Resist and push through any issues. It is definitely worth it.
8 Likes
FYI on new Mac mini issue.
I had a Mac mini with base M4 Pro. Only upgrade was to a 1TB (Apple) SSD. After two months, it started glitching (wouldn’t wake from sleep, wouldn’t complete bootup). Apple Store diagnostic test revealed the fan had failed. They allowed me (with some pushing) to return it (since they weren’t just willing to give me a new one). I am now wondering if this could be a common problem, in light of many reports of lots of internal heat and fans firing up on this version of the Mac mini. I don’t really remember my fans spinning up much at all.
I’d consider just getting the regular M4 Mac mini instead of the M4 Pro, but I plan to use the Mini as the brains of my home recording studio (mostly audio recording but some light video recording), so might not be enough for me. I also looked at Apple Refurbished to see if there was a Mac Studio, but the cheapest one was over $4,000, so that’s a no-go.
The specs of the M4 Pro Mac mini with 1 TB HD fit my needs pretty much perfectly, but I am now wondering if I should get another one, or wait until May/June to see what options are available for the Mac Studio (which is kinda overkill for my needs but might last longer).
1 Like
Are you sure you really need the M4 Pro? Like really really sure?
People have been doing pretty demanding audio and video tasks for many years on processors orders of magnitude slower than the base M4.
The base Mini with external storage is fantastic but go beyond that and the value proposition quickly plummets off a cliff. You could possibly make an argument for the 512gb but even that is £200 for a paltry 256gb upgrade and a slightly faster SSD speed that’ll be noticeable under almost no practical conditions when making music (or even outside of that, for the most part).
I’ll have 16 ins and 12 outs hooked up to my Mini, so a fairly involved setup, and the M4 is total overkill on the processing front. Granted, this is mainly with Renoise which is very well coded and I don’t tend to have much going on in the way of VSTs, but it’d be more than capable if I did.
I’d put that money into something more fun, personally 
3 Likes
Just grabbed an m2 max mbp as my audio dumping ground as well as my away from home work laptop. The thermal throttling issue makes sense since it’s a ridiculous chip in a small chassis. I’ve read you can use software (macs fan control) to alter the fans so they keep on top of the temperature rather than suddenly going jet engine when it hits 100 degrees. Anyone done this???
Lol. My mates Nan went to a computer shop for a laptop and the poor old dear ended up coming home with a Linux. The pushy salesman wowed her with talk of free software and the ability to tailor it to your needs (open source).
5 Likes
I don’t know how wide-spread heat overload is, or fan failures.
I’ve had mine for several months now, always on, and always in performance mode and it’s been flawless.
I’m shocked they battled you for a swap. That’s not been my experience with new apple products that have failed in a short time period (say, the first 6 months or so). I buy AppleCare extended for everything-Apple though. Not sure if you did or if that changes their perspective, or whether you just have a crappy Apple store.
I actually started with the non-pro M4 Mini and for my use on in-the-box projects I found the 4-performance core limit underwhelming. An example use case would be: 10-12 instances of things like Diva, Omnisphere, Pigments, Opsix Native… that sort of thing + 10-12 effects plugins/eqs/blah + master bus compression/limiting.
This would have me at 75%+ of all 4 performance cores and while it worked… it worried me because over the next few years (if history is correct) the future plugins are just going to get hungrier. If I plopped in a couple of my heaviest/inefficient (sigh) plugins, like AAS Chromaphone or Ultra Analog, which always spike a CPU in the best-case scenario, that spike would lead to crackles at usable buffer sizes.
So, for future proofing I got the M4 Pro. Double the performance cores + 8GB more memory + double the memory bus speed (or something like that) + faster SSD read/writes out-of-the-box: boom. Night and day difference. It doesn’t work hard at all. The above use case sits at like 20% across the cores and even Chromophone’s annoying core-spikes are manageable.
That’s my experience comparing the M4 to the M4 Pro. Mileage may vary, but I found the two to not even be in the same universe as each other.
