Mac Mini M1

[mschnell]

Hi Guys,
As a kind of Maintainer of this forum section, I need help.

Here-> https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=213568 I stated, that I have no knowledge about Macs. Moreover I expressed the opinion that for Live usage a PC might be better suited than a Mac due to price / performance ratio. (Especially regarding that I consider a Laptop not a good choice).

But now Apple released the Mac Mini M1 (and the M1x at the doorstep), and from all report I found I suppose this machine right now is by far the best option for creating a Live setup with Reaper.

I don't suppose that I myself will switch to MacOS soon, but I would very much like to keep this forum section up to speed.

Hence I need help from experienced Mac users and Mac Mini M1 owners to post their experiences and suggestions here.

Thanks a lot !
-Michael

[mschnell]

My impression of the current state....


I am positive that Reaper itself will not show any problems on that behalf.

The new M1 ("Apple silicon") Macs seem very interesting regarding performance / price and performance / power consumption ratio. Also Apple seems to promise a great future for that product line (M1X, M2, ....)

Hence (IMHO other than Intel Macs) this seems like a decent move.

Of course (AFAIK), Reaper does have a native M1 version (still beta right now) and no old project loading or licensing problems whatsoever.

OTOH, I feel that this might only be perfect, if all plugins used in the projects feature native (non-Rosetta) M1 (i.e. ARM CPU) versions. AFAIK, this is not yet really common in the industry.

E.g.: No Native Instruments plugins are native ARM right now. They provide list of what products are compatible via Rosetta. Kontakt is not mentioned there :( .

Moreover of course you need appropriate (e.g. approved MAC-M1) drivers for any hardware you use.

So I will wait some time before considering to buy new hardware.

-Michael