audio interface , and graphics card !

 

Correct: It was very hard to swipe the card in the POS, but now I'm happy: it's worth every penny, plus I already know that for at least 5/6 years I won't need upgrades. Also having that subtle pleasure of a high overhead in performance lets me work without anxiety: priceless. In any case, even the standard Mac mini M4 is fine, the only advice for those who want that is to buy the 1TB SSD: it's impossible to work with smaller storage than that.
Here's a benchmark comparison from Tom's guide:
https://www.tomsguide.com/computing...s-intel-amd-and-qualcomm-never-stood-a-chance

 

Last edited by a moderator: May 20, 2025

You mean without an external drive, right? I have my current SSD system partition set to 250gb, with all my plugins installed (650 of them), the other audio apps I use also; and I have over 100gb free at almost all times. I could easily trim that down further even. What do you have installed that you say to get the 1tb option? The prices for RAM are crazy, but SSD space isn't great either. Obviously, the larger internal ssd the better; but not necessarily for their prices.

 

Last edited: May 20, 2025

Of course: disk space depends on personal needs, my current configuration fills 550GB and I'm talking exclusively about installations (no libraries). Apart of audio, I edit videos and I want the footage of the project in progress to reside on the internal SSD: it is way faster than any external one. Also keep in mind that a certain space for the cache must always be left.
It's easy to get to 1 TB

 

Last edited by a moderator: May 20, 2025

The original poster is asking about a base model m4, upgrading just the ssd to 1tb is an additional $400. For the same $400, you are getting an extra 500gb internal ssd space, when you could get an additional 2tb or more external ssd storage.

For audio on Mac, it is easy to not need remotely close to that 1tb. There is a lot of stuff a new user can leave on the system disk that has no reason to be there if they are using Logic. Someone can blow well over 50gb just by keeping the Logic entire sound library on the system disk (and never use any of it). Then, someone can even install about 4 different formats of every plugin, when really only AU is used for Logic. So 20gb of plugins turns into 100gb. Leaving more than just the project you are working on sitting on the system disk is another. There are all kinds of ways to fill up your system disk with stuff that does not need to be there.

You're going to have to give an external drive a port one way or the other; because 1tb is obviously not going to fit 250gb for N5, and then Kontakt and Falcon libs, and whatever other content heavy instruments someone wants. You are stuck giving it a port either way.

 

This depends on the buffer size. At lower buffer sizes (32 to 128 samples), crackles begin to appear at around 65% CPU usage. This means that even in the early stages of the test, glitches and pops are already noticeable. The situation improves from 256 samples and above, where artifacts don't appear until CPU usage reaches around 80% (The 3rd stage of the test for 256 samples buffer)

 

44100, 32 samples - AVERAGE CPU: 68-72, no crackles (last part of project)
intel 14th gen CPU.

 

Cinebench is a good benchmark that correlates well to audio work. What PC CPU do you want it to compare with?

According to cpu monkey the m4 is gonna be twice as fast as your current setup.

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_core_i7_11800h-vs-apple_m4

 

Interesting! Please specify your system specs. What specific CPU you have? i7 or i9? Did you hear the fan noise during the test? Is it a pc or a laptop? Did your device got warmer?

 

Just for fun I ran your test session on Asus Pro Art laptop with i7 12700-H (6P/8E cores). At 256 buffer, the cpu average was 26%, 46% and 52% respectively for the 3 arrangement progression. I'm away from studio, so I used my gpu audio over hdmi. I also ran it in a manner that I usually do - with other applications running in background like Edge browser with 10+ tabs, jdownloader doing some tasks, OneNote app in the background. Not bad performance, but certainly not M4 performance.

 

14700k, 32gb ram
no fan noise. PC. Cant told you temp, but its above then avarage

 

As I said, space on disk is a personal matter: I could not work with a 256 or 512 drive. Talking about ext vs int storage: first of all you can't use an ext ssd as a boot disk, so it is impossible to compare two things. Moreover any ext ssd currently won’t have the speed of the internal Apple ssd.
Finally, I strongly discourage homemade swapping of the internal ssd with a bigger one: it is a reckless procedure that even when it succeeds does not give the performance of the original apple ssd. Does the Apple SSD worth $400? Yes for me

 

Quite similar performance to my M1 Air.

