best apple computer for home recording studio

While most major interface companies, DAWs, processor plug-ins, and virtual instruments have rolled out support for Apple silicon, our advice is always checking your go-tos to see if they support these chips. Apple silicon requires either native programming support or to be confirmed to be bug free while running in Rosetta 2. With your interface, DAW, and a collection of favorite plug-ins you will want to ensure compatibility before you upgrade. One note of which many audio professionals are likely already aware is software and hardware compatibility. Sample libraries will load noticeably quicker and loading times for these types of plug-ins should be a thing of the past.Īll these changes together allow the new M1 chips to provide a real, noticeable improvement over older laptops. Both will make loading up files and playback an instantaneous process, an important consideration if your go-to samplers have dense sample libraries. The other parts of the equation are faster (and more) memory and an ultra-fast SSD. While I wouldn’t say to stay clear of it, the bump up is worth it. The base 14' comes with a different take on the CPU with only 8 total core (6 performance and 2 efficiency). Projects with a ton of tracks and effects will not be sluggish if they are even sluggish at all anymore. With properly optimized software, you will notice the change. That’s double the performance cores of the original M1, which can help you run more instances of plug-ins or virtual instruments before the need to freeze tracks. The M1 Pro and M1 Max share the same CPU with 10 cores (8 performance and 2 efficiency).

For processor-intensive apps, like your favorite DAW, soft-synths, and third-party processing plug-ins, there are some solid improvements. The first pro chips for Mac are making a name for themselves with the M1 Pro and M1 Max, although a great deal of the flashiest stuff is for video and graphics work.

For audio work that is mostly processor intensive, you won’t see any benefit from moving up to the Max-unless you want to max out on memory. You do, at least, want the full-fledged CPU, so if you are going M1 Pro make sure you get the 10-core version. Both the Pro and Max have a 10-core processor with eight performance cores and two efficiency cores. One thing to know about the newest M1 chips is that they share the same CPU.

Best apple computer for home recording studio