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Mac mini for home studio setup - How much Mac to buy?

4Mal

4Mal

Gold Supporting Member
Jun 2, 2002
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Columbia River Gorge
#1
Currently running a 2011 MB Pro. Core i7 8 gb ram 512 SSD 15" screen. OSX High Sierra.
Presonus Studio One

Mostly. I'm mixing live demos from 16 track captures. Using mostly Presonus plugins.

I recently added Helix Native and am running it under AU. When I look for a better host, they generally want later versions of OSX and of course I'm at the latest rev suppprted by Apple.

Thinking about adding a Mac Mini as I have a couple of 32" displays left over from my coding days.

Will a 2018 Mac Mini core i5 suffice ? People in my area want crazy money for i7 mac mini's - like I can buy a new M1 for less... Will an 8gb M1 do the trick?
 
#2
even with Apple's "magical" dynamic memory management, you will be better off with 16gb unless your audio projects are pretty simple.

other than that, an i5 (going to be used/refurbished of course). You might want to consider an M1 Mac Mini with 16gb, tons more processing power vs the older i5 model, so it will keep up with demand for more years.

good luck!
 
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#7
I changed from a 2018 16 GB MacBook Pro for way over 2.000,- to a M1 Mac Mini for about 500,-, had a 32” over from coding work:-), It’s much faster. I do a lot of work with raw-developpers and a bit of 4k video editing along with Logic X mixing.
I only got 8GB. Never ran into problems with RAM.
But maybe it’s a good recommendation to get 16 GB.
But I hate hate hate what Apple is asking for RAM and SSDs.
Maybe I downgrade to 2GB just to express my anger.
 
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#8
4Mal said:
Mostly. I'm mixing live demos from 16 track captures.
Click to expand...

Something that was very recently brought to my attention by another engineer who's helping me archive/digitize some ancient multitrack tapes is that older Macs have a hell of a time handling long multitrack audio files, regardless of how much RAM is installed and how big/fast the drive is.

Now, "old" may be relative, I don't know of any clever way to correlate processor speed (or type) with track count & track length. And "long" is also relatve; if you're just talking about individual 4-minute tunes, there may be nothing to worry about. But when we briefly considered archiving my 40-minute ADAT tapes as 16 single contiguous WAV files, he asked me what Mac I was using and noted that his current top-of-the-line Mac Pro tower would have a hard time with files of that size. We wisely decided to chop up the files into individual takes.
 
#9
Well I ended up with a 2020 Mac Mini, 8 gig unified. Fast as blazes! Have my daw upgraded and installed. Getting Helix Native working and the the uad plugs.

Just about to migrate old projects over to it.

using Studio 1 4.5 Pro on my 2011 MBP I could load 16 tracks of 90 minutes and parse that into songs with no problems. For my band, all our demo's are live captures of full sets.
 
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#10
4Mal said:
Well I ended up with a 2020 Mac Mini, 8 gig unified. Fast as blazes! Have my daw upgraded and installed. Getting Helix Native working and the the uad plugs.

Just about to migrate old projects over to it.

using Studio 1 4.5 Pro on my 2011 MBP I could load 16 tracks of 90 minutes and parse that into songs with no problems. For my band, all our demo's are live captures of full sets.
Click to expand...
I am not alone, satisfied with my stupid cheap downgrade to 8 GB…
 
#11
Odd but with a Mac, I've never felt 'memory constrained'. I had to check my old MBP to see what I had installed in it before I went shopping for the mini. I was kinda suprised to see two 4 GB Dimms for 8 GB. But there ya go. My Win 11 laptop has 32. A Surface Pro 7 has 16 and my Windows SQL Server has 64. Now that I'm retired I should probably donate that stuff to a Museum and keep the Surface.
 
#12
@Bob_Ross That file length limitation might be the DAW and the way it manages memory. I've been using Studio One Pro for years - got it free with my first digital board a Presonus 16.4.2. Upgraded that version to Pro and I've been upgrading every couple of years. Simply no issues with long files for me though in general I'm only doing 16 to 20 tracks.

