The Ultimate M1 Mac Buying Guide for Music Production: M1 vs M1 Pro vs M1 Max vs M1 Ultra

Great info! What would you say as to the M1 base Mac Mini (8gb ram, 256gb SSD) for light music production?

you're the man James.

Thanks a lot. Very good video👌

I have just watched a few of your videos and I’m interested in purchasing an RME UCX II or fireface 802. My primary work would be to track a rock band eventually drums and about 24-40tracks of mixing with plugins. Do you think I can keep my HP device with the following specs:
Processor
Intel(R) Xeon(R) E-2176M CPU @ 2.70GHz|2.71 GHz
Installed RAM
16.0 GB (15.8 GB usable)

Thank you very much.
J

Thank you 🙏🏽!!!

My m1 macbook pro keeps having audio drop out and ive tried changing buffer size etc nothing working looker at foruks and none of It works. Be careful when buying

It is very hard to have an opinion what a person needs for music production, since it’s so dependent on workflow. I use iZotope Neutron and channel strips on every channel used. Next to that I work with modelled instruments, rather than sample based or external instruments and effects. That is a very CPU hungry way of working.

So - if the M1 and M2 chips aren't actually optimal for musicians but rather suited to Film makers,
isn't it better to buy a 2019 Macbook Pro Core i9 with 64 Gb of RAM and 1024 SSD ? For about 1K

Knowing that my main concern is the RAM power for heavy Plug-in use in Pro Tools ( EZDrummer 3, Neural DSP and Spitfire Audio )
And also the ability to use Big Sur without having to upgrade my Pro Tools perpetual license ( 200$ )

I always buy Apple computers used - and basically for what I'm doing with ProTools and Neural DSP / Toontrack,
going the M1 or M2 route is an extra 3K $

Wow ! Great video and info for music makers.

Could you please inform me whether Mac silicon (M1 and M2) supports AVB for integration with a Person's rack mixer?

So essentially, the computer that is the goldilock zone for the serious producer/artist is,

The 12 core M_Pro Chip 32gb ram 1tb SSD?

The problem is that the Mac Mini M1 Pro doesn’t exist :( That´s why I’m considering a Mac Studio M1 Max

Thanks for your informative video. You mention that the M1 Max is overkill for music production. However, I have the opportunity to purchase a M1 Max studio (Base Model) which has eight per cores and two eff cores for £1395 vs a M2 Mac Mini Pro which I believe has 6 per cores and 4 eff cores which retails at £1399. So in this scenario would the M1 Max be the better purchase? Thanks.

Excellent video. Very much appreciated.

So does Reaper tend to run better on the M1 Pro or the M2 Pro MacBook Pro??? Deciding if I should save some cash and just get a refurbished M1 Pro or spend a bit more for the newer model but I can’t find any definitive answers as to which MacBook Pro works best with Reaper.. anybody got any answers?

Mr. Zhan you deserve more subs

Excellent video.

Thanks James that was very informative. Wanted to ask you advise though, I am new to home recording, have Presonus Studio One Artist. I compose in several styles like salsa music and Latin Jazz, pop, Jazz, light Rock. The thing is that I would need to use several plug ins or a live 6 piece horn section, 4 live percussion instruments, baby bass, two keyboards and up to 3 back up and a lead singer. Is the M1 Pro a good choice or what about the new apple Studio? I would really appreciate your feedback.

Given the current state of apple hardware, would you recommend an M2 Pro chip with 32gb of Ram, or a M1 Max with 64gb of Ram? They're the same price...

James Zhan thanks for this video. Do you know if the iMac 24 M1 is sufficient for music and audio production? I am not a professional but a hobbyist. However, I do want professional results. How about an iMac 24 M1 with 16GB Ram and 1TB storage? Is that sufficient?

great video, very clear ! great work !

Great video but I am a bit confused….I am a reaper user and am looking at getting my first MacBook Pro in a few months and was pretty set on getting an M1 Pro 14 inch with 16 gb of ram and 1 tb of storage…I am a vocalist so I record vocal covers and such…will this be enough for my needs or do I need to opt for more ram and more storage?

love the video! One thing to potentially add (if you don't already have a video on it) when talking about form factor is the difference in peripheral connectivity since air, pro, mini, and studio have vastly different port options.

just what i needed thanks! ✌🏾

Intel for music production

I personally think that 10 core M1 pro is much better than 8 core M1 pro.
You get 2 performance cores in addition.
In total, that's 6 cores vs 8 cores (performance) not counting the 2 efficiency cores.
Since it seems that Logic pro doesn't care as much for efficiency cores, it's about 25% boost in CPU power.
Do correct me if I'm wrong though!

I would recommend M1 Max or Ultra or M2 Pro .

so I got an m1 max with 64 gig ram, 2 tb I use a lot of plugins always and virtual instruments, but also am editing 4k and 6k video, I have found that its been more than enough, I can load a pro tools session or Ableton session and still have tons of cpu and ram available. this being said this machine is future proof!!!

very wisely explained man, thanks and many regards 🙌🏻

I’ve tried forever to get someone to answer this. If anyone does I hope it’s you cause you seem like the smartest hands down when it comes to macs and specs for music. My instrumentals are already professional mixed and mastered. All I want is to record vocals. I’ve looked into low latency plug ins from Antares and waves. I’ve looked at motu m2 interface that claims 2.50ms latency or less. Yet everyone tells me to trash my 2012 MacBook Pro i5 processor 16gb ram 256ssd. I’m only gonna use maybe 3 to 10 vocals takes tops with basic things like pitch correction compression eq reverb etc. I thought about getting a 2015 MacBook instead with a quad core i7. Or is that a total waste and I should wait until I can get a m1 chip? The cheapest I seen is m1 MacBook Air 8gb ram 256ssd or is this over kill? Please help

Perfect video, this was exactly what I was looking for, many many thanks!

