Thanks for these videos, you seem to be the only person on RUclips who talks about the M3 Max's use in music production. Almost every other video is focused on content creation and video editing. I bought the base 14" M3 Max earlier this year and sometimes I wonder if I got more than I needed. I do video editing on the side but music production is my main focus.
I‘m using an iMac 2019 i9 9900K as my main production hub and an MBA M1 to perform live or produce while touring etc. Both machines are capable to even perform on the biggest mixing/mastering projects - I mix and master in the same project as producing and composing. There is absolutely no need for an M3 Max etc if you don’t have crazy sound design or composition projects with huge sample libraries. As a professional, I would advise to get the best version of Mx chip you can afford including enough RAM and SSD storage. No need to spend 5k+ on a machine if you’re not a professional or anywhere close. Even my MBA M1 is a true powerhouse already. Amazing videos and always good to have quality content about tech. Keep it up! Greetings from Berlin :)
Yes, people who run out of cpu of modern macs they eather beginners or they dont have workflow or want to have all the contorl and never bounce down to audio
yeap guys! i'm still on a imax27 core i9 9900k, all softwares are updates and runnin easy all my projects. never crashed out! i'll wait for m4 tests for maybe change my setup
@@fabiomoreira1759 It Boggs my mind, even 5 year old computer can run well, plugins aren't change so much in 5 year. Maybe some AI stuff, bu other then that, big names fabfilter, u-he , x f er are still same .
@@GermoStaalfeldt Dude! Plugins are gettin better on every update, running smoothly, less cpu consuming. I also own the entire izotope and sonibles line (AI)…. That imac i9 is a beast! And if you produce right ( first composing, anfter converting to audio and mixing audio tracks projects…. It uses max 40% cpu kkkkk)
Audio tracks aren’t a resource consumption problem with any computer nowadays. DAWs are typically design to run on one or two cores. Will take years for all daws to adapt to e cores p cores. Multiple midi tracks with time based fx are the actual resource consumer. Try using NI 14 komplete collectors edition or roland soundcloud and then tell me you don’t need a beefy computer with 32GB ram and highest single core Ghz cpu you can get. Pcs suffer dpc latency whilst macs don’t. Golden rule is always save projects three times: audio stems bounced wet and dry and midi raw format with all editable plugins associated tagged with meta data. Backup your pc and note down filepath plugin locations and don’t always autoupdate plugins from the internet. developers never test anything! Especially input device usb bus stress testing with 17 midi controllers.
Good video and cool track I have an M2 Max almost full spec on it, 96gigs ram and 4 tb space. For those interested, when I play live synths it gets laggy or there is latency and it’s annoying as hell. it seems that it gets triggered by reverb from logic, mastering and few others(so I have to press the latency button) This happenes almost regardless of how many track I’m running. It can be a song with 10 tracks. It really is about the effects that you use and yes sample rate. The interesting thing is, that I used logic on a Mac Pro tower 2010 - intel based and the latency happened only when I run to many tracks with too many effects, consistently on live playing a synth and playback. However with the new Mac’s when it comes to playback you can play probably 1000 tracks. Hope this helps to some ppl wondering and I did call Apple about it and the answer was “latency” button.
Download reference tracks you like, put them in your DAW and try to remake them a few times. To get the feel of it. Obviously not release it. Then use the skills you gained to make something your own. :)
I'm looking at a 16 " 14-Core CPU 30-Core GPU 36GB 1TB SSD. Gives you 10 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores. The refurbished are 15% cheaper at the moment. The M4 is around the corner but with the discount it might make sense to not buy the latest M4 machine as getting this performance core count will likely be 15 to 20 more expensive with maybe minimal difference to audio. Thoughts?
Hard to say, no one knows how the M4 is going to be or the prices. I feel that if you get a good deal its worth it. It is always going to be something new around the corner. And these machines are beasts...
So far the only vst that sends my M1 cpu crazy is multiple ample guitar instances or just one with loads of delays and effects. If you enable the performance impact option in Ableton you can see on each channel the load on cpu.
I would love to see that beast of a machine handling the same exact project at 96kHz…I’d love to produce smoothly at that sample rate…could you release a video showing this setup, if you didn’t already?
Even top producers like Noisia will render out tracks to audio files within a project to save CPU resources. He may have 100+ tracks going in project, with god knows how many plugins and effects. So I think with an m2 or m3 pro you can easily reach the limit.
