Best Apple Product for MainStage within a Budget

[kwyn]

What is the best Apple product for MainStage with a budget of about $850-$900? I'd like to stay "new" or refurb from Bestbuy. A friend has a legacy plan that comes with AppleCare+ with any Apple product I buy from there. Budget may have a little wiggle room, but not a whole lot.

 

MacBooks- I'm guessing anything with less than 16 gig ram is a no go? Even an M1 or M2? I currently have a 2019 i5 MacBook Air 16 gig RAM. that does seem to really crank up the fans and sound selection lags, when using preset concerts in MainStage, which I know tend to have a lot of sounds pre-loaded

 

iPad Air (or pro)- I know these don't run MainStage, but I assume I can get every MainStage sound running Logic?  

 

I may want to use additional instruments like Pianoteq, B3X, Korg Module, other high quality pianos either from App Store if I go with iPad or Kontakt if I go with MacBook.

 

Thanks in advance for your input.

[BluMunk]

For gigging? 

I know it depends on how you're using Mainstage, but I've been getting by fine with old (10 year+) Macbook Pros with 16 gig of ram. I am not running many VSTs outside of stock.

I'll be replacing those laptops with apple silicon in the next year, and have no doubts that an M1 with 16gig will be more than adequate to get me through the next 10 years (currently running an M1 mac mini for my home studio, no complaints).

So, for my use case (which may not be yours), a 16 gig M1 macbook pro should be great, and come in just at or under your budget.

[Reezekeys]

If you're like me you don't have a bunch of apps you're not using open while you're making music. 8GB should be enough. I wanted an 8GB M2 Mac Air last year but couldn't wait for a BTO so took a 16GB model that was in the store. I never come close to using up the ram, and I have a decent-sized Kontakt pianos, strings, plus organ, guitar, brass, etc. all loaded up for my gigs. If you're doing film scoring work with massive libraries then yes, 16GB would be my choice. Otherwise, I would rather have a larger internal SSD. And, an M1 Mac -refurb or used - should be fine. There are youtubes showing how the newer M-chips actually sacrifice some of the "performance" cores and that the older M1 processors offer almost equal performance. Don't be swayed by the hype.

 

38 minutes ago, kwyn said:

iPad Air (or pro)- I know these don't run MainStage, but I assume I can get every MainStage sound running Logic?  

 

 

Every? I'm not sure, but I wouldn't bet on it. Logic for iPad is not a 100% clone of the Mac version, I wouldn't expect it to have the same sound library. However, the Mac version (maybe the iPad version too?) has the "autosampler" plugin which I used to turn one of my older NI pianos into a Logic Sampler instrument (.exs). The iOS app AudioLayer can import these .exs instruments. AudioLayer is actually a very full-featured sampler app, almost like having a "lite" version of Kontakt for iOS devices.

[kwyn]

4 minutes ago, BluMunk said:

For gigging? 

I know it depends on how you're using Mainstage, but I've been getting by fine with old (10 year+) Macbook Pros with 16 gig of ram. I am not running many VSTs outside of stock.

I'll be replacing those laptops with apple silicon in the next year, and have no doubts that an M1 with 16gig will be more than adequate to get me through the next 10 years (currently running an M1 mac mini for my home studio, no complaints).

So, for my use case (which may not be yours), a 16 gig M1 macbook pro should be great, and come in just at or under your budget.

 

Yes. Live. Thanks!

[Sam Mullins]

I use a Mac Mini M1 with 16GB and 512GB.  I wouldn't recommend less memory or hard disk.  The M1 is plenty of CPU for running Mainstage with lots of plugins.  If it's a money tradeoff between getting more memory vs. M2, opt for the memory.

