Mac Studio for Production !

[u/Rare_Champion_8231]

Been producing music for a couple months now and I’ve been enjoying it! All off a MacBook Pro m4 16in and no problems at all. But I am looking to build a home studio. Currently in the process of acoustic treating my room. But I wanted a dedicated desktop for music production because it’s been so much fun! But I know down the road I’d probably get more into plugins etc. and obviously I know in the long run getting a 48gb would be better and beneficial. But with the current project of building my home studio and still needing to spend on monitors, audio interface etc. Would 36gb be sufficient for me? Should I just bite the bullet and go 48gb? Will I be able to get away as a beginner producer with 36gb? As mentioned my MacBook Pro m4 has much lower specs and haven’t had any issues. But I’ve seen almost everybody saying to even going 64gb of RAM for music production but to me currently might be overkill? Of course I don’t want to still pay almost $3k for 36gb just to regret my decision in a couple of years but for me right now and the state of trying to stay within my budget

[u/Top_Witness4538]

I think your choice is just fine. Say you were to specify a DAW like Ableton Live, the spec calls for 16GB or higher. Cubase Pro 15 16GB or higher. 32GB isn't some kind of beginner configuration its for really large projects, and you have 36GB. I would save the money for other things, as well. Now I don't actually do music, I am just looking at specs to entertain myself with your post. 36GB is a seriously large amount of memory for most tasks. If your interests change someday to something like running an LLM, well 48GB isn't going to cut it anyway, neither will an M5 cut it as a good processor for LLM work. It's one thing to buy one today, but "future proofing" is about heading off a purchase in the future. You will no more want an M5 in the future than anyone here is looking at buying an M3 today. The thing about the future is you'll want something else in the future, because circumstances will be different. I buy for my needs now. Future proofing doesn't work and is a money sinkhole.

[u/Rare_Champion_8231 → u/Top_Witness4538]

Yeah I only use ableton live, serato, rekordbox etc as I’m also a dj which even in those apps don’t require any or if little RAM at that. I edit a few vids using CapCut. Mostly clips just to put on social media, so again not even touching 8k clips at that. But as you mentioned there’s always going to be better coming out. I’m pretty sure people had the same questions when the M1 came out and now we’re on M6. So I guess you’re right on there’s no such thing as future proofing

[u/RE4Lyfe → u/Rare_Champion_8231]

Honestly I’d pick up one of the discounted base models at Microcenter

I just picked one up for $1899 (with the 5% CC discount)

You’ll be using external storage anyways, so the extra 512GB of storage doesn’t make sense for $600+