I'm willing (albeit hesitantly) to swing the $2K for the new base model Studio. As far as getting a Mini though, my issue is how inexpensive a model can I get away with that will be powerful enough for perhaps as long my 2012 Mini has (may not live that long anyway, lol)

IOW, if a sufficiently spec'd mini is gonna save me *only* 1-6, maybe 7 hundred dollars, I'd might as well splurge for the Studio. Also, because on top of a Mini's price, I'm going to automatically add and extra $1-200 for a hub for added ports (controllers and such)

I use Logic and Live. If I just did audio recording, the under a thousand Mini's probably be overkill. But I like doing a lot of synth stuff, so I'd like to be able to run as many instances of Omnisphere, Kontakt, Falcon, etc without ever worrying about choking the cpu pretty much any more.... not that I'd ever run a ridiculous amount anyway.

All peripherals are USB3 & 2.... controllers, interface, dongles, eternal HDD's, hubs, docking stations.

So after 13 years with my Mini, all the new ports got me scratching my head a little. I understand I'm going to need usb3 female > usb C male adapters.

I'm a bit unsure what I need for at least one of my dual monitor setup. ( 2 Dell 16:10 U2412's iirc)
One of those is using the HDMI port and the other is connected to one of the Thunderbolt ports via
a mini display port adapter (Apples I do believe)

If I got a Studio, I take it I can do the same.... one HDMI, and the other using a thunderbolt port, however I do believe I will need some new kind of mini display port adapter for this new TB connector?

Or I suppose getting one of those Satechi (sp?) hubs if I got a Mini that has an HDMI port I can use that instead.

Looking at youtube, some say get the 512gb ssd because you can put all your applications on an external instead. For example those satechi hub things has a slot for extra storage. I didn't know you could do that. As you know, DAWs like Logic, Live, etc installs a lot of shit in your Libraries and Documents folders, to name two. I always understood all that stuff is all part of the system and shouldn't be moved around and messed with.

Thanks for listening

 

You are going to need an external drive no matter what, imo. Even if you get a 1TB internal SSD. The SSD upgrade is too expensive to justify to me. But the RAM upgrade is important, because you really do not want 16gb RAM for audio work. 16 gb RAM is the perfect bare minimum, but you really want some overhead, like always.

You will probably want to get a Thunderbolt hub or "dock" also. You can put tons of stuff on an external using Aliases, like symlinks. You want your applications and actual .Component plugins on your system disk for fastest access speeds, but putting all the massive content that goes with them all can be on your external. Same thing with Logic Library, all other samples, Kontakt or Falcon libs, Serum presets. No problem at all.

If you get a Thunderbolt hub/dock, you can run your monitor off it, but there are also plenty of convertor cables like tb3->hdmi or dvi; and sorting out your monitor will be easy. You will also likely get a SD and other card reader, and an ethernet port in the hub too.

Maybe because I am still of the Mac Pro mindset, that I do not see these Mini or Studio machines as highly durable units. I am surprised you still have one from 2012 unscathed. So for me, myself and I, I am inclined to get a Mini "for now" to the tune of $1000 before sinking $2K into a Studio that I am no less skeptical about it lasting 10 years. It's still a mini computer compared to a 5,1 cheesegrater. They are still "new" ARM processors and each new CPU update are still improving very quickly. I do not think I will end up keeping one for long enough to justify the extra thousand bucks, only to replace it with something way faster in 2 years or what have you.

Pre-ARM Apple Silicon, I would have wanted the most powerful machine within budget, and be planning to use it for about 5-7 years. Now, not as long.