@@georged822 Why anyone would need 100+ tracks is beyond me unless you are recording orchestras. I remember producing songs on an Ampex 4 track in the studios back in the 70s. Just like the Beatles did in the 60s. Grouping and rendering tracks makes it possible to work on just about any computer.
1 little thing I would have really wanted to see, what buffer are you using, I see that your project is at a sampling rate of 48K but I didn't see the buffer size in Logic Pro. I have the M1 Max 16 inch and I find the best performance even while mixing is to keep the buffer lower compared to what I would do on a Intel x86 Mac. So back before the M series when using an Intel Mac I would do all of the tracking with a low buffer like 128 but then during the mix stage I would have to increase the buffer to 1024 just to keep large sessions running. But on the M series I can just set the buffer to 256 and do the whole session without ever changing it. I have been using Thunderbolt interfaces so a 256 buffer gives me 4 milliseconds of latency roundtrip total. I see you are using RME so I would guess you are using USB? I also find that setting the buffer too high causes more issues. So my question is, are you doing the same thing with your RME setup, just setting the buffer low and leaving it low or are you having to increase it as well as the mix gets larger? I'm waiting on M4 before I upgrade since I have put crazy amounts of time on my M1 Max machine! Cheers!! Great videos!!
I believe I show the buffer settings in Logic at some point in the Logic test. Its on 128 or 256. I have also noticed the same on Mac that Logic usually performs better at low buffer sizes. I am using the RME on USB, yes. If my projects gets huge I need to increase the buffer size sometimes, but its not that often anymore. Thanks for watching. :)
Thank you for the video! I'm in a similar conundrum although my laptop is also my main studio machine. I'm finding it really hard to choose between the Air you arewaiting on and the the 16" M3 or M4 when it's released. I can only afford 1TB and 32 gb ram in but I would max out the Air. My use case is similar to yours though projects are similar size but I also run other apps at the same time sometimes like Rekordbox.
@@GermoStaalfeldt no it’s not with 50 divas. It wit a lot of audio effects and other synths. Then if you are using some heavy pads in diva it will end your free cpu 😉
@@Drfresh1402 128GB awesome ! You'll never come close to touching it in audio. I would like to see how many instances of Spitfire BBC or one of their big orchestral libraries it would take to get close to 128
Hi.. I am too planning to shift to MAC. and was ready to buy m3 max but heard that it had heating and fan noise issues and more over the performance is not as it should be in a max 3... So I thought that I would go for m4 max when released.... Is it ok to wait or m3 is just right.... Please guide
hey man, how would u compare this with a ryzen 5950x and 7900x for music production? do I have better performance for the price with these chips? I just want to know if 5950x would be more than enough since I do heavy sound design work with lots of vst instruments like serum etc with a good amount of effects and need a lot of tracks!
Does Ryzen 7950x has any comparison with m3max .... I thought m max chip rules..... Looking for videos for ryzen now I am already using i9 12th gen 12900k....and studio one 6.6 as my DAW but performance is not that great..... In a session of 80 tracks with sends and inserts it gets slow .... So though of going for m3 max ... hope i won't be dissapointed ???? Your projects here are very clean and simple mine is mostly Cinamatic...
@@bjornark Also it has more performance cores I think the M2 Pro has (8 P cores) Vs M3 Max (10 P cores). Just wondering if the extra 2 P cores is worth the 33% extra spend.
@@slippyg i dunno why would someone run into issue with m2 pro :O that is problably workjflow issue or beginner issue, when they jsut stack up layers with full voices
Probably M3 Air will be a similar level to your old M1 MBP Bjørnar, it'll be interesting content regardless. Makes perfect sense to use the funds from the sale of your laptop to expand your setup. The kit will be mega. Changing your tracks/workflow will save you from hitting any bottlenecks for sure. Maybe that should be another video topic. What you changed, and how it helps hardware/software run as well as possible in the new style/way of working. Gr8 content as ever.
I'm not an audio engineer, but I'm pretty sure a M1 MacBook Pro with 16GB of ram is all you need for photo editing, video editing, CAD, and audio production for 95% of people.
![Jack Harlow - Hello Miss Johnson [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q86_nlRoIGw/mqdefault.jpg)
Thanks for these videos, you seem to be the only person on RUclips who talks about the M3 Max's use in music production. Almost every other video is focused on content creation and video editing. I bought the base 14" M3 Max earlier this year and sometimes I wonder if I got more than I needed. I do video editing on the side but music production is my main focus.
