Have M chips removed the Mac advantage?

[island_dj]

I'm new to Ableton and looking to get a laptop for music production (studio dj mixes, EDM production, etc., no live band stuff). I've been doing a bunch of research, and with Apple making its M chips skewed more to efficiency cores with each generation (and Ableton Live not using them) I'm wondering if Macbook is still the preferred direction. I feel like something along the lines of https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-la ... o9530rpl03 with a simple audio interface (think Scarlett 2i2) would be at least on par with a similarly equipped Macbook at a significant discount. Am I missing something not obvious?

[Tarekith]

If you set the MacBook to use 128 samples of latency or smaller in Live's preferences, it forces the app to use performance cores. Runs great too, lots of tracks, no fans kicking on, it's awesome. I would definitely recommend it.

[island_dj]

I guess what I'm getting at is, if only performance cores are used and PC laptops with Intel chips have the same number of performance cores, is there some other reason for getting a MacBook vs a Windows laptop with an audio interface? Option B is definitely less expensive.

[Tarekith]

Core Audio on MacOS is another big advantage, you don’t need third party drivers for audio interfaces to achieve excellent latency out of the box.

[Machinesworking]

There a few more variables than just speed here. The Apple Silicon chips use much less power and therefore get a longer battery life, and probably longer life in general.

Yes, there is really no advantage to more Efficiency cores with Live, it will not use them in any significant way, but the M3 is much fast than the M1 and there's IMO no doubt that the base model is going to be as powerful as the top end model M1.

I never hear my m2 mac studio Ultra, these things even with max specs arte dead quiet, we do audio. I was all prepped to start running an Intel PC and macbook air combo, but the studio is just really good for what we do.