Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
Is it finally time to get a MacBook?
So.
On the desktop audio side of things I have always built my own Windows PCs. Silent case, silent fans, etc. Now I have to downsize to a laptop for all things audio as we need the desk space.
The M1 MacBooks just seem so far ahead in terms of performance. And they run quiet. And with iOS and macOS converging. It’s time to finally switch isn’t it???
(Leave out the Windows/Apple insults please)
Comments
Yes. Do it. I have one of the new MacBook Pros and it’s incredible. Noticeably snappier than even last year’s M1 Mac mini. And the battery life is absurd.
I got it for the screen and ports. For my use, the plain M1 is enough—the M1 Pro is overkill.
Pros (compared to iPad): proper file management, audio units don’t just disappear, way more mature and reliable.
Cons: no touch screen, which I love for music apps. And you don’t get all the amazing iOS music apps. Drambo and Loopy Pro work on it, but are way better on iOS.
Then again, you can use iDAM to send your iPad audio to the Mac. That actually works really well.
I haven't seen anything yet from the AMD/Intel world that can match the performance, thermals, and silence of the new Macs in a laptop. One of the big pluses of the Macs is that they can actually maintain the performance levels when running on battery.
If you haven't checked one of the new Pros out in person, do. The screens are incredible if you do anything with the visual side of things. I played with one in a shop and had Final Cut rendering out a 4K vid with multiple 4K input files and the fans never kicked on. It's going to take some pretty hefty audio project to get the thing to make any noise. Maybe something big rendering a bunch of spatial audio stuff could.
Beyond that it's going to come down to if the software you want is there. One thing I wouldn't give as a plus to the Mac is any thought of a convergence of iOS and macOS. Running any pure iOS software on the Mac isn't what I consider a great experience. There are some cool things like Logic Remote if you use Logic or MainStage and I think Universal Control will be really useful if they ever get it released.
There's probably going to be some real benefits to being able to cross develop for iOS and macOS in the future, but for now I'd make the decision based on considering only the software available for the Mac and if it does what you want.
i got the M1 pro and its nuts. crazy fast, crazy powerful.
Got the M1 air a few months ago. No fan is a game changer. Pros have fans. The performance and battery life of the Air is quite amazing. I may get a Mac mini when they release a M1 Pro version to replace my 2012 Dell XPS desktop.
I’ve got the bog standard Apple M1 Air with 8Gb of memory and it’s a marvel. The performance is amazing. I can even play PC games using Parralells and it’s totally silent. Very impressive.
But how will you pirate and mod your computer?
For the first time in about 5 years it’s easy to recommend mac laptops.
The old rule of thumb applies. Spend as much as you can afford and you’ll get an a really good mac that will last you for years and years.
The entry level 14” MacBook Pro is amazing value for what you get. Just $/€/£200 ish more than the same 16/512 config of the 13”.
If you can wait the next Air might be worth waiting for but the current one is still going to be an excellent laptop.
I recently bought a 14” MBP base model and it’s fantastic. Couldn’t be more different experience from my previous work MBP, the first Touch Bar 15” and a total lemon.
I’ve had macs since 1988. The 2016 MBP has to be one of the worst macs I’ve ever owned. The new 14 is easily up there with the very best. And probably all things considered the best Mac ever made to date. Desktop performance. On batteries. With no compromises. Mind blown.
@klownshed when do they think the next line comes out?
Nobody knows for sure but Mark Gurman is saying about 5-6 months and that it will be a major refresh.
The M1 air is great but it’s in an enclosure designed for the Intel Airs.
Google DuckDuckGo “Mark Gurman M2 Air” for more info on the rumours. He tends to be right more often than not.
If you want 16G of RAM and 512GB SSD then the 14” MBP suddenly makes a lot of sense.
Cheers dude.
I will say I got the M1 mini as soon as they came out. The “iOS and macOS converging” thing is not really happening anytime soon. It’s been almost the same for the entire year I’ve had it. Now, I’m still stuck just using my iPad for music because I’m lazy and haven’t been trying to learn the new platform very much. I do go in and check periodically if things are working or not.
I had a handful out of hundreds of apps that could even download. They started off working terribly. Eventually all of a sudden they were working somewhat stable and that was only MacOS updates not updates for these apps for the most part. It still wasn’t enough to make it worth it.
