Is it worth it to buy a mac mini? or imac instead?

Some things to consider:

• Do you need another monitor? That's mainly what the $600 difference buys you.
• Are you going to need an optical drive? The mini doesn't come with one, so you'd need to hang an external one off of it.
• Are you ever going to need to move this computer? With the mini, it's really easy to unplug everything, throw it in a bag and go. Not so much with the iMac.
• One HUGE difference: the mini only comes with a dual-core CPU (even the i7). The iMac uses quad-cores across the board. If it were me, I think I'd choose more cores over less even though they had a slower clock speed.

The lack of an optical drive on the newest Mac mini rules it out in my opinion.

However, you can still purchase the previous model Mac mini (new) with an optical drive. The previous model does cost more than the current model, but well worth every penny.

Otherwise I would get the iMac, which includes an optical drive.

I just got the New mini with the HD 6630m core i 5 2.5ghz

and I love it , its very fast and i can even play world of warcraft on High settings it looks and plays great

I do not remember the last time i stuck a dvd/cd inside my imac so i really do not see the need for one at all

get yourself a usb hard drive and maybe a few usb sticks for quick transfers and thats more then you should ever need.

people do not like change i remember computers before cd-rom drives so not having one is not a big issue at all.

the new mac minis are very nice

I have a couple of old iMacs and a Mac Mini, and when the newest iMac started to fail I bought a new Mac Mini (2.3GHz i5). I have several 20in screens spare, I have good keyboards spare, and I have several external USB optical drives (somewhere is a real Apple Air Book drive) So the answer for me was buy a mini, upgrade the RAM (8GB), be happy. Also note that playing World of Warcraft makes the mini run extra hot, and MacOSX doesn't run the fan fast enough to keep the temp down, so I use smcFanControl while playing 'games'.

What you should do is fire up your activity monitor on your macbook pro and use Logic as you normally would. Try to recreate the conditions for the lacking performance you describe (running lots of plugins). Check your activity monitor at those times to see what the bottleneck is. Is your CPU maxed? If so, you'll probably want to take a look at the quad-core. Is it the RAM that's being maxed? If the page outs on the system memory tab continually increases, then the 4GB in your system isn't enough, and you'll need 8.

I don't know how your MBP is configured, but the default HDD is 5400RPM, so the slower spin speed could be something holding you back as well.

why not get a mac mini server. I was under the impression one usb port could be branched to hold a hundred and twenty seven different devices.

Don't get caught up in the CPU speed vs. cores. More cores is going to be better, especially when the speeds are so close.

If it makes you feel better, think of it this way: 2 cores * 2.8 GHZ = 5.6. but 4 cores * 2.0 GHZ = 8.0. also, you aren't taking in to account the huge performance jump from the core duo in your MBP to the sandy bridge that's in the mini. you can't even really compare the two, performance-wise.

EDIT: My math does not reflect actual performance comparisons, but I included it to quantify what you'd buy vs. what you've already got.

Message was edited by: Creeper74

have a look here: http://www.primatelabs.ca/geekbench/mac-benchmarks/

you'll see that the mini benchmarks higher than the imac. the question then becomes, is having an integrated display (and a nice one at that) and an optical drive worth $200 extra. you'll be fine with whatever you choose. compared to your current MBP, either one of these machines is going to be much faster.

On the plus side for the mini --

• Dead easy to get into the case and swap out a full or dead disk (go find a youtube movie of swapping out an iMac disk. Yikes!)
• Screen and computer are separate purchases. Computer fine but you need a bigger monitor? Buy a bigger monitor. Computer underpowered but monitor just fine? Buy a new mini.
• Portability -- going somewhere that already has a monitor? Toss the mini in a bag and you are good to go.
• RAID -- the mini server with the two drives makes a nice RAID. If you are paranoid about your data, there is your first line of defense against a disk failure.

On the plus side for the iMac --

• 16 GB of RAM. You can only stuff 8GB into a mini. (What were they thinking?!?!)
• Cost -- if you have to buy the monitor, keyboard, mouse/trackpad, cd-drive, the price advantage of the mini goes away one extra at a time.
• speed -- the mini tops out about the middle of the iMac line.
• Neatness -- some people are really annoyed by all those wires, and all-in-one gets rid of a bunch.

On the plus side for the iMac --

And the iMac includes a built-in optical SuperDrive!

