Mac Mini or MacBook Pro for portable rig?

[dix]

I'm considering having the company I'm working for buy either a 2018 Mac Mini or 2019 MacBook Pro as a portable rig for projects I do outside of my studio for them. I'll need something that can handle largeish MIDI projects on par with my current 12-core 3.33ghz cMP with 96GB RAM running DP.

The 2019 MBP exceeds my cMP's 6541 Geekbench score, but can only take 32GB RAM. The Mini's GB score is below my cMP at 5756, but goes to 64GB RAM. The VI template I use currently uses up 70GB of of my 96GB of RAM...though was working okay when I had only 64GB somehow (that's for another thread).

MNer bayswater is a Mini user and is getting the kind of performance I need so I'm leaning towards the Mini, but haven't seen, and would like to hear from any 2018 or 2019 MBP users doing this kind of work in DP. The company will go with whatever I say, but I'm not sure which of these machines would be best.

The rig needs to be as compact and easily portable as possible. It will need to be set up and broken down every day so an iMac isn't really practical.

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[mikehalloran]

The rig needs to be as compact and easily portable as possible. It will need to be set up and broken down every day so an iMac isn't really practical.

And an external monitor is? If the answer is Yes, then I'd go for the Mini since an extended keyboard etc. should also not be an issue.

If dealing with an external monitor is an issue, the MBP makes more sense. Now that iOS 13 allows one to use an iMac as an external monitor, there are more possibilities than previously.

Uses, portability etc... gotta consider everything.

I was on the horn to my daughter a few minutes ago. She thinks that the 2012 i7 15" MBP I recently acquired and upgraded (SSD, new battery) is the best machine for her uses that Apple ever built. I think it's too big and clunky for this one-armed guy—my wife's MB Air, OTOH works great. If her Apple engineer husband can find me a 2015 or later Air, I'd be happy to make the trade. As it is, that MBP sits on my desk as a Catalina test machine.

[dix]

Thanks Mike. I'll be using a separate display and extended keyboard either way, so the MBP display would only be useful as a second monitor - which would be handy for sure.

I was wondering if the extra cores of the MBP would trump the higher RAM of the Mini, but I think it would not. 32GB of RAM doesn't seem like enough for Orchestral mockups etc.

Speaking of Catalina. I'd probably need to install Mojave on whatever it is I buy. I got several bits and bobs that are not ready for it....I know the 16 inch MBP will be Catalina only, but the others I assume will accept Mojave.

[mikehalloran]

A 6 Core i7 is nothing to sneeze at. The Mini is available with up to 64GB RAM if that’s what you need.

[bayswater]

I don't know if this matters: I was on a lot of flights this past summer, and on most of them, when they did the announcements about the use of electronics, they specifically mentioned the 15" MBP and said to power it down and not use it at all during the flight. They didn't say why, but if you do editing while travelling, it might be a consideration. Not that you could use the Mini on the flight, but that particular MBP might be an issue.

[HCMarkus]

I don't know if this matters: I was on a lot of flights this past summer, and on most of them, when they did the announcements about the use of electronics, they specifically mentioned the 15" MBP and said to power it down and not use it at all during the flight. They didn't say why, but if you do editing while travelling, it might be a consideration. Not that you could use the Mini on the flight, but that particular MBP might be an issue.

There is/was a battery issue; Apple offers free repair for those with affected units.

https://support.apple.com/15-inch-macbo ... ery-recall

If you are gonna' use an external monitor and keyboard regardless, I'd think the Mini would be the way to go... easier to pack, no external power supply, better thermals likely and all the ports you need. And Apple doesn't offer an 8-core laptop, does it? Unless I'm mistaken, the Mini should be everything you need, but that 64gig RAM option is mighty pricey! Nice that you won't have to foot the bill.

The one strong argument for a laptop in your situation is it eliminates the need to carry a UPS. Unless you are not operating in a real-time critical environment, battery backup is essential.

As far as RAM limits, can you reduce your template footprint by minimizing Kontakt and other sampler VIs pre-load? I don't have a huge template myself, so I have Kontakt maximizing pre-load to minimize CPU load. Projects take a tad longer to get rolling, but I figure I might as well use my 48gigs of RAM for something.

