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New Mac Mini for Recording?

FIREpunkMEDIC

FIREpunkMEDIC

Jun 2, 2017
149
170
#1
Hey all!! As the title suggests I'm looking to upgrade from my 2012 MacBook Pro that is dying to a Mac Mini M4 for recording, mixing, etc. Not super heavy plugin use, a few here and there and say 30 tracks. Never hit that many, but I'd rather overshoot than understood. Wondering if 16gb RAM in a Mac M4 Mini would be enough or do you think I need 24? There's also the M4 Pro, but if I don't NEED that much there are other things I could upgrade with that money. Thoughts?

Thanks, and Happy Friday!
 
#3
The YouTube video reviews seem to indicate the base model is enough. I got the pro anyways. Probably complete overkill. Search YouTube for this exact use case. A lot of evaluation out there.
 
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#4
A base Mac Mini will blow away a 13 year old laptop. I too have a 2012 MBP that I keep only because it runs the last non-subscription version of Photoshop. But I also use it to practice with iTunes, which it still is plenty powerful. I was seriously considering a base Mac Mini, especially when they were $499 on Amazon but I didn't jump on it. I would have used the $100 savings to get a Satechi hub. My keyboard player friend did exactly that and he is running Final Cut Pro on it so there must be plenty of power in the base model.
 
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#8
FIREpunkMEDIC said:
Hey all!! As the title suggests I'm looking to upgrade from my 2012 MacBook Pro that is dying to a Mac Mini M4 for recording, mixing, etc. Not super heavy plugin use, a few here and there and say 30 tracks. Never hit that many, but I'd rather overshoot than understood. Wondering if 16gb RAM in a Mac M4 Mini would be enough or do you think I need 24? There's also the M4 Pro, but if I don't NEED that much there are other things I could upgrade with that money. Thoughts?

Thanks, and Happy Friday!
Click to expand...
Yeah 16GB is plenty. I have that configuration in my M3 mini and have never even had a hiccup. Get 512 storage if you can - and a good SSD external. You’ll be good for years 👍
 
#9
I have the M4 Pro with 48GB Ram, 1TB hard drive. The thing is a BEAST. This is my first Mac - I used to spend like 3K on custom PC builds. This blows them all away and at the size of about 4 iPhones. I absolutely love this thing. I haven't really been able to hit any of what I used to know as "limits" in Cubase. It just always works, and remains VERY snappy at 64 buffer even at over 100 tracks of VST instruments. It's insane.

But I am a pretty advanced user and use a lot of plugins. The base M4 should be fine for moderate DAW work. Definitely get at least 24GB of ram regardless, preferably at least 32. At least 512GB HD. It will run faster and better if you get the 1TB HD.

I would try and squeeze the Pro if you can. There's other stuff about the pro model that is better besides the CPU. It will last about 7-8 years is my guess. Good value.
 
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#10
Conventional tech wisdom says you should get as much memory and storage as your budget allows. While 16GB may work fine today, in 3-5 years as software develops (and gen AI gets integrated everywhere) to take advantage of more memory, you may be wishing for more. Since you can no longer upgrade memory like we could in the past, it’s best to get as much now as you can muster.

Mike Vee said:
At least 512GB HD. It will run faster and better if you get the 1TB HD.
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☝️also

That being said, if you can only afford the base Mac Mini, it will still be a great computer for years to come; you just might need a little patience or external storage in the future.
 
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#11
There’s no need to buy above your budget. Just buy at whatever price point you can afford and keep an eye on the performance meter.

There are many ways to not overload the DAW, e.g. bounce track and turn off the plugins, freeze the track, use stock plugins, plugins that consume less processing power etc.
 
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#12
I have used a base M2 Mac Mini for a couple of years and it works absolutely fine, much better than my previous intel powered 15” MacBook Pro. I have a UA Apollo Twin audio interface and use both Luna and Cubase 14 Pro DAWs. The M series processors are simply amazing, my Mac Mini has 8GB RAM and runs without a hitch. The new ones include 16GB RAM standard. With 256 SSD I keep the applications on the mac SSD and use external SSD storage for my data files.
 
