Ableton Forum

Hi all,
Using 11 Suite on my home PC (HP i5 8400, 12GB RAM, 512SSD I think I paid $400US refurbished) I With this pretty basic setup I've never run into any real issues. Wish latency was a little lower sometimes but that is about it. I'm not running anything intensive ever. Maybe 10 - 20 tracks and no super heavy VSTs.
I'm looking to move to a laptop so I'm not stuck in the basement where my studio is set up. I would be more productive and use more if I could get out of my studio in the basement and be able to sit in the front room with some natural light or just hang with the family and do some noodling with headphones on. Would be nice to be able to bring when traveling too.

Looking to keep things on a lower end budget as this is just a hobby. Since I'm a pretty light user I was thinking that I could get by with a new PC with i7/ryzen7 chip or Mac M1 with 16GB RAM. Does this sound like a reasonable thought process? It would be an upgrade to what I have and future proof me for a bit longer than going with an i5/ryzen5 and or 8GB RAM. I have no background with Macs so not sure about lesser/older models that are respectable.

A few other questions I have, as it's Black Friday time and figure deals abound.

Graphics Cards - Is there a need for an upgraded graphics card other than what's stock on the board? Is this something worth paying for? I'm not a gamer and this will only be used for production.

PC vs Mac - I've never owned a Mac, always been a PC guy, and outside of my production PC, I'm really almost all on Chrome devices. So any programs I have are PC based. Does it make sense to stick with PC for conversion simplicity or are the benefits of the Mac far superior? I'm not a Windows fan by any means, it's just always been what I've used for work and price differences between Macs. I know everyone says the MacBook Pros are great, but I'd like to keep sub 1K if possible. Then again if I can get 5 or more years out of it, like my current setup, might think about paying a little more.

I never had a pc in my life, but I'm not a mac fanboy. It's just what I got used to because that's what I had access to as a 1st computer.
Macs are definitely way easier to manage regarding audio, mainly because of OSX's great builtin Core Audio drivers. It's usually about plugging in an interface and you're good to go. Same goes for midi controllers. I know it's quite trickier on PCs... but people get around it eventually.
That being said, unless you love computers technology and scratching your head around technical challenges, and are ready to learn a new environnement, I'd say stick with a PC since that's what you know.

Unless you're using Live's builtin devices exclusively, navigating and sharing sets between your desktop PC and a Mac laptop will need quite some attention because of VSTs. Also, I don't think it's funny to manage two different files' system for your sets and User Library... it already requires quite some organisation to do it between 2 machines using the same OS (unless you're hosting everything on something like Dropbox, which I know some people do... but streaming realtime audio in a DAW from internet always seemed like a crazy idea to me).

Also, be aware that it seems quite hard to go back to Windows once you got used to OSX... which your wallet might not enjoy too much.

my 2cts

I would always recommend a Mac, just way less hassles and core audio is robust and built into the OS. You can often find really good deals on refurbished laptops from Apple too:

https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished