Audio switched to being a really light weight task with the M1 series I think. I ran a test on my M1 Air with 16GB of ram, I loaded up as many tracks as I could. These were simple sample instruments with a couple standard Logic effects. I was able to play 800 tracks! The most Logic can have is 1000. I thought it would stop at 200 or so.

Very reassuring, thanks!

 

[Taz Mangus]

Have you thought about getting an external SSD drive and use that as your boot drive.

 

[holonology]

We know the M2 updated Mac Pro I coming. Wisdom would show that Apple would focus on their desktop lines during this event and possibly update the Mini, Studio and iMac.

Of interest, I noticed this report strongly suggesting no M2 iMac is in the pipeline. Like any rumour, this has to be taken with a pinch of salt; but if it was 90%+ certain to go to M2 by October, I'd be tempted to hang on. However if it's more like 50% likely (or less), I'd probably move sooner. That's primarily given that it would be a minimum of December before the machines are rolling actually heading out to stores. I'll keep an eye out for new news.

 

[jav6454]

Of interest, I noticed this report strongly suggesting no M2 iMac is in the pipeline. Like any rumour, this has to be taken with a pinch of salt; but if it was 90%+ certain to go to M2 by October, I'd be tempted to hang on. However if it's more like 50% likely (or less), I'd probably move sooner. That's primarily given that it would be a minimum of December before the machines are rolling actually heading out to stores. I'll keep an eye out for new news.

Like I said, if you can hold on to October when the event is expected, wait it out and see what is offered.

 

[phrehdd]

Musician here. Personally I would go with the iMac. I know there’s a lot to be said about a powerful laptop, but you have to let the creativity guide you, not the hardware. What does this mean? Well… a laptop to me always feels like you’re living out of a backpack. An iMac feels more “dedicated” to the creativity. You sit down with in front of your iMac and midi controller and surrounded with the outboard gear.
its a different experience than being in front of a laptop (with a smaller screen). Yes, you can pick up any 4K screen and attach it to a laptop, but I personally want less clutter, especially if you’re already dealing with outboard gear and boxes and interfaces etc. Audio isn’t video. M1 iMac will do just fine, especially if ram is 16GB. Theres something nice about that 4.5K real estate on the screen to see multiple tracks without a hint of squinting.

First, I don't make music but I wanted to mention that in the past, I spent more than 5 years using a laptop on a desk and only taking it with me from time to time when I was going overnight elsewhere. On the desktop, it was in a stand-in vertical position and took up the smallest footprint. Only three connectors to the Mac - Monitor, hub, and power. It was extremely handy. My work was school and photo/artwork. I will say even with issues, for what I was doing it worked very well (2015 MBP 512/16) and in some ways, better than my M1 Mini also 512/16 which every day seems to have run into memory issues. One might think that a 14" MBP M1 would be a good fit residing on the desktop and ready if someone had to go somewhere or do presentation.

 

[theluggage]

Of interest, I noticed this report strongly suggesting no M2 iMac is in the pipeline.

You just have to accept that the Mac Mini, 14" MBP and 24" iMac are all well over a year old and could be up for replacement "real soon now" - where "Real Soon Now" could turn out to be October, next March, next June or never - and the rumours have been all over the place this year - especially in the iMac department. Nobody knows - but I really wouldn't bet on there being any new Macs available this calendar year.

Thanks for the advice @BB1970 - I tend to agree. Ideally you want the machine to "disappear" and just work - which iMacs really do. OK so it looks like M1 might be the ticket at this early stage and that M1 Pro might be too much.

I play around with synths and stiff via logic (I like messing with the kit - the "music" bit is debatable ) and one truth seems to be that if you're using hardware synths or MIDI controllers you need silly numbers of USB A 2.0 ports. With the iMac, you'd really want to go for the slightly higher end version to get the two extra USB-C ports - or you're going to end up needing an expensive Thunderbolt hub to give you extra "top-level" ports. You're probably going to need 1 TB3 port for external storage, 1 for your audio interface (it doesn't need TB3 but it's good to give it its own USB controller) and the other two for USB/MIDI devices (odds are you'll end up hanging a regular USB 3 hub off one of them).

That's one of the reasons I ultimately splashed out on a Mac Studio - apart from the more powerful processor (which is probably overkill for hobby music production) it's the only Mac that offers a sensible number of ports. Plus, I've got a a pair of Mateview 3:2 format displays for insane screen real estate, for a little over half the price of a single Apple display.

USB-C vs. USB-A ports aren't a big deal on a desktop where you can leave USB-C-to-A adapters plugged in - it's more of a pain on a laptop where you have to carry the things around.

