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Old 11-04-2018, 11:29 AM
FrankHudson FrankHudson is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: Minneapolis, MN
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I'm pleased that Apple is throwing us computer users a bone with this one. With my increasing use of Virtual Instruments, one of my pair of ancient Mac Minis will likely get replaced later this year with one of these.


Pluses: real CPU power available. Looks like a return to user upgradable RAM. SSD storage standard. Plenty of Thunderbolt/USB-C. Folks here who use DAWs to record their acoustic "real" instruments only would do great with the 4 core I3 model. My band recording Mini in the studio, which isn't asked to run virtual instruments is still a Core 2 Duo Mini model-probably 8 years old and used constantly since it was new.


Audio recording use-case pluses: you aren't paying for a high-end video card or display, neither of which are important in audio work. Those looking to do stout video editing stuff could add those things (external Thunderbolt video card dock/adapters are apparently a thing).


Negatives. Apple's markup on larger solid state hard drives is very large. Most more complex VIs that would challenge my newer 2012 Mac Mini have huge sample libraries. Logic X (where I do most of my VI work) can move sample libraries after they are installed, but the scuttlebutt I hear says that it doesn't always move them entirely (yes, I know the alias trick). I'm thinking I'll go with the 512 gigabyte drive model and just hold my nose at the markup, but I really should go with the 1 terabyte model and I'm already stretching the budget before looking at that. I've lived with external firewire drives in the past, so I'm guessing I'll be looking at (?multiple)external drives. A 1 terabyte drive more at market price would have made this a no-brainer.

That's not an issue for most here. Just move your old sessions off to a cheap external drive if you want to keep them and don't install big VI libraries that you won't be using.
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Guitars: 20th Century Seagull S6-12, S6 Folk, Seagull M6; '00 Guild JF30-12, '01 Martin 00-15, '16 Martin 000-17, '07 Parkwood PW510, Epiphone Biscuit resonator, Merlin Dulcimer, and various electric guitars, basses....
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