New Computer Day - Macbook Air M5

[Jarick]

Picked up one of the new Macbook Air M5 models this morning and setting it up now. Looking forward to seeing how it works compared to my old Macbook Air M1!

I've had my Macbook Air M1 for several years and it's still performing really well, but my memory and application needs have outgrown the base model specs (256 GB drive and 8 GB memory). I found just launching a couple browser tabs and having a couple things running in the background like UAD Console would eat up all my physical memory pushing me into disk memory, and then between Logic Pro and a few other apps almost my entire disk was full all of the time. Also the original M1 had issues with HDMI output so the new model should work better with my ultrawide monitor.

So I picked up the new base model which has 512 GB drive and 16 GB memory. Thought about bumping those up again but I want to see how this one does first.

 

[Jarick]

First hurdle - the Mac refuses to see the UAD Apollo Twin despite uninstalling and reinstalling twice. MOTU M4 is plug and play. Very strongly considering just ditching the Apollo at this point given how much of a pain it is.

But outside of that, wow the computer is noticeably faster zipping around even just web browsing and stuff. Sites are loading faster and you can go back and forth with zero lag. It's also nice having the Activity Monitor memory showing green all the time with a lot of memory available.

 

[Chocol8]

Yeah, I think 16 gb is the minimum ram for a happy Mac experience. Apple left the default too low for too long which just hurts customer experience.

 

[mavrick102000]

Agreed. 8GB RAM is only good for surfing with a few tabs open and will usually maintain normal performance. 16GB has been bare minimum even in a frugal corporate environment for at least a decade to ensure core functionality doesn't suffer while multi-taksing particularly if you're using MicroSlop products.

The new SIlicon-based Macs are fast, but the shared memory for some of the graphics allocation, makes me want to bump them up to 24GB so I would be left with the base 16GB RAM for Logic and Plug-ins and other OS tasks with rarely any concern.

I'll be it still performs very well for you. Bummer on the Apollo interface issues.

 

[Jarick]

Agreed. 8GB RAM is only good for surfing with a few tabs open and will usually maintain normal performance. 16GB has been bare minimum even in a frugal corporate environment for at least a decade to ensure core functionality doesn't suffer while multi-taksing particularly if you're using MicroSlop products.

The new SIlicon-based Macs are fast, but the shared memory for some of the graphics allocation, makes me want to bump them up to 24GB so I would be left with the base 16GB RAM for Logic and Plug-ins and other OS tasks with rarely any concern.

I'll be it still performs very well for you. Bummer on the Apollo interface issues.

I've got a new computer waiting for me back at the office too, which will bump me from 8GB to 16GB on Windows 11. I do a ton of multi tasking and a lot of memory intensive work with Power BI so looking forward to some improvements there too.

 

[mavrick102000]

My corp laptop has 64GB. I was surprised that corporate went nearly all 64 GB on Windows and 32 GB on Macs for Devs to avoid performance complaint issues. I was surprised as I was used to 16GB max except for the power users.

 

[JCW308]

I've got a new computer waiting for me back at the office too, which will bump me from 8GB to 16GB on Windows 11. I do a ton of multi tasking and a lot of memory intensive work with Power BI so looking forward to some improvements there too.

16GB isn't really anything special for Windows 11 these days. I'd go to at least 32GB.

 

[Jarick]

16GB isn't really anything special for Windows 11 these days. I'd go to at least 32GB.

It's a company computer so I don't really have any say in the matter.

 

[Jarick]

Randomly saw this video on YouTube and followed the instructions and now the Apollo Twin is working! A bit disappointed this wasn't in the instructions explicitly.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Randomly saw this video on YouTube and followed the instructions and now the Apollo Twin is working! A bit disappointed this wasn't in the instructions explicitly.

I was about to suggest this very procedure after reading your second post, but you've found things yourself already.
I think it's got to do with Apple straying away from the old (kernel extension based?) driver system, but some companies are still using these drivers, so you need to explicitely allow macOS to still use them. Had to go through that myself as well.

 

[Jarick]

Day 2 - I never really figured out how to use my iCloud documents on my old computer so I used my downloads folder as documents instead. Now I'm going through and doing a thorough review and backup so I can use documents properly and keep synced with the cloud for backup.

First step is going through what seems like 500,000 impulse response files I have piled up.

 

[Sascha Franck]

First step is going through what seems like 500,000 impulse response files I have piled up.

Try each of them out and record a snippet for comparison. Seeya in 2139.

 

[Jarick]

Day 3 - was going to start setting up Logic to work on my external drive, then found I should reformat my drive for a modern Apple format, so I had to shuffle some files around. After reformatting the drive it prompted me to setup Time Machine for backups, which I had completely forgotten about as I never did it on my last computer.

So now I've got a 2 TB external SSD with half dedicated to backing up my local drive and half dedicated to additional storage.

Still have to figure out what I want to keep in iCloud vs local drive though. Maybe I can figure out how to set up a folder to backup to both just in case?

 

[Jarick]

First folder of IR's is about 100,000 files

I've got to download all of them and then consolidate to one folder so I can delete duplicates.

The hardest part will probably be holding each of them to see if they spark joy before deleting.

I'll say this though, the new Mac drive is fast as hell alongside the USB SSD drive. I was able to transfer 250 GB of files back and forth in probably five minutes each way.

 

[Sascha Franck]

First folder of IR's is about 100,000 files

I just checked my IR folder (all of them, cab and reverb IRs combined) and it's around 190k files. Admittedly, around 30k are just the Red Wirez Big Pack and there's a motherload of files (mainly reverbs) doubled in a folder @BROCKSTAR once posted.

Btw, as you are using Logic as well, I highly recommend grabbing the Space Designer Manager tool. Creates a Space Designer preset for each IR you slap at it (obviously batch processing included - which is the main purpose of it) and once that's done you'll be able to browse IRs faster than ever before.

--- 2 minutes later ---

FFS! Space Designer Manager vanished from earth. Was available from the website when I bought it, moved to the App Store then but is now completely gone as it seems.
I still have the mail adress of the guy somewhere, may ask him about what's going on. Seriously, IMO it's one of the most valuable tools for Logic users ever.

 

[Jarick]

Well I'm about 10 hours in and only half of the 300,000 or so impulses have downloaded from iCloud. This thing is glacially slow.

 

[JCW308]

Well I'm about 10 hours in and only half of the 300,000 or so impulses have downloaded from iCloud. This thing is glacially slow.

Sounds like you need a psychiatrist, not a faster laptop. :-)

 

[Sascha Franck]

Just fwiw, as I've mentioned it: The programmer of Space Designer Manager got back to me and told me he's no longer into programming. That's absolutely bad news IMO (fortunately my version still works). Asked him whether he could give the code to someone else and he answered "perhaps".

 

[Jarick]

Sounds like you need a psychiatrist, not a faster laptop. :-)

I've been trying to consolidate all my external drives as well as my iCloud files so I had I don't know how many copies of all the various IR files I downloaded over the years. I'm about halfway through sorting and cleaning up things, already deleted about 200,000 IR files which is over 16 GB worth.

 

[Jarick]

Finally done!

Total deleted: 278,601 files (23 GB)

Final kept and organized: 253,164 files (12 GB)