 

I know you may not want a Mini; I am using it because i already had it for Logic at home studio when I decided to start using Mainstage live.   Obviously a little more hassle live than a macbook since you need external monitor and keyboard/house (which you might have already)  I use a 15" cheap monitor driven by a single USB-C cable and a wireless keyboard/mousepad.  So not too bad for setup and it has one clear advantage:  I can use a keyboard stand tablet holder for the monitor and have it right in front of me (I have chords/lyric hints in Mainstage programs).  Easier to deal with than mounting a laptop or putting it off to the side.  

[kwyn]

1 minute ago, Reezekeys said:

If you're like me you don't have a bunch of apps you're not using open while you're making music. 8GB should be enough. I wanted an 8GB M2 Mac Air last year but couldn't wait for a BTO so took a 16GB model that was in the store. I never come close to using up the ram, and I have a decent-sized Kontakt pianos, strings, plus organ, guitar, brass, etc. all loaded up for my gigs. If you're doing film scoring work with massive libraries then yes, 16GB would be my choice. Otherwise, I would rather have a larger internal SSD.

 

It's not for film scoring or even studio recording or anything super fancy. Just live performance. I would probably have B3X, an acoustic piano or 2, a Rhodes, a wurly, and a synth or 2.

[Sam Mullins]

Whether memory is an issue really depends on your use case.  I typically do 3 hour-long sets and that's about 40 songs.  If I was just using a  moderate number of standard sounds in a few configurations, then I could do this all in one Concert and have no memory issues.  But on any given night, a good chunk of the 40 have lots of splits and soft synths, etc.  When I tried to do that all in one Concert, it was always pushing the memory limits.  Mac OS does some magic in the background so it's never very clear if you are actually going to have problems.  But I don't risk it and always put each set in it's own Concert.    It's possible I'm sweating this unnecessarily. 

I wish Mainstage did what Camelot Pro does on the iPad; give you the option of loading/unloading the soft synths on each song change (to reduce memory consumption at any one time.)   It would be fine with me to have 15-20 second loading delay between songs.  The mainstage model is more like what I expect is required for musical theatre work;  lots of scene changes with new sounds and no flexibility on loading time.  Still it would be nice the have the option to swap in/out or not.

 

 

 

[ElmerJFudd]

You need a screen, at least to program your setlists and setup your midi controls.   

 

You really shouldn't invest $900 in an Intel Mac at this time.  However, at the moment everything does run on one and if you can haggle a good price on a Mac Book Pro 2018 or newer for well under $900 with 16gb+ of RAM and 512gb+ SSD storage, it would be fine for running Mainstage today.   Like a tool you use for music, not your everyday computer since it will surely be cutoff from updates sooner than later.  

 

Otherwise, any M1  or M2 MacBook Air with 16gb RAM and 512 Storage.   You may be able to find an M1 model in your price range.  

[Reezekeys]

9 minutes ago, ElmerJFudd said:

if you can haggle a good price on a Mac Book Pro 2018 or newer for well under $900 with 16gb+ of RAM and 512gb+ SSD storage, it would be find for running Mainstage

 

Here's an Apple Silicon Mac - imo, a superior choice over any Intel Mac - not exactly "well under" $900 but less than $900:

 

https://eshop.macsales.com/configure-my-mac/UAKN2HS41XXXXXC

 

They also have one with half the ram and half as large an SSD for $500. 8GB ram wouldn't sway me against it but the 256GB SSD does - however if you already have another computer for day-to-day tasks and just need this for Mainstaging, a 256GB SSD would be plenty big enough.

[AnotherScott]

1 hour ago, kwyn said:

MacBooks- I'm guessing anything with less than 16 gig ram is a no go? Even an M1 or M2? I currently have a 2019 i5 MacBook Air 16 gig RAM.

I don't have personal experience here, but I've read where people have said that an M1/M2 lets them do things with 8GB that they would have needed 16 GB for on an Intel model. But the fact that you can't expand RAM would still prompt me toward the 16 if possible. You can always add more storage (externally), but you're stuck with the RAM.