[dix]

Weird about the airline rule. I hadn't heard that. It wouldn't effect my project, but I would have my personal MBP. I'll definitely investigate before I fly. Thx for the heads up!

Really good point about a laptop not needing a UPS. I did a similar project a couple years ago. The venue I was working in (and will be for this project) was effectively under construction and lost power a couple times. Even portable UPSs don't look too portable.

And Apple doesn't offer an 8-core laptop, does it?

It do. The May 2019 MBPs can have 8-core i9 2.4ghz processors. Yes, there's still a few arguments for a MBP. I'll be using separate display, but the MBP would be a very handy second monitor. Plus the idea that I'd need to setup a display for the Mini every time I wanted to just check something in the project or make a small change could be a PIA.

The project I did like this before went flawlessly on a 2014 i7 4-core MBP, but it was entirely audio track playback. This time I want the ability to compose with VIs and create mixes in a way I'm accustom to with my home studio. That's where the 32GB RAM limit of the MBP comes up short.

Either way the advice re maximizing my template is good. The 70GB temple I mention in the OP is totally haphazard, and built as I went along composing for various projects. I know I could get that down for the Mini...possibly for the MBP, but it would be a compromise.

Thanks all!

[Prime Mover]

RAM - something to think about…

I'm a RAM hog too, but you should do some real-world testing before you start thinking that you need to squeeze every GB into your machine. Modern memory management by VIs has some pretty sophisticated tricks. First of all, no matter how much RAM you have installed most modern samplers only load a fraction of the patch into physical memory, most is streamed off the drive.

Here's how it works: the software calculates how long it will take to seek and begin streaming any sample off your drive. Then, it loads only the very beginning of the sample into memory; only the amount of time it needs to start streaming the bulk of the sample off the disk. So even if you have a 70GB instrument, the sampler will only pre-load a fraction of that into memory. Even if you were to load up on RAM, the software doesn't care: it only uses as much RAM as it needs to load the very beginning of every sample. This is how Kontakt works, anyway, but I highly suspect this is how many do these days. Additionally, Kontakt only loads a sample ONCE, if you load multiple instances of the same instrument (or another instrument that uses some of the same samples), it knows to only load one copy into RAM.

Secondly, SSDs... Remember about that hard drive streaming I mentioned? SSDs are magnitudes faster than platters in their seek and stream time. I replaced my platter with an SSD about 5 years back, and immediately noticed that Kontakt used far less RAM. That's because Kontakt calculated that it need a far smaller piece of the sample before it could get the rest off the SSD. SSDs are also far more consistent and safer.

I use MainStage live, which pre-loads all patches from all of my 250+ songs into memory on startup. This is mostly a blessing (though it takes time to load), because I have dozens and dozens of large sample VIs ready to go at any moment. This is far more RAM than a large orchestral sequence in DP (since DP only loads one chunk at a time). Even on my old 2001 machine, once I switched to SSD, I never got a glitch. With my 32GB 2019 MBP, neither the RAM nor CPU ever comes anywhere close to its limit. It took me a long time to come around, but RAM isn't the be-all-and-end-all it used to be. With SSD technology, and advanced memory management systems, VIs and hosts are becoming extremely efficient.

In closing: do some real-world testing and research. Load your sample library patches into memory and get a sense of really how much memory your projects will be using. Load an 800MB patch into memory, I suspect when you check its ram use, it will only be a small percentage.

[bayswater]

Eric makes a good point. As I mentioned, the I/O on the Mini is pretty quick. I have samples on a TB 3 SSD and loading is really quick. On my iMac, I had preloads set to max where it was possible. I don't have to any more. For example, in the test project I mentioned, every audio file and sample played is unique. There's a lot of I/O going on there.

[Prime Mover]

External I/O is one option, and it's pretty safe these days. I trust USB-C far more than USB-A to stay put and not glitch. Those little USB-C jacks are surprisingly secure.

However, if I can swing it, I try to do most of my important live stuff with as few connections as possible. I don't use an audio interface, and I don't use an external drive. I paid a pretty penny for a 1TB internal SSD drive and use that for all my live stuff. If the OP is locked into a 70GB template, I recommend he get a large internal drive and just use that if he can get away with it.

