I think it’s crazy that any DAW or plugin should have issues or still be running on Rosetta emulation, but not everyone listens to me. M1 series has been out since November 2020 and macOS Monterey since October 2021. It should go without saying, but I’m gonna say it anyway. You will be on external storage very quickly.

256GB is a pointless SSD capacity as well.

No need to completely dog out the CPU, ha! The numbers would be comparable for Ableton Live or other DAWs as well.ĭAWs will run on an 8GB Mac mini but you will hit the memory ceiling and feel it. Real world loaded I would feel very comfortable throwing 60 tracks at the Mac mini M1 8GB model or 115 tracks at the Mac Studio M1 Max 32GB model. Note the tracks in this benchmark are not necessarily real world loaded but I think you can see both of these systems will satisfy average DAW performance needs. The Mac Studio M1 Max 32GB has 10 CPU cores and 24 GPU cores. The Mac mini M1 8GB has 8 CPU cores and 8 GPU cores. To give you a rough idea of DAW performance, these Logic Pro benchmarks come from the ‘ Mac Studio vs M1 Mac Mini after 2 Weeks! Real-World Results.’ video located in the YouTube section farther down this page. GPU Performance Benchmarks DAW Benchmarks It is worth noting that even the entry level M1 Mac mini holds its own against all previous Intel-based Macs. Multi-core performance is where the differences become more apparent because of the different number of cores. The single-core performance of the Mac mini is very similar to all other M1 Series processors, because of course they all share the same core. For some the 13″ MacBook Pro M1/M2 would also be a viable option, but I personally hate the touch bar and find the design/features dated, so they are not for me (or the majority of others). With the above caveats, the Mac mini M1 and its siblings, the Mac mini M2, the MacBook Air M2, the MacBook Air M1 and the 24″ iMac M1 make amazing low cost options for musicians and creators. You will regret buying an Apple M Series system with 8GB memory and a 256GB SSD. Any less than this does not make performance or economic sense. My minimum Apple computer recommendation for musicians and creators is 16GB memory and 512GB SSD or more. A 16GB memory upgrade for $200 and a 512GB SSD upgrade for $200 are seriously the minimum of what you need. It’s tight now and has a negative future-proofing factor. 8GB of memory and a 256GB SSD are not enough for musicians and creators. I’m not going to play with you here, or hem and haw like many YouTubers do. If properly configured Apple silicon is too expensive for you, buy used or refurbished. Do not buy a computer with 8GB memory and a 256GB SSD! Why any musician or creator would buy a new system constrained like this in 2023 is beyond me.

M1 mac mini storage upgrade