How is the performance of Music app on M1 Mac mini?

[vddobrev]

How is the performance of Music app on M1 Mac mini or M1 MacBook Pro 13" or MacBook Air? In particular:

Is scrolling smooth in Album view, and Artists view when you scroll albums of the selected artists?
How quick is switching between views, like Recently Added, Albums, Artists?
How is the performance of Apple Music store, i.e. searching, selecting, browsing, back navigation, etc.?

Asking because I am considering replacing my 2014 Mac mini, but only if Music app is great on M1 Mac. Otherwise the 2014 mini plays music/movies just fine, and it is its sole purpose.

Please include number of songs in your library when replying.

Edit: Also, are you using Cloud Music Library?

 

[vddobrev]

Anyone? Please share your experience with M1 Mac and the Music app.

 

[Gnattu]

I'm still having frame-drops sometimes on scrolling but it is not frequent. I'm on a 4K screen. Music app now will discard album cover and render them as blank image on scrolling. The views switch is fast for me but the Apple Music online service suffer from some UI lag due to the nature of web-view that cannot be overcome by processing power because you have to wait for the server to respond. I have about 3500 songs in my library and around 300 albums.

 

[TrueBlou]

On my 8GB M1 MBA the performance of Music is faultless. I’m not saying that as hyperbole, if I’m switching between say Recently Added and Album view, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear it changed view before I click.

Scrolling from the top, to the bottom of my Album view (as it is with every other view) is fluid and stutter-free, no matter how fast, or slow I scroll.

It’s not the most demanding of apps, but it’s performance is great for me.

Of course, it could depend on the size of your library. And as you asked, I have 1,222 albums, for a total of 10,090 songs currently.

 

[TrueBlou]

I'm still having frame-drops sometimes on scrolling but it is not frequent. I'm on a 4K screen. Music app now will discard album cover and render them as blank image on scrolling. The views switch is fast for me but the Apple Music online service suffer from some UI lag due to the nature of web-view that cannot be overcome by processing power because you have to wait for the server to respond. I have about 3500 songs in my library and around 300 albums.

That’s incredibly different from my experience. I’ll have to pop upstairs to the office and try it out on my M1 Mac Mini on my 4K monitor to see if I see the same behaviour.

 

[Gnattu]

That’s incredibly different from my experience. I’ll have to pop upstairs to the office and try it out on my M1 Mac Mini on my 4K monitor to see if I see the same behaviour.

I don't see frame drops when I exit full screen and the window becomes smaller. Display resolution definitely affects the scrolling performance. It is not frequent and you are still getting fluid scrolling most of the time, but you will occasionally see that.

 

[TrueBlou]

I don't see frame drops when I exit full screen and the window becomes smaller. Display resolution definitely affects the scrolling performance. It is not frequent and you are still getting fluid scrolling most of the time, but you will occasionally see that.

I do see an occasional frame drop when I'm paying attention, but I was really more referring to your experience of having cover art discarded and re-rendered, I don't get that, even in full-screen 4K.

 

[PsykX]

The Music app is basically a website instead of a native app, which is why it performs poorly.

My biggest issue with it on M1 is not performance but it's a problem that slows me down. The Search Field is completely broken on macOS. Whenever I search for an artist, it always returns a few random artists I have in my library EXCEPT the one I'm looking for. I have to reset the field and then type the same thing again, and it'll work.

 

[TrueBlou]

I always find it curious, or strange if you like, how so many people - particularly when using the same hardware, have so many varied experiences with an app which should in theory at least perform the same across the board.

My only issue with the Music app, and it's one I'm forever submitting feedback about, is that it still doesn't have (*^*&%*($!*$ gesture support. The inconsistencies with gestures in macOS really drives me up the wall, particularly when it's such an easy thing to rectify.

 

[vddobrev]

Thanks to all who responded. I have the scrolling problem and switching views on all my 3 macs - 2014 mini, 2013 Mac Pro, 2015 13" MBP. I only have some 590 albums! Switching views has a considerable delay when switching to Artists view from any other.

Scrolling in Albums view is choppy as if refresh rate was 24Hz or less, and it often just jumps and skips.

One thing to note is I am using Cloud Music Library - could this be the reason for all this?

 

[TrueBlou]

Thanks to all who responded. I have the scrolling problem and switching views on all my 3 macs - 2014 mini, 2013 Mac Pro, 2015 13" MBP. I only have some 590 albums! Switching views has a considerable delay when switching to Artists view from any other.

Scrolling in Albums view is choppy as if refresh rate was 24Hz or less, and it often just jumps and skips.

One thing to note is I am using Cloud Music Library - could this be the reason for all this?

I use iCloud music library as well.

I think, rather than us all talking about what it's like on an M1 system, you'd be better to see it.

So here's a quick clip of me wheeking around mine.

To reiterate then, iCloud Music Library, 1,222 albums, 10,090 songs, Mac Mini M1 8GB (running off an external 1TB Thunderbolt 3 NVMe), full-screen 4K (re-encoded in HandBreak for a smaller file size).

I know most people will have different experiences, but as you’ll see from the video, mine seem different from much of the problems in this thread so far.

Even most of the jerking you see in the video is down to my stupid nerve damage making my hand twitch, rather than the app itself.

I never have issues searching, either Apple Music or my Library. Music remembers exactly where I left each tab, easily 95% of the time.

