Macbook 12" + Pro Tools 11. What performance can I expect?

[tobbenos]

Hi,

I experience lots of playback errors when using Pro Tools on a Macbook 12". I want to know what performance I can expect from the system.

Earlier, I used Pro Tools a lot for studio and stage use, with a semi-pro setup on a Macbook Pro and Digidesign interface. Now, however, life has other demands from me and more of a hobby. Still, I would love to use Pro Tools as a quick go-to tool for creating music at home. I want to use it as a companion to my piano/keyboard, so that I can use it as soft synths and with beats playback, and I want to be able to do quick recordings. Now, when hitting 'Play' with one to instances of Xpand (one for a preentered MIDI-beat, the other for live synths) and one instance of Mini Grand (for live use), the system plays back for only a few seconds before it stops reporting the standard playback error asking me to increase buffer size. However, this happens also when buffer is set to maximal size.

My current setup is a early 2016 Macbook 12-inch (1,1 GHz Intel m3, 8 GB RAM) running MacOS Sierra (10.12.5), Pro Tools 11.3.1, and Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 USB interface.

Before trying to find out more about what's slowing my system – what performance can I expect from this system?

To be honest, I have thought about converting to Logic as I somehow expect that to have an okay performance without tweaking so much. Maybe that would not solve the problem. But since this is for quick home use, I want to have a plug-and-play use – I want to be able to have other applications open (and WiFi enabled) while using Pro Tools.

Thank you in advance.