Originally Posted by justanoldmuso
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the thing that bugs me about the wonderfull mini m4 is one is limited as to the amount of ram...which makes me wonder how do apple users with big plugin counts in a song that consume oodles of ram address this ? ive been struggling to find info on benchmarks.

om
RAM isn’t the issue you think it is as far as plug-ins go. One can have an audio project with 300 instances of VIs and 2–4 plug-ins per track and do just fine on 32GB.

AV, any graphics usage, browsers and especially AI are memory intensive. That the M3 Studio Ultra now offers up to 512GB RAM is entirely due to AI. My M2 Studio Ultra is maxed out at 192GB—I can crunch huge graphics files but a 3 minute AI rendering task sends me out to lunch with the hopes that the file is done when I get back.

Free RAM is important—memory leaks incl. plug-ins, open apps and browser pages can consume most of 32GB in a hurry. Virtual Memory is no substitute as Apple found out when they built the G4. Rebooting is the only thing that completely clears the RAM cache——about once a week for me but daily when I had only 32GB.


Originally Posted by Brian Hughes
I use an external SSD for my alot of my stuff. However there are now upgrade kits available from third party's that let you install 2 tb for a fraction of the cost of Apple. Do a search on YT for mac mini upgrade kits.

I have external TB4 boot drives for testing. When booted from an external, there is a notable speed difference. Also, one cannot install a Recovery Partition on an external and other considerations. Thunderbolt 5 is about double the speed of TB4.

iFixIt.com M4 Mini repair and upgrades page iFixIt.com is where to go for info on those Mini M4 upgrades.

Those internal upgrade kits for the Studio from France are pretty good. Availability is off and on as Apple keeps trying to shut them down.

Studio Storage Upgrades

There are some big differences between the Mini M4 and M4 Pro. The M4 is available up to 32GB RAM and has TB4 ports. The Mini M4 Pro is available up to 64GB RAM and has TB5 ports.

Now about the differences between my Jag MK II and the green one used in the last Indiana Jones movie…


BIAB 2025 Audiophile Mac
24Core/60CoreGPU M2 MacStudioUltra/8TB/192GB Sequoia, M1 MBAir, 2012 MBP
Digital Performer11, LogicPro, Finale27/Dorico/Encore/SmartScorePro64/Notion6 /Overture5