Benchmark Dom Sigalas official Cubase benchmark.

So I just benchmarked the M4 Max (14 core) against my i7 10th gen (6 core) Windows laptop and my Windows 11 13900K (24 core)

And WOW the M4 Max is very, very impressive.

My Windows laptop managed 35 instances (sounds like a leaf blower!)

My Windows 13900K manage a mighty 205 tracks! .... but the water cooling system became noticeably noisy.

The M4 Max managed 175 tracks! totally SILENTLY!

Which is an incredible feat of engineering for a laptop - I take my hat off to Apple ..... truly amazing imho.

Posts like this make me wonder.
How many tracks do we need to make a song
Have we gotten lazy or just love track numbers?

Meh. I mean, great. It's really useful.

On the other hand, if we consider that Apple has complete control over the entire computer design from CPU to mobo to RAM hookup to i/o, and then add a couple of years since the 13900K is older, and then add full control over the OS, then I think the performance is pretty much where it should be.

Exactly, both my 13900K and M4 Max have way more multi core performance than I need to make a song.

Where they fall over for me is their single core performance which in real terms has made only a relatively small improvement in the last 10 years - roughly 2.5 x improvement.

We’re getting slightly fooled by the huge core count.

It’s giving us amazing width (way more width than we need) but little extra height.

I mean there’s no way I’d buy an M4 Studio Ultra (2x M4 Max CPU’s) that would give 350 Cubase benchmarked track instances (Dom Sigalas) but the same single core performance.

It’ll be a machine for film makers for sure or perhaps mocking up an 80 piece symphony - but a stereo song - totally ott imho.

Fun trying out Logic again after a 20 year absence in my writing rig.

I do love Logic/ Garage Band for song sketching - those Apple Loops and Logic instruments make for a fun inspiring sketch pad.

Cubase Pro 14 is in my studio space and it’s fabulous for recording editing and mixing.

For quick fire writing and song sketching I’m less of a fan of Cubase and I think Logic/ GB is just quicker and more fun for me.

Nice to have both on hand again.

i own both a m4 max and an i9 13900 and its not even a fair comparison tbh

i dont know whats comprised of doms benchmark but mine will bring any computer to its knees...
a few weeks ago i was working with a youtuber James Zahn and we both were rather surprised how powerful this thing really is. the first test we tried was ozone 11, well I blew that test out the water having 500 active with ever module on and wasnt even at 50% cpu.

most of us have fabfilter plugins, specifically Pro L2 but set to x32 oversampling and you'll usually see quite a few computers crumble.

in both logic pro 11 and nuendo 13 i was able to get insane numbers vs my i9 machine.
the i9 was able to load 45-47 instances before crackles and pops started then just dropouts soon as 1 more was loaded. thats not bad at all at 32x oversampling granted(256 buffer, antelope galaxy32)
my m4max didn't dropout in nuendo 13 until 506!!! logic got 517! playing back without dropouts or cpu overloads, thats insane from a laptop and that has nothing to do with the insane gpu which im learning davinci and final cut to take advantage of it however a lot of the stuff i deal with from netflix and another huge studio happen to use media composer a bit more, anywho that has nothing to do with this at hand.

a full mix that was kicking the i9's ass a bit was at 85-88% cpu usage and i tend to print mixes rather than offline bounce b/c i mix hybrid so i need them to playback without pops and clicks and somethings i just noticed the bounce altering the mix at times. well the same mix on the m4max isnt even at 50%, the fans didn't even come on

i've never been a mac guy b/c my background is a mcse/ccnp. i now have a macpro and this m4max and i don't even touch my pc's at the moment.. plus having an ipad, iphone, apple watch it just made sense to go the mac route but i'm more than impressed and truly impressed with logic 11.1.1 too and i've been a master of steinberg apps since 1998/99

if you can load any plugin with 32x or higher oversampling and get over 100 instances thats impressive imo if its a cpu intensive plugin, 500+ is just uncalled for lol.
much more dsp power than my old accel hd4 system that costed 10x more than a $4400 laptop. i don't plan to upgrade at this point until a m6.. wont even consider the m5 whenever it comes lol

The Dom Sigalas benchmark is a great cross platform benchmark.

Try it.

I’m really impressed with my new 16” MBP M4 Max, for a laptop it has an amazing performance!

I’m definitely not keen on OSX 15 !!

But I tolerate OSX so I can own and use Cubase Pro 14 and Logic 11 in my writing/ rehearsal room.

For my studio space I’m 100% sticking with Cubase Pro 14 on my pro built Windows 11 desktop (13900K 96GB ram 14TB internal m.2) …. feels like home for me

I feel exactly the same way about Apple Mx series laptops and OSX v Windows.

My first month or so with Mac OS ands the M.x series Mac was great but that soon wore off with various annoying little things and I was glad to return to my windows machine as my main studio DAW for running Cubase/Reaper

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I have never done a project with more than 100 tracks in real life. M4 is impressive though for the money especially considering power consumption and the size.

I did a track a few years ago with Alexander Armstrong that had nearly 100 vocal tracks @24/96K . It was a big soundscape choir section at the end that built through the song.

last year I mixed a 'snarky Puppy' type project done at British Grove Studios London that had 74 Raw 24/96k tracks per song so with groups and FX well over 100 on the mixer.


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that's a lot of tracks! was that using a silicone mac then?

Nope, windows PC's then and now. I use my silicone Mac for mobile only.


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