Like the Mac mini, the Mac Pro doesn't come with a display, but that doesn't stop it from being a great desktop computer and one of the best Macs for music production. The Mac Pro comes with a 3.5 gigahertz processor, and you can choose between a 6-Core and 8-Core Intel Xeon E5. Mac vs PC for music production. This is the same mini that Apple introduced in October 2018, aside from the storage update. When Apple updated it in 2018 we were pleasantly surprised by just.
- Apple Mac Mini 2018
- 2018 Mac Mini For Music Production Machine
- 2018 Mac Mini For Music Production Free
Two things came to mind as I watched Tim Cook unveil the 2018 Mac mini.
- Wow.
- Should I move back to New York?
Prior to moving to Tokyo, I worked as an electronic music designer in New York and Las Vegas, where my job involved building keyboard racks and designing sounds for keyboard players on Broadway shows. More often than not, the racks I built were powered by Mac minis running MainStage.
Why Mac mini?
Despite all the razzle-dazzle you see onstage, Broadway shows actually have very tight budgets, especially when it comes to keyboard racks for the electronic music designer. Unfortunately, professional music equipment is really expensive, so this reality often presented a 'trilemma' between low price, high reliability, and high flexibility.
Is the 2018 Mac Mini a good choice for music production? Hello all, I use Ableton daily for my work and Its time for me to upgrade from my 13 inch 2012 MacBook pro.
- The sleek, space gray Apple Mac Mini comes in a range of specifications, going from entry-level up to Actually Quite Serious, however we've again opted for what we classed as the happy medium. A shade under $1,400 gets you a solid CPU, a healthy amount of RAM and a small but quick SSD.
- I ask because I use my Mac for music production, and a noisy Mac mini would not be welcome when recording vocals. It was surprisingly quiet. I think quieter than either the 13' or 15' 2018 MacBook.
Low Price
On Broadway shows, I was usually given a $10,000 pre-tax budget to spend on a single keyboard rack with two computers for redundancy. On Off-Broadway shows, even less — maybe $7,500. Here's a rough cost breakdown of the major components, excluding the computer, in a keyboard rack.
- $1500 — MIDI keyboard controller
- $2000 — two audio interfaces
- $1200 — cables, pedals, and accessories
- $1200 — 8-channel DI box
- $500 — software
- $150 — power conditioner
- $100 — KVM switch
- $500 — computer keyboard, mouse, and display
This leaves a total of $3,350 for two computers, making a mid to high-end Mac mini the only viable option.
High Reliability
In a live performance setting, redundancy and modularity make up a system's level of reliability. High reliability is the key factor to consider when building a keyboard rack, and this is especially true for touring productions that prefer to have computers mounted in a rack case. Loading and unloading gear to travel to a new city every week while having to worry about the fragility of MacBook Pros and iMacs is a nightmare.
Upgrading RAM in the 2014 Mac mini.
Ideally, every keyboard rack should strive for redundancy and have two of everything, which automatically doubles the cost. Secondly, the keyboard rack's computers should be modular. This allows for components like the keyboard, mouse, display, and hard drive to be replaced individually. It's a lot cheaper to replace a mouse than to replace a whole MacBook Pro with a faulty trackpad. The Mac mini and Mac Pro are the only two Apple computers that satisfy the requirements for high reliability. The iMac is only semi-modular, and the current MacBook Pros completely lack modularity.
High Flexibility
Broadway shows can be very sonically diverse, and it's not uncommon to use dozens if not hundreds of different sounds in a MainStage file. High-end virtual instrument plugins like Ivory (Broadway's favorite piano sound), Omnisphere, and Session Strings require a lot of CPU and RAM, especially in a live performance setting that requires a 64 or 128 sample buffer size. If you don't know what buffer is, think of it as temporary memory where the computer can store processed data before handing it off somewhere else. In the context of live music performance, a musician presses a key on a MIDI keyboard, and the CPU generates the 'sound' and stores it in the buffer. After the buffer is full, the data is sent off for digital-to-analog conversion.
A keyboard rig running MainStage on a Mac mini.
The bigger the buffer size, the more time the CPU has between data handoffs, which equates to less processing cycles in the same amount of time. Being able to set a low buffer size isn't a huge deal for music producers and mixers, but it's crucial for live musicians who use MainStage. I'm currently running MainStage on a 2017 MacBook Pro with an RME Babyface for audio output. With a 128 sample buffer size, the latency time (the amount of time between playing the keyboard and hearing sound) is 7 ms. With a 256 sample buffer size, the latency time moves up to 14 ms, which is very noticeable and more than enough to have a negative impact on musical performance.
Prior to the 2018 Mac mini, the 15″ MacBook Pro, the iMac, and the Mac Pro were the only computers with sufficient resource configurability to satisfy the virtual instruments that are being used in modern live performance settings.
The Trilemma at Hand
In blockchain, we can't have decentralization, security, and speed. The same concept applies to keyboard racks for Broadway shows — we can't have a low price, high reliability, and high flexibility. We must choose two. For the producer, the price comes first, reliability comes second, and flexibility comes last. For me, this means the Mac mini is the only possible choice when building keyboard racks. To overcome the flexibility issue, I have to compromise on sound quality by sampling resource-heavy virtual instruments into MainStage's native and comparatively lightweight EXS24 format. If you're a photographer, this process is similar to editing a JPEG instead of a RAW file, where the potential to make heavy changes to the image has been 'sampled out'.