My old ProTools (Pro Tolls) rig was crash city if I glanced at it wrong...
 
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#13
4Mal said:
My old ProTools (Pro Tolls) rig was crash city if I glanced at it wrong...
Click to expand...

+1. I was surprised to discover that Avid and Evil only share two letters. Even if they are both in the same place in the middle of the word. I’ve used Logic for years. Not a single crash.
 
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#14
I recently upgraded from a 2014 i5 with 8GB and SSD boot drive (+2TB HD) to an M2 w 16GB and 1TB drive. The day to day working of Logic, for my purposes (home recording studio) seems unchanged. Effects/filters process faster, but the 2014 was not that slow. I have never done video editing, though.

I echo what others say, an M1 or M2 would be a good choice. I know these can be had very inexpensively with 8GB, which is likely enough, but if you have an extra $200 to burn go ahead and upgrade (that does hurt, huh?). Tbh the only practical benefit I have seen to my spending $1200 for a new Mini is the OS will continue to upgrade for the next 8 years or so vs the 2014 which was about to hit the upgrade wall.

I donated the 2014 to a music school/youth nonprofit to use as a recording computer. I think for that application it will continue to be relevant as long as it powers on.
 
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#15
Chris Fitzgerald said:
I do video and audio editing on an M1. It is fast and works well. It’s best to use an external SSD, and USB C is more than fast enough.
Click to expand...

Same. I bought an Intel Mac Mini and it bogged down with video. Ended up getting an M1 Mac Studio with (I think) 32GB RAM. It’s got plenty of power to run Logic and a ton of plug-ins or Premiere Pro for video editing. I’m very pleased with it. The Mini is now my general duty non-creative machine (internet, work stuff).

I supplement the Studio with a 4TB SSD over USB.
 
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#16
The M1 mini is a great machine. For relatively light tasks.

If you’re going to spend the price of a Mini, I’d jump to the next tier. My base model M1 Studio has made me very happy. I expect it will continue to make me happy for another ten years.
 
#17
so far so good with the M1. The Studio looks amazing but over the top for my needs I expect. Biggest reason for my upgrade was to get to a current OS. My old MBP - which is fine - was maxed at 10.13.6 High Sierra. Try finding a good AU/ VST host ... way easier on Sonoma.
 
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#18
I recently replaced my M1 MacBook Pro (8/256 bass model) with a Mac Mini M2 8/256 bass model. The MacBook met an untimely death due to water spill. Both base spec machines work fine for me with no memory pressure issues. I do use external 1TB SSD’s for project storage and data files. The M processor macs are significantly faster than my previous intel processor powered macs making me a fan of the M series. I typically experience 29 seconds to export the mix down of a complete song with the M processor macs.

Speaking solely for myself, I wish I had upgraded to the 512GB SSD simply to future proof internal storage space. My machine is dedicated for music and video production, I use LUNA and Cubase as DAW’s and FinalCut Pro for video. With the base M2 Mini 256 SSD I have 110GB free space.
 
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#19
@One Way sounds good! I have been happy with the audio/video processing/rendering times on the M1 iMac in my office at the U, where we do a lot of video work. But at home, I still have an aging 27” iMac that works fine but will eventually crash or become obsolete.

I’ve been thinking about the possibility of an M2 or M3 Mac mini when that happens, and your report is a welcome one. What are you using for a monitor? I really like the bigger monitor of the old iMac but the newer ones top out at 24”.
 
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#20
@Chris Fitzgerald I’m using an LG 29” ultra wide monitor model LG WP60G-B. With the ultra wide form factor I can use it almost like I have two monitors side by side but even better at times, say 2/3rds of the screen width for the DAW and 1/3rd of the screen for plugins display. A 32” ultra wide would be cool however when ordering I thought the larger one would be more than my workstation desk will allow
 
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