The RETURN of my M1 Mac mini!

I’ve found a new home for my M1 Mac mini. It’s going to play a central role in a mini music production studio I’m building. Thanks to Mackie, it should be a great little setup. In today’s video, I reveal my plans!

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I have zero interest in deep spec dives or long-winded comparisons. I review laptops, smartphones, tablets, headphones and the latest tech based on real experience. I'll tell you how it'll make you feel, whether or not it's worth your time (and money) and help you find the tech you need to get stuff done.

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CHAPTERS
00:00 - Intro
01:11 - The M1 Mac mini
04:21 - Mackie gear
07:07 - Sharing the journey

[MarkEllisReviews]

Hands up if you've got a music studio in your bedroom!

[mbach]

Curious to see an update soon hopefully

[wallywatching]

Always love seeing your Big Knob, Mark. 😂

[toadlguy]

A Big Knob is good but you need some (a bunch) of those Slider Thingies!

[wills]

Nice one Mark. I reorganised my entire workspace so that monitors are on standmounts with 1 metre clearance from wall boundaries. Still near-field (1.5 metre) from desk. Worked much better than tweaking monitors digitally. Subwoofer sits on the floor between them. Audio was my highest priority so rearranging workspace was worth the effort.

[ed_ms]

Looking forward for more. Happy to see a mix of what I am interested in, tech and music making.

[velanche]

Very cool to see you creating space for music production. I had an M1 Mac mini and agree it’s a great computer. But gave it to my mom and got an M1 MacBook Pro as the hub of my computing life, including music production. Logic has and still is my jam, but last week I rearranged my studio desk and now have both the Launchpad Pro and Maschine Jam (as a control surface) on my desk, with my Komplete Kontrol keyboard in the keyboard tray. Great that Mackie is giving you some cool toys to play with; my monitors and sub are from Tapco, which got folded into Mackie before the brand discontinued. Looking forward to following your musical journey as I wade through my own. As ever, many thanks!

[danielebenezer]

I follow your tech reviews and love them. Was expecting more of your music videos on this playlist. Pls let me know if I’ve missed something or if you’ve got a separate channel for music production. 🔊

[BSDjunkie]

Mackie monitor reminds me of the 3’ high Disco Monitor speakers we had back in the day. Definitely sounds like a banging audio system.

[ScottMackey]

I've started producing music again and the M1 mini works a treat. Lot's have native support for the M1 too. You'll not see any issue running Logic or Ableton. Just need a good external NVME drive. Looking forward to seeing the Mackie equipment too. For quick fun and awesome results, I suggest looking in to Mixed in Keys Pilot plugins too.

[c.garison]

After 18 month, I still love the M1 MacMini and it is definitely my favorite Mac (even beats out the M1 MacBook Pro). MacOS Ventura has appeared to quash a couple of the bluetooth bugs that I had been experiencing with the device so that is a nice thing with the upgrade. And Ventura has not negatively impacted any of my tools like Office or photo editing tools. As far as the tools for video or music production, that is outside of my wheel house.

[terrydunlin]

Looking forward to these future videos they are right up my street. I use FL studio on pc (fruity loops) always been interested in using a Mac set up so once again I can’t wait!

[packgrog]

Interesting... I haven't heard of Mackie previously, but my audio processing setup is both simpler and older. I currently use an older RME BabyFace Pro (NOT the FS version) connected to an M1 MacBook Air to record my vinyl to hi-res digital. I've tried other audio interfaces, most notably the Apogee Duet 2, but while the Duet was easily the simplest to use for someone only ever worried about 2 channel recording, the ADC was less neutral and more harsh.

My recording and editing app is iZotope RX 8. I actually only do the recording on the MacBook Air, and do my editing on a 2013 27" iMac, using a JDS Labs Element II and Fostex TR-X00 headphones. Any editing that I do is primarily declicking, which is why the screen size becomes more valuable than the processing power of the M1, particularly given that the most CPU intensive processing is resampling my 32/192 audio files to 32/44 for portable listening of the resulting audio.

I do also have a 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD M1 Mac Mini which I love and use constantly, but that's primarily as a headless media server. I run Plex on it, to host my video collection for streaming anywhere else in the house without having to dig out discs. It also does duty as my video converter, churning away on older files to change them to x265 files at sometimes half the size that they used to be at the same video quality. It does all of this without a single hiccup. The M1's processing power and negligible power use is a godsend in this form factor. Even at full tilt processing video, streaming never slows down, it gets only slightly warm to the touch, and I still can't hear the fan! I also somehow still haven't had swap issues with the meager 8GB RAM! The only disappointment I've had with it was with Luna Display, which ran worse that Chrome Remote Desktop during video processing. When video processing was done, however, Luna Display was dramatically better at video playback, with no choppiness detected. Sadly, this meant returning the Luna Display, as it simply didn't fit my needs.

These M1 designs really are a marvel. I do wish there was a way to expand the RAM and SSD, but so far it hasn't been a problem even under some heavy usage.

[scottboettcher]

Sounds like fun, I'll be following along. I started out on C-Labs "Creator" on an Atari, Yammie speakers, DX-7 and a Roland TR-505 drum machine.

[neilbissett]

Looking forward to your next music studio set up part 2 😎

[sojournous]

I have a similar setup. Love Logic Pro … I’ve had problems with Logic freezing up and/or crashing though.

[louisefindlay]

Do you find the Mac Mini heavy? I lifted one in an Apple Store (perhaps it was weighted down or attached to something) but it felt a lot heavier than I was expecting.

[dwn]

Nice! You should check out Reason too for an aesthetically pleasing DAW solution. EDIT: Where is the link to the iPad pared down studio you created (3:18)?

[quartlow]

"bedroom music making"? First time I've heard it called that.😁

[wmblemania]

I love my 16GB M1 mini.
But, I've been using it with multiple accounts a lot lately -- my wife is using it as she de-junks her old iMac -- and memory has started to become an issue. 32GB would be nice.
Also: I stopped having Bluetooth mouse problems as soon as I shifted from an HDMI cable, to USB C.