Apple MacBook Pro 13" M1 Audio Power Test - Logic Pro With Space Designer
When the audio community knew that a new Apple MacBook Pro M1 (Late 2020) was landing at Experts HQ we got a barrage of requests to test it. We asked some engineers and producers what they'd like us to throw at it.
The MacBook Pro M1 audio power test is just one of the tests we are going to be conducting with the new Apple Silicon Macs powered by the M1 chips in the coming weeks. It's one thing for Apple to give a glossy presentation, selectively quoting numbers on power, cooling and battery life, but how do those translate for those working in the audio world, especially as these machines, by any other standard, should be considered as entry-level.
Before We Begin - A Safety Announcement
What we are doing with these tests is bleeding edge, not the kind of stuff any sane person who needs to make a living from pro audio should do. We bought this as a test machine and right now most DAWs, plugins and all other software is not supported.
Please don't take any of these tests as us telling you it's OK to sell your old computer and move to the new Apple Mac M1. Our advice is to wait until all the tests are done. In the meantime, make sure you bookmark our Big Sur compatibility guide and keep checking it. Now fasten your seatbelts and enjoy the flight.
Logic Pro With Space Designer
Producer and engineer Alan Branch (U2, Primal Scream and a multitude of other acts) messaged us ‘Simple Logic Pro CPU test’. “Make a new 44.1/48 project with a single audio track & short audio region, insert as many Space Designers as possible then duplicate the track. The key question is how many total Space Designers can it run?" Even better Alan sent us the project to try. You can download it here and try it for yourself.
The Test
The test is a simple one. It's a session with audio on the tracks, 15 Space Designers inserted on every track, the challenge is to find out how many Space Designers can you run before Logic stops playing reliably. He gave us some instructions to ensure all machines tested were set up equally.
Ensure Logic preferences/audio is set to:
I/O buffer size of 128 (1024 seems worse)
Processing Threads - Manually set to max
Process Buffer Range - Large
Multithreading - Playback Tracks
Use Option-click on the power button to bypass tracks, to ensures the track is completely disabled.
Open the mixer, (press X by default) select all tracks & click the Disable button on the lowest Space Designer row, this will reduce or increase the number of SD instances per track and may help Logic optimise the maximum number of SDs per core.
MacBook Pro M1 Audio Power Test - Logic Pro Results
Mac Pro 5.1 3.46 GHz 12 core 32GB - 315 Space Designers
MacBook Pro 2.4GHz 8 Core i9 32GB - 210 Space Designers
iMac 5K Retina 27" Late 2017, 4GHz Quad Core i7 32GB - 210 Space Designers
MacBook Pro 13" M1 2020 16GB - 435 Space Designers
As you can see a new MacBook Pro M1 can run over twice as many Space Designers as a fully loaded Intel MacBook Pro i9.
What About Fan Noise?
On the MacBook Pro i9 after running the test for 2 minutes the temperature of the Mac was around 80 degrees C. At this point, the fan was going fast enough to dry your hair.
On the new MacBook Pro 13" M1 after running the same test for 5 minutes the temperature of the Mac was around 26 degrees C. We couldn't get the fan to kick in. This thing is silent, it could spend its life in a monastery where one has to take a vow of silence.
Summary
So there you have it, our first real-world audio test of the new Apple MacBook Pro 13" M1.
Think of everything you've learned about how computers work over the years, all that stuff on power, heat, throttling, noise, memory usage. Think again, comparing an Apple M1 chip with an Intel is like comparing a banana with a boat, both words may begin with B but that's about as close as it gets.
In any other world this machine would be considered entry level, but as we’ve already said the isn’t the world we’ve grown accustomed to, it’s a new paradigm. Some will read this and still not believe what they are reading, so be it, we have nothing to prove, even more exciting neither does this Apple Mac M1 either. It may be the new kid on the block, but watch out, the new Apple Macs are no pushover. Want a second opinion? Then check out John Gruber’s thoughts on the new Mac.
We've been running tests for several hours now on all the major DAWs and this entry-level Apple Mac M1 computer is, to put it bluntly, f*cking insane. In our early tests, the hype is actually less than the reality and whenever Apple launch their next-generation professional Mac computers, we expect that they are going to be very special.