I was so set on finally getting Ryzen desktop, but it's crazy how much punch M4 base model gets in that price range, it have L1 cache similar to top of the line AMD/Intel CPU's without breaking a sweat, which is perfect for my needs, need just 20% more CPU and RAM, my swap is now 2GB's over the top max and CPU is hitting the wall slowly, really don't look to spend x3 more to gain headaches with Windows and optimizations, chasing parts and all that. Now it's a question should I get another laptop or Mini this time, probably the later, could use this one for sketching and Mini for mixing later on, awesome stuff.

 

My idea behind buying this base model is that.

In Music Production,
The M4 base model beats M1 Ultra, M2 Ultra in single core performance which is the most important parameter for the DAW performance. I know that doesn't mean it's stronger than M2 Ultra. But think about the price to performance ratio compare to older gen Chips. M1/M2 Ultra was crazy expensive compared to this M4 model.

If we apply this logic to the near future
After a Year or two, M6 will be stronger than M4 Ultra in Single Core Performance. Also it will be a 2nm chip which will perform even faster than current 3nm chips i.e M4 chips.

So by getting the base model you're saving a lot of money to swap the M4 with M6/M7 in the near future which will cost about the same as M4.

Also, The base model M4 is half the price of M4 Pro. You can buy another mac in the upcoming years by saving the money and getting the base model instead of the pro. If you have the money than go for the pro, it's double the performance.

Again, this is only true for single core performance which is the most important parameter for DAW performance. But it's the best value product you can buy for music production.

You can have the latest & greatest devices in the future years, if you go with Base Model & Save some money.

Also, the resell value of M Series Devices are Crazy. Just google "M1 refurbished" and check the prices. It still holds 75% of it's value in the refurbished market. So frankly speaking, it's easier to buy another mac in the future.

Also, M4 base model is 16 GB Ram compared to Base models upto M3, they all had 8GB Ram, it was a joke even for me tbh. But 16 GB is somewhat usable imho.

Just my two cents.

 

Good point, especially for me personally as I'm pretty modest user, base models just keep getting better and tech is evolving, guess folks who have higher demands can't really relate, if they need 32GB+ RAM from the get go, 1TB+ of storage and run projects that can exhaust top of the line beast CPU's right now.

I'm Kontakt free, lately started abusing Nexus and some Nebula libraries, so my RAM usage went over 8GB's and I'm close to hitting the wall with CPU on full project, dunno, I could start bouncing stuff or ditch stereo buss processing in same project, raise the buffer and etc, but reason I got last machine is exactly that, so I don't need to worry about things like that and leave stuff in MIDI if I want entirely.

Working on M1 so far was a complete pleasure, battery life is still crazy, quality of everything is just top notch, zero issues with audio interface or macOS, Bitwig is running like a champ too, dunno, only negative thing about all of it is Apple.

Not a fan really, their whole planned obsolescence and business model, they are so scummy that are in fact genius, because they manage to pull out that on their users year after year, have number of perfectly working "unusable" iPhones at this point, but hey... When they introduced AI BS in Sequoia I was on my way out really, but had so great experience so far that I even started looking for machines that don't come with it, then hell of trying to build 600 bucks desktop AM4 PC that can outperform M4 or come close to it (AM5 prices are crazy), but be enough for future proofing, so you just can't throw cheapest components either with stock cooler or random case or PSU... then discovered you can actually remove AI stuff from Sequoia and that seemed cool and this thread popped up, You Tube recommended James Zhan videos and they pulled me in again.

 

Agree on all your points, I can totally understand your situation. M1 hype was real tbh when it launched I was pulling my hair to get my hands on that. But had budget issues. Finally after 3 entire M series chips I bought this M4. So grateful tbh.

Before buying the M4, I binge watched all of James Zhan's videos & now i can confirm, his videos were on point and quite accurate.

About AI Stuff, I never turned ON any AI features in settings in my M4 as it came to me with macos 15 sequoia by default. Never really bothered with it.

