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Apple Mac Mini M1


Larry Shelby

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14 minutes ago, telecode 101 said:

8gb ram and 256gb disk. aint gonna fly as a DAW. but i may be wrong.

It would work fine for a single DAW.  I ran my OS and DAW on a 240 Gb SSD,
then went to a 480 Gb, then to 1 Tb...

You won't be able to "Store" your instruments and such on it, but it would work 
for recording and mixing!

EDIT: But I had 16 Gb RAM.  You'd probably have to "Freeze" or "Bounce" VI's before mixing
on this system.

Edited by cclarry
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14 minutes ago, Bapu said:

Only problem I see is how to run two monitors.

Two thunderbolt ports with (I assume) one DisplayPort source each + HDMI = three monitors.

If you need to go DisplayPort to DVI/HDMI beyond ca. 1920*1200@60Hz you need a powered converter because the voltage has to be boosted from 3.3V to 5.0V. These are more expensive and are often called "active" although DVI/HDMI and DP protocols need "active" components to convert between in any case. The key difference is extra power. So if your adapter doesn't come with that extra power intake (e.g. via USB or TB) then it's likely limited to those lower bandwidths.

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8GB is enough for audio work more often than not. In general the size capacity is the least significant spec after a modest minimum is reached, and beyond that CAS latency (cycles) and bandwidth (Hz) start to matter more. What is more important out of those depends a lot on whether you're working on small or large (in context of desktop/workstation workloads) sets of data. With audio I'd wager to guess that latency matters more than bandwidth, whereas with video it is likely the opposite. But you better get a second opinion.

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13 minutes ago, sarine said:

Two thunderbolt ports with (I assume) one DisplayPort source each + HDMI = three monitors.

If you need to go DisplayPort to DVI/HDMI beyond ca. 1920*1200@60Hz you need a powered converter because the voltage has to be boosted from 3.3V to 5.0V. These are more expensive and are often called "active" although DVI/HDMI and DP protocols need "active" components to convert between in any case. The key difference is extra power. So if your adapter doesn't come with that extra power intake (e.g. via USB or TB) then it's likely limited to those lower bandwidths.

I need one Thunderbolt for my daisy chained two (2) UAD Satellites. 

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4 hours ago, telecode 101 said:

8gb ram and 256gb disk. aint gonna fly as a DAW. but i may be wrong.

Data point: that's exactly what my Dell Latitude E6410 has and it does fine with Cakewalk. It has a quad i7 in it, replacing the i5 that came with it. I think it's about 10 years old now.

For electronic music production, there's nothing wrong with it at all. For many-tracked audio with lots of FX, I might have to do some freezing, but that's all in the game.

Humongous movie score orchestral libraries would be beyond its RAM and drive capacity, but I don't do that sort of work.

I'm guessing that this Apple silicon is some pretty fast stuff, so that Mini should work better than my aging Dell, although still limited in the same way as far as storage and the ability to hold big instruments in memory. I don't know what kind of resource hog Logic is, but it would also run Reaper and Waveform.

Still, if I were buying a new computer in 2021, I wouldn't bother with less than 16G of RAM and 1TB of drive, because why fork out money if I'm still going to be constrained?

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2 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Data point: that's exactly what my Dell Latitude E6410 has and it does fine with Cakewalk. It has a quad i7 in it, replacing the i5 that came with it. I think it's about 10 years old now.

For electronic music production, there's nothing wrong with it at all. For many-tracked audio with lots of FX, I might have to do some freezing, but that's all in the game.

Humongous movie score orchestral libraries would be beyond its RAM and drive capacity, but I don't do that sort of work.

I'm guessing that this Apple silicon is some pretty fast stuff, so that Mini should work better than my aging Dell, although still limited in the same way as far as storage and the ability to hold big instruments in memory. I don't know what kind of resource hog Logic is, but it would also run Reaper and Waveform.

Still, if I were buying a new computer in 2021, I wouldn't bother with less than 16G of RAM and 1TB of drive, because why fork out money if I'm still going to be constrained?

Yes, the M1 is supposed to be fast. I don't know much about this M1 stuff.  I was on an old i7 mini which was cool. But that one you were able to open up and upgrade ram and disks. I am not sure about these new minis. The mini was a very cool and handy and small footprint  computing solution. It served me well for years.

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I had an m1 MacBook Pro .  I got 8 gab ram,  256 hd .   I was surprised,  but the 8gb ram was no issues at all.  The 256 hd is barely enough,  but will do.  external hd are not that expensive and fast.  I stress tested it with ridiculous amounts of plugs ins and Kontakt.  As well as diva and a variety of vst instruments.  Even a bunch of safari tbs and other organs open.  What an amazing machine.  It changed the way I use laptops.  We are used to accepting the fact that if you actually use your laptop for real work,  it will drain the battery and get super loud and  hot.  Not with an m1 Mac.  You can run the denses project and  it will keep up,  no problem.   With it silent and barely warm at all.  Work on real projects anywhere.  
 

I returned it because I’m waiting for the next version and I want a 16 inch screen.  Was hoping it would be release soon but looks like we have to wait till at least November.  Apple really hit it out of the park this time.  It used to be that they where underpowered and overpriced.  They are still expensive,  but they deliver on the power.  Intel and AMD  are way behind now.  

 

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10 hours ago, Bapu said:

We Need @Jim Roseberry to chime in on 16gb system which is what I would choose along with 1tb or 2tb OS drive.

I think this would blow away my MacBook Pro Quadcore 8Gb 1tb.

It would blow away your older MacBook Pro.

 

I'm not much of an Apple guy... and not a fan of ultra small form-factor machines for "workstation" purposes.

A laptop that's passive-cooled with 8GB of RAM is suitable for it's design purpose (Surfing the Web, office duty, etc).

With 8GB RAM, a small handful of virtual-instruments would have the machine RAM-starved.

Open up Chrome with half a dozen tabs active/open.  You can chew thru RAM quickly.

Even using compression to stretch that 8GB further... it's running lean.

If small-form-factor also means small-cooling, that's going to limit performance.

 

Some folks will try to tell you the M1 (mobile CPU) will out-perform something like the 5950x (desktop CPU).

If expecting that level of performance, the laws of thermal-dynamics (tight enclosure) are going to disappoint you.  ?

If you're expecting a great performing mobile CPU, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

It will be interesting to see what Apple does in a desktop version of the M1.

 

My idea of a great small-form-factor machine:

Lian-Li TU-150 mini-ITX case - allows full-sized Noctua 140mm cooler

Full-sized cooler means you can run a high-end desktop CPU... at full speed.

Up to 64GB RAM

Multiple internal SSDs (including M.2 NVMe Ultra)

Small... but zero performance compromise

Runs near dead-silent 

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20 minutes ago, Jim Roseberry said:

With 8GB RAM, a small handful of virtual-instruments would have the machine RAM-starved.

No.

Unless you're talking about orchestration or other heavy sample libraries, I have no idea what you're talking about.

 

21 minutes ago, Jim Roseberry said:

Open up Chrome with half a dozen tabs active/open.  You can chew thru RAM quickly.

Yes.

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