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Minimalist Experiment - Advice?


Compressor61

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Hello All.

My normal setup is a M1 Mac Mini with all the latest updates, Ventura, LP 10.7.3, tons of plugins and virtual instruments, samples, on and on. All working well for the most part. 

I’m traveling to Asia for a month next week to visit my wife’s family. I can’t take my main setup so I’m trying an experiment of sorts. I want to purposely limit myself to an all stock LP setup on a low power computer so I can focus on songwriting and production and not get sucked into the Vortex of shiny things and plugins. I may play around with GarageBand as well. I’m hoping this will help me break out of some bad habits, form some good new habits and improve my skillset.

So I bought a 2011 MacBook Pro 13” for $75 on eBay and it’s in surprisingly good shape. I upgraded it with 16gb RAM and 512 SSD.  It runs great! So for around $125 I have an old but fully functional MacBook. But it will only run High Sierra and nothing newer as the MacOS. That limits me to LP 10.4.8. LP seems to run fine so far but I haven’t done much with it.

I’ve watched a few vids on using Opencore Legacy Patcher to get Monterey running on this old Mac, which would get me to LP 10.7 but it seems a bit dodgy and I fear it would lead to a nightmare of LP compatibility issues and problems. 

Has anyone done this Opencore thing with Monterey (btw Ventura not supported yet for 2011 MPB) on an old Mac and did LP 10.7 run well?

Also, does anyone have thoughts on how you would approach this kind of minimalist experiment? It’s only for a month and I can bring whatever projects I create into my main setup when I get back home.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

 

Don

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i would stay within the constraints you've set up, and not try patching the OS to run monterey; after all, the focus is on simplicity.

i have a cme xkey25 air for travel; thin, light, (works with usb as well). simple! and headphones, or monitors like the ik multimedia micros. you could get something like the apogee groove (on ebay, if not new) as a DAC for monitors or headphones.

am a 'severe minimalist' (my GF's words, not mine), and simplicity can be a great thing, forcing one to focus on the music, not the gear. i think you've got the right idea, have fun with it 👍

EDIT: fwiw, the drive in that mac is a mechanical drive, not an SSD.

Edited by fisherking
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