Logic Pro on new Macbook airs

[mgs4]

Hey guys,

I'm getting an ultimate 13" air very soon, and was just wondering if anyone has used Logic pro on it yet, and if so how well does it perform?

thanks

 

[Feuersturm]

I wonder this too... I just bought an 11'' i7 MBA and I'm going to test it within the next few days with Logic Pro 9, and compare it to my 2009 13'' MBP.

 

[mgs4]

ah ok cool. please reply once you've tested it out

 

[pickleydoo]

Feuerstrum,

Yes, please post your results here when you get a chance. I'm looking at picking up the 11" i7 and an Apogee Duet 2 and would love to hear your thoughts.

 

[franmatt80]

I'm using Logic Pro on my 11" - only light editing work with small audio files though, so not sure how useful a comparison it is for you. Working like a dream - and no lagging when I'm messing around with reverb etc which I expected.

I'm running a new MBA with 4gb RAM, base line processor speed.

 

[Feuersturm]

Ok I compared my old 2009 MBP 13'' (2.53Ghz, 4 GB Ram) with my new 11'' MBA (i7, 4GB Ram). I checked the Logic cpu load in the included Demo Song "The Number's Game". Well, both had about the same cpu load during the Song (between 10-60%, most of the time about 40%), but I would say the MBA was a TINY bit better (between 5-10%). Both Songs were played from the internal Harddrive.
I'm gonna make some "real world" recording tests soon...

 

[Feuersturm]

I also ran the "Logic Multicore Benchmark Test" (google it...):

MBP 13'' (mid-2009, 2,53 Ghz, 4 GB Ram): 17 Tracks

Macbook Air 11'' (2011, i7, 4 GB Ram): 24 Tracks

All under Logic 9.14, 32 bit Mode, OS Lion, 256 samples and medium buffer, internal Soundcard.
Nice little machine, the new air!

 

[pickleydoo]

Feuersturm,

Do you think one of the new Airs + an Apogee Duet 2 would be suitable for tracking on the go?

Thanks!

 

[Lek]

11" 4/128 gave me problems with logic pro 9 today

I'm using it to perform live
I loaded 7 songs, and my new 2011 11" Air gave me the 'disk overload' problem when trying to play one. Sucks, I thought with the ssd there would be no problems, but it couldn't handle it. Initially, the drive seemed better than my 17" macbook pro's 5400rpm native drive - especially when hitting play the cpu load wouldn't max out like on my pro's. But literally tonight - I hit a limit with it I guess.

By the way, a song might have 8 to 10 tracks with NO, I repeat, NO plugins. When I mix I use all hardware (I'm also a big tape machine freak - 2" 16 track ampex). This was just to perform live

So this leads me to the question, are songs not currently being played taking up memory or being accessed by the hard drive?

 

[mgs4]

interesting, thanks for the info so far. i actually still have logic 8 which i'll probably still use on the new machine, i wonder how it'll run... it works fine on my late 2009 macbook. (i'm thinking surely the new airs would handle logic better than an older macbook)

 

[nebulos]

I'm using it to perform live
I loaded 7 songs, and my new 2011 11" Air gave me the 'disk overload' problem when trying to play one. Sucks, I thought with the ssd there would be no problems, but it couldn't handle it. Initially, the drive seemed better than my 17" macbook pro's 5400rpm native drive - especially when hitting play the cpu load wouldn't max out like on my pro's. But literally tonight - I hit a limit with it I guess.

By the way, a song might have 8 to 10 tracks with NO, I repeat, NO plugins. When I mix I use all hardware (I'm also a big tape machine freak - 2" 16 track ampex). This was just to perform live

So this leads me to the question, are songs not currently being played taking up memory or being accessed by the hard drive?

you can check memory usage in activity monitor (applications -> utilities -> activity monitor).

how large are the song files? can you try it with 7 baby songs, like 1 track, 5 seconds each.

i don't know Logic. have you googled 'logic disk overload'?