Though I agree that the iMac has the edge over the Mini with CPU & graphics, one thing to be aware of is the dual core i5 processors on the Mini have Hyperthreading technology which create two processing paths per core. A virtual quad core. Not as fast as a real quad core but ****** close enough to make significant speed difference, I used my 2.3 GHz entry level Mini (with 8 GB ram added) to transcode several dvd & blu-Ray videos on Handbrake, which is multi core aware. Compared to my AMD 6 core HP running Win7, the Mini took only a minute or two longer to render the videos. (And remember, under OSX, the decrypting & transcoding is one step, on Windows it is 2 steps: you have to decrypt first before transcoding. I only measured the transcoding time on Handbrake giving the Windows coding a break). On the Mini, using Activity Monitor, I could see 4 streams being worked on -2 real; 2 virtual. I know those streams were no where near as powerful as a true quad core but they did cut down the transcode time by almost half compared to my 2009 C2D Mini. From what I'm reading on the web an iMac would have been faster. BUT not signicantly so.

Bottom Line: For once, the Minis do not have to kneel to any iMac for speed or capability. As they say, its close enough for government work!. For me, I have all the peripherals, and prefer being able to add or drop what I want to the mix as technology demands (blu-ray drive, bigger monitor, decent speakers). Can't (easily) do that with an iMac. That's why I will always prefer a flexibility of a now viable Mini.

Hello Buddy. I cannot speak for logic but i can speak for protools. Protools is the industry standard DAW (digital audio workstation). I would only ever consider it for mixing and making music first and foremost above all other DAW softwares.

RAM greater than 4gb will NOTeffect your DAW or mixing performance at all. Protools in its current 32bit state only utilizes 3.4-3.6gb RAM total. (however getting 8gb RAM is not a bad idea since it so cheap, but it will not "boost" your DAW performance) Therefore anything above that will not be used in your protools mix. Im not sure if logic utilizes more RAM than that or not but protools currently does not.

I would get the mac mini server version with quad core. Reason being: you will be able to move you studio and get any sized external monitor you want and wont have to be married to a 21 or 27" imac screen every time you need to hit the road.

DAW's are processor heavy and are not RAM intensive like video or graphic design. The only way your DAW when running protools uses more than the previously spoken about 3.4-3.6gb RAM is when using virtual instruments that are not in AVID or digidesing sample libraries. Something like a addictive drums or BFD drums are sameple libraries and virtual instruments and their samples are pulled up in RAM while the CPU is processing the sounds. These would utilize the extra RAM aboce the 3.6gb RAM, NOT the DAW.

IMPORTANT: Protools is NOTcompatible with Lion as of yet! (I assume logic LE is not either) Protools is NOT capable with Server versions of OSX either. most audio interfaces that are USB or firewire also are NOT yet compatible with Server OSX or Lion as of yet.

NOTE: the i7 mac mini server is not a 2.7ghz i7 processor as per your first post, it is only a 2.0ghz i7 btw.

IF you do decide to get the 2011 mac mini server with quad core, you will have to purchase a snow leopard retail installer disc. Install snow leopard to an external harddrive as your boot volume. Back up the external hard drive boot volume using time machine on a separate or partitioned pard of this external drive and then restore that backup back on to your new mac mini thats currently loaded with lion. You CANNOT merely install snow leopard onto the new mac mini , the mac will now let you do so. You will get errors everytime you try, you must "fool: the mac and "force" it to revert to an earlier OS such as snow leopard. You CANNOT run protools on lion and you CANNOT run protools on a Server OS. You will get errors all day and all night. the way i described is the ONLY way to run this. Trust me from experience.

When you do you get your DAW set up on the mac mini. Its nice because you can partition the other drive to run lion still if you want and then you can use the 2nd drive that has lion installed on it as your record version and it will run Waaaay better than any USB external drive or firewire drive. This is very convenient compared to the imacs but can take days to set up. Time machine and the the snow leoopard retail version Disc is key though. I use a mac mini server my self and have dealt with this for months including expensive technical phone calls for support.

I have a lion OSX set up on my mac mini and a 60GB partition set up on the second hard drive running snow leopard. Protools projects are saved to the Lion hard drive when booting form the snow leopard side.

you will continue to run into these issues when upgrading or changing equipment when dealing with audio recording. Your best bet is to pick a great system that works, put it on a partitioned drive and dont update or change anything until the host application (AVID/protools in this case) is absolutely ready for a change.

I hope this helped and did not confuse the crap out of you!

Jordan

<Edited By Host>