Help with mbp for ableton live

[Ellingferd]

I am trying to decide between the following machines (all will have 16gb ram and 512 ssd):
13” touchbar mbp with 3.5 i7 (dual core, not quad)
15” touchbar mbp with 2.8 i7
15” touchbar mbp with 3.1 i7

I am producing music that will involve synth and effects, not on the order of 40+ tracks right now, but who knows what the future holds. My common synths are max for cats Bengal and OSCiLLOT which can be cpu hungry.

If the 13” will work it would be preferrable because of size, but I am guessing the dual core would eventually be limiting? Among the 15” models, does it make sense to pay more for the 3.1 upgrade, or is the 2.8 plenty of power to last the next 4-5 years? Would the 2.8 be slower on single core tasks than the 3.5 dual core? Thanks!

 

[New_Mac_Smell]

Quite a lot of info on this if you Google for it.

From Ableton https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/a...ad-on-one-core-when-using-multi-core-machines

So it seems you want the fastest single core performance. In which case the 13" 3.5Ghz will do fine for you, the 15" is faster but so marginal you won't notice. https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/416

Get whichever one you want then, if the 13" is your desired then get it. If you wanted screen real-estate and stuff then get the 15".

 

[Ellingferd]

Ableton operates by putting one track per core so, if you’ve got 4 tracks on a 4 core processor, then it’s one per core. 8 core processor and 2 tracks per core, etc. At least this is what has been talked about in the ableton forums. I’ve researched this quite a bit but thought I would ask here to get a wide scope of opinions.

Most ableton users agree that quad core is better than dual core, which really I guess puts me to deciding between 2.8 and 3.1 in the 15” (does it make sense to pay the extra for the 3.1?).

 

[New_Mac_Smell]

Then get a multi-core machine. The faster the processor the faster it can handle it. If you know the software then you probably already know the answer. If it makes sense to you to pay the extra then go for it, it's 300Mhz difference though, so in reality it would make little to no difference (There are other things such as caches however).

So if you think the extra money is worth it then go for it, if you're unsure and wanted to save money or needed other accessories then it'll be fine. The higher end CPUs are mainly there for the people who really want them, the base CPUs are still very high end ones after all.