I was in your possition in late nov/early Dec and fond a great deal on a brand new M1 Max. I paid £1995.00 from Costco for a 64Gb-2TB 14 inch MBP M1 Max. I had to pay £15 to get on liine membership but that was easy and once i had a membership number I coud buy the laptop. Check it out there might be one or 2 left.

It's been a fantastic machine and can handle big mix projets here in Cubase 13.

M

You were one of the the fortunate ones to get your hands on one of these-such great savings!

However, these are no longer in stock….I know as I have been checking several times a day for the last 2-3 weeks. I think the M3 MacBook Max will be the next best option for me. Obviously, price is much higher, but am keeping my eyes peeled for best price!!

second this! im running a mbp 2016 and it does a lot but hits its limit fast so scrolling isn't an issue that much forcing me to bounce or freeze tracks. Cant imagine having an M2,3 processor with 10x or more power ? id get frustrated fast with all that power and limited screen estate of a laptop. likely a mini with a wide screen(maybe 2) is the ticket

Like my newly aquired M2 Pro mini 32GB? It's connected to a 55" LG OLED sitting on the wall between my main speakers. The power of that mac, the sound of my Dynaudios and Topping DAC, and that beautiful screen is simply heaven.

Between an M1 Max and M3 Max I'd go with the M3 Max as it appears to be a significant improvement.

Personally, I decided to replace my 2018 MBP with a refurb 12-core M2 Pro MBP. I just don't need the extra horsepower of an M3 Max and can't justify the extra expense since I'm just doing music for fun. I thought about an M3 Pro but the M2 Pro does just as well if not better for audio and I'm happy to save a few bucks getting a refurbished M2 Pro. Any of these will absolutely smoke my 2018 MBP which is still a capable computer and will get heavy daily use as my primary work laptop.

Good luck with your decision, I'm super excited to move on with Apple silicon for music/audio production.

Thanks for the advice re. M3 Max. That’s great that you opted for the M2 pro! I think you will def. Notice the improvement coming from intel. But still your intel machine is like 3 years ahead of my 2015 MacBook Pro retina!! So you can imagine what a noticeable performance upgrade it should provide.

I am looking out for the best deal, but am trying to decide whether I will get the 36GB max or 48gb which bumps price up to an additional £450. I had hoped for 2TB SSD but am resigned to the fact that I might have to settle for the 1TB and use externals when required.

Do you use scaling for text or default 4k?
I'm thinking of getting a 42" or 48" LG (coming from a 34" ultrawide).

There are many aspects to this, but I'll try to make it short; For over a decade now, I've had my DAWwork/entertainment/everythingelse condensed into it all going thru the one same mac.

I have a fairly large living room, fairly dampened, with a big desk/bookshelf/vinylcollection in the middle, with my DAW controllers on top (also helps w/standing waves), and my sweet spot is standing in front of it when mixing, a couple of meters away from the TV and speakers.

I have two other positions, with their own sets of wireless mouse and keyboard; comfy chair about 4 meters away, and a desk under the TV, with a 32" screen, for when I need to sit close to a screen.

So, when watching a movie, browsing, or anything, I'm mostly quite far away from the main screen, the 55" TV. I have it scaled to a 1600 x 900 resolution. That makes it so I can read most text on the screen from almost any position in the room. Even from the far away kitchen corner.

This may seem overly elaborate, but I've developed it over years, and I'm very happy with it, it sounds good all over, and I have control of my mac from three/four places in the room. I can even control protools from quite far away because of the low resolution.

Here's a photo. A bit dated, with a 48" TV:



Post scriptum: I would never think of sitting close to a 55" OLED TV on a desk, I have the 32" for that.

At least in the US, you can't go from 36GB to 48GB without also upgrading from the 14 core to the 16 core Max. It's an expensive upgrade just to get that extra 12GB of memory since you're also paying for a lot of extra GPU power with the 16 core Max. Memory on Apple silicon is functionally more powerful per GB than it was on Intel Macs, even if it's not the 2 to 1 ratio that Apple claims. If you're able to get by with 16GB on your current intel MBP, you may never get close to the ceiling with 36GB on Apple silicon. On the other hand, if you're using lots of very large sample libraries it may make sense to go ahead and get the extra memory since you can't upgrade it in the future.

FWIW I also use a 43" inch monitor in 4k. Avoids the need for scaling and hence problems with software that doesn't do scaling.

Memory is memory... Don't beleive the Apple hype...

If you need to Load 30 GB for a full orchestral library it doesn't matter if it's Apple M1.2.3 memory or Crucial on a PC.

Yes the latency and speed make a difference so DDR5 will perform beter than DDR4 but don't fall into Apple's marketing nonesense .



M

@ Jake it is the same pricing and upgrading structure here in the UK also. I really appreciate your advice and think just to give me more flexibility re.Sample libraries (some of which I have held off from buying with the intel machine) 48GB is looking like a more likely option. I want to have this machine for some time to come and I know RAM cannot be upgraded later down the line. Whilst 16GB has served me for a good while, I have had to make serious compromises whilst working and it’s quite restrictive and frustrating to work with now. An upgrade is long overdue and welcomed!!