As far as hard drives space goes - I went for 1TB, but I'd say that 512GB plus a cheap external hard drive for "archiving" stuff would be adequate if money was tight and you're not into video production - I've got full Logic, Arturia V collection, a demo of Bitwig Studio, and a couple of dozen recorded Logic projects, plus a ton of non-music stuff on there (like XCode, stacks of documents. MP3s, a Linux VM and 6GB of downloads which could be just deleted) and it's still only up to 360GB. It would only take me a modicum of organisation to archive stuff, keep the downloads folder tidy, and stay within ~400GB. Having 1TB is more of a convenience.

However, my hesitation with the Mini (and it's a hesitation that's a possible dealbreaker) is that I've heard about several issues with the Mini on here and other places. These can be around the Bluetooth, issues with screen connectivity (eg: mouse cursors being jumpy, screen flickering) and seemingly not just on one or two isolated incidents.

Bear in mind that people only post here when they have problems, and that all the M1 Macs have minor variations on the same hardware, and USB3/bluetooth/WiFi interference is an issue that extends beyond Macs. (If you're doing music, most of your USB is going to be USB 2.0, anyway...). Also, my motto with WiFi is: if you can use an Ethernet cable instead do (or a USB/MIDI cable if you're talking about music kit with WiFi).

If you go for a Mini, just check in the Mini forums here when choosing a display. Going for a USB-C or DisplayPort display seems to be more reliable than HDMI - but that eats up a TB3/USB port (although with a USB-C display you'll usually get a couple of downstream USB 2 ports on the display).

 

[holonology]

"Real Soon Now" could turn out to be October, next March, next June or never - and the rumours have been all over the place this year - especially in the iMac department. Nobody knows - but I really wouldn't bet on there being any new Macs available this calendar year.

Gotcha. That's my feeling (not that I know more or less than anyone else.) I'd have thought the Mini was the next in line; as it's going to be 600-ish days since it had the M1 update. As you say you can find a view that it's basically a certainty or that it's never gonna happen.

Bear in mind that people only post here when they have problems, and that all the M1 Macs have minor variations on the same hardware, and USB3/bluetooth/WiFi interference is an issue that extends beyond Macs. If you go for a Mini, just check in the Mini forums here when choosing a display. Going for a USB-C or DisplayPort display seems to be more reliable than HDMI - but that eats up a TB3/USB port (although with a USB-C display you'll usually get a couple of downstream USB 2 ports on the display).

If I were to choose the Mini I was strongly considering a Dell USB-C monitor, so that's useful to know.

I do appreciate that most of the comments online tend to favour either "I"ve had it for 5 minutes and it's amazing!" or "DON'T MAKE THIS MISTAKE" type reviews and I'm happy to take what I read with a pinch of salt That said, the sheer volume of the comments makes me concerned. As you say, music is USB2, which is fine. I'd considered Logitech mouse & keyboard, and I have some non production headphones - these are all Bluetooth. I could stick to wired connections to reduce the chance of Bluetooth issues to zero, but it's just a surprise more than anything. That's proabably playing out against my previous Macs where "it just works" has generally been true.

Cheers for the input!

 

[theluggage]

and I have some non production headphones - these are all Bluetooth

I don't know about the latest models, but any Bluetooth headphones I've used have had a significant audio delay (we're talking about order-of-magnitude 0.5 seconds, not a few ms) which makes them useless for anything "interactive" like music production. You'll want half-decent "production" headphones and/or monitor speakers anyway (if you don't already have them) so you might as well use them for day-to-day work.

With Logitech stuff I tend to use the Unifying receiver so you only need one dongle for Mouse and Keyboard - currently plugged in to a USB port on my Mateview USB-C monitor & haven't had any problem.

If I were to choose the Mini I was strongly considering a Dell USB-C monitor, so that's useful to know.

Sure - when you decide which one just do a quick check in the Mac Mini forum.

I'm a fan of the Huawei Mateview - as I said I'm using them on a Mac Studio but from what I've seen people are happy with them on M1 Minis, too.

 

[holonology]

With Logitech stuff I tend to use the Unifying receiver so you only need one dongle for Mouse and Keyboard - currently plugged in to a USB port on my Mateview USB-C monitor & haven't had any problem.

Interesting. So there is some possibility that unifying reviever & USBC monitor is a decent option for MM. Good to know. The BT headphones are purely for casual use around the house. I sometimes listen to stuff as I'm wandering about, but i have a pair of Audio Technica's for proper music sessions.