Mac Mini M2 Pro & Ableton Live - compatibility and stability

[Whaikōrero]

Hi people,

I'm looking to upgrade because I would like a faster loading experience on Ableton.

I'm wondering if anyone out there has experience of upgrading to this Mac.

- Loading times: did it make loading times for you faster? (at the moment on my Mac Mini late 2012 i7 2.3Ghz 16gb ram dual internal SSD drive it takes 40-60 seconds to load a project on average. Catalina 10.15.7. I tend to have 15 tracks or so, with one instance of Komplete Kontrol and Arturia going).

- Peripherals: did your USB 3 audio interface, Push 2, external SSDs, thunderbolt connected monitors become obsolete or dysfunctional? How did you resolve this? At the moment I use a Behringer U-Phoria UMC404 over USB 3. An external 4TB SSD over USB 3. A Push 2 over USB 3. Keyboard via USB 3. And a AOC monitor via the thunderbolt port.

- Also with the latest auto update to 11.3.2 or 11.3.3 (whatever the latest is) - I think this has actually slowed down loading times even more. Is there a way to revert to a previous version of Ableton 11? How can that be done?

Thanks ya'll

[[jur]]

at the moment on my Mac Mini late 2012

Well, you'll be smashed by the performances difference!
Those machines are beast, and Live is fully compatible so don't worry.
The only to watch for is if you're using 3rd party plugins: some of them might not be silicon-compatible; but that's nothing related to Live.
Peripherals: I was using a 2010 mac pro before, and everything that I was using it with is now used with my m1 mini. Maybe check your soundcard's compatibility though.

[lincolnkid]

- Also with the latest auto update to 11.3.2 or 11.3.3 (whatever the latest is) - I think this has actually slowed down loading times even more. Is there a way to revert to a previous version of Ableton 11? How can that be done?

You can download previous versions here: https://www.ableton.com/en/download/archive/

[Karhide]

I recently upgraded from my old Windows 10 machine to a new Mac Mini M2 Pro and it's been rock solid. The installation process took a fair amount of time and some old plugs are not supported but I did check that all the main plugins I use now were supported. For the audio interface, I've been using an RME UFX or the Babyface Pro FS along with the Digitakt, Digitone and Syntakt connected using Overbridge over USB.

I've been really happy and still finding my way with the OS but the music software has been very smooth.

[interceptor]

Im also looking to upgrade my machine to the new Mac mini M2 Pro. I have a Intel Macbook Pro 2019 6 core i7 2.6 Mhz.
Its a cabable machine but the fans are running at approx 5000 rpm most of the time making it quite noisy. So my main thing is I want a more silent computer.

Im not using much plugins. Im using Live mostly as a midi sequencer and audio recorder for hardware. Latency is very important. Im running a buffer size of 64 on a Motu Ultralite mk4. I also have a Push 2 that is taking some CPU resources.

The tests I have seen on YT they are running heavy sets with lots of plugins and tracks. Thats not a real use case for me. Can anyone comment on very low latency operation and fan noise?

Thanks

[Tarekith]

I used to have that same laptop, so I know the frustration. Fan noise is GREATLY reduced for all the Apple M based CPUs now, they run much cooler and the fans rarely need to spin up that high. My current M1 Pro MBP is damn near silent compared to the older Intel based MBP.

[interceptor]

Thanks Tarekith, thats good to know. Im pretty sure it will be a lot better.

Im quite fed up with the fan noise now. Makes it very difficult to hear subtle reverb when monitoring on speakers. Im using it docked with the screen closed so that might not help.

I´ll probably go for the M2 Pro. It will be my first Apple Silicon machine. Pretty excited for the extra performance it has. And it might be perfect for my use case since Ableton is recommending lower latency settings for better performance:

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/artic ... -computers

[Tarekith]

It will be one of the biggest jumps in computing power you’re likely to ever experience.

[Pitch Black]

It will be one of the biggest jumps in computing power you’re likely to ever experience.

Ehhhhhh…. Young pup! I went from a beige Mac Performa Someting to a G4 tower waaay back in 2000AD, and it was like “ohhh you really can do viable audio recordings on these machines!”

[interceptor]

Just wanted to make a little update. Got the Mac Mini M2 Pro a week ago and the machine is an absolute beast.
Im running 64 samples buffer size with Motu Ultralite mk4 with no problem. 32 is possible also. The fans have not yet gone past 1750 rpm so its totally silent. Even when it gets warm the fans are running at 1750.

Old usb hubs and monitor working fine. External HDDs, Push2 and other usb midi devices working perfect. Though i would recomend to check if your interface have apple silicon drivers.

Startup time is just a few seconds. Im very happy with the machine and can definitely recomend it.