Thinking about getting a Mac Mini

[drumzalicious]

Currently I have a mid 2006 MacBook Pro. It works find except it can only go up to 2gb of ram. With that being said the Mac Mini had essentially the same specs ad my laptop except it can go up to 8gb of ram which would boost my productivity a bit.

I am going to doing a lot of recording and mixing up to the full 48 tracks allowed in Pro Tools 8.

Any help or guidance would be appreciated.

I already have an audio drive. Using a OWC Mercury Elite AL Pro.

Thanks.

[EarBud]

I've also been thinking about going with a Mac Mini, and was about to post the same question. I don't know why no one replied to yours.

I have done a lot of searching within the Mac LE forum, and for some reason I can find very few instances where the Mini is even MENTIONED.

It seems like the perfect entree into the Mac platform - especially if you're on a limited budget and are just shell-shocked at all the compatibility issues raised when building a PC.

I sure would appreciate someone taking the time to let us know if the Mac Mini works okay with PT9, and if so, what level of performance could be expected.

Thanks.

[nst7]

There have been several people who've mentioned Mac Mini's as working very well. There's no reason they shouldn't. The specs in the current one are the same as my 3 year old Imac, and I can do plenty with it, and mine only goes to 4 gb of ram.

One reason they may not be mentioned as much is for a few reasons. One, it doesn't come with a display or keyboard. If people are keeping the ones from their old PC, that's fine. But a lot of people would sell their old PC's with those accessories and would need new ones. When you add the price of that, it starts to come closer to the price of the cheapest Imac. Plus you'd want to add at least 2 more gigs of ram to make it even with the Imac, which brings the price even closer. So I think a lot of people just go for that.

The other issue, which may or may not be a big deal, is that the Mac Mini comes with a 5400 rpm drive, with no option to change it. This may not be a big deal since you're running audio on your external drive, but some people may want to put sample libraries on the system drive, and that slower rpm would affect performance.

[CME]

FWIW I started on the original 1.42 Ghz PPC G4 mini. The new ones are way more capable than it ever dreamed of being. I bought it just to test the "Mac" waters. Never looked back. But yes a 2.4ghz C2D proc and 8 GB of Ram ought to be a nice little system. Pretty portable also. In fact I think the server version is pretty cool as you wouldn't need an ext hard drive. Not sure if you'd have to reinstall the base OS or if PT runs fine on the server version. Anywho I think you'd be fine with it. And yes the extra ram will definitely help. In all my systems I've seen in increase in performance when I upped the ram to 4GB or more. :)

[CME]

Originally Posted by EarBud

I sure would appreciate someone taking the time to let us know if the Mac Mini works okay with PT9, and if so, what level of performance could be expected.

Thanks.

While I don't own one and won't comment on it working for sure, I really think it will. It should be on par with my MacBook Pro and it's a great machine. I run sessions with 20-30 audio tracks, multiple plugs in each track, at least one instance of Strike, and a couple of Xpands or Hybrid without breaking a sweat.

However I will add if you are running VI heavy sessions, esp 3rd party VIs, you might be better looking at something with more cores. Would be nice if they'd up the mini to include a quad i7. It might replace my MBP. Okay it probably would.

[EarBud]

This is all welcome information.

I guess the 5400 rpm drive speed is the only issue. Will the OS run okay at 5400?

Also, is anyone using PT9 on the Mini?

Thanks.

[CME]

Originally Posted by EarBud

This is all welcome information.

I guess the 5400 rpm drive speed is the only issue. Will the OS run okay at 5400?

Also, is anyone using PT9 on the Mini?

Thanks.

Yeah the system will run fine on a 5400 rpm drive. You might need another ext drive for samples if you use a lot of vi's. But I haven't had an issues running strike off my 5400 rpm drive. Also don't buy extra ram from apple. Check somewhere like owc or crucial. It will save you a lot of money and I believe is extremely easy to install on the new minis.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[sonicland]

I'm still on PT8.04 but I did just get a Mini. I had a Dual 2.5Ghz G5 with a UAD-1 card and had nothing but trouble with it for years. Literally could only run a few tracks at low latency before getting the dreaded "increase buffer size" message. I think that Mac was a lemon and it was time to move on, of course I had to forego the UAD-1 card (got $110 for it). I have an Mbox 2.

I found a demo 2.66Ghz Core2 Duo Mini with 4GB of ram and a 500GB drive (5400rpm) for $625. I had to spend as little as possible and since I have a monitor and external 1TB hard drive, this was the cheapest way to go.

I've had it about 6 weeks and it's been great. A typical session for me is recording a scratch track of my acoustic and vocals, then doing a keeper lead vocal track, then recording the keeper acoustic pass with 2 mics on 2 tracks, then I'll add a reverb and maybe some compression, maybe a couple harmony tracks. I can do all of that on the lowest latency setting without getting into any trouble, maybe 25-26% CPU usage, something that wasn't even remotely possible with my old Mac.

I also do a lot of songs using Strike with a number of guitar and bass plugins (Amplitube and GuitarRig are my faves) and memory and processing power get eaten up more quickly but I'm still able to work well as 512 latency is usually fine for me when recording (I don't have to do that often at all).

I looked at one song I'm working on that has the following

7 audio tracks
1 click track
D-Verb and Air Verb running
2 instances of Eleven Free
1 instance of Amplitube SVX Uno
1 EQ and 1 compressor

Buffer size at 64 and I'm hitting about 37% CPU usage (I think 20% or more of that is the guitar plugins), if I go to 512 buffer size it drops to about 28%. I hope that may tell you something about what you could expect but I'm thrilled that I'm finally able to get some serious work done without the computer getting in the way.

The only drawback to this particular Mini is that both memory slots are filled with 2GB chips so the only way I can upgrade is to remove those and get 2 4GB chips at a cost of about $200, maybe a little less if I can sell the ones I take out. I'd love to know what improvement I'd see with 8GB instead of 4, that would help me decide if it's worth it.

PT9 doesn't really have much I need so I'll wait for that but I do need the new version of Strike and GuitarRig. Living paycheck to paycheck so money is tight.

Hope some of this helps, FWIW I've been thrilled with the Mini, it's been working great.

[sonicland]

Originally Posted by CME

In fact I think the server version is pretty cool as you wouldn't need an ext hard drive. Not sure if you'd have to reinstall the base OS or if PT runs fine on the server version.

Be careful, I'm pretty sure I read on this forum that the Mini server version will only run Snow Leopard server, not the regular OSX 10.6 and I'm also pretty sure PT won't run on SL server. Also, yes you wouldn't need an ext hard drive but you would need an ext superdrive as the Mini server doesn't come with any cd/dvd drive at all (that's where they put the 2nd hard drive). I did a brief look into the Mini Server model and quickly came to the conclusion that it wouldn't work well or easily for regular ProTools use.

[lordtom]

Folks, I have a 2.53 core 2 duo server running the latest SL server along with Ptle 8 mbox mini, Logic 9 and Studio one. this little bi**h is amazing. It has 2 500 gig hd and 4 gig ram. I bought an external mac optical drive which connects via usb. this is all connected to a 47in Samsung LCD screen...

Picked it up used for 500.00 bucks and used as a second system to my mac pro.

Great machine