Melodist

I've gone for the Air, it does seem more stable compared to the Pro once you've hit the warm temperature while the Pro is more jumpy and that at a performance difference of 7% in real tasks. Also I like that it's always quiet and that I don't have to deal with the touchbar. The Air has the same performance as the 2.3 GHz i9 Macbook Pro so I'm very happy.

Yes, but not fixed three months later. Will probably never be fixed in Catalina - i.e. never fixed on the Intel Mac Mini. I don't trust Apple to fix anything that doesn't work out of the gate anymore. When they do, it's just good luck. They also seem to break things that previously were fine a lot more than they used to. And then not acknowledge the problem and not put it right. Has it been posted in the official apple support forum? With hardware issues or upgrades I agree but when it comes to software they do usually fix these things. I mean what's the official supported maximum resolution for M1? It's an easy fix tbh.

So basically, running Cinebench is the best 100% CPU pure performance test which you can run. On the first run, here are the results: MBP: 7815 MBA: 7212 That's a 8% performance difference after 1 hour of Cinebench. This was followed 2 Minutes after it had stopped by one another 1 hour run (2 in total then) with the following results. MBP: 7805 MBA: 7034 That's about 10% and you gotta remember, the MBA is fanless and the Pro runs the fans at 4000 RPM, which is noticably audible. But I want the 10% *cry* I guess nobody can help me, personal choice. But I think just based on pure reason, I should go for the Air. On full load 100% CPU usage, the Air has a better battery life. And since nobody would believe me, here I am, testing them against each other side by side at 3 AM: They have a key cover on them from EeeCoo, I can eat my Pizza and don't worry about prints. One of them has to leave my house by Tuesday though *cry* Reason tells me get the Air and anything else the Pro. However, I would've chosen the Pro over the Air if I had scored 6600 points versus 7800 but after 2 hours of Cinebench, which is super unrealistic and hefty, the difference is 10% (7034 points versus 7805, maybe I have cought a well binned chip) and during a more reasonable hefty usage of 1 hour, the difference is 8% and the Air has even more battery life than the Pro, given that the Pro uses 25 watts under full load vs the Air max 15 Watts.

I am currently working on a rock song with a friend, collaborating overseas. I have like 10 alternatives now in the session and trying out different guitar sounds so I'm hiding tracks etc. I am already around 70 tracks. Simple rock song. This includes Logic's Drummer tracks (in a summing track) etc. There is compression EQ delays reverbs virtual amps etc. all over the place. Flextime, and some flex pitch used. The GUI/mixer everything is buttery smooth. The good news is my M1 Macbook Air is using around 10% of its CPU. Extremely pleased with this machine. Exactly. I've been working on some stuff for the past 10 years, some of it being above my average pay grade and whenever you came across serious sessions, always less was more, especially sonically. There is also a major artist (post audio mixing), who's name I leave in the unknown, who has probably 30% of applied inserts by making the right choices versus the new kid, applying 15 inserts on a vocal chain not knowing what their doing. All I'm saying, is that even I, doing serious sessions myself, wouldn't even go beyond 40% of the M1's processing power so why should I wait for the next chip? It's gonna be more expensive anyways and the M1 as it stands already surpasses the most expensive Macbook Pro 8-Core from part year in pure processing performance. What more do you need? If I do heavy VIs for orchestra sessions during pre-peoduction, that's what my desktop hackintosh is for but I rarely come across that, maybe 10%. Most professional Vi users have a very ergonomical way of using virtual instruments and don't need crazy amounts of RAM. Thanks, that makes sense to me. I found another video of someone managing 309 tracks on their 16-core MP 2019. I wonder if they're just adding audio/midi tracks without duplicating all the plug-ins? Who knows.... Things move on. Music now doesn't sound like it did in the 1960's. Technology is one of the things that changes - it's musicians as well as engineers who push the boundaries of technology, in order to find new, novel sounds. Even the Beatles linked two 4-tracks together. Lots of people who do film / orchestral composition need 70-80 tracks for each 'articulation' - a whole orchestra (or more normally just a string section) playing legato, or pizzicato, or tremolo. So not all tracks are sounding at the same time, but the VIs are loaded and ready to play on multiple articulations. In the 1960's, you needed an orchestra, and a hall. But probably only two mics. For pop/rock/country, stuff gets shipped around as stems - 5-10 takes per instrument. Easy to get high track counts for that stuff too, although not as high as film. And in the middle there are fusion bands and world music with choirs and tens of percussion players or multi-miked drum kits. It's really easy to swallow up the tracks. Yeah I mean, the 2019 Mac Pro is a nice machine but you'd probably would've been better off running an Intel or Ryzen Hackintosh for music production. But it is still a great machine, however you paid a hefty Apple Premium on it since Ryzen 5000 series CPU at 700 bucks equals in performance with the fastest Mac Pro from 2019. And these Benchmarks with 300+ tracks are flawed or frozen. Intel Xeons don't stack up that well against the K series such as the 9900K or 11900k running with 5 GHz on all cores with nice cooling. I'm scoring about 11k on Geekbench with my 9900K running at 5.1 GHz on all cores with a nice Noctua Cooler. If I look at the Geekbench Mac Scores, the 12 Core 2019 Mac Pro sits at 12.000, so I'm fairly happy. My friend scores 14.500 points with his Ryzen 5950x but Geekbench is very Intel optimized and ways to cheat the scores, Cinebench is a better point of reference. Cinebench is purely CPU focused. The M1 scores roughly 7800 points (7200) for the Air, which is amazing. My 9900KS sits at 14.000 and I'm barely doing more than 20% usage on hefty sessions. In Cinebench R20, the 28 Core Mac Pro 2019 is surpassed by the 5950X with 10409 points, dialing in at 700 Euros plus a TB3 Motherboard for 500. My 9900KS runs at 4800 points in stock, which at 5.1 GHz on every core, reaching 6000 points, very close to your 16 Core MP at 6800 points. If we translate the M1 results to Cinebench R20, it would be at 2900 points. That's pretty much half as fast as your 16-Core Mac Pro, which I find impressive no? And about 40% slower than my stock 9900KS which I don't use beyond 30% of usage anyways in demanding sessions on God damn awful Pro Tools Ultimate 2021.3.0.