That said the Rosetta translation works almost seamlessly for anything I experienced. The normal Mac apps should run fine for you. It’s just if you hope to run your iOS apps don’t expect it.
Do you know if the GUI bug that caused iOS plugins to blowup Logic got fixed? I've taken all the audio stuff off of our Mini so it can be used for something more important than my needs, so I can't test this anymore. I had an update from Apple about my bug report a couple of weeks ago that made me think they may have that fixed now.
M1 Pro here, it’s hands down the best laptop I’ve ever used. I can edit So many 4k video steams and it doesn’t even get warm. Nuts. Do it.
The Macbook Air M1 is the best laptop that I have ever had, thanks to its absence of fans.
At the end of the day, every laptop that I owned died after accumulating dust in the fan.
Also, thanks to how brilliant and polished Mac OS is, work with this machine as a desktop computer connected to an external monitor is a breeze.
If you have a bluetooth and a mouse keyboard connected and it's using the USB-C charger, when you close the lid it will start to work automatically in desktop mode.
Even more, if you use the Macbook Air in this way, after some days it will stop charging the battery in a smart way, to save its lifetime operational time.
Also, I really hate how the the computer world has evolved with the x86 architecture to machines that don't give a shit about the environment and climate change, with absurd power consumptions.
ARM is the future, and there is no way in which I will ever buy a machine with a x86 processor again. It doesn't matter if it's a PC or a Sony or Microsoft console. Not with these power consumptions and how harmful they are for the environment.
the energy a laptop uses during its lifetime is only a fraction of the energy it costs to produce it, so hanging on to your old x86 machine will always be less harmful for the environment than replacing it with a (more energy-efficient) ARM machine
I’ve got an M1 Pro and I’ve yet to actually hear the fans come on. As a stress test, I rendered the below video out while at the same time compiling a multiarch docker image. Either of those things would make my top of the range intel MBP sound like a 747 and get so hot I couldn’t use it on my lap. The video took about 6 minutes to render on the M1 Pro, it took over 30 minutes on Intel and I wasn’t even compiling docker images at the same time. Fans never came on on the M1 and it only got mildly warm.
Thanks. I'm curious if you have a link to some site where this point is clarified.
Good to know, I think I prefer fanless for laptops going forward. Less weight too, but good sign of effeciency for Mac Minis in the future.
https://www.networkworld.com/article/2229029/computer-factories-eat-way-more-energy-than-running-the-devices-they-build.html
or from Apple: https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/notebooks/13-inch_MacBookAir_PER_Nov2020.pdf (page 2)
13-inch MacBook Air life cycle carbon emissions
76% Production
8% Transport
15% Use
<1% End-of-life processing
Great question, great answer. A rare and illuminating evidence based discussion. Thank you.
@cp3. Yes, thanks, good info.
As with most consumer products the imbalance between the production and end of life cycles should give everyone pause for thought, the cyclical nature of the universe, life, must be adhered to, the balance must be retained as much as possible.
I’d figured that production and transport were environmentally expensive, but I didn’t realize how much. That’s nuts.
I wonder how much of that is down to the power efficiency of the M1? I wonder how much energy the Intel Macs use during their lifetime. I mean, overall even something nuts like 4x extra energy use wouldn’t make a difference overall. Just interested to see.
I’ll try to find the relevant PDF.
EDIT: same for 2020 MacBook Air, and even the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro is only 19% (page 2).
I had no idea. That's pretty stunning really.
I saw this over on Elektronauts and thought it might be useful to someone here.
US: Best Buy has the 14" MBP for $400 off. Apple M1 Pro chip - 16GB Memory - 512GB SSD (Latest Model) - Space Gray.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/macbook-pro-14-laptop-apple-m1-pro-chip-16gb-memory-512gb-ssd-latest-model-space-gray/6450853.p?skuId=6450853
I have several family members who were lifelong Windows users, they both got Macs (MacBook Pro and Mac mini) and they never looked back. They love them.
I have a big library on Steam, will it works on Parralells?
Same for me, especially since Win 10.
But it took me a few months to really get used to MacOS as a lot of handy Windows features and tools don't exist on MacOS.
BTW there's another advantage in the current 14" and 16" Macbook Pros:
Sound!
The speakers now have an incredible bass response, hard to believe at this size.