[ElmerJFudd]

It’s a shame getting a Mac with 16gb RAM is such a jump from 8gb in price - new or used.   But it’s soldered to the motherboard like a lot of thin light efficient/long battery life PC laptops these days so that’s that.  8gb is good enough for a simple MainStage rig.  

[David Emm]

I went for 16 gb (make yourself comfortable, even if 8 seems adequate) and 500 gb, but I'm aiming for a model with 2 TB. 3 years on, I've eaten that 500 gb. External drives work, but I'm finding the situation fidgety. I prefer to have it all in one place, leaving the drives for backup. At the very least, get 1 tb if possible and make it easier on yourself. It'll give you more options later if you need them.

[David Emm]

3 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

Logic for iPad is not a 100% clone of the Mac version, I wouldn't expect it to have the same sound library. However, the Mac version (maybe the iPad version too?) has the "autosampler" plugin which I used to turn one of my older NI pianos into a Logic Sampler instrument (.exs). The iOS app AudioLayer can import these .exs instruments.

 

THIS. Autosampler makes Sampler my most critical instrument. Once you learn to finesse it, the savings in memory and CPU load are huge. I have monster patches of the gods on-demand, including things from long-gone hardware. I encourage any Logic user to at least make a small set of something or t'other so you're familiar with the basics. Its not hard to suss, but its not WYSIWYG, either. Once you have to go back and re-do a few flubbed takes- and you will- it'll become second nature. It can eat X amount of memory as glorified WAVs, but its less than having all of the host instruments cranking away at once. 

[Reezekeys]

1 hour ago, David Emm said:

I went for 16 gb (make yourself comfortable, even if 8 seems adequate) and 500 gb, but I'm aiming for a model with 2 TB. 3 years on, I've eaten that 500 gb. External drives work, but I'm finding the situation fidgety. I prefer to have it all in one place, leaving the drives for backup. At the very least, get 1 tb if possible and make it easier on yourself. It'll give you more options later if you need them.

 

Agreed! In my case, I was coming to my M2 Air from a 2013 MacBook Pro that had a 1TB drive with about 750GB used. As I saw it, I couldn't get a new computer with less than a 1TB drive - not without significant work culling unneeded files or moving them to an external. Even then, it's likely that whatever was left would fill up most of a 512GB SSD - not a great way to start out with a computer you plan to get years of use from! So 1TB was a necessity. 16GB ram was not a necessity to me, and for a more-or-less "normal" Mainstage rig I doubt very much it would be a necessity. Of course a "normal" MS rig could be different things to different people, but my bet is that 8GB ram would be fine.

[Tusker]

14 hours ago, Sam Mullins said:

Whether memory is an issue really depends on your use case.  I typically do 3 hour-long sets and that's about 40 songs.  If I was just using a  moderate number of standard sounds in a few configurations, then I could do this all in one Concert and have no memory issues.  But on any given night, a good chunk of the 40 have lots of splits and soft synths, etc.  When I tried to do that all in one Concert, it was always pushing the memory limits.  Mac OS does some magic in the background so it's never very clear if you are actually going to have problems.  But I don't risk it and always put each set in it's own Concert.    It's possible I'm sweating this unnecessarily. 
 

 

I break stuff up also. Especially if I am using a lot of samples.

[Reezekeys]

Just saw this on the best buy site. Some good deals here:

 

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?st=macbook+air

 

The 13" M1 with 8GB/512GB for $660 would be my choice if you're on a budget.

 

7 hours ago, Tusker said:

When I tried to do that all in one Concert, it was always pushing the memory limits.  Mac OS does some magic in the background so it's never very clear if you are actually going to have problems.

 

Go to Activity Monitor and click the "Memory" column at the top. On the bottom, look for the small "MEMORY PRESSURE" window. If you're green, you're clean!

[kwyn]

Ok. So what would perform better, a 2019 MacBook air i5 with 16 gig ram, an M2 air with 8 gigs, or an iPad air gen 5!