And I’m certainly not an Apple apologist, indeed until Apple launched lossless and I switched to Apple One, I used Qobuz more. I love Apple Music for discovering new music. But more of my listening is actually with music I purchase - yeah, I’m an old-fashioned kinda guy . Which I host on my own content server to access anywhere in the world - assuming I’ve not got the tracks I want on the 1TB card I use in my Walkman.

 

[Feyl]

Here's my experience with the Music.app on my M1 Mac mini with a 4K HDR monitor...

It's definitely not smooth. It can't scroll smoothly basically anywhere, it's slow when loading content and searching is hit or miss most of the time and the app can't even remember where I was before and take me back to the start. It's not unusable but every other music streaming app is in a completely different league. From the feature and ease of use perspective I like almost everything about Apple Music but the quality of the app is what always make me stop using it after some time. I have over 2,000 songs in my library and I use iCloud Music Library and playing my own music files from it. I have also Intel MacBook Air and the exeprience is exactly the same. Apple really is bad at software for quite some time.

 

[vddobrev]

@TrueBlou - thank you for taking the time to record this.

 

[vddobrev]

Here is how it looks on my 2105 13" MBP 8GB 2.9 GHz Dual-core i5. Looks exactly the same in my mini and Mac Pro. Sorry for the low resolution...

 

[Feyl]

View attachment 1899580

Here is how it looks on my 2105 13" MBP 8GB 2.9 GHz Dual-core i5. Looks exactly the same in my mini and Mc Pro. Sorry for the low resolution...

Looks exactly like my M1 Mac mini. It's not a hardware inefficiency but bad software.

 

[vddobrev]

Looks exactly like my M1 Mac mini. It's not a hardware inefficiency but bad software.

Good to hear this. I almost pulled the trigger to get a new Mac mini M1... So this thread helped me a lot... it can't be that the 3 macs I have are so antiquated that they cannot run Music app.

 

[TrueBlou]

View attachment 1899580

Here is how it looks on my 2105 13" MBP 8GB 2.9 GHz Dual-core i5. Looks exactly the same in my mini and Mac Pro. Sorry for the low resolution...

I’d definitely say it’s software rather than hardware, and if your Mac Mini’s sole purpose is media playback, then I definitely wouldn’t recommend replacing it at this point.

So long as it’s capable of playing the music and movies you need it to, it’s worth keeping it. Even if a little stutter here and there is the price to pay. Unless Apple surprises us all and actually improves the Music app….. Oh, I amuse myself sometimes

 

[Feyl]

Good to hear this. I almost pulled the trigger to get a new Mac mini M1... So this thread helped me a lot... it can't be that the 3 macs I have are so antiquated that they cannot run Music app.

Definitely don't get M1 Mac just for that as it won't improve your experience in any way. It's a funny irony, that macOS used to be superior to Windows in basically every way, but for years Windows is so fast and completely fluid even on a decade old computer. It's a sad state of affairs for Apple.

 

[lordhamster]

Windows is so fast and completely fluid

I don't think I've ever seen these words combined in a single sentence before.

 

[pshufd]

I just fired it up, started a song and checked Activity Monitor and it's using 3.2% of one core. This is on an M1 mini. Music is really minimalist. What are you expecting?

About 4,000 songs in the library.

 

[vddobrev]

It's decided then - Mac mini 2014 will continue its service as a dedicated music player. It is connected to my NAD receiver and output is set to 1080P, the maximum of the receiver. I recently re-downloaded all my library in hi-res lossless format - results are satisfying, the receiver handles up to 24bit 192KHz. The NAD receiver is then connected to my 4K TV, the image from Mac mini is up-scaled to 4K and a bit fuzzy. I can connect the mini directly to the TV at 4K, but then it drops down to 30Hz refresh, and also the ARC channel is limited to 16bit 48KHz. Not that I will hear the the difference, but...

In any case - thank you all for the feedback.

 

[vddobrev]

I just fired it up, started a song and checked Activity Monitor and it's using 3.2% of one core. This is on an M1 mini. Music is really minimalist. What are you expecting?

About 4,000 songs in the library.

Well, I am expecting it to be more like the iOS and iPadOS Music app in terms of fluid scrolling and fluid navigation of the Music UI. I don't believe this is unreasonable expectation, is it?

 

[pshufd]

Well, I am expecting it to be more like the iOS and iPadOS Music app in terms of fluid scrolling and fluid navigation of the Music UI. I don't believe this is unreasonable expectation, is it?

Depends on your hardware. Music is slow on my iPhone 5 but really fast on my 13 mini. It's fast on my iPad mini 5 but slow on my iPad mini 2. If you're using hardware from the last three years, then Music should fly. I've run Music (or maybe just iTunes) on my 2009 iMac 27 and it runs fine though I wouldn't say that it's snappy.

 

[vddobrev]

Depends on your hardware. Music is slow on my iPhone 5 but really fast on my 13 mini. It's fast on my iPad mini 5 but slow on my iPad mini 2. If you're using hardware from the last three years, then Music should fly. I've run Music (or maybe just iTunes) on my 2009 iMac 27 and it runs fine though I wouldn't say that it's snappy.

Thanks for the input. The whole purpose of this thread was to get an idea how macOS Music performs on an M1, since my hardware is NOT from the last 3 years. The conclusion I made from the responses was that even on M1 macOS Music app is not fluid. I also have iPad mini 5, iPad Pro 11" M1, and iPhone X - Music app is perfectly fine on these devices, but they run iOS/iPadOS.

 

[Feyl]

I don't think I've ever seen these words combined in a single sentence before.

Well, it's true though. I'm not happy about it, believe me.