I will chime in and say that, for full Orchestral, you should be looking at a used M3 Studio Ultra with full Apple Care, 96GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. Prices are now dipping fast, and some good bargains to be had. Double that RAM if you want the London Philharmonic with full ambience.
It does depend on just how much you will rely on Orchestral stuff. I’m guessing, but with articulations and ambient mics - you could be looking at 1GB of RAM for each instrument, if you want full authenticity.
I don’t, and went for a base Mini M4, in order to get great single-core performance. I record guitars, bass and vocals, with sampled drums and VST synths. I feel that a 24GB/512GB Mini M4 is the sweet spot to do what I want. That is a powerful machine for the money. But I’m not doing Symphony’s. I can still fire up an 8-piece string section, or a few horns, the odd concert harp, tympani, and whatever. But that puts me on the edge of RAM, so 36GB would be better - 48GB even. But I survive quite well, without compromises.
If Orchestral isn’t the priority, then the M4 single-core performance is definitely the key factor.
The Mini M4 Pros are not suited to music studio use. They are noisy, plain and simple. Too much in a small box. Nursemaiding heat build-up, and fan noise in a home-studio is no fun.
Now, an M4 Studio Max 16-core is a very capable machine, but with 96GB/1TB, you will be paying a lot more than a used M3 Ultra Studio. But the Max Studio will give you full M4 single-core headroom, and big RAM sizes.
Big problem with the latest Reaper and Cubase, and Ableton at present, is the inability to spread workload over multiple P-cores in Windows and Mac OS. There are 3rd-party workarounds (Audio-Gridder) that can sort this, or you can turn off P-core number 1. Bit frustrating really. The audio-engines of the DAW’s is the problem. This will improve, but not anytime soon.
With this in mind, I would firmly recommend jumping in, and buying a pre-loved/hated M4 base Mini, with 24GB RAM, and 512GB SSD. Plenty around in mint condition, and easy to sell when you decide that your Symphony is now your priority, and you need the 20 cores and huge RAM. All DAWs at present can use the 4 P-cores to their max, and Reaper and Cubase can utilise the E-cores also to their fullest. This gives a lot of scope, and for purely music, it makes the base M4 Mini a very powerful and stable machine to use.
My recommendation is to use a single monitor, with 1440p resolution. This keeps temps down. I have a curved 21/9 Samsung. But a 32/9 curved is even better. I don’t have speakers either side of the monitor though. So I’m quite unique in that approach.
Here’s my little setup…
I like to use a Bryston DAC for most monitoring work, but have an old legacy Motu Ultralight mk3 for midi-keyboard and recording live sources. The Motu outputs Spdif into the Bryston DAC, and is of sufficient quality, since I don’t use the Ultralight’s DAC.
One important factor is to get a proper audio USB2 cable for your soundcard. The front USB-C sockets on my Mini M4 are for the DAC and Motu alone. I use a DH LABS Mirage for my Bryston BDA-2 DAC, and the Ultralight has a basic Supra USB-C cable, both designed for audio use. The Supra is quite capable for it’s price, and should be your best choice, if not spending DH LABS money.
Everything else is connected to a Razer Chroma TB4 hub. The Chroma has a very good power supply, and my DAC and Motu Ultralight are self-powered. This means the M4 Mini power-supply isn’t stressed at all, and the single 21/9 1440p monitor at 60hz doesn’t tax the GPU cores too much either. So temperatures in the M4 Mini are kept to a minimum - and fan noise is zero so far, even on big projects.
You will want at least one external TB4 enclosure for your sample libraries, and your project files. I would say an OWC Express TB4, with a WD black NVME (3GB/sec) - that’s the best choice right now. I get away with 1TB, as I don’t have big sample libraries. I also use an old Samsung 850 Evo SSD on the Chroma’s USB3.1 for Time Machine duties, and I have a 1GB/sec 970 pro NVME enclosure for drive-image backups.
Lot to consider there, but lastly I’ll add two things I feel are important.
Make it a music platform that can standalone. By this I mean NO iCloud, no AI - keep it lean. Ok, maybe the odd game of Chess, and a few of your favorite tunes. But nothing else except your music. Try and purchase/download your programs on another machine, and use a pen-drive for installations. Definitely keep internet connection to a minimum, preferably off.
I use an APC smart UPS (pictured). This gives me ripple-free, pure sine-wave mains electricity, and is totally isolated from your domestic supply. It eliminates noise, gives better bass/bottom-end, protects against voltage surges, and of course, if you have a power-out - you have a good period of time to save your work and power down. I can then plug my microwave into mine, with a small reading lamp. This gives me hot food, cups of tea and some light for a few hours, until the power comes back on.
