M2 mac advise request

[its2loud]

8GB of RAM is never going to be enough no matter what machine you choose. You should remove that choice as one of your options when comparing machines.

16GB is the bare minimum depending on what kind of work you do and none of us know what that is.

[samplaire]

Probably you missunderstood me . In 8GB I meant the difference between 24 and 16.


2 kinds of work

@ Pro Tools:

- Sound design based mainly on sfx, rarely on VI, short form (30s-5mins), stereo (max 200 tracks)
- commercials post production (several spots in one session), 150 tracks max (dialogues, voice over, sfx, ready music, ProRes Video)

@ Logic:

- instrumental music composing (well, sometimes live instruments, vocals), lots of VI mainly synths, sometimes sample based.

Both Mac Minis are almost the same price (I can live with the 100 euros more for the pro with the mentioned specs). Pro with 32 ram is additional 500 euros more meaning 600 euros in comparison to the plain M2 24GB.

This is my home setup but I work on it also for money (I work in a studio but some of the work I do at home). So I can’t say this setup earns money.

[its2loud]

If you work with video you’re going to be limited with 16GB. I would recommend the M2 Pro with 32GB RAM and 1TB storage if your budget can handle it. But at that point you’re almost to the price of the base M2 Mac Studio.

[samplaire]

As I wrote earlier my budget says No to 32GB…

I did what I should prior to asking you guys here - launched Activity Monitor with a session opened, Chrome with a bunch of tabs and… around 15 GB were in use. As my current Mac has 28GB the swap file was 0. But as you all said - 16 is occupated so easily that my most probable purchase will be the M2 24/512. So I have to wave goodbye to the 16gb utopia ;-)

[its2loud]

You’ve been sitting on the fence about this for over a month now. Fortunately for you, that has been a good thing since new Macs have been released during that time.

If buying a Mac in your country offers the same policy as in the US, you have a 14 day return window for any Mac purchased directly with Apple.

The M2 Mac Mini 24GB Ram will probably be just fine for you but if not, you have 14 days to decide if you want to swap it out for the M2 Pro.

[JFreak]

I would recommend the M2 Mini Pro simply because it has 4 thunderbolts. My M1 mini only has two and obviously both always in use.

I am not a heavy VI user, but simply working with audio these M1/16GB (mini) and M2/24 (air) are more than enough.

[samplaire]

The purchase policy allows to return in 14 days, indeed. Perhaps I’ll do it?

I work with video and this alone makes the need of almost 5GB as the avid video engine occupies such amount of ram. So 16 is really tight…

[zakco]

I upgraded from a 2012 Mac Pro 5.1 with 32gb to a new mac mini M2 Pro with 32 gb. For some processes the difference is minimal for others it's massive. Shutter encoder is one example - video conversion is BLAZING FAST! I'm super happy with the new system.

[samplaire]

I’ve ended up with a second hand Mac Studio M1, the base model + an NVMe 40gbps enclosure stuffed with a 3000/3000 ssd from Lexar ;-) 2TB with the real 2800/2800 speed is enough for my sample library and a 1TB ADATA NVMe in a 10gbps enclosure (700/700) for the pro tools projects is fair enough