Ableton performance on Mac?

[bytheriver]

I’ve always used windows for everything, my desktop is due a upgrade and I had in mind a 3700x and 2070rtx super as I use it for gaming as well. Lately I’ve been hard into the production and done almost no gaming, which I kinda like, so I was thinking about maybe getting a MacBook Pro instead intentionally to prevent myself ending up wasting all my time gaming.

The new 13inch looks pretty awesome, but it has a pathetic 8gb ram by pc standards, does that somehow go further with Mac OS or would 16gb upgrade be pretty essential for loading samples into for playback on a music computer? We used to have that handy cpu test thread so you could see real world performance on different systems, without that I’m looking for some personal experiences to help me choose.

[Tarekith]

I think 16GB would be pretty essential these days if you're planning on using it for music making.

[bytheriver]

Yeah I had a feeling that'd be the case. Love the look/feel/concept of the macbook and the new 13" looks decent for £1200 or so, but when you've added in the memory upgrade and got the SSD from 128 to 256 to turn it into something remotely 'pro' capable your touching £1600 which is pretty sickening.

[miyaru]

I think a desktop machine (what you have now) and a Macbook Pro 13 are completely different beasts....... I would prefer a lightningfast desktop machine for the money, but that is me. I don't want to start the Mac vs. PC war all over again, but what are the reasons to go Mac? Aren't you happy with a PC? I'm really happy using PC's, and am surely familiar with Mac's we have them at home too. I would not want to trade my Music PC for a Mac though, as it is stable and working fast and reliable.

Before you part from your money think long and hard!

[bytheriver]

I think a desktop machine (what you have now) and a Macbook Pro 13 are completely different beasts....... I would prefer a lightningfast desktop machine for the money, but that is me. I don't want to start the Mac vs. PC war all over again, but what are the reasons to go Mac? Aren't you happy with a PC? I'm really happy using PC's, and am surely familiar with Mac's we have them at home too. I would not want to trade my Music PC for a Mac though, as it is stable and working fast and reliable.

Before you part from your money think long and hard!

Your right they are different, it seemed that CPU advances had outpaced the plugin advances though. Back in the day I needed a beefy desktop because reverbs/synths etc would eat a lot of CPU, now I rarely even think about the CPU use since there always seems to be a lot of CPU headroom even on pretty modest hardware.

With that in mind having a portable system I could use on the go (a lot of my free time is when I'm away from home) and then plug into a big external monitor/USB dock at home with hardware and Push etc attached is quite appealing.

[miyaru]

Taking your last reply in account: go for the Mac then!!!!

I'm never on the go with my music, just me in my homestudio, so me for it's different.

[miyaru]

But go for an as big as possible SSD and 16GB of fast RAM!

[TLW]

Mac’s Core Audio/MIDI and built-in MIDI networking and IAC driver makes things much simpler than when dealing with a PC DAW.

The OS is also lighter on resources than Windows and things like dpc-induced latency are extremely unusual. Nor does cpu core-parking and speed-stepping require adjusting. I can get 32 and 64 sample latencies out of my MBP without having to do any configuring to tune it for DAW use, which I’ve never managed in a PC.

Apple’s SSDs are extremely fast, but 256GB is a better idea than 128GB. 16GB RAM seems ample enough and the speed is whatever Apple decided to fit into that model of Mac.

Downsides? Price, lack of expansion slots other than via Thunderbolt, limited customisation options, usually lower cpu speeds than the very latest Intel chips, but that’s compensated for by the system integration as a whole being very good because the people who write the OS know exactly what’s in a Mac - Windows has to be able to work with thousands of possible hardware combinations.

And Macs don’t come with Windows 10 >:-)

[miyaru]

And Macs don’t come with Windows 10 >:-)

Ah, and a Mac vs. PC war is here LOL - no, just kiddin'

[nathannn]

Mac’s Core Audio/MIDI and built-in MIDI networking and IAC driver makes things much simpler than when dealing with a PC DAW.

The OS is also lighter on resources than Windows and things like dpc-induced latency are extremely unusual. Nor does cpu core-parking and speed-stepping require adjusting. I can get 32 and 64 sample latencies out of my MBP without having to do any configuring to tune it for DAW use, which I’ve never managed in a PC.

Apple’s SSDs are extremely fast, but 256GB is a better idea than 128GB. 16GB RAM seems ample enough and the speed is whatever Apple decided to fit into that model of Mac.

Downsides? Price, lack of expansion slots other than via Thunderbolt, limited customisation options, usually lower cpu speeds than the very latest Intel chips, but that’s compensated for by the system integration as a whole being very good because the people who write the OS know exactly what’s in a Mac - Windows has to be able to work with thousands of possible hardware combinations.

And Macs don’t come with Windows 10 >:-)

But a mac's fans are always loud!

[TLW]

To be honest the fan in mine doesn’t kick in that often when using Live. It’s more noisy browsing some web pages, I suspect because the gpu heats up for some reason.