Hello guys,

I’m currently in dire need of laptop upgrade, and currently debating between purchasing Apple silicon, intel, or just swap to windows.

I prefer to stay on Mac since that’s what I’ve been using for almost a decade, but my main concern is the lack of available cracked plugins for the Apple silicon.

I do mix/mastering full time on Pro Tools on my iMac, but decided to find laptop for more mobility.

appreciate all of your advices and insights!

 

I would advise you to stay with macOS & Apple silicon. The 15" M2 based MacBook Air destroys the Intel based MacBook Pro. Just gets better from there up to a point.

For day-to-day beat making & ITB mixing;;
Apple:
16GB RAM, 512GB SSD as a minimum

Windows:
32GB RAM 1TB SSD as a minimum

Be aware that Windows 11 is hit & miss for stability vs Windows 10 and, Microsoft plans to make the next version worse concerning functionality & features (according to sources in the know). This of course could change before release but, would not count on it.

 

If your using cracks I'd get a PC unless you have to travel with it and I'm saying alot of travel not twice a year to a studio.. ppl buy laptops and use them like they are home units and from staying plugged in all the time the battery gets worped I built my PC last year and it was the best decision I ever made .. ryzeen 5900x 32 gig ram 2 SSD and liquid cooled and if I have any issues I just order that part not have to throw away the whole thing.. I honestly don't see why more people don't do it ..

 

Thanks a lot for your input, between air/MacBook pro, is the difference huge? Which would you recommend?

 

I have mix of paid plugins and cracked, since the cost adds up quick and is very costly. I don’t travel often, but time to time I have to travel out of the studio I’m at for work, and I hate having to use other’s setups because I don’t have my own. This was mainly the reason why I was also contemplating going windows, or even intel mac, since I heard there aren’t too many cracked plugins out there of Apple silicon and old ones are incompatible.

 

ironically, there is no fan in the Air. the 13" mbp has no fans. The 15", and 16" mbp have two. There are plenty of available plugins, just not any iLok R2R releases. You can figure out what has been released vs. plugins you want/need to run; and then make a list and see which you can find, make substitutions for, will have to buy, or think of something else. See what that list looks like to you.

For the amount it sounds like traveling, i'd probably get the Air w/16gb. Price them out and then compare what they come with.

 

So may exciting options with the MacBook air and the new Pro's. My MacBook pro M1pro 14" is the best decision I ever made. I plug it into the docs on my workstation and it handles everything I throw at it. ARM technology is the only game in town over old x86 tech. An M2 Air with 16 gig is a great choice as is a 14" Pro with the M2.. I have a 500 gig system drive and 16 gig of ram. Next machine i'd go for 1TB & 32. that being said I never run out of Ram and run everything natively. My professional experience with this machine is pure joy. I sold my Xeon tower and was an early adopter of the Mac Mini M1, then decided on the MacBook pro which has been awesome. I got a M2ipad pro 6 months ago and with the MacBook pro its so powerful for Video (resolve), Graphics (affinity) and daws. Its a great time to be in the market actually. Hope this helps

Wron Plenty of Mac Cracks available.

Wrong.. use the settings to maximise battery life.

Apple Silicon is the only game in town, bang for buck. X86 architecture is dead. PLus, he asked for a laptop. I have a 1 year old speced up MacBook pro M1pro and it's really reliable and built like a tank. I gave my 2015 i7 MacBook pro to my wife, and it's still going gangbusters.

 

If you are making money off this computer, stick with what you know, whatever that is.

Nothing is as frustrating for others or yourself as trying to troubleshoot something on a system a computer or operating system you are not familiar with and nothing screams unprofessional or amateur as loudly.

Nothing is perfect and problems will arise, minimizing them is an important part of being professional.

 

Stick to what you're used to. PC's are superior for gaming and rendering, but for audio Macs are just as capable.

