New M2 Mac Mini's are cheap ..thoughts?

[Kapo_Polenton]

I saw a guy run 1000 instances of plugins over 100 tracks and his M1 8G ran without any issues. So I see that the M2 is now out and it is discounted. That said, they apparently also throttle the SSD. do any of you guys know how that would affect tracks and VST's? I guess the M1 chip is faster, but the M2 efficient. I'm racking my brain here.. I'm leaning towards an M1 8g for 700 CAD. The 8G on these M1/M2 chips seem to be as fast as intel versions with 16gb according to people who have run them head to head.

What do you guys think? I mainly push audio out through an old console and use minimal plugins as i have some hardware EQ and comps that I use as well. but I want it to load quick, be decent on latency ( though I imagine it will be better than my laptop PC) and be steady. Also need to hook a bunch of USB up to it which I assume I can do through a hub for peripherals like ( PITA i-lok), keyboard, mouse, AD/DA conversion etc.

 

[cobrahead1030]

I just got an M1 8gb MacBook Air a few months ago. So far it does the bulk of what I need running Logic.

That's typically half a dozen guitar/bass tracks using Neural DSP plugins, a midi track with a Kontakt drum library, occasionally a few synth or piano instruments with some time based plug-ins, and a mastering VST. I don't go crazy loading it up with plug-ins & tracks, but it's not exactly minimal usage either.

 

[Greazygeo]

I bought an M1 Mac Mini. Other than not much ins and outs and no cd drive it is great. Running Logic with 8 drum tracks, 30 guitar tracks, software keys, synths and bass, plug ins on every channel pretty much the cpu is barely even running.

 

[Kapo_Polenton]

Sweet. Thanks fellas. What do you use to extend the ins? USB / thunderbolt hub?

 

[Greazygeo]

Sweet. Thanks fellas. What do you use to extend the ins? USB / thunderbolt hub?

I am still looking into that part…so far I am ok with what is on there, just have to plug and unplug one thing. OWC has some stuff that looks like it woukd work.

 

[Spaceboy]

The m1 has been a game changer for me.

 

[BesaMoogie]

Not sure if you guys know this. I usually put up the latency much higher when mixing and applying VSTs and Effects (Only for recording I have it as low as possible and turn off all the effect’s and other tracks etc).
That way you can save up a lot of resources and my 2013 macbook is still able to keep up. High latency does not matter, when mixing.