That's thrown my sense of the right level of investment off a bit (especially with all these M1/2 chips coming out.) I chose 16GB of RAM 10 years ago. I’ve been looking at the models listed above, and the Mac ecosystem seems to have changed a fair bit since I last bought. Even though it's just for fun, my main concern is that the machine can can handle EDM style music production, which can be RAM intensive to load all the libraries, plugins and virtual instruments (mostly running all this via Rosetta 2 for now.) With that in mind, I’ve narrowed the search down to the Mac mini, Mac Studio and the MacBook Pro. I should say that my personal primary use for the machine (aside from the usual TV watching, web browsing etc) will be hobby level music production. As a result, I'm looking for something flexible for my next machine, either a laptop or a small desktop. With all the changes since 2020, we now work at home more so I'd like to have others in the family be able to swap their machines in/out of our desk. I’m a longtime iMac user and I’ve had around 8-10 years of use from a mid-level machine each time. A buying question that I hope might be useful for others. Prices for the Mac Studio start at $1,999/£1,999, while the Studio Display starts at $1,599/£1,499.įind out more on the Apple (opens in new tab) website.TLDR - with all the new M1/2 chips - what is the best machine/RAM etc for hobby music production? The Mac Studio and Studio Display are available to pre-order from today, and will start arriving to customers on Friday 18 March. Given its name, it’s no surprise that Mac Studio is being targeted at music makers - Apple made a point of mentioning that it can “power the digital audio workstation they’ve been dreaming of” during its launch event - so we’re looking forward to finding out if it can live up to its billing. In fact, it’s even got its own processor - the A13 Bionic chip.

The Mac Studio is complemented by the 27-inch Studio Display, which rocks a 5K Retina screen, a built-in camera, a three-microphone array and a six-speaker sound system.

There are connections on the front, too - a couple of USB-C ports and an SD card slot. When it comes to connectivity, the rear of the Mac Studio offers four Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 10GB Ethernet port, two USB-A ports, an HDMI port, and a “pro audio” jack for high-impedance headphones or external amplified speakers.

Imac pro recording studio