That being said, since this is a hardware forum to some degree: IF you’re primarily using hardware and will be using the M4 (base) to track and mix/master hardware audio tracks and sequence and such, the base would be fine. My comparison is based on in-the-box usage. I use the M4 Pro to track hardware also, and it’s far overkill for that use case.
5 Likes
I have a 14" M4 Max on the way to finally replace my 2012 i7 Mb Pro. Should be a decent boost in performance 
Mostly went with the Max because of heavy Blender usage but looking forward to a smoother experience using Meld and certain Reaktor ensembles as well.
4 Likes
That machine is going to blow your mind. Seriously.
My performance more than tripled from a 2011 i7 quad iMac to a 2020 i5 6-core.
The nearly doubled that to a 2021 M1 Pro Macbook.
And the M4 Pro (just the Pro) has nearly quadrupled over that.
(going by Logic Pro’s CPU meter on the same projects, which I have a few I use as benchmarks).
With my buffer size halving with each jump from 256 on the 2011, 128 on the 2020, 64 on the 2021 M1 and 32 now on the M4 Pro.
Seriously. It’s going to blow your mind.
4 Likes
I mainly use autodesk flame on an m2 studio ultra. Been planning on having a play with blender. See if I can stress out those gpu cores.
1 Like
I expect good things. I had an M2 Pro for about a year and a half at my last job (got laid off, severance package is paying for the M4 Max 
) with about half the gpu cores and that already handled everything like a champ. Didn’t do any audio things on it though so I’m prepared to be amazed 
1 Like
I’ve used Blender on an M2 Pro and it doesn’t disappoint. But I was actually most impressed by its cpu performance running the realtime rendering engine. (Eevee)
2 Likes
Thanks for this, confirms that I really don’t want to do an M4, as opposed to M4 Pro.
Edit: I bit the bullet. Just ordered a new Mac mini with the same specs as the one I returned (M4 Pro base CPU with 24 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD). Should have it in two weeks.
I did have Apple Extended Care. I have also owned maybe 15 Macs over the years and have never asked to return a single one. Not sure if they can see that, but maybe. Also, my last Mac was a “Trash Can” Mac Pro that I used for 10 years, and it never once crashed on me.
4 Likes
Ok, question I cannot find an answer to. I installed the Arturia Software Center. After logging into Software Center, it wants to set my install location to /Library/Arturia. Everything I’ve read says I should install VSTs in Library/Audio/Plugins/VST. Is this simply for the software center and then it’ll put my plugins in the appropriate folder? Should I change it to Library/Audio/Plugins/VST? I’m still grappling with the folder structure and such and want to keep things as tidy as possible.
I don’t know if this will help, but I usually just agree to install where it recommends, with most plugins and installers, and I have never really had a problem. And since the Arturia Software Center is an app, it will end up in the Applications Folder if you need to find it.
2 Likes
I do the same.
Only issue with recent mac is the default hard drives are tiny - I installed most of the synth plugins and now I’m struggling with space.
1 Like
Update: the VSTs did in fact install into the /library/audio/plugins/vst folder, so it worked as expected. I’m still not used to things “just working” and it’s so nice.
3 Likes
I have stopped worrying about setting custom install folders, for both win and Mac. Vst3 at least had this standardised now, and i mostly install those. In the olden days, there was no standard folder on windows, so it became a hot mess if you didn’t specify.
Nowadays, at least with vst3, it just works, on bot mac and win
3 Likes
I think VST2 and VST3 are installed in different locations. In general I only install VST3 and accept the default location
They are. Vst3 is the only one with a standard location and iirc you can’t change it
1 Like
If you have a MicroCenter in your US city, the base Mac Mini M4 is 499.
My only experience with MicroCenter is ordering things for work some years ago… motherboards, RAM, drives, etc.
They were fine, but I haven’t dealt with them since, so do some digging before just grabbing it. These are in-store only, sadly, or I’d be the guinea pig and there’s no MicroCenter within a reasonable drive of me.
https://www.microcenter.com/product/688173/apple-mac-mini-mu9d3ll-a-(late-2024)-desktop-computer