 

wait, you're doing full time mix/master and decide on cracked plugins? that's terrible!

at first, get ready to start paying for ProTools, because it's subscription or perpetual annual renewals fuckery,
you'll need latest ProTools for M2+Ventura compatibility,

plugins are tricky, because even legit plugins aren't all Apple Silicon native yet,
for cracked plugins, well it depends, but any "tampered" ones won't load in ProTools, regardless of Windows/Mac/Intel/AppleSilicon

least troublesome way overall in my opinion, would be basically "equally old" MacBook like your iMac, meaning, you could install same MacOS, use same ProTools version and same plugins, same audio interface with its same driver, just like you do on your iMac

 

M1 Native PT on m1pro mbp works very well. Exports alot faster than rosetta if you bounce itb. Not even a contest between intel based macbooks. If you use Pro Tools Mac is still superior imo. If you work with sample based libraries in cubase it wouldnt matter as much afaik. Additionally quite a lot of pro plugins used in mixing only work well on Mac, so thats sth to keep in mind.

 

No, I do pay for majority of what I use (including pro tools), but I just like the option of being able to use cracked plugins for when I want to try something for a lot longer period than the period given by the companies. Unfortunately as much as I would love to have the money pay for everything, I’m not exactly at that level of success yet.

 

The difference is not huge. For normal everyday creation, editing & mixing, either will do. The Pro gives a little more track & plugin count while also offering more RAM & CPU cores.

For high plugin, virtual instrument sessions and/or large recording sessions, the Pro with at least 64GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD is the way to go.

You should also have some sort of off-line storage strategy.

• High Speed SD Cards
• External SSDs or HDDs

 

Last edited: Jul 18, 2023

just a note, but these are the features and specs most evaluated by reviewers and consumers. In many cases, when a product is designed and engineered; it's not the only difference in component quality. Companies will often use a lot more lower cost/grade components, specifically to meet a specific target price point. They don't announce they used cheaper keys, power supply, dvd-rw, or no fans.

 

Last edited: Jul 18, 2023

There's plenty of plugins already available for Silicon Mac.

Analog Obsession, Antares, Baby Audio, Cradle, DDMF, Devious Machines, Fab Filter, Fuse Audio Labs, IK Multimedia, Izotope, Kiive Audio,
Kushview, Nomad Factory, Plugin Alliance, Plugin Boutique, Pulsar Modular, Purified Audio, Sound Particles, Sound Radix, Steinberg, TBTech,
ToneBoosters, Voxengo, Waves, Yum Audio.

Just to name a few.

 

Unless something has changed, why you can't you use BlueCat's Audio Patchwork to load plugins in either VST or AU format inside Protools?

 

The latest ProTools 2023.6 was too buggy for me so I downgraded to 2021.7 . So awesome just to be able to test out all those R2R plugins without BlueCat's Patchwork.

 

ah understood, no problem

then you should check which plugins you have and which have native support,
ProTools can only run in native OR rosetta2 mode (toggle in Ctrl-click: App - Get Info), in each mode only matching compatible plugins will work (for ex. Altiverb which still has no Apple Silicon support will only show up in ProTools run in rosetta2 mode)

for Mac specs,
13" and 15" MacBook Air lacks cooling fan, good for silent recording but not good for heavier sustained workloads (like for ex. iZotope RX Music Rebalance),
13" MacBook Pro is a joke, it's just reused old design with mediocre cooling, connectivity and display,
14" and 16" MacBook Pro is proper work laptop, overpriced as anything Apple, but offers much better value, performance and connectivity compared to similarly specced MacBook Air,
if you're tight on budget but want something capable, then definitely base model 14" MacBook Pro should be your starting point, and eventually pay more for better specs - do note nothing is upgradeable later, so pick wisely

 

worked at the top 3 largest tech firms in a previous life - Apple silicon all the way without question. I wouldn't however get the 14" - I have the M1 Max 14" and the screen size is just too damn small for logic pro and to do anything serious - I would go for the 15" regular with as much memory as you can afford and disk or 16" MBP

 

Another option : running crckd plugins on a SEPARATE windows machine with Audiogridder
Small NUC format should be enough

So you can still use Mac AND get cracked plugins.
Don't know if it works on M2.

And if you want to try crckd APPS on Windows, you can share the Window machine display with your Mac.
So you don't need a screen for the NUC

Some reading here :
https://audiosex.pro/threads/is-it-clever-to-build-a-hackintosh-in-2023.67404/page-2