Do I need more unified memory or more cores?

[Mixologist]

I am about to buy myself a new M2 Macbook Pro and would like to optimize my system for Protools and Ableton. I've searched the forums but surprisingly can't find an answer to my query.
If I want to use lots of plugins and virtual instruments, should I increase my unified memory or upgrade my processor? Which will help the most with latency? And which will maximize my track count? I'm sure the more cores and the more memory the better, but I don't have an unlimited budget.
Thanks in advance for your help.

[Darryl Ramm]

Hi

Welcome to DUC.

Nobody here can answer your question with any useful confidence, what you need varies dramatically based on your workflow/session size/exactly what you are doing. And nobody here has any idea what you are doing/wanting to do.

If you are using a lot of sample based VIs then memory can be especially critical.

If you are running just a lot of plugins (which might include VIs as well) you may need a lot of cores, but a lot of cores won't help much in cases where you are running few plugins, or have long chains of plugins that run together on few cores for efficiency (cache locality) reasons.

And neither *directly* affects latency, latency is directly controlled by the size of the HW buffer you are using, the ability to run at smaller HW buffer sizes is dependent on lots of stuff, especially your workflow (e.g. freezing/committing tracks to reduce load, etc.), plugin quality, how you are using plugins, how well optimized the system is, and yes how much CPU power you have and if there is sufficient memory. But again there is no simple way to guess what you need.

Nobody here has any idea if you are composing orchestral music or scoring movies or just recording and mixing a few piece band. The best place to start with what you should be looking at as a minimum is based on your current system/use experience. Is that working OK? How much more capacity do you need? Especially how much memory is on that system is a good starting place, make it larger on the Mac and enough to last for several years, and you have no idea what new software will need, and on a Mac it's not upgradable, and you only have 16GB, 32Gb, 64GB, and 96GB steps. Personally I'd be at 64GB or more minimum, but that's me (lots of memory needs for software development etc.). Then what CPU cores does that give you... likely a lot, and they are not slow. And then you have storage, you can't get any faster or easier to use storage than the (expensive) internal SSD and that's not upgradable either, so get your wallet our and max out what you can afford there.

And realistically if you are after power you'll be picking a 10 or 12 core CPU options... so you don't have many dimensions to play with here and your decisions are very likely to be budget driven. (Unless you want to spend more than $6k on a laptop).

And with the new M2 MBP be aware of Apple skimping with the SSD NAND chip configs at the low-storage capacity configs. They are NAND fanout/bandwidth constrained in low end configs, you need to add more SSD storage to get multiple NAND chips on the motherboard to give better I/O performance. Lots of folks out there reporting on this.

[StefB]

What Daryll said...
Besides latency:
You will need 32Gb of memory (16Gb is a push but do-able but you should not go lower than that) get that first and add cores if you have any money left.

[JFreak]

In audio work, single-core performance is still king. Video work benefits from good multi-core performance much more, AND from the better GPU that comes with more cores.

So, simple as that, for audio work buy as much memory you think of needing in three years and settle for the cpu/gpu that comes with it. Even internal storage, for me, is more important than number of cores.

[Ben Jenssen]

Originally Posted by JFreak

In audio work, single-core performance is still king.

Yes. We've always been told that. For audio processing - it's better with fewer faster cores than more, slower cores.

@OP: Think of it this way; the task of converting a video to a different format; the calculation can be spread out on many cores, the results from each core is assembled in the end and you have the result. The more cores, the quicker the result. You can't do that with the calculations done in realtime in a DAW, because the results need to be on time, all the time. So you don't have the luxury of spreading it out over lots of cores.

I know this is an oversimplification, and I'm not a programmer just a humble user.

If you check out the single core performance of M1/M2 on geekbench you'll notice the relatively small difference the two and their variants. Multicore on the other hand, big differences.

Memory; as others have indicated, try to get a feel for how much you're using now, with big sessions; you might use Activity Monitor to see if there is swapping taking place, if not, you are within the limits of your size of RAM. And consider if your demand for memory size will increase in the years to come, remember in the new macs, the ram is soldered in and is not upgradable.

[Becharax]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Hi
Can you elaborate a little more on this ?

And with the new M2 MBP be aware of Apple skimping with the SSD NAND chip configs at the low-storage capacity configs. They are NAND fanout/bandwidth constrained in low end configs, you need to add more SSD storage to get multiple NAND chips on the motherboard to give better I/O performance. Lots of folks out there reporting on this.

Welcome to DUC.

Nobody here can answer your question with any useful confidence, what you need varies dramatically based on your workflow/session size/exactly what you are doing. And nobody here has any idea what you are doing/wanting to do.

If you are using a lot of sample based VIs then memory can be especially critical.

If you are running just a lot of plugins (which might include VIs as well) you may need a lot of cores, but a lot of cores won't help much in cases where you are running few plugins, or have long chains of plugins that run together on few cores for efficiency (cache locality) reasons.

And neither *directly* affects latency, latency is directly controlled by the size of the HW buffer you are using, the ability to run at smaller HW buffer sizes is dependent on lots of stuff, especially your workflow (e.g. freezing/committing tracks to reduce load, etc.), plugin quality, how you are using plugins, how well optimized the system is, and yes how much CPU power you have and if there is sufficient memory. But again there is no simple way to guess what you need.