Saying about Memory pressure graph ...👍 to check

The most helpful video I’ve seen recently, thanks for this

m1 pro 🙋

drum vsts choke up my cpu, i layer three at a time, any idea how much ram i would need in a m1

if you're surfing now for a Macbook pro M1, they cost MORE than a MacStudio M1 Max. Since I will only use it in my own music studio, I don't need it to be portable. So with that in mind, I'm better off with the MacStudio, which has double the RAM and more connections than the Macbook for LESS money. Plus I don't need to have a complete laptop near my workspace. I can put my keyboard and mouse where it suits me, and not have a laptop with dock(s) in the space I can now use for a DAW controller or mixer.

Macbook pro M1 pro
8core cpu / 14core gpu
16gb 512
Price -1.22 lakh

Macbook pro M1 pro
8core cpu / 14core gpu
32gb 512
Price -1.50 lakh

Macbook pro M2 pro
10core cpu / 16core gpu
16gb 512
Price -1.49 lakh

Macbook pro M1 pro
10core cpu / 16core gpu
16gb 1TB
Price -1.55 lakh

Price is in indian rupees

Which one would be more preferable for music production only ?
Which one is a good deal ?
Please reply ASAP as i wanna buy it soon

Brilliant video, so helpful as I'm trying to decide what to upgrade to. Thank you!

Thanks so much for making such a clear, logical and easily understood video. I'm a full time guitar player using Logic Pro and a pretty old MBP (2013) which is dying. Apple tech is far from my forte and this video completely took all the heartache out of it. The cost of most things in Australia is prohibitively expensive so you really do need to know what you're paying for and what you do and don't need. Even my ailing old 2013 MBP with 16GB Ram stayed green on the memory pressure test using Logic Pro. Tracking, using mastering software and bouncing a project. All same result. Thanks again.

Thanks for the video! btw, does it still make sense to get the macbook air m1 with 8gb ram and 256 gb ssd?? Unfortunately thats only what i can afford and my current MSI Gf63 Thin laptop ( i5 9th gen 8 gb ram 512 gb ssd) is struggling to play even only 30 tracks in reaper with 4 to 5 instances of kontakt and 4 instances of Neural dsp Nolly. I would really like some advice from you !! thanks in advance oh and this will be my first ever macOS experience because i am a windows user for a long time now! cheers from India! 😊😊

RAM TESTED/REVIEW // So I got my MBP M2pro 16inch a few days ago. Got the 16gb/1TB version at a discount for 2780€s, while the 32gb version would cost 3550€ (to all non EU people yeah our prices are this ridiculous). I did not think blindly spending 800€ more for RAM that I might or might not need is worth it so I got the 16GB version to test it out:

First, I mostly mix and master and dont really produce much anymore. For my fellow engineers, I can assure you now you will probably never need more than 16gb on your Mac. 16gb on my previous windows laptop was not really much, since basically already 8gb of the 16 were occupied by win/other programs. Not sure if permanently or not, as I did not have the memory pressure graph on there.

Loading up some of my newest projects that had my Alienware m17 r5 running on 100% CPU (and 80% occupied RAM) in Ableton run on my new mac with 25-30%. I had to duplicate all tracks and all plugins 4 times in order to fill up the CPU. At this point, the ram pressure graph was still around 25% (which makes sense as I only duplicated tracks and didnt add new ones). Still, adding other tracks with 60mb per wav would still allow 100 more tracks, filling up 6GB more. Even then, we would hardly fill up 10GB of the 16. So I guess, engineers definetely can stick with 16, unless you mix 250+ track projects on the regular. I dont think you will ever exceed that (and even if you would once in like 200 projects, the hotswap ability could still handle a lot by loading samples from the SSD directly and the CPU would still struggle before that - as I said, I was able to run 160 tracks with lots of plugins until it struggled). This is also why I would recommend the M2pro with 16gb over the M1max with 32gb if youre not using tons of sample libraries.

For producers, I think it is still tough to fill up the ram. Did not test this yet as I dont have omnisphere kontakt etc on my mac, but I think you should definetly be able to have a few instances running, even in full mixing projects as I explained above. I recon if you really need more than a few instances of Kontakt running every project (maybe 7-10+? just a guess tho) you can opt for 32gb (or more if youre making film music), but still, with a price difference this significant Id still recommend you to test if you really need to spend the money, as it saved me 800€ that I would have never used on my mac. At most stores, you can give your device back for 30 days anyway, so if you notice you really need more RAM, you can justify the expense and buy more.

Great review👏🏼👏🏼I WISH I WATCHED THIS BEFORE I BOUGH MY MAC😥

Great video with sustainable information! Constantly revisiting it for reference.

As someone who owns the base model M1 Pro, i can say it as been the best laptop I have ever got my hands on. 16GBs of memory works great for my videos, the media engine works great for 4K videos, now the only thing is that is hard is having good Wi-Fi! I will say, thanks James for the help with this video.

How to know if to get the M1 Max 16'' with the 24 or 32 GPU cores? where can I find the actual difference between the two?

Thank you loads for this video. I was considering buying a Studio for my music production, and really didn't want to spend the big bucks! This really helped put it all into perspective. Much appreciated.

not one word on the 20 cores of the ultra...

I want to switch from a windows to a mac for numerous reasons and this video has helped me more than any video ever! Thank you!

I have a lot of excel(large files) open and do some coding and heavy multitasking. And planning to install parallels 18 on my mac. Is base model sufficient for my needs, or should I go for M1 max 32 core GPU. or 32GB 16 core? difference in price from base model to m1 Max is circa 800$.