M1 Mac mini... Isn't great or what!!

Just set up a refurb Mac mini with M1 this morning. I was expecting hell but wow! everything is working great and pretty much all I have is running under Rosetta. It's going way better than the PowerPC to Intel transition. This little computer really is a beast. Even the plugins I have that are way discontinued are working all right in Logic. If some people were wondering about compatibility, here's the stuff I have that I didn't think would show up:

- Omnisphere 1.5

- Korg Gadget 1.7, the plugins...

- All N-I except MassiveX as advertised

- My old Belkin TB1 Express Dock

- UAD everything(Arrow+TB2 Satellite)

- Arturia

- Korg Legacy Coll.

- SonicProject PRO-X II

- Pianoteq Stage 6

- UM-ONEmkII

- Old Roland Firewire FA-66(just for fun)

 

Of course, only stuff that gave me a headache is the Steinberg stuff. I managed to make Retrologue 2 work but Padshop 2 is lost. I could contact Steinberg but by the time they respond Apple will have moved past the AS chips, so...

 

Blink

Yep. I'm impressed. Makes my iMac seem sluggish.

Korg Legacy? Those were amongst the few I had to ditch... HmmmM1... maybe try again then...

Korg Legacy? Those were amongst the few I had to ditch... HmmmM1... maybe try again then...

First time I started Logic, under Rosetta, Korg’s validation app started upon the plugin manager scanning my stuff and it asked to download the whole package. After that, they were all available. Definitely reinstall them with the Korg authorization app, which is way simpler than it used to be.

NB the KORG Legacy apps (I use my M1 a lot) are Intel binaries, and I assume the plugin is as well. All should be good if you run Logic in Rosetta mode.

I got my M1 Mac Mini two months ago after using Windows machines for 20 years or so. I absolutely love this little machine. What I love the most is its silence. I'm super sensitive to noise, and this M1 Mini is dead silent. All my instruments and effects work without an issue (Arturia V, Pigments, UVI stuff, Korg Collection, Cherry Audio, XLN, IKM stuff, Valhalla, TAL, Roland Cloud, and Waves One Knob series). I'm using a MOTU M4 interface, and everything is just fast.

My first "real" encounter with the Mini was while I was working at Apple. They had roomfuls of the little guys sitting on shelves, with cool air being blown through the shelves to come up through holes in the slats to keep the machines nice and cool. (Minis historically had air-circulation and therefore heating problems when put to "serious" use.) These were computers that, among other things, were night-and-day scanning all of Apple's web-sites (internal and external) looking for problems. You could push a button to connect a console to any of them. It was quite the sight to see.

 

Although the form factor of the Mini is about as minimal as you can get, the hardware is and always has been impressive. You can still buy external fans for them, and I probably would do so.

The M1 is a different beasty. My 2011 Mini-server, that many touted as suitable for audio recording...wasn't. The fan started kicking on loudly with iTunes, ffs. The M1 is in an entirely different level.