Nobody here has any idea if you are composing orchestral music or scoring movies or just recording and mixing a few piece band. The best place to start with what you should be looking at as a minimum is based on your current system/use experience. Is that working OK? How much more capacity do you need? Especially how much memory is on that system is a good starting place, make it larger on the Mac and enough to last for several years, and you have no idea what new software will need, and on a Mac it's not upgradable, and you only have 16GB, 32Gb, 64GB, and 96GB steps. Personally I'd be at 64GB or more minimum, but that's me (lots of memory needs for software development etc.). Then what CPU cores does that give you... likely a lot, and they are not slow. And then you have storage, you can't get any faster or easier to use storage than the (expensive) internal SSD and that's not upgradable either, so get your wallet our and max out what you can afford there.

And realistically if you are after power you'll be picking a 10 or 12 core CPU options... so you don't have many dimensions to play with here and your decisions are very likely to be budget driven. (Unless you want to spend more than $6k on a laptop).

And with the new M2 MBP be aware of Apple skimping with the SSD NAND chip configs at the low-storage capacity configs. They are NAND fanout/bandwidth constrained in low end configs, you need to add more SSD storage to get multiple NAND chips on the motherboard to give better I/O performance. Lots of folks out there reporting on this.

[Darryl Ramm]

The SSD controllers are onboard the Apple Silicon processors, but the actual NAND storage chips are external to that, soldered onto the motherboard. In a minimal memory config you get one NAND chip out of 4 possible ones (ed: *per controller* on most? motherboards). As you increase the memory config you get multiple NAND chips effectively accessed in parallel and performance increases significantly. This is the so called fan-out of controllers being able to access more NAND storage in parallel. And is the same reason that historically many of the smallest configuration M.2 drives have had lower performance than the larger versions of the same model drive.

Annoyingly Apple has managed to significantly reduce storage performance on the base storage configs of current M2 Mac Book Pro and M2 Mac Mini compared to their immediate predecessors. These used multiple NAND chips with just less storage capacity in each chip. To save a little money Apple has reduced the NAND chip count and increased the size of that single NAND chip. Now this is still fast NVMe storage, especially compared to any old HDD, but it's still a super annoying thing Apple has done. But just solve it by avoid any of the smallest storage configs. 256GB (and 512GB?)... 2TB and above I know you are fine (the smallest I'd buy).

There are many reviews and writeup out there that get into more detail about this. Here is one: https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/24/2...nch-nand-chips or for a breathless video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1XWHFkHgp8 (the argument presented there that you need fast SSD for unified memory paging does not apply to Pro Tools use... you want enough RAM that you are not paging out to the SSD, near real time apps like Pro Tools does not do well with that... but I'd argue fast disk is always good, fast startup, fast OS installs, fast Pro Tools startup, fast VI sample loads, etc.). And with only relatively slow Thunderbolt 3 connections I just find it very annoying that Apple has crippled the much faster internal SSDs in the base configs.

[JFreak]

In short: never buy any Apple with smallest storage option.

[Mixologist]

Thanks everyone for your replies, you are all a lot more into weeds on this stuff than me.

My current system works well and only chokes up on sessions with a lot of sample-based VIs or track counts over 100. Here's what I'm running now:
MacBook Pro 15" - 2017
2.9 GHz Intel i7
16G RAM 2133MHz
512GB SSD
Mojave 10.14.6
The computer gets hot and the fans are blowing hard!

In Pro Tools, which I use primarily for mixing (not music production), the system chokes up with high track counts, especially mixing a 30 minute+ show, or power hungry plugs like real-time RX10 (I tend to clean my audio offline). I use a lot of Izotope plugs which seem to run efficiently, except for the new Ozone 10 which is a hog!

I run Ableton for music, and run some VI synths which seem fine (Omnisphere, Massive, etc), though a lot of instances does bog down the system. I have a large Kontact library and some of those instruments barely run - I'm looking at you Modern Scoring Strings! And while Ableton runs far better than Pro Tools with the same number of VIs, it gets choked up unless I freeze tracks, which is a pain. Also, I often insert plugs such as compressors or reverbs on a track after the VI. Plugs on the mix bus really hit the system hard!

I'm looking at these two MacBook Pros, either 14: or 16":
M2pro
12-Core CPU
19-Core GPU
16GB Unified Memory
1TB SSD Storage
16-core Neural Engine

M2max
12-Core CPU
30-Core GPU
32GB Unified Memory
1TB SSD Storage
16-core Neural Engine

I'm also considering the 2TB SSD so I can store all my sample libraries on the internal drive instead of the external SSD where they live now. An alternate to this is to get a 1TB SDXC and keep them all there. Would there be any issues with that?

Obviously the better machine is better! That's not my question. What I'm asking is, whichever of these options I choose, would it be better to spend more $ to bump up the memory? Or bump up the processor? And will the 2TB SSD perform better than a 1TB? And will my sample libraries perform well if I store them on a fast SDXC card?

Thanks again.

[BScout]

The 512GB are reportedly 2 x 256GB. This was reported in some tear down.