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Hey guys, so recently, my windows desktop, producing computer/school/my entire life you get the idea, the HDD got fried and so did the motherboard. It was a 7 year old computer, so I expected this to happen eventually. It was shit anyway, terrible for producing, I used FL studio and had to drop my buffer rate to about 120 and still got major CPU use after cloning a synth channel. Anyways, I'm thinking about buying a MacBook pro, I was wondering, which model do you logic users think is best for running logic and your usual EDM/dub plugins and synths?


I was originally gonna go with the 13.3 inch 2.9GHz with 8gbs of ram, what do you guys suggest or prefer?


Also what should I expect switching from FL to logic? I have all my samples on an external drive, but they're all .wmv I know I'm going to miss FL, but I want a MacBook not only for producing but for school.


Excuse me if there are any super crude misspellings or grammatical errors, dictating this on an iPhone.

I've just done exactly that - moved from FL Studio on a PC to a macbook pro (2.5ghz 4gb ram) with Logic. Best thing I've ever done. Logic is the nuts. The only annoying thing is beat creation but you soon get over that once you throw them into the arrange window.

I haven't clapped out the cpu once yet and I've had a 30 track monster running on it - the only thing I would suggest is an SSD instead of HDD as the HDD's can't keep up with the logic playhead when fully pushed.

Spend 2 weeks on a macbook and logic and you wont miss FL one bit! Just make sure you RTF<logic>M - it takes some getting used to but it's much more powerful.

If you don't like anything other than FL, you can still setup a Bootcamp pretty easily.
Giving Logic a shot can't hurt you though. (I don't know Logic, nor FL)

Yeah I was thinking bout setting up botcamp, but I was thinking, wouldn't that eat up a lot of CPU usage? Causing Fl to run slow and such?

dotcurrency wrote:Yeah I was thinking bout setting up botcamp, but I was thinking, wouldn't that eat up a lot of CPU usage? Causing Fl to run slow and such?

If you're wanting to do that, you might as well get a windows laptop. Do you have a way to try out logic for a bit and see if you like it?

I'm an FL user, but I'm sure you'll love logic if you give it some months, learn to use it properly etc.

Plus it's great for pretty much any audio editing/recording tasks you might have. tbh it's an outstanding program if you can spare the cash.



Otherwise you can spend the money you would have spent on logic on a larger hdd, more ram, better processor, and bootcamp. You can just reinstall your existing version of fl on your new computer. If you're happy with fl, why go through the hassle and expense of buying and learning a new daw?

Here's the thing, I would be buying the base model MacBook pro which I think is like 2.3GHz with 4GBs. I'm just curious as to how well that would work with producing.


I could always buy ableton live instead of logic... I'll be importing my license for NI massive, FM8, Kontakt and orchestral. So CPU wise, would a few instances of those (just an example) running with plugins/filters/ etc do fine on a Mac? Mainly worried about sound clipping.

instead of a 1,500 dollar base MacBook, you could stick with what you're already familiar with and build a PC that could run NASA HQ.

Ive got a Macbook Pro 15 running 4GB of RAM, and Logic.

1- I recommend getting an external audio unit/soundcard to help conserve RAM and to get a cleaner more accurate sound, you can find them for really cheap on ebay.

2-Logic is a GREAT program, but can be a bit difficult to navigate by yourself. I highly recommend subscribing to macprovideo.com and using their videos to learn the ins and outs. Seriously, its like music production school for 20 bucks a month.

Build a laptop? sounds legit.
The macbook are actually not that expensive (if you compare to nicely built pc laptop), it's not all about megabytes and hertz. (let's not do a mac/pc troll)

To answer the bootcamp/CPU thing : it's not an emulation or virtualisation, it's just a multi-boot utility (renamed), you install windows on the mac, it has the very very same spec (everything is as fast as it should be, the drivers are good).
When you install it, it's actually pretty awesome since you don't have to get the drivers one by one : just autorun your MacOS CD, and all the drivers are installed.

Plugins will clip the same as on a windows setup. The system is irrelevant here.

I got a late 2009 macbook, still with a Intel dual core 2,0 ghz only but this shit runs everything so smooth you'd think it was brand new.

Seriously you wouldn't believe me that this one is about 4 years old.

My point being: If the size of the screen isn't a matter, then you should be happy with the base moedl 13,3".
I also wouldn't recommend a 15" for school.

Also Logic might be one of the cheapest daws out there so definetely go for it!

Try dropping your buffer length all the way down and still be lagging like shit. Now man, that's tough shit.

Pick up an iMac, you won't regret it.

Significantly more powerful for the money you pay, and the 25" screen is absolutely key when using Logic.
I found it really painful to run Logic on my 13" macbook because everything was so squashed. There are a lot of windows in the program and its nice to have the screen space, feels much, much better to use.

On my old macbook I maxed out the audio engine all the time, crashed shit everywhere. I've done the same thing on my new iMac but it doesn't happen that often.
If you're crashing things and having issues there's no reason not to simply save a few different versions of your projects and keep certain things in MIDI in each one.
For example, bounce your drums to audio, then save the version with the audio drums and your super-complicated-automated-FXed bassline, to prevent crashing and overloads and stuff.

I'm still running on 32-bit so I can have all my plugins though, I imagine with the 64 bit version you'd see a significant increase in performance.
The 32-to-64-bit bridge is really shit though, if you're going to run 64 bit I'd say goodbye to your plugins in 32. But I don't think you'll have that problem with your NI stuff.

I was leaning towards getting a MacBook, now I'm leaning towards a desktop. I already have one monitor, so I'd be using dual monitors, Ive used FL studio on a laptop, it's not fun having things squeezed up in a small space, I guess I'll just go with a nice custom windows desktop. Going to do some reading in the hardware thread. Thanks for the insight guys, really appreciate it.

albeton will be a much smoother transition from fl (or even cubase)
so just because your on a mac doesnt mean you have to limit yourself to logic;)

I disagree, I found logic to be much easier to get a grasp on than ableton, its probably all down to personal preference as usual either way..

Logic is cheap, it comes with everything you need, although if you'd like to run FL studio there is no problem doing that whatsoever and it will not slow down your mac in any way Many people have both OSX and Windows installed on their macbooks! So you could even go for both.

Ableton doesn't support dual monitors. If you get a macbook (pro), you might consider the 15" as the 13" is tiny, and the 17" is too heavy to lug around. Also, you might consider getting an SSD as your main hard drive, and then rip out the superdrive (dvd drive) and use that space for an HDD (which can hold a lot more gb for storage and such). That way you'll have the speed of an SSD and the capacity of an HDD.