Hi, as always, it depends. Let me devide this into two topics:
Macbook Air Apple Music App
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1. You should use an external audio interface at least if you want to play live due to latency of the internal sound cards of each MacBook.
2. If a MacBook Air is suitable depends on the complexity of the sounds and effects you want to use. Playing a single piano sound might work but if you use additional effects and more sounds in parallel you might come into trouble.
I use a MacBook Pro 15“ what is also recommend by Apple and run several sounds and effects in parallel, e.g. two instances of Omnisphere 2, Valhalla Shimmer on a reverb Bus and Steinbergs The Grand 3 as Piano sound. From observable CPU usage I would say this will not work on a MacBook Air.
How powerful the CPU should be depends also on the sample buffer you set. The smaller the sample buffer the higher the necessary CPU usage and lower the latency. The larger the sample buffer, the lower the necessary CPU usage but Aldo the higher the latency.
One last important thing. An Intel Core i7 in the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro 13“ is a 2-Core Version. Only the MacBook Pro 15“ has a real quad-core CPU!
Dec 26, 2017 7:19 AM
Hi, as always, it depends. Let me devide this into two topics:
1. You should use an external audio interface at least if you want to play live due to latency of the internal sound cards of each MacBook.
2. If a MacBook Air is suitable depends on the complexity of the sounds and effects you want to use. Playing a single piano sound might work but if you use additional effects and more sounds in parallel you might come into trouble.
I use a MacBook Pro 15“ what is also recommend by Apple and run several sounds and effects in parallel, e.g. two instances of Omnisphere 2, Valhalla Shimmer on a reverb Bus and Steinbergs The Grand 3 as Piano sound. From observable CPU usage I would say this will not work on a MacBook Air.
How powerful the CPU should be depends also on the sample buffer you set. The smaller the sample buffer the higher the necessary CPU usage and lower the latency. The larger the sample buffer, the lower the necessary CPU usage but Aldo the higher the latency.
Apple Macbook Air Review
One last important thing. An Intel Core i7 in the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro 13“ is a 2-Core Version. Only the MacBook Pro 15“ has a real quad-core CPU!
Apple Music On Macbook Pro
Dec 26, 2017 7:19 AM