Copped a base Ultra in the end, setting up and trying a few sessions. I'll post some findings soon but first things.
Most 3rd party plugins working already on Protools 2022.4 i was pleasantly surprised. I'm finding similarly to reports just loading a few recent big sessions can run them at 64/128 buffer when they were 1024 on my 2018 32gb intel mac mini and at the edge of cpu. Meters suggest 50% of the CPU on PT for these sessions, but again reports that meters are not showing true picture (this is 5050 geekbench5 manmini i7 vs 24k ultra so should be more scaled eventually)
Have not done any major tweaking or tests yet
Fan Noise wise: check my post for some details if you are interested.
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...he-loudest-macs-at-idle.2337251/post-31097497
but re:noise if you are used to being in a music studio over the years this is a long way from the cheesegraters or any intel you have ever had, but not as quiet as the fanless m1 air/mini