Good choice, you can probably have it for a long while.
Ya i too haven't come across any such video...
Thanks bro....
You are welcome!
I‘m using an iMac 2019 i9 9900K as my main production hub and an MBA M1 to perform live or produce while touring etc. Both machines are capable to even perform on the biggest mixing/mastering projects - I mix and master in the same project as producing and composing. There is absolutely no need for an M3 Max etc if you don’t have crazy sound design or composition projects with huge sample libraries.
As a professional, I would advise to get the best version of Mx chip you can afford including enough RAM and SSD storage. No need to spend 5k+ on a machine if you’re not a professional or anywhere close. Even my MBA M1 is a true powerhouse already.
Amazing videos and always good to have quality content about tech. Keep it up! Greetings from Berlin :)
Yes I agree, thanks for watching. Berlin is a cool city, visited it last summer. Drove all the way from Norway :D
Yes, people who run out of cpu of modern macs they eather beginners or they dont have workflow or want to have all the contorl and never bounce down to audio
yeap guys! i'm still on a imax27 core i9 9900k, all softwares are updates and runnin easy all my projects. never crashed out! i'll wait for m4 tests for maybe change my setup
@@fabiomoreira1759 It Boggs my mind, even 5 year old computer can run well, plugins aren't change so much in 5 year. Maybe some AI stuff, bu other then that, big names fabfilter, u-he , x f er are still same .
@@GermoStaalfeldt Dude! Plugins are gettin better on every update, running smoothly, less cpu consuming. I also own the entire izotope and sonibles line (AI)…. That imac i9 is a beast! And if you produce right ( first composing, anfter converting to audio and mixing audio tracks projects…. It uses max 40% cpu kkkkk)
I bought this 128 gb 14 inch version for cinema and so far worth it's weight in gold. A real keeper.
Audio tracks aren’t a resource consumption problem with any computer nowadays. DAWs are typically design to run on one or two cores. Will take years for all daws to adapt to e cores p cores. Multiple midi tracks with time based fx are the actual resource consumer. Try using NI 14 komplete collectors edition or roland soundcloud and then tell me you don’t need a beefy computer with 32GB ram and highest single core Ghz cpu you can get. Pcs suffer dpc latency whilst macs don’t. Golden rule is always save projects three times: audio stems bounced wet and dry and midi raw format with all editable plugins associated tagged with meta data. Backup your pc and note down filepath plugin locations and don’t always autoupdate plugins from the internet. developers never test anything! Especially input device usb bus stress testing with 17 midi controllers.
Actually Reaper has been proven to be the most efficient Daw, to evenly run all of both parts of the cores setups.
Really looking forward to your Macbook Air Ableton video..Thanks for doing this.
Thanks for watching, the M3 Air video is out tomorrow. 😉
Great music - and video! You ask for ideas for what to make, I'd like to see some full on music making sessions :)
Thanks! Your suggestion is noted :)
Waw i like your new style, its beter than the old one, Greetings Harry from South Holland, the Netherlands
Thanks!
Sounds huge!
A Session with, Bunch of instances of Kontakt & Omnisphere would be a real test but super cool vid
Wanna get a M2 Max Mbp so badly
My curiosity is more with actual live performance with real time live using Waves and its effects.
Good video and cool track
I have an M2 Max almost full spec on it, 96gigs ram and 4 tb space. For those interested, when I play live synths it gets laggy or there is latency and it’s annoying as hell. it seems that it gets triggered by reverb from logic, mastering and few others(so I have to press the latency button) This happenes almost regardless of how many track I’m running. It can be a song with 10 tracks. It really is about the effects that you use and yes sample rate. The interesting thing is, that I used logic on a Mac Pro tower 2010 - intel based and the latency happened only when I run to many tracks with too many effects, consistently on live playing a synth and playback. However with the new Mac’s when it comes to playback you can play probably 1000 tracks. Hope this helps to some ppl wondering and I did call Apple about it and the answer was “latency” button.
Great video!
Love this tune at 8:58; what genre is that? Reminds me of Deadmau5 ❤
Thanks! I am not sure to be honest, Progressive House maybe :)
@@bjornark oh cool, do you have any tips for someone that’s starting out in this genre? I produce already but mostly hip-hop and ambient :)
Download reference tracks you like, put them in your DAW and try to remake them a few times. To get the feel of it. Obviously not release it. Then use the skills you gained to make something your own. :)
@@bjornark thanks a lot, really appreciated
Nice progressive! Reminds of Brisker and Magitman
Thanks! Will check them out.