 

Those are the options that seem available to me right now

[Reezekeys]

Between the two Macs, the M2 Air without question.

 

Mac vs iPad is another ball game. Both can now host some fairly involved setups with decent sounding plugins. I don't know what kinds of gigs you do, but my local hits are fairly low-key jazz, r&b & funk, just needing bread & butter acoustic and electromechanical instruments; not a cover or wedding band needing loading/unloading of many different plugins and samples during a set (I load everything once at the beginning of the night). My iPad does fine for that (and it's a relatively inexpensive 9G), but the reality is that – imo – the sound selection and quality are not quite at the level of what you can do on the Mac. The iPad is just so much easier to bring to a gig and set up, and the sounds I use are satisfying enough in a live setting, that I accept the slight compromises in sound quality. To be honest the quality is more than good enough for me to be happy on a gig - I don't think about it at all as I play. However, If it has to be one or the other - right now I would still go with that M2 Air! It should be useful for years, and you'll have access to top shelf plugins and other music software, as well as the Apple AI stuff coming (who knows what that's all going to lead to?). So the M2 Air would get my vote for sure.

[Sam Mullins]

3 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

Go to Activity Monitor and click the "Memory" column at the top. On the bottom, look for the small "MEMORY PRESSURE" window. If you're green, you're clean!

Yeah that’s what i was watching and would occasionally see it get into bad territory. 

[kwyn]

18 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

Between the two Macs, the M2 Air without question.

 

Mac vs iPad is another ball game. Both can now host some fairly involved setups with decent sounding plugins. I don't know what kinds of gigs you do, but my local hits are fairly low-key jazz, r&b & funk, just needing bread & butter acoustic and electromechanical instruments; not a cover or wedding band needing loading/unloading of many different plugins and samples during a set (I load everything once at the beginning of the night). My iPad does fine for that (and it's a relatively inexpensive 9G), but the reality is that – imo – the sound selection and quality are not quite at the level of what you can do on the Mac. The iPad is just so much easier to bring to a gig and set up, and the sounds I use are satisfying enough in a live setting, that I accept the slight compromises in sound quality. To be honest the quality is more than good enough for me to be happy on a gig - I don't think about it at all as I play. However, If it has to be one or the other - right now I would still go with that M2 Air! It should be useful for years, and you'll have access to top shelf plugins and other music software, as well as the Apple AI stuff coming (who knows what that's all going to lead to?). So the M2 Air would get my vote for sure.

So even though the 2019 i5 would have 16 gig ram, you would choose the M2 with 8? 

 

Id probably like to load up a Hammond, a grand, a Rhodes, a wurly, horns, and a synth or 2 on rarer occasions. Maybe an upright.

[Franz Schiller]

I've also been considering a Mac Air M2 and wondering if I can get away with 8GB.

[AnotherScott]

1 hour ago, kwyn said:

So even though the 2019 i5 would have 16 gig ram, you would choose the M2 with 8? 

As mentioned, people often say that 8 GB on Apple Silicon can be seen as comparable to 16 on Intel, though I can't personally vouch for that, and would not assume any generalization like that to be true for all possible usages. But assuming that's even close to true, yeah, I'd go Apple Silicon in your comparison, especially since you're not even comparing to the higher end Intel (i7).

 

From everymac.com, here are the benchmarks for the 2019 i5 (8 GB RAM) vs. the slowest Apple silicon model (also with 8 GB RAM), and also for comparison, a higher end Intel model (also 8GB RAM), showing why I think it might be a tougher call if you had a high end Intel. Look at the Geekbench 4 benchmarks, and you can see that a top-of-line Intel i7 Mac can be performance competitive with an M1, which is why I've looked into this myself, since I have that Intel base Mac and I have it with 32 GB RAM. That could be competitive with base Apple silicon, especially  perhaps if that Apple silicon model has far less RAM. But unlike my i7, your i5 is smoked in raw performance by even the bottom line Apple silicon model, to an extent that I doubt having more RAM in the i5 could possibly make up for it.