 

All my samples/libraries are on external drives spread on 2 bare hdd's in an OWC usb3 dock. That's what I'm going to still be using for now.
All the other stuff used with DAW, controllers/interface are usb2 devices.
My Mini still chugging along but I do want to upgrade Logic (I'm currently stuck at 10.4.8) Live 11, fugget about it.... takes 15,20 minutes to open a project. Logic opens normally but I have Live and want to use it and my mini's no longer cutting it for that

 

Any of the newer Ableton versions are quite a bit heavier than Logic 10.4. I think you are right to say 11 is where you really start to see the difference in performance. Logic 10.4 is fine, but the 10.5 update was a very nice update. There are also the new ARM only plugins to consider. The day before that, I didn't even really care. I'll keep my Mac Pro running as a server even if/when I buy a Mini. But I think I am going to go with a Mini, with the Pro cpu upgrade, 24gb RAM, and then just weigh the storage upgrade price $ per gb to see if it is worth it. I could live with 500gb system disk no problem. That configuration comes out to somewhere around $1000. I won't feel all that bad if I buy one and a month later they come out with another gen of processors. Not 2K bad anyway.

 

Easy...
If you plan to do video and audio go Mac Studio, Mine has 64GB Ram but I work with 6K Raw video and the RAM is a must.
If you only plan for audio the Mac Mini with 16 or 24GB Ram is it, more is overkill for 95% of people doing audio.

 

Last edited: Aug 4, 2025 at 9:38 AM

Once again, to ppl faking to NOT understand the point ...

When you load heavy projects, not on CPU, but on RAM, there is a lot of limitations on Apple choice recently.
They pushed their fast CPU silicon BUT with reduced RAM on the other side.
And their CPU do nothing on this side.

For most "non professionals" users, it is working right.
First M1 M2 M3 starting at 8GB is a joke. This is what firefox use with 20 pages open

When i told ppl years ago 16GB M1 (maximum for the regular M1) was probably not enough for orchestral or similar projects, ppl came to flood the thread with their "it is enough .... because CPU is very fast ".

I'm not really sure they think the same years after ...

Some reading (among a bunch) :
https://audiosex.pro/threads/really-bad-first-impression-on-mac-mini-m1.69310/page-2

 

Thanks guys.

What is considered enough ram nowadays for the casual home recording setup? My 2012 mini has 16gb. The less expensive Mini's have 24gb. The base Studio has 36gb.
I'm a person that, even though I most likely never need large track counts, I do like to know I have enough power available to ever hit a cpu limit.
I need to do a search for something like, 'able to run 300 instances of Omnisphere or Kontakt' lol. I know Ableton forum usually has a stress test project you can load for example. There's got to be people who posted something like running as many vsti instances with ridiculous amounts of plugins on their $800 M4 10 core 24gb Mini for example.

If I can get away with a $1200 or under Mini and never choke the cpu for the kind of stuff I do, that'd be great. But once you start going to Mini M4 Pro12-14 core, then it's getting near, as well as way above depending, the $2k price of the Studio base model

 

Another fun one :
https://audiosex.pro/threads/8gb-ram-mac-vs-16gb-ram-pc.73173/

 

Found brand new Mac Mini M2 Pro 16/512 for 640 euros, pretty much settled on that, enough for my needs, YMMV and all that, Logic and Bitwig utilize performance cores, so pretty much M2/M3 Pro got an edge over base M4 there, Pro is another story, but for the buck, more ports and all that.

 

If anyone's curious, after hemming and hawing all day long, I went and bought the Base Studio model with the 1tb SSD. However B&H Photo has a $200 instant rebate on the 1tb upgraded version so I got it at the same price as the 512gb base model price.

 

Congrats, happy unboxing.. I just got the same. Myself, I'm still looking for an external SSD that makes use of the TB5 ports, but can't really find it, or they're basically way too expensive. For storage USB3/TB 3 is sufficient, but for video work I'd like a fast external 'disk'.
Problem is, the Studio is so blazing fast, TB3 and even TB4 are way slower, so an external SSD at those speeds doesn't make sense.
I guess I should wait.

Talking about expensive: https://www.sonnetstore.com/collections/thunderbolt-docks/products/echo13-thunderbolt5-ssd-dock-4tb
Or: https://www.owc.com/solutions/thunderblade-x12
This looks nice, when it would be TB5, but it isn't: https://www.terra-master.com/global/products/homesoho-das/d4-ssd.html

 

Thanks, likewise!

