iMac - what to go with for recording?

[silky smoove]

It might very well be that because you have a hyper-threaded desktop grade quad core processor vs. my measly much slower hyper-threaded laptop-grade dual core processo

I was always told that the Minis used laptop processors, even the quad core varieties. I’ve never looked into it beyond that, so you’re likely correct.

Regarding freezing of tracks: It’s not something I’ve ever bothered with, and frankly didn’t even know existed until one day I accidentally enabled all of the track icons in the arrange window. I should really dig into it as it seems like a handy way to go about things if you’re not knee deep in mixing tasks.

 

[honeyiscool]

I was always told that the Minis used laptop processors, even the quad core varieties. I’ve never looked into it beyond that, so you’re likely correct.

Regarding freezing of tracks: It’s not something I’ve ever bothered with, and frankly didn’t even know existed until one day I accidentally enabled all of the track icons in the arrange window. I should really dig into it as it seems like a handy way to go about things if you’re not knee deep in mixing tasks.

Ah, you are right. I actually thought you said iMac. I have the exact same Mac Mini, by the way. I inherited it from work when the hard drive failed after 4 years and I offered to take it home to see if I could fix it. It's not the easiest computer to work in, but I was able to install two two drives in it just following iFixIt using one of those replacement kits. One magnetic drive and one solid state drive, best of both worlds.

The thing about the 3615QM mobile processor in these computers is that for a mobile processor, it's quite nice. After this model, they didn't put quad core processors in Mac Minis anymore, which is a shame. This particular model's kind of a beast.

 

[silky smoove]

Ah, you are right. I actually thought you said iMac. I have the exact same Mac Mini, by the way. I inherited it from work when the hard drive failed after 4 years and I offered to take it home to see if I could fix it. It's not the easiest computer to work in, but I was able to install two two drives in it just following iFixIt using one of those replacement kits. One magnetic drive and one solid state drive, best of both worlds.

The thing about the 3615QM mobile processor in these computers is that for a mobile processor, it's quite nice. After this model, they didn't put quad core processors in Mac Minis anymore, which is a shame. This particular model's kind of a beast.

You’re definitely right about the subsequent models being less powerful. If you check out the Geekbench scores on later models they’re significantly lower than the late 2012 version. I’m expecting a big upgrade on the next release, but for now the version that you and I have certainly seems to be the jewel of the series.

I’ve considered adding a second drive. I have a 500 GB SATA SSD sitting on my desk unused with the HDD in the machine currently. The information I read online stated that the secondary drive needed to be PCIe rather than SATA. Is that what you did on yours? Both my HDD and my SSD are SATA so I was unclear if there was a way to implement that. My thought was to use the SSD for the OS, programs and active projects, and then just shunt inactive projects and files over to the HDD until I need to use them again.

 

[honeyiscool]

You’re definitely right about the subsequent models being less powerful. If you check out the Geekbench scores on later models they’re significantly lower than the late 2012 version. I’m expecting a big upgrade on the next release, but for now the version that you and I have certainly seems to be the jewel of the series.

I’ve considered adding a second drive. I have a 500 GB SATA SSD sitting on my desk unused with the HDD in the machine currently. The information I read online stated that the secondary drive needed to be PCIe rather than SATA. Is that what you did on yours? Both my HDD and my SSD are SATA so I was unclear if there was a way to implement that. My thought was to use the SSD for the OS, programs and active projects, and then just shunt inactive projects and files over to the HDD until I need to use them again.

Nope, on mine, it's got two SATA ports, you just need some mounting hardware, a SATA cable, and tools. I think the PCIe drives are later models. My setup on this computer is as you describe. I have a 500 GB SSD and a 1 TB HDD. I keep the OS on the SSD and then use the HDD as my data drive, moving projects as needed. I don't record on this computer, though, it's more for video and photo editing.

If you have some Torx drivers, it might be good to open it up to get a quick look at what's going on under there. It'll take you 5 min and answer a lot of questions.

 

[40Hz]

You're digitizing analog information.

For that use case your speed and workspace memory resources are über-important.

1. Max out your computer's RAM complement regardless of what computer you get. Take it as a given - for music apps, RAM is the biggest bang for the buck. Anything that will fit into your memory space without needing to buffer to a drive is a big win.

2. A faster processor may make a anywhere from a moderate to major improvement depending on what you're doing. For straight recording you can get away with a slower processor although latencies will be affected. But once you get into plugins or synthesis or modeling you'll need all the horsepower you can get. So if you plan on doing production and mastering, get the faster processor.

Since you can't upgrade the processor (or in some cases the RAM) in an Apple product, you're usually wise to get whatever Apple you buy fully maxed out.

3. SSDs are really nice. Once you get used to them you'll wonder how you ever worked without one. Their cost is high per megabyte, and there are issues with duty cycles and long term reliability compared to traditional hard drives. But they've improved a great deal in the past few years and their cost has come down. Absolute storage size isn't a major concern since you can (as in will) always offload project files to an external drive. Most savvy recording types only use the SSD for the operating system, their music apps, and whatever project they're currently working on. And they're meticulous about backing things up to external storage. I use both an external hard drive and also a free 50Gb account at mega.nz for long term storage. (note: I recommend Mega very highly. Generous free plans. And their paid plans are very reasonable. Only difference between the two is maximum storage size. Disclaimer: I’m just a customer. I have no affiliation with the company.)

4. All computer configuations involve tradeoffs. Never enough money. Never enough resources. So you need to balance wants against available funds and do a little triage.

I’d recommend spending your money on: (a) RAM, (b) CPU speed, and (c) a solid-state drive - in that order.

At least that’s what I’d do based on my own experience with music software and a career in enterprise IT.

Luck!

 

[bass12]

Thanks @40Hz, that was a very helpful post!

 

[40Hz]

Thanks @40Hz, that was a very helpful post!

You’re welcome. Spent most of my career planning and speccing out servers and data networks for business. System configurations and budgeting is what I do. Glad you found it helpful.

 

[JonathanRoberts]

You'll notice a huge difference in performance with an SSD. What you can do if you don't want to spend much extra is get a small ssd for your boot drive and use a regular hd for loads of storage space at a lower cost.