M1 macs

[mark7]

M1Pro with 32 gigs of ram or M1max with 16 gigs of ram? Mixing and Mastering only


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[Ben Jenssen]

Originally Posted by mark7

M1Pro with 32 gigs of ram or M1max with 16 gigs of ram?


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Depends on the type of load you intend to put on it.

Large sessions? Lots of VIs? Video? Loads of samples?
More info and I'm shure you'll get some sound advice.

[Darryl Ramm]

16 gig of RAM I'd consider a minimum for a Pro Tools machine.

You want this to last several years as software gets more bloated.. then definitely get 32 (or 64GB). You have no option to upgrade memory in future.

[Ben Jenssen]

For me, 16 on my M1 is plenty. w/PT I mostly mix smallish sessions with few Vis, no video, and I never see swapped memory, Activity Monitor always in the green. I also use Adobe Lightroom Classic with quite a large library, and it uses half of the 16 at most. If I run a semi-busy session in PT while having Lightroom catalogue open, I might get into the orange in ActMon memory, but I don't see any effect on performance. (I'll be running internet browser and small apps also.)

[Ben Jenssen]

I had 32GB on my i7 2018 Mini thru the last year and a half, and I never saw ActMon get into anything but the lower greens. Using a few GBs of disk cache in PT, I always felt like it was a waste. If you have more memory than you need, it's a waste of money, I always thought. 128GB of ram doesn't mean a thing if you don't use it.

Of, course, Darryl is right to point out that the M1s' memory is not upgradable so you'll have to consider that. But the question on pro32 vs max16 is a question of what is most important to you and your purchase; memory requirements vs CPU/GPU requirements.