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#13
FIREpunkMEDIC said:
Not super heavy plugin use, a few here and there and say 30 tracks. Never hit that many, but I'd rather overshoot than understood. Wondering if 16gb RAM in a Mac M4 Mini would be enough or do you think I need 24?
Click to expand...
16 should be okay if you're just tracking. More RAM might be a nice cushion if you're running virtual instruments and a lot plugins. Better safe than sorry considering you can't add RAM.

FYI this guy does a simultaneous comparison his 2012 Mac with 16Gb RAM to a 3-year-old M1 Mac mini with a mere 8Gb RAM: the old Mac "crashed out" at 10 instances of virtual instruments, the (discontinued) M1 was chugging along with 18.



There are plenty of YouTube videos showing the current-gen base M4 Mac mini being used for music production: this stress test has it easily handling 32 samples plus a mastering plugin (mastering the track in real -time):

 
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#14
“Gee, I wish I had gotten less RAM and slower processors”, said no one ever.

I love my first-gen Mac Studio. The only thing that improved its performance in Logic was getting an external USB-C solid-state hard drive for the Logic projects. Separating operating system disk traffic from project disk traffic has long been a best practice for performance.
 
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#15
I've heard thet M4 are killer machines, but currently own only a M1 pro and a M2 pro. one of them has 16G RAM

while the 16G might be enough for what you're doing, it really depends on what you're doing. a 24G machine is more future-proof, i.e. will make you happy for more years. the CPU on those machines is killer, so it's likely the RAM shortage you'll feel first.

I still remember when my studio mac mini of 10+ years ago was fine with 4G RAM until OS X Mavericks was released.
 
#16
ctmullins said:
“Gee, I wish I had gotten less RAM and slower processors”, said no one ever.

I love my first-gen Mac Studio. The only thing that improved its performance in Logic was getting an external USB-C solid-state hard drive for the Logic projects. Separating operating system disk traffic from project disk traffic has long been a best practice for performance.
Click to expand...
Same. I also use my first gen Mac Studio for video editing. I have a couple of 4TB SSDs on hand for those projects. Very rarely does the system bog down (eg playback slows occasionally in Multicam edits).
 
#17
Always recommend maxing out RAM. If budget is a concern, the base-level 16-gig Mac Mini M4 will still suit your needs for a long time. You won't buy it only to find out it can't handle recording. It can do the job swimmingly, especially compared to your 2012 MacBook Pro.

The price difference between the base 16-gig and 24-gig is pretty crazy. It's 67% more expensive. But if you have the extra budget room, more ram for recording is always preferred. It'll probably give you several extra years out of the computer before you need to replace it. But is $400 extra dollars now worth it to you when 16 gigs of ram will probably get the job done without a hiccup?

Edited to add:
For reference, I've been recording on Mac since the PowerMac G4 Mirrored Door tower days. I would usually get a beefy mac tower (Mac Pro after the PowerMacs) for producing and a laptop for live performance. At some point around 2013 i just started getting whatever the most spec'd out or fastest clock-speed MacBook Pro with as much RAM as possible. I'm currently on a MBP M2-Pro with 32 gigs of RAM. Forgone the powerhouse tower. It's overkill.

That's all to say, you don't need the most powerful tower to produce/record/engineer anymore. Most halfway-decent spec'd computers will do the job perfectly fine. It's more a matter of how long before you have to replace them as opposed to if it can do the task of recording.

16gb Mac Mini M4 benchmarks vs 15" MacBook Pro 2012 benchmarks
 
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#18
A while back I got a Mac M2 Max 96GB 1TB SSD. I wanted something that will handle virtual instruments (Serum, Massive X) and MIDI. The previous Mac I used had 16GB of RAM and it just wasn't enough for MIDI. It was great for audio though.
 
#19
DirtDog said:
That’ll be fine, but make sure you get a model with enough I/O for peripherals. My Mac Mini and Mac Studio have plenty. My MacBook Air does not.
Click to expand...
I use a riser w/hub with my Air. It helps with the lack of I/O ports.
Something like this.
IMG_0311.jpeg
 
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