New Mac Studio w/ M2

[Julia123]

Has anyone put Ableton to the test with the new Mac Studio M2 Max 12 Core? I ended up having to split my last project on my i7 iMac in half because all my plug-ins and tracks maxed out the CPU.

[scg]

What buffer size are you using? Have you read Ableton's suggestions here?

[Trevor being Trevor]

I had an i9 imac and it was great, but it wasn't till I had 5950x and 64gb ram in my current PC that I felt like I finally had enough headroom for bigger projects (Ableton 10 at least). Just from generational leaps in performance alone, I would guess an M2 Max could be a similar experience if you bought the right CPU and RAM combination for your needs.

[Julia123]

Thanks, yes I adjust the buffer as needed and haven't run out of RAM. It was purely CPU spikes at the optimal buffer. I am not sure if the 5950X would compare more to the M2 Max or M2 Ultra.

[yur2die4]

I don’t know if there would really be a comparison. Very different processing from different eras. Comparing the M2’s to each other might be a thing. I’d imagine there are a lot of resources for doing that, and it probably comes down to the more powerful one only really beefing it up a little more for a lot more money. But sometimes that’s what the consumer desires.

Otherwise, comparing M2s to Mac Intels is kind of a strange thing. Intels will support a few older plugins that M2s won’t do ‘natively’, but can still do under Rosetta. Performance-wise, the M2s ‘should’ run much better, quieter, and more efficiently at the same time. But I think there’s debate on how smoothly M CPUs handle abrupt data jumps (seen occasional users complaining about audio pops, which I’ve experienced sometimes too).

[Julia123]

Performance-wise, the M2s ‘should’ run much better, quieter, and more efficiently at the same time. But I think there’s debate on how smoothly M CPUs handle abrupt data jumps (seen occasional users complaining about audio pops, which I’ve experienced sometimes too).

Wow, that's something for me to look into, thanks. I haven't heard from any Ableton user using a M1 or M2 so it must not be a common combination.

[yur2die4]

I think a lot of people have enthusiastically switched to the M CPUs. I guess you might be following other groups where it is different. I see many people mention their M experiences on this forum. I still see a lot of intel-mac users too. I think YouTube might demonstrate some of the pros and cons. Just be cautiously optimistic about the hype heheh

The other common thing I see though is desktops with very powerful modern CPUs. Which, I initially thought were stalling in progress, but it seems they’re stepping up nicely.

[Tarekith]

The newer M chips are orders of magnitude better than the previous intel version, it’s one of the biggest leaps in processing in years IMVHO. You can throw tons at them, and they barely get warm, it’s great for laptops. One thing to be aware of is that most music apps on M chips seem to work better with a latency of 128 samples or less, which is different from the intel chips where raising your latency could gain you some CPU power. On the M chips, it forces the processor into higher performance mode and out of efficiency mode.

I went from an Intel i9 based MBP to an M1 Pro MBP and it’s a massive difference.

[Julia123]

The newer M chips are orders of magnitude better than the previous intel version, it’s one of the biggest leaps in processing in years IMVHO. You can throw tons at them, and they barely get warm, it’s great for laptops. One thing to be aware of is that most music apps on M chips seem to work better with a latency of 128 samples or less, which is different from the intel chips where raising your latency could gain you some CPU power. On the M chips, it forces the processor into higher performance mode and out of efficiency mode.

I went from an Intel i9 based MBP to an M1 Pro MBP and it’s a massive difference.

Great to hear. I would love to work at 128 or less through an entire project! Have you issue with abrupt data jumps causing issues?

[Tarekith]

No issues for me at all upgrading to the newer M chips.