So I should get by with buying a M2 Ultra for my Logic sessions, thanks BK
I'm looking at a 16 " 14-Core CPU 30-Core GPU 36GB 1TB SSD. Gives you 10 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores. The refurbished are 15% cheaper at the moment.
The M4 is around the corner but with the discount it might make sense to not buy the latest M4 machine as getting this performance core count will likely be 15 to 20 more expensive with maybe minimal difference to audio. Thoughts?
Hard to say, no one knows how the M4 is going to be or the prices. I feel that if you get a good deal its worth it. It is always going to be something new around the corner. And these machines are beasts...
So far the only vst that sends my M1 cpu crazy is multiple ample guitar instances or just one with loads of delays and effects. If you enable the performance impact option in Ableton you can see on each channel the load on cpu.
I would love to see that beast of a machine handling the same exact project at 96kHz…I’d love to produce smoothly at that sample rate…could you release a video showing this setup, if you didn’t already?
96kHz would be interesting, but I dont have the laptop anymore. Sorry about that.
great video..
Thanks
I would hope that a $4K computer would be able to do music production!
Even top producers like Noisia will render out tracks to audio files within a project to save CPU resources. He may have 100+ tracks going in project, with god knows how many plugins and effects. So I think with an m2 or m3 pro you can easily reach the limit.
@georged822 Yeah, this seems to be common with producers who know their stuff. (Not me)
@@georged822 Why anyone would need 100+ tracks is beyond me unless you are recording orchestras. I remember producing songs on an Ampex 4 track in the studios back in the 70s. Just like the Beatles did in the 60s. Grouping and rendering tracks makes it possible to work on just about any computer.
@@TonyThomas10000 Trust me , it happens ..
@@Groove81TV That shows total indecision. You don't need 100 tracks to make popular music.
Thanks for very good information. Do you ever experience lagging DAW on Sonoma mic mode?
Nah, cant say I have. Depends more on how much plugins you load up in the DAW.
1 little thing I would have really wanted to see, what buffer are you using, I see that your project is at a sampling rate of 48K but I didn't see the buffer size in Logic Pro. I have the M1 Max 16 inch and I find the best performance even while mixing is to keep the buffer lower compared to what I would do on a Intel x86 Mac. So back before the M series when using an Intel Mac I would do all of the tracking with a low buffer like 128 but then during the mix stage I would have to increase the buffer to 1024 just to keep large sessions running. But on the M series I can just set the buffer to 256 and do the whole session without ever changing it. I have been using Thunderbolt interfaces so a 256 buffer gives me 4 milliseconds of latency roundtrip total. I see you are using RME so I would guess you are using USB? I also find that setting the buffer too high causes more issues.
So my question is, are you doing the same thing with your RME setup, just setting the buffer low and leaving it low or are you having to increase it as well as the mix gets larger? I'm waiting on M4 before I upgrade since I have put crazy amounts of time on my M1 Max machine! Cheers!! Great videos!!
I believe I show the buffer settings in Logic at some point in the Logic test. Its on 128 or 256. I have also noticed the same on Mac that Logic usually performs better at low buffer sizes. I am using the RME on USB, yes.
If my projects gets huge I need to increase the buffer size sometimes, but its not that often anymore. Thanks for watching. :)
@@bjornark Thanks for the reply cheers!!!
Thanks for the video.. 🌤️✨
Can you tell me what you are using to monitor the resources (CPU etc.)?
Looks different to the inbuilt Resource Monitor.. 😊
MX Power gadget and activity montor shows the cpu usage.
Thank you for the video! I'm in a similar conundrum although my laptop is also my main studio machine. I'm finding it really hard to choose between the Air you arewaiting on and the the 16" M3 or M4 when it's released. I can only afford 1TB and 32 gb ram in but I would max out the Air. My use case is similar to yours though projects are similar size but I also run other apps at the same time sometimes like Rekordbox.
Air video is out tomorrow!
@@bjornark Lifesaver :) !!
hi
Bjørnar, how are you? Should I choose i9 64 GB RAM 512 SSD or m1 16GB RAM 256 GB SSD?
I am fine. That is a difficult question, you are asking if you should use Windows or Mac? Or are you talking about the older i9 Intel MacBook Pro?
@@bjornark yeah bro MacBook i9 vs Macbook m1
I have the 16inch M2 Max 64gb. It’s great but…. Some multi Diva’s in some patches is totally eating the cpu to max
Diva is always a CPU hog :D But you can set the quality to draft. And export quality to best.
