rMBP 11,3 powerful enough?

[larrysharp11]

Hi all,

I'm Looking for some perspective here. I went from a Dual 1.25 Ghz G4 with DP4 to a PC with various versions of SONAR and now want to go back to DP8 on my Retina Macbook Pro 11,3 (16G RAM, 500G SSD). I was planning to keep the PC to run Komplete 10 and a NI Kontrol S61 as a standalone hardware synth through the analog outs of a Mackie 400F FW interface.

In order to do that I'd have to upgrade from Windows Vista to 7 or 8, and probably add some memory to the PC. Then I'd probably want a different controller for VIs on the rMBP so I don't have to pass MIDI from the Kontrol S61 via USB to the PC then to a MIDI interface then via MIDI to another MIDI interface on the rMBP. I have an old MOTU Microexpress MIDI interface I'm hoping will still work on the rMBP for the few hardware synths I have.

The main reason I would do all that is to take some load off the processor in the rMBP, but I wonder if it's necessary. This is where I could use some perspective from folks who are using modern Macs. I know my laptop can run circles around my old Mac and even my PC (2.6 Ghz i7 920). But I assume modern software uses more processing power too, so I don't know if the macbook can handle it all.

To give you an idea of context: I'll run DP 8, Komplete 10 and Arturia softsynths most of the time. I'll use FM8, Reaktor, and Kontakt a lot, as well as CS-80V, JP8V, etc. I don't use big sample libraries and probably won't have more than 20 or 30 audio tracks in a project. I'll have some MIDI tracks for hw synths as well. I'll use a few Waves plugs and stock DP FX. I do mostly electronic, jazz, weird poppy stuff, and neo-classical (for lack of a better word). No film scoring or big orchestral stuff, very little acoustic recording and usually 1-3 mics/tracks at a time when I do.

Thanks for the input!

Larry

[bayswater]

I have no experience with this Mac, but looking up the specs in Mactracker, I see it is at least, and probably more powerful than my Mac (assuming it has the i7 processor -- it looks like all 11,3 models do). I'm pretty sure mine would deal with the sort of project you describe. With external drives for samples and project files, large RAM buffers for samples, etc, it looks promising.

[Michael Canavan]

You shouldn't need to run the PC, but, it is sort of hilarious that you ask how many plug ins can your rmbp handle while giving only the model idenitfier number instead of the actual speed.

I'm guessing that since you say it can run circles around your PC which you give the speed of as an intel 2.6 i7, it's at least a dual core. My 15" is a 10.1 and the actual specs quad core 2.7ghz i7 512SSD, make it more than capable of what you want to do, barring the occasional hiccup. I would keep the PC around as a slave for those times when you go nuts.

[bayswater]

giving only the model idenitfier number instead of the actual speed.

Mac tracker gives the specs.

[larrysharp11]

Thanks for the replies. I should have given more info - I was trying to keep it as short as possible.

The macbook pro has one 2.3 GHz quad core i7 processor with 16G ram, 500G SSD, 256K L2 cache per core, 6 MB L3 cache.

I plan to use the internal SSD as the system drive and possibly for audio (at least for the project I'm currently working on, based on what I've read online about best practices these days) and external drives for samples and backups. Ideally I'd have all SSD TB external drives, but those are still a bit pricey and I have a slew of old 7200 rpm HDs I could repurpose in a cheap USB 3 enclosure for now.

Anyone else using a setup similar to this? What size/type of projects are you doing with it? Could it handle 5 or 6 instances of NI/Arturia synths plus a couple dozen audio and a handful of MIDI tracks, with Waves and/or MOTU dynamics/eq fx on some of the audio tracks?

Thanks!