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infinitejest

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 1, 2016
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Anyone using the M1 for music production? What is your experience?
I'm still using a 2019 16 inch MacBook and was wondering if the new M2 will be more powerful at this point.
 

MF878

macrumors 6502
Jul 12, 2011
370
338
Auckland, New Zealand
It will depend on what software you use, but I can say from first-hand experience that my 14” M1 Pro completely and totally demolishes the Core i9 16” at running Logic Pro. On paper, the M2 should comfortably outperform your Intel 16” running anything that’s been optimised for Apple silicon, and perform equal or marginally better at anything that works properly with Rosetta.
 
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infinitejest

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 1, 2016
745
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It will depend on what software you use, but I can say from first-hand experience that my 14” M1 Pro completely and totally demolishes the Core i9 16” at running Logic Pro. On paper, the M2 should comfortably outperform your Intel 16” running anything that’s been optimised for Apple silicon, and perform equal or marginally better at anything that works properly with Rosetta.
I also use Logic. That great to hear and exactly what I was hoping for. Seems like with the new M-Chips the days are over that you need a Pro machine for music production and I'm happy about that because I really like to use more portable machines.
 

eicca

Suspended
Oct 23, 2014
1,773
3,604
In the "Logic track benchmark test" the base-model pretty much M1 matches a fully-upgraded 12-core classic Mac Pro.

My own classic Mac Pro isn't even upgraded to that level and I never get anywhere near its limits with my Logic projects, running several samplers, some modellers, plenty of plugins and lots of audio tracks.

Hope that's useful.
 

LIVEFRMNYC

macrumors G3
Oct 27, 2009
8,877
10,987
Anyone using the M1 for music production? What is your experience?
I'm still using a 2019 16 inch MacBook and was wondering if the new M2 will be more powerful at this point.

If you use an insane number of tracks and plugins on a project, then the M1 might just crash before the M2. But 99.9% of usage, it runs flawless on my MBA M1 16gb.
 

infinitejest

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 1, 2016
745
1,967
If you use an insane number of tracks and plugins on a project, then the M1 might just crash before the M2. But 99.9% of usage, it runs flawless on my MBA M1 16gb.
What would you say is an insane number of tracks? I actually have projects with 200 tracks in it. It runs flawless on my 16 inch MacBook Pro. I think the real question here is if the M2 is better than the i9 and like someone else here said, on paper it should be.
In terms on RAM, is there a way I can test how much my Logic projects actually use? Can I trust the number I see for Logic in Activity Monitor?
 

Pugly

macrumors 6502
Jun 7, 2016
411
403
I use an M1 Air for music production, and it's been great. I think the Air is uniquely suited to do well, since the cpu use peaks up but it's less sustained. The only situation it would be a problem is rending tracks to audio with really long exports.

I can set the audio buffer to 32 samples and it's usable with any plugins. I have a project with around 60 tracks and another with over 100 that I ran problems on an old Air and needed to freeze tracks and run at the highest buffer size. The M1 easily handles it with only 25% cpu and lowest buffer size.

Judging by benchmarks, the M1 Macs are roughly a 16inch MacBook Pro. That's the baseline, which is a good 2 to 3 times better than any Intel 13" MacBook Pro or Air. The full M1 Pro is about twice as good as the M1. It's really an insane amount of power for an entry level computer.

This is a good demonstration of what the M1 Air can do.

He runs an actual project and says it would be impossible on an Intel 13" MacBook Pro. And there was no noticeable difference between the M1 Air and Pro. He's doing mixing, but there was no difference between 8GB or 16GB. I'm curious what the actual RAM limitations are, you would need a lot of huge sample libraries to need more than 16GB I think... but I haven't seen a demonstration of what the limits are.
 
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infinitejest

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 1, 2016
745
1,967
I use an M1 Air for music production, and it's been great. I think the Air is uniquely suited to do well, since the cpu use peaks up but it's less sustained. The only situation it would be a problem is rending tracks to audio with really long exports.

I can set the audio buffer to 32 samples and it's usable with any plugins. I have a project with around 60 tracks and another with over 100 that I ran problems on an old Air and needed to freeze tracks and run at the highest buffer size. The M1 easily handles it with only 25% cpu and lowest buffer size.

Judging by benchmarks, the M1 Macs are roughly a 16inch MacBook Pro. That's the baseline, which is a good 2 to 3 times better than any Intel 13" MacBook Pro or Air. The full M1 Pro is about twice as good as the M1. It's really an insane amount of power for an entry level computer.

This is a good demonstration of what the M1 Air can do.

He runs an actual project and says it would be impossible on an Intel 13" MacBook Pro. And there was no noticeable difference between the M1 Air and Pro. He's doing mixing, but there was no difference between 8GB or 16GB. I'm curious what the actual RAM limitations are, you would need a lot of huge sample libraries to need more than 16GB I think... but I haven't seen a demonstration of what the limits are.
That's really interesting. Seem like the Air is finally more than sufficient when it comes to music production.
I'd love to have a more portable machine and especially a quieter one. The loud fan noise is really something that bothers me. Now I only have to make up my mind if those two things are worth upgrading since the performance I get from my 16 inch Pro is still more than good enough.
Thanks for sharing your experience!
 
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