I grabbed a base m2 air for couch surfing but I haven't had a chance to stress test it yet. I installed Cubase 12 the other day so maybe I'll get around to it in the next few days.

My main music machine is a M1 Mini 16/1TB and i'm barely taxing it on a day to day basis. I also have a 14" M1 Pro MBP 16/512GB that I use for web dev and stuff. It's such a smooth machine that I'm thinking of grabbing a 32/4TB MBP to use as my all in one machine. I might as well hold out for the M2 or whatever model is on the horizon.

D

Working on getting my M2 Air up and running. My current machine is a 9900K Windows desktop, so it's a little more complicated than an upgrade. I'm trying to set it up so that I can work on either machine, and I'm also avoiding Rosetta - which restricts me to VSTs that work Native on Mac.

Native Instruments has stated that, though they work on M1, there are problems on M2. Most of NI isn't ported to Native yet. However, Kontakt is - and in early testing, I've seen no issue on M2. FWIW, the Air has 16 Gb RAM, and 1TB mass storage.

Haha yes, when I've been burned by Apple products (my bendy iPhone 6 where SMD components pulled from the mainboard, the notorious MBP butterfly keyboards) it is so disappointing.

As the M2s are put in the newer MBP design there will be more space in the case and (presumably) active cooling, I think they will be able to avoid the throttling that is happening on the M2s we have now, not to mention they should have the extra cores of the Pro/Max configurations we saw on the respective M1 versions. Of course we won't know for sure until they arrive.

Finally got to the point where I could compare my 9700K Win 10 (tuned well, not overclocked) against my new Air M2 (16 Gb, 1 Tb). And, it's rather impressive.

Running Studio One. Test session was audio tracks only (no virtual instruments). Bunch of bussing, and 5 FX tracks. Interface is Presonus Quantum, and tests were at 256 sample latency. Studio One dropout protection off. All Mac plugins were Apple native - no Rosetta involved.

Starting with the Mac, I loaded it up to the point of crackling, removed one plug. That's my "no throttle" max.

I then set it up to loop until the Air hit max temp, then removed plugins until it stopped crackling. That's my "throttle" max. To get there, I removed 4 Waves Abbey Road plates.

Next, I moved the "throttle" project to the PC. It crackled. I had to remove two additional Abbey Road plates to eliminate the crackle.

In this test at least, I'm going to call it roughly the same. And this is way more plugins than I normally would use. Which is fantastic - I'll be able to move between the two systems, knowing that whatever I do on one will run on the other. For my normal projects, it appears that they run at a 16 sample latency just fine on the Mac.

FYI, I used a freeware Mac plugin called Hot by XS-Labs, which shows the Mac temperatures and thermal pressure. It looks like the Air wants to keep the temperature below 70 deg C. It also looks like the passive cooling system works well - once you remove the processing load (which I did by hitting the master plugin disable), the temperature drops really fast. BTW, if you're grabbing Hot, get it from the developer's Github. The download version that comes up through search is old and doesn't properly support the Air.

As always with computers and audio, YMMV.

I'll probably update at M4, Using M1 MBP now and it's meeting all my needs.

"The M2, which runs at 3.49GHz compared to 3.2GHz for the ‌M1‌, earned a single-core score of 1919, which is roughly 12 percent faster than the 1707 single-core score of the ‌M1‌ MacBook Air. The M2 earned a multi-core score of 8928, up about 20 percent from the 7419 score of the ‌M1‌ model".

The choice is pretty clear:

that’s not a fair comparison but ok

What's not fair about the specs?

you should compare the m1 ultra to the 13900k… not the base m2 which is probably more like the lower tier 13xxx… 13900 still beats every apple sillicon in terms of benchmarks. it’s not the whole story tho so if you like to look at things narrowly like that go ahead lol

I had an M2 Air and while it was a great computer, I sold it because I got tired of trying to get used to a smaller screen. I also feel the M1 Pro 14” is too small. I’m back on my 15” Intel 2015 for the time being. 15” is the perfect laptop size and I don’t know why Apple decided discontinue it in favor of 14” and 16”. One feels too small and the other feels too big.

I’m thinking about holding out for the new 15” Air.

That was the fastest M2 CPU listed at www.cpubenchmark.net.

The following quote:

"The M2, which runs at 3.49GHz compared to 3.2GHz for the ‌M1‌, earned a single-core score of 1919, which is roughly 12 percent faster than the 1707 single-core score of the ‌M1‌ MacBook Air. The M2 earned a multi-core score of 8928, up about 20 percent from the 7419 score of the ‌M1‌ model".

Is from https://www.macrumors.com/guide/m2/ and dated Dec 1 2022.

I'm looking to buy a new studio system and based on the research I've done, like I said before the choice is clear. I looked into buying a Mac and decided against it based on the price/performance ratio and I wouldn't buy one just to be one of the "cool kids". I also have no use for toy laptops.

But hey if you want to keep buying into Apple's hype then go ahead lol.

If you want to buy a system that can't be upgraded then go ahead lol.

If you want to worry about Apple breaking your plugins every time they change a line of code in their OS then go ahead lol.

If you want to spend your time begging developers to release M1 or M2 or M3 or whatever hype comes next versions of their plugins then go ahead lol.

For example....from Overloud "We are excited to let you know that Overloud plug-ins are officially macOS 13 Ventura compatible*!

*Ventura compatibility cannot be guaranteed for discontinued products".

The very first VSTi plugin I ever bought in 2001-ish that ran on Win XP (and possibly Win 98) still works on Win 10 today.

So like I said the choice is crystal clear to me.

Windows definitely has its advantages (I am on both PC and Mac OS platforms), but it's not all strawberries, cream & sugar. I have both HW that was never brought forward past Windows 98, and cherished plugins or libraries that won't run past Windows XP. While all instances I can think of are likely developers "at fault," I think it's mistaken if you're implying that newer Windows machines / OS can run anything. (which you don't state...but it's leaning in that direction)

At the moment, I'd be happy just to find a way to get my 'Downloads' folder to appear again!

You’re comparing a Macbook air to a PC Tower.... This is my last reply to u

The 16" model, due to its very narrow bezels, has the physical format of the former 15" model.

The new 15" will be more like a traditional 14" dimensions-wise.