Personally, I would go with the 15" MBP. I suspect that when you get down to it, there will be a large-percentage of time that you won't even bother setting up the monitor. My machine has an 8-core i9, with 32GB or RAM, I can literally run a full DP template WHILE rendering a 3D raytrace in the background... it's insane. It leaves my trashcan MacPro in the dust.

[dix]

Thanks PM! This info and reminders are helpful. Hearing from a 2019 MBP user is exactly what I was hoping for.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. The 70GB I refer to is the amount of RAM the Activity Monitor reports is being used by my system including the OS currently (big ol template). Not the the samples themselves - which of course is way more and somewhat irrelevant considering everything is and will be streaming off SSDs as you and bayswater point out. The plan for this rig, currently, is to bring a 4 bay RAID 0 loaded with SSDs, so I should be okay and then some. And I don't do any background 3D rendering!

It sounds like your template is around the size of what I would need PM. And if I approach it more like a live rig as you do, and optimize my setup, I'm now leaning back toward an 8-core MBP....that is until someone shoots a hole in it!

Thanks for the advice everyone! It's all super helpful.

[Prime Mover]

Oh wow, that is a pretty crazy-high RAM usage! That's kind of hard to get my head around how that could possibly get so huge. Mind if I ask what library/sample-engine you're using? At that size, that makes me think it's not one with the advanced memory management and DFD streaming I was mentioning.

For reference: EWQLSO Platinum is just shy of 200GB, and thats' with every single articulation variation of all instruments with 3 different mic positions. Not to be skeptical... but I'm skeptical... not of you, but of how efficient whatever software you're using is managing your system resources. That said, you know you're workflow, and I'm not here to mess with it or convince you to change (I've been on the other end of that way too much). Just... wow.

Are you using Raid0 simply as an easy way to accumulate drive space? If so, that makes sense. However, if you're doing it to increase seek efficiency, I don't think you'll find it provides the same benefits with SSD. SSDs don't have physical heads to seek and they don't encounter wear-and-tear in the conventional ways, which are the two primary benefits of Raid0. That said... I get it, SSDs are currently exponentially more expensive as their size increases, and it would probably be cheaper to build an array of smaller drives. (this is stupid and makes no sense, btw)

Off topic: was this ever true of HDDs? I don't recall it ever being the case. Typically a 2TB drive would be about 150% the price of a 1TB drive. But RAM and SSDs are the opposite, a 2TB SSD is about 250% the price of a 1TB SSD. There might be a technical reason, but I suspect it's just a demand and marketing reason. I'm very very suspicious.

[dix]

I guess that's a lot of RAM? I wouldn't think it would be as much as those guys with massive templates on slaved rigs where every articulation is loaded at once....although I guess key switch patches would also need to load the same amount.

Mine is like 9 fullish instances of Kontakt, a few instances of Falcon, 6 of Play distributed through 8 instances of VEP set to 8 threads per instance. Weirdly when I had just 64GB of RAM the Activity Monitor reported I was using 60GB of my RAM with the exact same template. That seemed cramped so I went to 96GB and the template sort of spread out and made it's self comfortable at 70GB, 45GB of which going to VEP, 7GB for DP. The rest for the OS and misc.

As I said it's not a particularly well thought out, optimized template, but it's rock solid day in a day out and runs efficiently in DP. There was a slight improvement in efficiency when I went from 64GB of RAM to 96, but not huge.

The RAID 0 is mainly for the other component of the project that needs be able to read 200 or 300 audio tracks at the same time. I may end up putting the libraries elsewhere, because yeah, It's overkill for VI usage. And based on what you're saying it may be overkill for the audio tracks. More research is called for.

Thanks for your input PM. I may rethink a few things based on your advice.

[HCMarkus]

ALL SSDs for the road for sure... no moving parts to crap out when your gear gets mishandled... baggage handlers don't break guitars exclusively.

Hey dix, maybe your should get this CPU...

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14980/th ... 0xe-review.

[dix]

Whoa! 14 5ghz cores, Yes, I should get that! ...although it'd only work as a nice lapel pin for the immediate future.