 

 

[kwyn]

15 minutes ago, AnotherScott said:

As mentioned, people often say that 8 GB on Apple Silicon can be seen as comparable to 16 on Intel, though I can't personally vouch for that, and would not assume any generalization like that to be true for all possible usages. But assuming that's even close to true, yeah, I'd go Apple Silicon in your comparison, especially since you're not even comparing to the higher end Intel (i7).

 

From everymac.com, here are the benchmarks for the 2019 i5 (8 GB RAM) vs. the slowest Apple silicon model (also with 8 GB RAM), and also for comparison, a higher end Intel model (also 8GB RAM), showing why I think it might be a tougher call if you had a high end Intel. Look at the Geekbench 4 benchmarks, and you can see that a top-of-line Intel i7 Mac can be performance competitive with an M1, which is why I've looked into this myself, since I have that Intel base Mac and I have it with 32 GB RAM. That could be competitive with base Apple silicon, especially  perhaps if that Apple silicon model has far less RAM. But unlike my i7, your i5 is smoked in raw performance by even the bottom line Apple silicon model, to an extent that I doubt having more RAM in the i5 could possibly make up for it.

 

 

Good stuff Scott! Thank you 

[Reezekeys]

IMO, having comparable Geekbench numbers is one factor out of many. The future is Apple Silicon. No doubt an Intel Mac can still be very useful - but I don’t think it’s a good idea for someone looking to buy a Mac now. 

[analogika]

On 6/12/2024 at 11:54 PM, Reezekeys said:

 

Here's an Apple Silicon Mac - imo, a superior choice over any Intel Mac - not exactly "well under" $900 but less than $900:

 

https://eshop.macsales.com/configure-my-mac/UAKN2HS41XXXXXC

 

They also have one with half the ram and half as large an SSD for $500. 8GB ram wouldn't sway me against it but the 256GB SSD does - however if you already have another computer for day-to-day tasks and just need this for Mainstaging, a 256GB SSD would be plenty big enough.

 

This machine is the one to get. 

I would grab one for as long as they're available.

[kwyn]

So I got the M2, 8 gig ram. In MainStage, loaded up a few acoustic pianos, synth, Horns, Electric pianos, simultaneously, which is the bulk of my gigs. Played YouTube video in the background and jammed on top of it, one instrument at a time. Wasn't able to Max out the ram. Pushed it into the high 6's. No issues with RAM. 

 

Only issue I had was, with USB audio, it forces a higher sample bit rate, and that caused some minor pops at buffer 64 and 128. When I went straight from the headphone jack, that went away. Admittedly, just using a USB hub not a dedicated audio interface. 

 

Would a dedicated interface fix that?

[AnotherScott]

On 6/12/2024 at 4:09 PM, kwyn said:

I currently have a 2019 i5 MacBook Air 16 gig RAM. that does seem to really crank up the fans and sound selection lags, when using preset concerts in MainStage

So based on the following, it sounds like you've already determined that, even with half the RAM, the lag in sound selection is gone?

10 minutes ago, kwyn said:

So I got the M2, 8 gig ram. In MainStage, loaded up a few acoustic pianos, synth, Horns, Electric pianos, simultaneously, which is the bulk of my gigs. Played YouTube video in the background and jammed on top of it, one instrument at a time. Wasn't able to Max out the ram. Pushed it into the high 6's. No issues with RAM.

Assuming yes, that would seem to confirm that, at least to address the particular issue you were seeing, the Apple silicon processor did indeed take care of it despite half the RAM, whether because your limitation was more one of raw performance capability and not so much RAM dependent, or the M2's more efficient use of a smaller amount of RAM, or a combination of the two.