 

The joke is still their pricing for upgrades from base model units. When the Apple Silicon units were first released, you could have bought a second Mini for the same price as adding an additional 8gb of RAM just to get to 16gb. Just adding an internal ethernet port was something like $50 or $100. Now it is the same thing with the $400 additional cost to go from 500gb to 1tb internal. There are already thunderbolt 5 external SSDs available which are faster than the M4's internal system disk, and 2 times the capacity for the exact same price. But you cannot do this with RAM, you are stuck with whatever you buy; just like the processor. Also do not forget, to go from 250gb to 500gb internal ssd and 16gb to 24gb RAM is another upgrade with all the ensuing costs.

How much do you really want to spend on upgrading a Mini, before you just bite the bullet and get a Studio instead? This is where you have to weigh durability versus wanting to keep replacing your Mac with newer models.

Some of what you are discussing is a modern variant of Moore's Law. Miniaturization has always had additional costs associated with it. Or instead of making something more powerful, it is just manufactured to be even smaller physical size. One reason why a 4+ year old M1 is holding such a good resale value, is because nothing has changed all that much which you are going to see anywhere but a benchmark test. People are not selling them in droves, because they do not even need to.

 

Sorry for leaving the thread unattended. I was on vacation for a week . After checking my laptop again, I realized it was underperforming because I was running it without the battery. That battery only lasts about 10 seconds, so I removed it months ago. I noticed this issue because I was monitoring the performance meters, and the clock speed was stuck at 2.3 GHz — half of the supposed 4.6 GHz limit.

So I ran the tests again, this time with the almost-dead battery reinserted, and the speed went up to 4 GHz. After doing some research, I found out that batteries actually act as power stabilizers when the laptop is plugged into an outlet. Laptops rely on the battery to provide stable power across the entire system.

For the tests, I disabled Serum and changed the sampling rate to 48 kHz to simulate the consumption of the BlinkitsPenguin Mac Mini M4. The i7-11800H lost again, by a lot — but this time only at lower buffer sizes. At higher buffer sizes (above 250 ms), the performance seems to be closer to the M4. I believe this is because both CPUs aren't pushed to high consumption levels, as the larger buffer size gives them more “breathing room,” so they don’t need to draw as much power.

In any case, the M4 still wins — not just in CPU performance, but also in noise and electricity consuptiom. Those fans were sounding like a turbine

AVG CPU % Legend:

1st: i7-11800h at 2.3GHz with Serum 2 active, 44.1khz sampling rate so we should just disregard this one.

2nd: i7-11800h at 4.6GHz without Serum 2, 48.0khz sampling rate

3rd: M4 Base model








Thank you all for taking the time to test your PC rigs and Macs as well. If I get the chance, I’ll add a chart with all the test results and CPUs mentioned in this thread.

 

One more thing I want to point out about M4 in Studio One, It can go upto 4096 Buffer Rate when using Mac Mini Audio in I/O. So mixing in S1 with 4096 Sample rate gives more performance.

My old Windows Laptop was only able to go upto 2048 Buffer.

 

You shouldn't even really need to go that high of a buffer with such a fast processor. Obviously that depends on a lot of factors like the plugins you include in that DAW project, how big the project actually is, and a few other things. Basic recommendations from GPT for your m4, there are some other Logic tricks to squeeze even more performance for more tracks like turning off High Precision Summing while you are producing, and not mixing; but you really shouldn't need them:


Recording (Low Latency Required)
Goal: Fast response for live input monitoring, MIDI instruments, vocals, etc.

DAW Recommended Buffer Size Notes
Ableton Live 64 or 128 samples Use "Reduced Latency When Monitoring" option.
Studio One 64 samples Enable "Low Latency Monitoring" in Studio One’s mixer.
Logic Pro X 64 or 128 samples Set Process Buffer Range to Small, and Low Latency Mode ON.
Cubase 64 samples Activate "Constrain Delay Compensation" when tracking.
Mixing (System Stability / Plugin Performance)
Goal: Max CPU headroom for processing and effects-heavy sessions.

DAW Recommended Buffer Size Notes
Ableton Live 512 to 1024 samples Ideal when not recording live.
Studio One 512 or 1024 samples Switch off low-latency mode for maximum CPU headroom.
Logic Pro X 512 or 1024 samples Set Process Buffer Range to Large, Low Latency Mode OFF.
Cubase 512 to 1024 samples Can push higher for large mix sessions.