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User profile for user: Pat Gilmour
Pat Gilmour Author
User level: Level 2
241 points

Will GarageBand run well on MacBook Air i5 (2020)?

Hi - a friend wants to buy a new Mac laptop. He's a fairly "lite" user... web, email, word processing etc.


However, as he's middle-aged and worried about it, he's decided to put together a band with his buddies!


I'm his go-to nerd as I'm a systems integrator, but I don't have any experience with recording studio software and it's hardware requirements.


I was thinking of suggesting he buys a MacBook Air 1.1GHz Quad-Core Core i5 with 512GB Storage.


  • Would that configuration run GarageBand capably for mixing songs recorded on real instruments? (I doubt they'll be moving to Logic any time soon.) Or does he need to consider a MacBook Pro?
  • Should he think of adding 16gb RAM? Is GarageBand memory intensive or can he get away with 8GB?
  • Assuming they manage to put together an album of 10 tracks, I'm assuming 512gb HD is going to more than ample. Am I right?


Thanks for any insights, and front row tickets promised for the best answerer when they hit the big time!











Posted on May 5, 2020 6:53 PM

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User profile for user: Pat Gilmour
Pat Gilmour Author
User level: Level 2
241 points

Posted on May 7, 2020 7:36 AM

From Apple Support:


Processor and RAM: The minimum recommended is 4GB RAM with i3 processor so upgrading to an i5 and default 8GM RAM in the MacBook Air will be beneficial for running the application.


Hard Drive (Storage): 10 three minute stereo tracks at 10MB per minute, is around 300MB total. Obviously if you have more tracks in your song, the total size will be even larger. So in this example your GarageBand project would be 300MB in size, and the final mix-down which you export to iTunes would be 30MB.


So a MacBook Air 1.1GHz Quad-Core Core i5 Processor with Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz, 512GB Storage, Touch ID sounds more than capable.


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User profile for user: Pat Gilmour
Pat Gilmour Author
User level: Level 2
241 points

May 7, 2020 7:36 AM in response to Pat Gilmour

From Apple Support:


Processor and RAM: The minimum recommended is 4GB RAM with i3 processor so upgrading to an i5 and default 8GM RAM in the MacBook Air will be beneficial for running the application.


Hard Drive (Storage): 10 three minute stereo tracks at 10MB per minute, is around 300MB total. Obviously if you have more tracks in your song, the total size will be even larger. So in this example your GarageBand project would be 300MB in size, and the final mix-down which you export to iTunes would be 30MB.


So a MacBook Air 1.1GHz Quad-Core Core i5 Processor with Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz, 512GB Storage, Touch ID sounds more than capable.


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Will GarageBand run well on MacBook Air i5 (2020)?

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