 

16 minutes ago, kwyn said:

Only issue I had was, with USB audio, it forces a higher sample bit rate, and that caused some minor pops at buffer 64 and 128. When I went straight from the headphone jack, that went away. Admittedly, just using a USB hub not a dedicated audio interface. 

 

Would a dedicated interface fix that?

I don't know, but it sounds like you can fix it for free and not have another piece to bring around and wire up, if you just use the headphone jack. 😉

[Reezekeys]

48 minutes ago, kwyn said:

Only issue I had was, with USB audio, it forces a higher sample bit rate, and that caused some minor pops at buffer 64 and 128. When I went straight from the headphone jack, that went away. Admittedly, just using a USB hub not a dedicated audio interface. 

 

Where was the audio actually coming from then? Computer to hub to... what?

 

Going from my old Intel Mac (late-2013 MacBook Pro) to my M2 Air involved a learning curve wrt audio on AS computers. First, the headphone out and the laptop's speakers are treated as separate audio destinations. This change may have pre-dated Apple Silicon Macs as I skipped a few OS versions going to the Air, but it was new to me. Some apps - like the plugins host I use, Plogue Bidule - cannot deal with changing outputs (i.e., simply pulling out the headphone jack's cable) without restarting. Also, connecting my Airpod Pros forces the system audio SR to 48K and has implications for any software needing to play or pass 44.1 audio. Some apps can do real-time sample rate converting, others cannot. Could something similar be what you experienced? Best practice is to make sure everything is at the same SR. I've never heard any pops and clicks with my setup when I do this - and have put my buffer at 32 samples on occasion.

[kwyn]

1 hour ago, AnotherScott said:

So based on the following, it sounds like you've already determined that, even with half the RAM, the lag in sound selection is gone?

 

Assuming yes, that would seem to confirm that, at least to address the particular issue you were seeing, the Apple silicon processor did indeed take care of it despite half the RAM, whether because your limitation was more one of raw performance capability and not so much RAM dependent, or the M2's more efficient use of a smaller amount of RAM, or a combination of the two.

 

I don't know, but it sounds like you can fix it for free and not have another piece to bring around and wire up, if you just use the headphone jack. 😉

1. Yes. The lag in sound selection is now instantaneous. No lag at all!

2. Even using the "keyboard quick start" concert, which loads up about 51 patches, no issues at all!!

3. I get it. I'm just wary of headphone jacks. I busted a few on my iPads. 

 

Anyway, this M2 is quite a beast, even with only 8 gigs of ram. Runs super cool too! I've never really been a Mac guy, and will probably remain a PC guy for most things, but I have to say these M series chips are rather impressive. 

[kwyn]

48 minutes ago, Reezekeys said:

 

Where was the audio actually coming from then? Computer to hub to... what?

 

Going from my old Intel Mac (late-2013 MacBook Pro) to my M2 Air involved a learning curve wrt audio on AS computers. First, the headphone out and the laptop's speakers are treated as separate audio destinations. This change may have pre-dated Apple Silicon Macs as I skipped a few OS versions going to the Air, but it was new to me. Some apps - like the plugins host I use, Plogue Bidule - cannot deal with changing outputs (i.e., simply pulling out the headphone jack's cable) without restarting. Also, connecting my Airpod Pros forces the system audio SR to 48K and has implications for any software needing to play or pass 44.1 audio. Some apps can do real-time sample rate converting, others cannot. Could something similar be what you experienced? Best practice is to make sure everything is at the same SR. I've never heard any pops and clicks with my setup when I do this - and have put my buffer at 32 samples on occasion.

The audio was going from computer-->hub -->USB to 1/8 adapter -->Stereo Y cable--> to mixer--> studio monitors

 

This is really my first experience with MAC. Not sure why it forces 48 over 44.1 when going that route. Maybe I should try bypassing the hub and see what happens. 64 samples would be a low enough buffer for me. I barely notice lag at 128, but at 256, I can definitely feel it.