recommendation for new CPU for protools 12le

[tomoc_99]

I have real problems with my mac air, and now I find that protools12 recommends 16g of fast ram(ddr3?). Okay, well I really don't need portability, so should I get like an Imac with 32gs, or what? recommendations and warnings, please. I have suffered enough with the mac air.
Note I have to transfer my protools12 le libraries to the new computer and I might just spring for a totally new protools to avoid any bs with the latest OS.

[Darryl Ramm]

It's just "Pro Tools", there was not "LE" after Pro Tools 8 LE.

I would not recommend a Mac Air for Pro Tools use, but folks do mange to use them for some stuff. You are asking for advice, maybe going off on a tangent, what exact problems are you having now? What exact AAE or other errors and what exact model/spec Mac Air are you using? Is the computer fully optimized? What make/model drive are you recording to? How many tracks? What plugins in a session? What sample rate? At what IO buffer size?

I would hold off and wait for the major refresh that has to be coming for all Mac computers. Apple is behind in shipping systems with Thunderbolt 3 and that is an important step up in external IO performance... an area where all Apple Macs are currently weak compared to many PCs.

Otherwise advice as per usual...

Get an i7 or Xeon. Quad core or more. But the CPU needs are determined by your plugin use. You have to get a handle on what you are trying to do, and/or change your workflow to suit, e.g. mixing at large IO buffer sizes, freezing tracks etc.

Do not get a Fusion drive (unless you know what you are doing and plan to break the Fusion drive into two separate drives). Get the largest internal SSD you can. Apple uses very fast PCIe/NVMe SSDs that are way faster than external drives and you usually can't upgrade them, so order the biggest you can from Apple. Yes the stupid Apple prices are often worth it. Then try running your sessions and samples off that drive. It will work fine for most users, especially with Pro Tools 12 disk cache properly used (not set to "normal", duh stupid UI there Avid).

DRAM is cheap enough that I would tend to max out DRAM in any computer, including purchasing good third party memory later(perfectly matching all DIMMS) for an iMac or Mac Pro. The Mac Mini and MacBook Pro have some or all memory soldered on the Motherboard... always order a MacBook Pro with the maximum memory possible.

My next dream Mac would be a MacBook Pro 15" with 2TB PCIe SSD, 64 GB Memory and dual Thunderbolt 3 and full USB 3.1 Gen2 (i.e. 10Gbps). Apple is so far behind the ball currently, but lets hope...

[tomoc_99]

1.8bgh i7 intel; 4gb 1333 ddr3; This is like a mid 2011 mac air.
It runs very slow and sometimes just spins in a loop.
I am using an mbox2 mini and just recording two tracks at a time.
I was told that the 4gb is way too small for protools, which is odd because only rarely does protools hang. Everything else runs like a dying slug. So I need a new something. Imac, mac pro, evil empire machine running linux. I do my work in my man cave and do not need portability.. PS: even when I am running nothing but chrome this air dies, so there is something wrong with the air anyway.

[Darryl Ramm]

Yes, well part of this is easy, yes 4GB is too small for Pro Tools 12.

Not sure what you mean by "spins in a loop" but with only 4GB I expect you will see the beachball spinning when Pro Tools 12 is trying to run. And without some good techcnial debugging skills it can be pretty hard to know what is going on if the whole machine seems to have issues.

BTW the Chrome browser is notorious for consuming memory and CPU, all those background "helper processes" ah ain't helping. Still if you want a web browser it is far ahead of Firefox and Safari on performance, reliability and standards compliance. But it is a pig... and can easily eat several GB.

[albee1952]

iMac and Macbook Pro are great IF you get an i7 quad core and at least 8GB of RAM(more is better). On the Macbook, get the 15" screen as the 13" is too small(some plugins are liable to spill off the screen which makes editing them a PITA). Also, a 2011/2012 Mini with an i7 quad can do a good job, and 2010-2012 Mac Pro Towers are pretty affordable at the moment(but you won't get Thunderbolt)