MacBook Pro with only 8GB? Can this run NI Stuff safely?

Even with the limitations of the new Macbook Pro 2013/2014 people are still saying they're the best for music production. I could see that being said for recording, but is this the case for projects that are mainly comprised of Virtual Instruments and Effects plugins? Can they really all run cool off 8GB Ram or is people just saying MacBook Pros are they best because it sounds cool? Chime in! I want to know your thoughts on this. I just bought a windows laptop because no longer was attracted to what Apple was offering and thought it might be time for a change. But, I hate windows...lol Maybe there's some "Mojo" an 8GB MacBook Pro has that will allow it to run as many tracks as a fully loaded 32GB Windows PC Laptop? My goal is to be able to get about 40-50 plugin heavy tracks(1-2 Vis & 3-4 effects) to load. If a 8-16GB Macbook pro will get that for me, I may just go for it and be back in my comfort zone.

 

For a plugin-heavy production you DO need as much RAM as possible, so yes, more is better in this case, so 32 GB of RAM is really much better than 8 GB of RAM.

 

Thanks for the input. I just been seeing all over the net of people loving their 8GB having MBP but very few of them mention anything about plugins. It sounds like they probably do more live recording than anything else.

 

A Mac Pro would be a better choice in this case. My 2012 rMBP (16 Gb, 2.6 GHz) can barely do 85 tracks of (Ring Shifter + Space Designer + Channel EQ + Compressor + 4-voice EXS 24) in Logic v9.1.8. In this scenario all cores are maxed out.

 

Does it work if you replace these 85 instances of Space Designer with a normal reverb and select an empty audio track before playback? I heard convolution reverbs are really heavy on processors

 

I haven't tried that but I'm sure those 85 Space Designers are causing most of the stress. So yes, replacing them with say Platinum verbs would help a lot. Keep in mind though djtorchmusic wants to run "40-50 plugin heavy tracks"...

 

There is nothing stopping you using 8GB, its all dependent on the memory required by the instruments you are loading. You will be able to load up several in 8GB, and just bounce to audio when you begin to run out of available memory. You will just need to adjust your workflow a bit to take account of it.

 

That's would be a problem for me. When I'm in my creative flow, I don't want to "memory manage". Otherwise it would defeat the purpose. I like to audition 3-4 virtual instruments at a time, maybe stack them, etc. If I can get 85 tracks like Teemeister, I'd be happy with that. I did buy a MSI gaming box that takes up to 32GB, but windows is a trip. I can see why I left it alone 7 years ago (wow, how time flies).

 

There's absolutely nothing wrong with Windows (esp. W7, which are the best Windows ever). Disk streaming performance (particularly with SSDs) is better on Windows than OSX, which benefits DAWs and samplers.

I didn't have a single crash with my W7 installation in 3 years now, everything runs smooth and perfectly stable, I can run a LOT of plugins and stuff at the same time (100+ tracks with Reaper and 16 GB RAM, but I'm going to add another 16 GB this month just because I can). So, you might wanna rethink about some things.

 

I'm glad you brought that up. I'm sitting in front of a MSI GT60 as we speak. It SHOULD outperform a fully loaded Macbook pro, but it's been a pain getting all the devices to agree with Windows 8.1. It's been 7 years since I stepped away from a Windows Box for music production. I hope it works out. If it does, I'll save about 500-1000 and still outperform MBPr.

 

Notice I mentioned W7, not W8

 

LOL! Yeah, I caught that. This thing came with Windows 8 and I upgraded to 8.1. IF I end up staying with it, I'll consider the downgrade to Windows 7, if there's a huge benefit. So far, all this installing and moving .dll files around has been a pain. I never had to do this with OSX. But, I'm gonna see where this takes me and if I have to bail, I do have an image of my Mac Pro install I can slam on an iMac or MBPr. I do like all the configuration options you get with a gaming box.

32GB Ram (MBPr only 16)
4 internal drive configuration (MBPr only one)

I just hope the "numbers" don't lie.

 

OK...Here's the update:

It looks like I'll be sticking with my Windows 8.1 Gaming box(laptop) to produce with. It doesn't have the "Swag" of a macbook pro, but it has more internal and external I/O that I found to be relevant. I believe I could have got by with 16MB of ram, but the single SSD only option really killed it for me. I would have to run everything off of one huge SSD and the MBPr would have cost something like 2500.00 or more. I looked into an iMac, which was cool with memory but had other internal limitations and I really wanted something I could travel with, if I had to. The only reservation I have with this thing is DJ gigs. I'm not sure if I trust Windows enough yet to use this big thing live. But, I'll keep playing around with it and see where it takes me.