Hey guys,
Looking for some mac-friendly advice.
I’m currently running a 2009 Mac Pro 4,1 tower. 2x quad core, 16gb ram, 4x 1TB barracuda 7200 HDD’s. It’s been my music production CPU for the last 2 years, and TBH it is massive overkill for what I am doing. I just checked a few dense sessions (100+ tracks) in both Pro Tools 12 and Ableton 9, and the CPU usage didn’t go above 12%, with RAM only using 7GB (in the PT session, only 3GB in the Ableton session). FWIW I don’t use a lot of softsynths, and the ones I do (Maschine, Massive, Monark, Prism, Operator) run fine on my crappy 2012 MBP. I’m def not doing 20+ instances of omnisphere - and don’t plan to.
I also don’t use the pcie slots, and I’m not even using the 5 (8 if you count the monitor hub) USB slots as I have a USB Hub I move between my studio and my live setup. I don’t do anything video related (nor do I plan to) so the big graphics card (AMD Radeon 7XXXsomething something) is wasted for the most part - except to run the meters and playhead in my DAW… I actually bought it in case I needed to upgrade using PCIE, graphic, etc, but have since moved the other direction completely. I leave any gaming for consoles.
Which brings me to my next point: my live Mac is a crappy old standard 2012 13" base model (albeit with 16gb ram). It’s actually not so bad for what I am doing, but something a little more robust/future-proof is probably a good idea. Some of my sessions from the Pro definitely run slower on the MBP.
SO, my question is - should I sell my Pro tower, replace it with a decent MBP (maybe 2015, 15" i7?) that I can then use for gigs etc? The main problems I can see with the MBP are: connectivity (solved by USB hub in my case), HDD space (I could keep 2 of the barracuda’s and get a sata enclosure for $60), and components in laptop vs tower (any???).
The bonus is I should have some $$$ spare after to spend on other things (read: synths)
Any help welcome!
NOTE: please don’t turn this into a mac vs. PC debate - I care not for it. I am no apple fan boy (still using an iPhone 4), but all my systems are Apple, my work systems are all Apple, and literally everyone I work with in music is Apple based.