Does MaxMSP run on the Mac Studio M1 Ultra

    MaxMSPadvanced

    Rob Chafer
    May 25 2023 | 10:12 am
    Hi, I’m sure this is straight forward, but I’m thinking of buying a Mac Studio with the M1 Ultra for its performance. I use Max and just wanted to check there are no compatibility issues running Max with the chip architecture of the machine. Thanks, Rob

    • florian1947's icon
      florian1947
      May 25 2023 | 12:58 pm
      Max8 will run native, but you may have to run it under Rosetta depending on 3rd party externals. The M1 Ultra might be overkill; I've been using an M1 Max vanilla for a year now with some heavy patches, and never even heard the ventilator.
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    • Rob Chafer's icon
      Rob Chafer's icon
      Rob Chafer
      May 25 2023 | 1:16 pm
      Thanks, Florian1947. The advice about the M1 Max vs Ultra is also good to hear.
    • slo ~|•'s icon
      slo ~|•'s icon
      slo ~|•
      May 25 2023 | 5:34 pm
      I was reading that the Mac Mini M2 Pro compares well with the Mac Studio M1 Max (between vanilla and Ultra) for less $$, although the Studio offers a better selection of ports and a higher possible amount of RAM.
      https://www.macrumors.com/guide/mac-mini-vs-mac-studio/
    • tyler mazaika's icon
      tyler mazaika's icon
      tyler mazaika
      May 26 2023 | 2:26 pm
      I got a Mac Mini M2 Pro and love it. I haven't really been stressing the extra "performance" cores yet, but the extra ports have been handy. Also, IIRC the single-core performance on M2 is something like 15-20% faster than M1 (in any configuration), which can be especially beneficial for audio (M4L in Ableton). If you're doing GPU stuff your considerations may be different, though?
    • Rob Chafer's icon
      Rob Chafer's icon
      Rob Chafer
      May 27 2023 | 8:40 am
      Hi, thanks, for the other two comments, Slo~|. and Tyler. All really good info to think about.
    • Iain Duncan's icon
      Iain Duncan's icon
      Iain Duncan
      May 28 2023 | 3:08 pm
      The Apple Silicon chips are great for Max. Even my plain old M1 Mini flies. If I were buying a machine now I would definitely get an M2 mini. It's small enough that bringing it around is easy, but the performance per dollar is still much better than the laptops and you get a decent number of ports. (And personally, I'm always paranoid about having really expensive laptops!) I haven't tried the M2, but my M1 is basically silent.