Mac Mini M4 with Dorico and NPPE

Hello. I’m thinking about purchasing a Mac Mini M4. Would 16 GB Unified Memory be sufficient for using Dorico with a NPPE library like Iconica Sketch, Musio, or BBCSO Core, or would it be better for me to purchase one with 24 GB or 32 GB (or go for a Windows 32 GB computer available at Costco)? For context, I am a hobbyist arranger who arranges music for String Orchestra and Full Orchestra, and the largest instrumentation I work with is: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, strings.

ETA: My usual Full Orchestra instrumentation is: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings.

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The new Mac Mini is a wonderful machine for Dorico and music production in general, no doubt about it. 16 GB may be OK for your described use case, but it’s better to get more RAM if you can afford it. I personally wouldn’t go bellow 24 GB.

NPPE uses a lot of memory - I would check what the latest recommendations are on the Noteperformer website.

But - I’ve been using BBCSO core for strings, Spitfire solo strings and Hollywood choirs, on a fairly old 16GB MacBook machine, and although NPPE is reporting memory use of 25GB (a lot of which must be paged to disk) it still manages to perform without dropouts.

I’m impressed with how MacOS is able to achieve that.

Although that’s the case, and you can probably get away with 16GB at the moment, I still recommend getting more than 16GB, just to give yourself some future-proofing.

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I would go with 32GB of RAM. Right now, I’m running with 24GB on an M2 MacBook Air, which is sufficient for the BBCSO, but not for larger libraries, like the Cinesamples or Cinematic Studio libraries. It is my opinion that you should always err on the side of too much RAM.

Mike

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Thank you for your responses. I’m going to go with the 24GB one for now, which could change based on what reviewers say once they test the products.

Update: I ultimately decided to purchase the Mac Mini with 32GB. It should be coming in within the next week or so.

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I think 32 GB will help you when loading more RAM-intensive libraries.

Mike

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BBC Core uses over 20Gb RAM with NPPE so you’d certainly want 32Gb to run that library. Iconica is much less demanding. Basically, as @MikeInBoston says, the more you get the bigger the choice of libraries. Some of them such as Orchestral Tools or the Cinematic Studio I use require much more to run in NPPE than natively.

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You mean Iconica Sketch, right? Iconica has been known for being quite a heavy load…

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yes, I meant indeed the bundled Iconica Sketch

I mostly use the instruments in BBCSO Core, which take up around 15GB. Even though I have the BBCSO Pro version, I choose to use the Core version which takes up less RAM. By the way, the VSL libraries are VERY RAM efficient.

Mike