I'm sure this machine is much overkill for me but I'd rather have the power there if ever needing it in future. Right now I'm going to be using the external HDD's I've been using all along for my libraries/content. I suppose I'll move to SSD's eventually. Bought some usb adapters for the usb cables I already use. I'm going to do fresh installs even though it'll be a pain.

 

base model M4 Mac Studio is way better machine (even compared to "equally-specced" Mac Mini),
if you don't "need" such specs though, I'd say very base model M4 Mac Mini (16GB/256GB) will already be a noticeable step up from your 2012 Mini in terms of speed and silence,

your primary concern should be RAM, because M4 cpu is already blazing fast (and you pay more for more cores, not higher speeds) but non-upgradeable unified RAM will be potential bottleneck in future,
storage is more a matter of convenience, if nowadays 4TB NVME4 SSD (TLC with own DRAM, that is important!) like Kingston Fury costs ~$330 there is no objective reason to pay Apple $200 for slow 0.25TB storage upgrade lol,

if money isn't a problem, then most reasonably futureproof spec would be M4 Mac Studio with 64GB RAM and 1TB SSD

 

To similar spec a M4 Pro Mini.... 14 core, 1tb ssd, 10gb ethernet, 48gb ram (Apple won't let you go to 32gb ram with Mini but forces you to jump to 48gb), the price would be $2,100. Also to consider would've been at least another $100 to add a hub for more ports. Essential for DAW users with lots of peripherals, that's $2,200 now. $200 over the what I paid for the Studio, albeit with 36gb ram rather than 48gb

If I stayed with the Mini's default 24gb, losing the 10gb ethernet I don't need, that dropped the price to $1,700. The 24gb ram bothered me though, so for *only* a 300 buck difference, I went with the Studio.
Arriving Friday

 

Last edited: Aug 6, 2025 at 7:23 PM

@mr.personality I can't say for certain, but as far as I know RAM on Mini is about 2x slower (bandwidth) and so is SSD at same capacity on paper,

fingers crossed for flawless Studio experience, latest MacOS on Apple Silicon works well, only trouble is Apple's obsesssion with security, I bet you'll be looking into Sentinel ( https://github.com/alienator88/Sentinel ) within day of fresh install

 

Guys, thank you for your suggestions. I'm also keeping an eye on this thread because I want to upgrade my computer and switch from Windows to Mac. I'm currently considering two options: either Mac Mini M4 Pro 12-core, 48GB RAM, 1TB SSD, or MacBook Pro M3 Max 14-core, 36GB RAM, 1TB SSD. These aren't final choices, but for now, they seem more realistic for me in terms of price.

 

you can always keep an eye on used Macs, I just checked local market and M1 Max Mac Studio costs only 30% price compared to M4 Max Mac Studio - not a bad deal for DAW-only rig imo

 

Thanks.

Checked out the link. Didn't quite get it's purpose though. Does it have anything to do with using software from sister site 'covertly' so to speak?
I used to use Little Snitch back when I went from a '96 Mac to a '07 Macbook and discovered cracked apps. The shock of how much computers changed from OS 8, 9 and cpu power to even a lower end macbook was enormous. However, since I got the 2012 mini, all my software has been legit.

Oddly, while the computing difference over the ten year span between the 7600 & 8600 power macs I had and the macbook was huge.... including how far software had come... the 13 years between the 2012 mini and now feels not so much. In terms of power absolutely. However in terms of software, I'm going to be using the same Logic (except updated to current version) and Live, all same plugins, all the same softsynths, amp modelers, etc, that I'm using now, except I'll be able run them all waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay faster and more of them.

 

Last edited: Aug 7, 2025 at 2:13 PM

Who are these people who do not understand the importance of RAM? It's literally the 3rd sentence in the first reply.

You aren't even a Mac user, so everyone else understands the true important thing here. It is not going to be running Windows.

No-one (sane) is using Ableton Live and Logic for Orchestral music over Cubase. Calm down, Karen.