can someone help me to make a decision for Mac for Logic Pro?

I run an M1 Ultra fully decked out. Track count 75-150 depending on song. I also use external DSP for UAD plugs. My system runs resourcefully but I still have to clean things up by bouncing to audio and freezing when necessary. If you are using stock EQ and Compressors, this will help a lot but considering everything you said, I say you go all the way. Your demand is quite high and you don’t want anything holding you back.

You can also save CPU by using Kontakt as a multi-output instrument as well. Best of luck!

we currently can't offload any Native Instrument products or Spitfire Audio products to external drives, so you'll need a lot of local storage for those.

I don't think this is correct. I have all my Native Instrument Library and most of my Spitfire Audio products on an external SSD. However, I wouldn't move the Logic Library to an external drive.

CORRECTION: I was wrong about Native Instruments and Spitfire Audio, as. yoyoBen pointed out. They can have their Content Path set to an external drive for installation there.

If I had spitfire, I would be happy to run the test for you but I use Eastwest/Musio/CSS.

You will not regret it either way. You get a powerful machine in both cases.

Bro, it’s all good. We are always learning.

I am happy to do that for you. Just lay out the process. Do you want me to play a legato note for eight bars or something? LMK and I will document. Cheers! Have a great 4th 🇺🇸

If it was me, I'd get an M4 Studio with as much RAM and storage as I could afford. The reason I say that about RAM and storage, according to both companies, we currently can't offload any Native Instrument products or Spitfire Audio products to external drives, so you'll need a lot of local storage for those.

For example, I have all of the Logic Pro Sound Libraries on an external Thunderbolt SSD, which is quite fast. To deal with the load and the heat, I have that drive up off of my desk in a metal iPhone holder and a circulating tower fan off to the side of my desk to keep my external drive, me, and all the rest of my gear cool.

As for Max vs. Ultra, are you only planning to use Logic Pro? Or, are you also planning on doing some video editing or movie making? I think the answer to that question would be my decision maker. My personal opinion is that getting the most processing power Apple sells is probably overkill if you're ONLY working with Logic Pro. Lots of people are out there using M4 and M4 Pro with Logic Pro. How many total tracks do you expect to have in any one project?

You know better than anyone what your need is, so my blind opinion is just that—blind.

I hope that helps, somewhat.

John

P.S. Native Instruments owns a lot of other music creation tool companies, such as Plugin Alliance, and more. So if any of those other companies products have sound libraries, they'll eat up more of your local storage.

Ben, please share HOW you do that? NI has paths in their install manager, but they are dimmed from editing. I did try changing the path for their libraries and it reverted back to their default or didn't take, I don't remember.

Did you manually move them? If so, how are they found? I have all the Commandline Tools installed, if that's what's needed.

I'm having no trouble with all of the Logic Pro sound libraries relocated per Logic Pro's own built-in feature.

Ben, ignore. I was wrong. I'll try setting the NI install paths again. As for Spitfire Audio, I'll Google that, too.

I could have sworn that FAQs of both companies said they were working on making that available. Oh, well. I should have Googled before speaking.

Thanks for pointing that out! That will get me back some local disk space. I really appreciate it.

John

Thank you! I recovered a lot of local space with your advice, @yoyoBen.