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Is a MacBook Pro 15 retina enough for film music ?

Hi everybody.

I'm a performer live musician and composer woking also with advertising music, film and TV music for the 60 percent of my business.


'Cause 6 months per year touring, i'm used to use portable Mac.


Until now i worked with my MBpro 2007 bumped with SSD raid configuration ( one ssd replaced the main 7200 rpm original drive, and a second SSD is installed in the optical DVD slot, and 6 gig of RAM with the 10.6.8 OSX and Logic 9.1,8. When i'm at home, i use it plugged to an apple cinema display 30"-


I run super rock solid and flawlessy lot of VST and heavy orchestral libraries here, being a 15 years Mac and Logic user i know how to save resources and use things at the best with freeze, workarounds eccetera BUT now it's time to upgrade seriously to have less limit to my music ideas and speed up the work, especially with orchestral oriented stuff.


I'm open to every solution, also the nMac pro 'cause is very portable but i think the minimum configuration that have sense is at least 8 cores but at that price?!?


So that's why i'm oriented on a macbook pro retina 15" in super top configuration ( 16 gig RAM, 1 tb superfast SSD, 2.7 processor, double video with 2 gb RAM in europe kind of 3300 Euro) and maybe use as a slave the current mbook pro. I would be more ok if the mbpro could have more RAM, but is'nt more than 16.


The question is: have anyone experienced in film tv music tell me if the mbook pro 15 retina is enough to do tv music? I know is a generic question but to have an idea, i don't do VERY HEAVY orchestral stuff but i'd like to run flawlessy in a template like, per example: 3 multis of simphobya, 5 albion instruments, 2 LASS instances, 6 audio tracks and a bunch of audio/outboard plug ins to mix everything?


OR must i to take a 8 or 12 core nMac Pro and maybe take a mbpro 13 retina to work at the fly when i'm on tour for example?


i don't consider the old 12 cores Mac Pro, and i really would, 'cause i don't want to upgrade in something not having a thunderbolt, assuming i'll use tha new machine for about 6 years.


Thanks a lot, hope someone can help to make my decision.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)

Posted on Feb 17, 2014 1:09 AM

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4 replies

Feb 17, 2014 3:08 AM in response to Phil Stokes

thanks a lot, nobody than me knows what i need, for sure.


But I'm looking for the help of someone with precise knoledge in hardware setup for composing film music that can tell me his experienced-related opinion about my discussion.


I know the benchmark page. A benchmark is a good indication but i think nothing beat the experience...


Thanks a lot!

Is a MacBook Pro 15 retina enough for film music ?

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