I mean do you really use 50 divas ?
@@GermoStaalfeldt no it’s not with 50 divas. It wit a lot of audio effects and other synths. Then if you are using some heavy pads in diva it will end your free cpu 😉
Over of my budget I will say LOL. I believe many people's budget too
For sure, here it costs 5750 USD (converted to USD from our currency).
But does it 5xbeat performance of maxed out on Cpu $1150 PC?
It's the hassle of installing all the VSTs that's gets me
@@bjornark Holy shit.
@@kennethdarlington I don't understand what you're asking, could you rephrase it?
Still using cMP.. Dual hex core...
Still kicks az , even for movie scores...
Awesome, Thanks for sharing.
I have a M3Max also and I wished I went with more than 48GB ram and went at least 64GB. Some production just eats up RAM
I’m going with 128.
@@Drfresh1402 128GB awesome ! You'll never come close to touching it in audio. I would like to see how many instances of Spitfire BBC or one of their big orchestral libraries it would take to get close to 128
I thought you sold your MacBook Pro?
Its complicated
@@bjornark😂 happy for you though.
Pls Post Test video M3 Max With FL Studio .....
Appreciate you asking, but that wont happen. Sorry.
What about a 96gb macbook?! Is that overkill?
Depends on what you are going to use it for? For the use you see in this video = yes absolutely overkill with 96GB.
Hi..
I am too planning to shift to MAC. and was ready to buy m3 max but heard that it had heating and fan noise issues and more over the performance is not as it should be in a max 3...
So I thought that I would go for m4 max when released....
Is it ok to wait or m3 is just right....
Please guide
well i make dubstep and bass music and that using a lot of cpu tbh no cap
hey man, how would u compare this with a ryzen 5950x and 7900x for music production? do I have better performance for the price with these chips? I just want to know if 5950x would be more than enough since I do heavy sound design work with lots of vst instruments like serum etc with a good amount of effects and need a lot of tracks!
Hey, sorry I dont have the 5950x
Does Ryzen 7950x has any comparison with m3max ....
I thought m max chip rules.....
Looking for videos for ryzen now
I am already using i9 12th gen 12900k....and studio one 6.6 as my DAW but performance is not that great.....
In a session of 80 tracks with sends and inserts it gets slow ....
So though of going for m3 max ... hope i won't be dissapointed ????
Your projects here are very clean and simple mine is mostly Cinamatic...
Why don't you do a comparison M3Max vs intel 12900k vs Ryzen 7950x ...
Iwould be very helpful for the community 😊
I dont have it, that why :)
Well, m2 pro is allready more then enough, i wouldnt understand those who run into issues with m1 -m2 but ofc if u do orchestral stuff its diffferent
😍😍😍😍
:)
10/10
Do you find the M3 max to run at a lower CPU % Vs the M2 Pro 12 core?
The M3 Max is the better performer so it should, if you compare the same projects with the same plugins & settings.
@@bjornark Also it has more performance cores I think the M2 Pro has (8 P cores) Vs M3 Max (10 P cores). Just wondering if the extra 2 P cores is worth the 33% extra spend.
This is the 16-Core M3 Max, so it has 12 P cores.
@@bjornark a beast then haha. Nice.
@@slippyg i dunno why would someone run into issue with m2 pro :O that is problably workjflow issue or beginner issue, when they jsut stack up layers with full voices
Probably M3 Air will be a similar level to your old M1 MBP Bjørnar, it'll be interesting content regardless. Makes perfect sense to use the funds from the sale of your laptop to expand your setup. The kit will be mega. Changing your tracks/workflow will save you from hitting any bottlenecks for sure. Maybe that should be another video topic. What you changed, and how it helps hardware/software run as well as possible in the new style/way of working. Gr8 content as ever.
Thanks for watching. The M3 air is surprising for sure ... ;)
@@bjornark lol, good to know. I still Mac Mini, or a M1 Max Studio used if I see one at decent price. Cool to See Logic appear too
;)
I'm not an audio engineer, but I'm pretty sure a M1 MacBook Pro with 16GB of ram is all you need for photo editing, video editing, CAD, and audio production for 95% of people.
I think you are right.
Thanks, I only want a machine for Logic Pro, using iMac late 2015 and looking to upgrade.
Not cinema my friend. In apple pro res raw HQ? Dream on.