Seems like Dante is not working under Rosetta2 !

So pity they were not able to rewrite their app till the first developper kit were proposed by Apple :/

Any dev to confirm it is a real big work to do ?

Also can someone with the M1 run some plugins with some large libraries like pianos and orchestra stuff? I wanna know if 8GB would be enough.
(I mostly use Logic and NI Komplete orchestral stuff)

If so I might get the Air base model (8GB RAM, 256GB Storage) and maybe 2 years later get the Mac Mini Pro with more RAM, Storage etc.

I think it depends which libraries you use, some are like 5-10gb but only load up about 500mb of data in use. Personally I get along fine with 8gb and I use kontakt a lot but if I were buying a new computer, 8gb would be an absolute no go for me, especially since you can't add more in these products.

I'm very curious about getting some later iterations if only for the lower thermals and noise but if they're low on ram then they will not get my business, they really need to offer more storage if they want to offer a competitive product.

Yes seems odd, in this video of an M1 MINI you can see 7 cores on the go.

The dude has a track armed, which I think reserves the last core? Or perhaps I have it wrong, either way 7 cores fired up here.

The results in this video of the New Logic Benchmark Test seem reasonable and roughly expected compared to the i9 iMac, but Alchemy and Diva are way off.

I have more questions than answers at the moment...

One core is always reserved for the "live" track.

By now I'm pretty sure that the OP hasn't set the "Performance Threads" to 8 in the audio preferences dialog.
Would like to see a new test with that set accordingly.

It looks like a track is record armed in the screenshot, I wonder if this affects anything? I haven't used Logic in a while so don't recall what the deal is with record arming audio or VI tracks, just that the buffer is affected due to track states.

Difference between real-world applications and benchmarks?

Benchmarking is very hard.

No, my understanding is that a pair of 1 high performance and 1 efficiency core are always coupled for the OS kernel scheduler to shuffle loads back and forth depending on what that load does. This is very visible to userland.

So there are 4 cores visible to userland, and whether it is backed by a high-performance core or not is a matter internal to the OS.

Everything else would be very hard to implement.

Curious to see some real world tests and news on plugin compatibility.

Yes, a record armed track will put that track into live (low latency) mode and also reserve one thread for it. Which is also why you usually select a "no output" or record disabled audio track in case you want to squeeze out the last ounce of juice. That way, the core can be used for playback tracks as well (at least most of it - apparently a certain amount is still reserved for whatever it might be).

As far as the activity monitor's CPU meter goes, I don't think it's lining up the CPUs properly - maybe Apple hasn't worked on that yet.

However, the video you've posted clearly shows there's nothing fundamentally wrong with Logic, possibly with the exception of Alchemy (Diva might not even be fully supported yet, hence running in Rosetta mode). And as far as Alchemy goes, who knows, it might be because the Camel Audio folks are still maintaining it - so maybe they're just late or something (whereas Scuplture is a genuine Logic synth).
Would like to see a variety of different tests, though. I was about to prepare a singlethread test - but that was using Alchemy. So I rather modify it and use Sculpture, too.

As said before, usually the plain CPU benchmarks transfer quite well to Logic benchmarks.
And well, by now I'm quite sure I know why the test was that "bad" - "Performance Threads" in Logic needs to be set to 8.

No, there's 8 cores visible. In Logic as well. Check the video Chevron posted.

Yeh that is my recollection too, select an unarmed audio track when running the test.

What you say makes a lot of sense, perhaps Alchemy, Diva, and other Logic and 3rd party plugins are running under Rosetta 2.

I am debating getting either an M1 MBA or MBP to investigate myself, only as a 2nd machine and not a primary studio machine... Id like to see a few more promising tests first though.

The video and graphics guys are all over this on YouTube, but as usual us audio types are outnumbered.

Well, here's to hoping that some more Logic testing shows a bigger leap with the M1 and track count.

Maybe this "New Logic Pro Benchmark test" needs a tweak to better compare M1 vs Intel... or maybe this first example we're seeing need some settings adjustment.

60 Tracks for the M1 MacBook Air IS pretty good... but after all the other BenchMark results we've been seeing.. I did expect something even higher.

I think it's clear native apps are going to fly and Rosetta translated executables will see a 30ish% hit. So depending on your workflow (lots of 3rd party plus and synths) vs Logic as a tracker/mixing with Logic plugins.) the user experience is going to be very different - or somewhere in the middle if you do a bit of both with an improving situation as Arm installs become available.

Thanks. Might be time to get one for myself just to get first-hand information.

Check the video Chevron posted. 109 tracks for the M1 Mini.

As said, I'm getting 89 from my 2x2.66 cheesegrater - and as I'm not doing any kind of big orchestral arrangements, that kind of performance will likely suit me well for the rest of my life, so, an M1 MBP being at least on par is absolutely great news.
And I'm sure it'll turn into even better news once some singlethread tests are conducted - because that's where the cheesgrater falls significantly short these days, and my plans are being able to completely work at 32 samples buffersize one day. And given the current standard benchmarks, any M1 Mac should simply destroy my cheesegrater left and right in that area.

Seems like maybe the new MBA is restricted to 4 cores on purpose because of passive cooling, whereas the Mac Mini is not restricted?

No. None of the other benchmarks suggests that. As said, by now I'd take a bet it's about Logic's audio preferences not set accordingly.

I would like to know if everything in terms of Logic's stock plugins that run in the latest version are native to Apple Silicon, or are some things under emulation.

I am guessing that Diva is also running under emulation, but I am only guessing...

****** Measurement errors again in this post!!!!
A bunch of off screen tracks at the top were accidentally muted. REAL number of tracks on the M1 is ~90 NOT 128. Also (just to make everything more confusing - the 8 Core iMac i7 is really ~120 tracks .... I am deleting the wrong measurements that were here....

OMG !!!!

OK - I see what everyone is talking about! I watched the video of the MacMini M1 with 8 cores in Logic and so I searched preferences. In "Audio" Processing threads I just left it at Automatic. Looking at the dropdown I found you can tell it to use all 8 cores!!!!

Starting to feel a bit silly spending so much on my 16" earlier this year

Apple really seem to have knocked it out of the park with these chips. Imagine how powerful the 16" will be when it arrives? And I'm sure it'll be really quiet.

The single core speed will be amazing for low latency work.

That's the stuff

The tested M1 mini is the base model 8 GB machine. Alchemy uses quite a bit of RAM, 100 plus instances would more than fill up even the 16 GB model. It wouldn't surprise me if this was the bottleneck here.

It is. The guy confirmed it in the comments.

Can you do an Alchemy test too?

I got a Mini this year and it's doing the job but these new ones are hard to ignore. If they announce a higher spec Mini in the same form factor I might just have to get one of the rack cases that holds 2 and run them both! Or maybe the rumored smaller Mac Pro gets announced, then I'll be in trouble.

Looks like you got more instances at lower buffers as in the M1 test at 1048 with 109 tracks.

Cool thanks, and Alchemy? The figures suggest so

Now we are talking, that is what I was expecting and amazing score for a fanless super cool (in more ways than one) laptop.