It's fast enough for me right now.

Tried to but I'd need copyright free music or maybe use that Vi track from the original Benchmark because all the stuff I got is label bound, hard to out something up which doesn't have a copyright issue. Can't put it up with Ocean Eyes, it's gonna cause issues.

I dunno, 180 tracks sound pretty good for 16 cores of that Intel Type processor, given my 9900k manages around 130 to 140, tracks, which is akin to a 12 Core Pro 2019. My 9900k is OCd to run at 5.1 GHz on all cores during AVX and it is the same speed as the 12 Core Mac Pro from 2019, doing 140 tracks. Now, since the 16Core is 20% faster than your 12, according to geek bench, it is 130 x 1.2, which is , 168, which means 180 is actually very realistic and good. The numbers posted on music-prod are wrong. For example, the Air says 110 there, but in reality, it is 94/95 tracks. Oddly enough the Pro is correct, with 105 tracks. But 180 tracks with the 16 core xeon is pretty good. Xeons are made for stability not performance. Using a 10 Core 11 series processor at 5GHz on every core will be very close to your 16 Core Xeon.

Having tested both the Air and Pro, it's just hard for me to make a choice between them. They both have advantages and disadvantages. Let's start off with the pure computational capabilities in Cinebench, which is a very realistic realtime multicore stresstest: Air: 7200 Points Pro: 7815 Points Both results were done during the 30 Minutes stability test. That's less than 10% performance difference between the Air and the Pro, which consumes 10 Watts less (15 vs 25 watts). Therefore, in theory, letting the SoC run at 25 watts, will level them both out in terms of battery life. Then there is the physical keys, which is more appealing with the Air. But the Pro has a larger trackpad and 100 nits more brightness. However, being fanless is an advantage, also from being completely closed up vs, open holes for ventilation, which makes it more prone to moisture and humidity effects. It's just tough to make a choice. What do you guys think? I think anpeformance difference of 8% isn't really worth spending the extra money but I'm just generally afraid of getting a laptop without a fan since it'll probably add to a better durability. It's just, there is no real choice between them for me, it's so hard to decide. Help me. By the way, I'm doing post audio production work with plugins and studio sessions and having this laptop will make me more flexible plus the main plugins which I use (Fabfilter, Valhalla and DMG Audio) have already been ported to Apple Silicon so I'm good on that end and actually doing back from Pro Tools to Logic Pro is a blessing. I need to decide till the end of this week before I can send one of them back.

I ran both for a few hours to get them to the hottest temperature with the following: Logic Benchmark: Pro 104 Air 94 Fabfilter: Pro 79 Air 71 So the difference stays the same, 10% performance drop.

I appreciate your results a lot: could you check and see what would sustain a 10 minute loop? Michael

Well it could be quite possible because the air has a more potent passive cooling solution, meaning more surface area to cool the chip unless it receive more heat than the block can dissipate in time. I wonder if he had heaten it up like I said for like 15 minutes before doing the benchmark.

Impressive, that's faster than my Macbook Pro M1 :> Did you let it get warm before you awuired these results or are they cold start results?

Can you do both? The Logic Pro X stock plugin benchmark available here and my Fabfilter one? On the Logic Stock plugin benchmark, after having warmed up, I'm getting around 104/105 tracks with the Pro. But you need to set everything to all 8 cores, 1024 samples and large buffer size. On my Fabfilter one, I'm at 80 / 79.

Native, Rosetta and Intel I've got my Pro now and set up a proper benchmark: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-X0wxZxcEv5YZGyLiUXB2UvnIycSrMyK/view?usp=sharing I'm getting 80 tracks with my Fabfilter setup (79 more stable for a longer time). I just wonder now how much worse the Air is because I'm thinking about returning it for the Air, given the ventless design and I could for the same money add 1 TB to it.

Yes this actually was a good idea to compare 2 daws on 2 different systems with same third party plugins. This way someone could decide to go with a new Mac and logic or stay on a powerful desktop system in the PC world. Thanks for that but also agree needs its own thread. How many tracks are you able to run with your Air after it warmed up for like 15 Minutes at this setting? I mean let's say warm it up with 90 Tracks and then see how much more you can activate? https://music-prod.com/logic-pro-x-benchmarks/ Could you also run this benchmark? This one is with Fabfilter Plugins, which is a little more CPU intensive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-X0wxZxcEv5YZGyLiUXB2UvnIycSrMyK/view?usp=sharing