Mojave or Big Sur for VIs with 8 GB ram?

[uncle dunc]

Bought a refurbished 2014 Mac Mini with SSD drive for my GF in 2021. She's transitioned to her phone and never even turned it on. Now a friend could use it with the apps that come with a new Motu interface, Performer Lite and Ableton Lite. (The 2014 Mac Minis have the ram soldered to the motherboard - too much hassle to upgrade.)

I'm wondering if Mojave or Catalina would be a better choice since the Big Sur OS uses twice as much ram. I suspect all she'd be doing is a drum loop, a bass line, and maybe a keyboard, and a couple of tracks of audio - a songwriter sketch pad. She wouldn't be buying third party plugins or doing orchestral arrangements. The downside to Mojave would be when Motu and other apps no longer support it.

[bayswater]

My 2018 Mini came with Mojave. I’ve tried all the subsequent updates on a test volume and none of them presented any noticeable advantage when running DP. If you use Logic, that might be different. I’m stuck at Logic 10.5. Catalina, if anything, was slower and buggier than Mojave.

For me, Monterey is still a possibility if DP stop working with earlier OS versions. It seems OK, except it shows instances of USB devices dismounting spontaneously, a PITA when your iLok disappears. I was not aware of a memory issue with it.

[mikehalloran]

The 2018 Mini is a different machine than yours.

My buddy's 2014 i5 Mini 4GB works surprisingly well over Monterey. He updated accidentally and after we ran it through its paces using Performer Lite, we decided to leave it alone.

An 8GB is better, of course. You state it has an SSD — how big? These came with an AHCI blade or mechanical HDD and a few came with a Hybrid drive (one of each acting as a single unit).

The original blade can be upgraded to a much larger NVMe 3 x4 blade that will run about 3x the speed. Plus a SATA III SSD will drop into the empty space (or replace the HDD) if you need additional storage. It's an easy and inexpensive DIY. The RAM is soldered into place and cannot be upgraded. I am not recommending that you have 12TB storage (4+8) but it can be done. A 4TB blade + adapter would set you back about $225 and really give that Mini its Wheaties.

My friend's i5 does not have the PCIe socket for a blade so I installed a 2TB SATA III SSD in his. It does what he needs.

All of that said, I can run DP 11.3 on my 2012 MacBook Pro over Catalina. It's slow but doable. I have some of my Kontakt, UVI and IKM VIs installed. It's a test machine only but I used it to try Melodyne Basic just last week. I could use it in a pinch.

[uncle dunc]

The refurbishing place put in a 225 GB SSD drive, which should be good for her uses. I recommended an external SSD for backup, and another one for audio if the OS disk starts filling up.