The 2018 Mac mini
The new Mac mini is an incredible machine, and it's a real solution to the trilemma described above. It keeps the same rack-mountable design and general price point of the previous generation while providing power users with the processor and RAM configurations they need to get work done. I suspect the 3.2 GHz 6‑core i7 with 16 GB RAM configuration will soon become a crowd favorite in the Broadway community — not only for people like me, but for sound designers, audio mixers, video designers, and lighting designers as well. Thank you, Apple. Thank you very much.
With the dawn of home-based producers, or what some people call 'bedroom producers', many aspiring composers and DJs are looking for ways to set up their own music hive.
Most of them start with laptops or desktop PCs and work their way up to upgrade from mouse and keyboard sequencing to using MIDI keyboards, mixers and so forth.
A big question that comes up amongst music producers is if you can us an iMac, which is regarded as a consumer product, for heavy audio production.
Www chrome web browser. In this article, we are going to break down the iMac's specifications and if it qualifies as a reliable computer for music production.
Are iMacs powerful enough for music production?
Generally speaking, all iMacs come with 8 gig of RAM, which should be enough for any producer to get their hands on.
The number of tracks, audio files and effects that can be produced in a song, especially if you are working with a lot of automations and you need to fully-master every bit of sound in your song, can also define how much CPU you need, and how big of a screen you need to check everything in place.
This is why some producers have already resorted to getting an iMac for their music production not just because of the big screen, but also the heavy processing power that can cater big DAWs.
Running low on hard drive space can also take its toll on your production power and make you run low on CPU, so most producers get an external hard drive that includes all audio files of their projects, or divide the hard drive into partitions.
For music production, SSD, or solid state drives, are ideal. They make your computer boot in a fraction of the time that it would normally take. It also makes your programs load faster. The only downside to SSD hard drives is that they are more expensive.
Which iMac should you go with?
Apple Mac Mini 2018
There are various iMac models to choose from that have screen sizes from 21.5 inches to 27 inches.
The Mac you choose depends on your preference(your DAW's CPU needs), budget and most importantly your working space. Apple products are usually expensive so you should take your time deciding which Mac is best suited for you.
I'd recommend getting an iMac with quad-core or higher. The entry-level iMac is dual-core with 1.4GHz of processing power. For a little bit more, you can get an iMac with twice the hard drive space and almost twice the processing power.
iMac vs. Mac Mini (for music production)
When buying a Mac, most people either go with a Mac Mini or an iMac.
What is the latest stable version of chrome. If you want to save cash, you can go for the Mac Mini. The Mac Mini just tends to be less upgradable. Then again, if you already have a previous desktop computer or even an HDTV at home or on your working space, getting a Mac Mini will save you a couple hundred bucks. Much like desktop PCs, you can upgrade their RAM as you wish depending on your production needs and how much your budget can afford.
A big question that comes up amongst music producers is if you can us an iMac, which is regarded as a consumer product, for heavy audio production.
Www chrome web browser. In this article, we are going to break down the iMac's specifications and if it qualifies as a reliable computer for music production.
Are iMacs powerful enough for music production?
Generally speaking, all iMacs come with 8 gig of RAM, which should be enough for any producer to get their hands on.
The number of tracks, audio files and effects that can be produced in a song, especially if you are working with a lot of automations and you need to fully-master every bit of sound in your song, can also define how much CPU you need, and how big of a screen you need to check everything in place.
This is why some producers have already resorted to getting an iMac for their music production not just because of the big screen, but also the heavy processing power that can cater big DAWs.
Running low on hard drive space can also take its toll on your production power and make you run low on CPU, so most producers get an external hard drive that includes all audio files of their projects, or divide the hard drive into partitions.
For music production, SSD, or solid state drives, are ideal. They make your computer boot in a fraction of the time that it would normally take. It also makes your programs load faster. The only downside to SSD hard drives is that they are more expensive.
Which iMac should you go with?
Apple Mac Mini 2018
There are various iMac models to choose from that have screen sizes from 21.5 inches to 27 inches.
The Mac you choose depends on your preference(your DAW's CPU needs), budget and most importantly your working space. Apple products are usually expensive so you should take your time deciding which Mac is best suited for you.
I'd recommend getting an iMac with quad-core or higher. The entry-level iMac is dual-core with 1.4GHz of processing power. For a little bit more, you can get an iMac with twice the hard drive space and almost twice the processing power.
iMac vs. Mac Mini (for music production)
When buying a Mac, most people either go with a Mac Mini or an iMac.
What is the latest stable version of chrome. If you want to save cash, you can go for the Mac Mini. The Mac Mini just tends to be less upgradable. Then again, if you already have a previous desktop computer or even an HDTV at home or on your working space, getting a Mac Mini will save you a couple hundred bucks. Much like desktop PCs, you can upgrade their RAM as you wish depending on your production needs and how much your budget can afford.
Despite the big cash that you'll need for the iMac, some producers would stick to their guns because they know they can't run their DAWs and audio plugins as smoothly as in a Mac Mini, but hey, it's up to the producer, right?
Not everyone uses high-quality and heavy VSTs and might be more into recording from real instruments instead. If you run a lightweight production set up, it won't be necessary spending an extra $1000+ on a more powerful Mac.
An iMac is a great choice because it provides you with great CPU power, specifications and an extremely high build quality. However, not everyone can afford an iMac and if you are a 'bedroom producer', getting might be enough to serve your purposes.
Nonetheless, both computers are excellent choices when it comes to music production. The Macs of today are more powerful than they have ever been.
Final Notes:
2018 Mac Mini For Music Production Machine
So, do you still think an iMac is nothing but a product built for average consumers?
No way!
2018 Mac Mini For Music Production Free
The entry-level iMac comes jam packed with 8GB of ram. Memory is easily upgradable on a Mac and can dramatically improve your computer's speed.
An iMac is a perfect choice for music production!
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