After a 12 year break I’m jumping back into music and will be starting from scratch for the whole setup and copying scores one note at a time from an old system with Finale and Sibelius into Dorico, on either a MacBook Air or Pro
I see in the system requirements for Dorico that 16 GB ram is recommended and before I take the hardware plunge it would be nice to have a sense whether to go “lite” w the Air or err on the safe side w a maxed out M3 MacBook Pro. Big difference in the $ between those but if it minimizes problems w playback etc worth it
Not sure about the Air M2 but seems like RAM options are limited. I imagine the M3 Pro would handle things well but there are also a lot of system options just within that one choice. It has the obvious advantages of a 16” screen, better speakers and more ports etc, but the part I’m stuck on is the befuddling lineup of CPU and RAM options
Laptop is a must for reasons of space and portability, and overall simplicity because I’m old and allergic to DAW and most other tech-intensive things
Hoping someone who has done something similar lately can give feedback. The internet has loads of videos comparing systems for music but most are about DAW on big production systems w multiple components etc
What I’m after is as minimalist a system as I can put together, a powerful enough laptop to run Dorico + Note Performer + a few orchestra and solo instrument libraries, and a keyboard for note input of course
First thing to note is that the Pro and the Max are just “more cores”. Each core runs at the same speed as the “base” chip. (Though there are ‘performance’ and ‘efficiency’ cores in each.)
Next is that the M3 isn’t that much faster than the M2, and the latter is already pretty fast as it is.
The M-series Macs are very efficient with RAM, but I’d recommend 16 Gb as a minimum. If you do want to run some of the big third-party sample libraries, like Spitfire BBCSO, then these do require a lot of RAM.
A 15-inch MB Air with 512Gb storage and 24Gb RAM should serve you very well. In the UK, that comes in at £1,999.
A 16-inch MB Pro is going to start at £2,599, for the same storage, an M3 Pro and 18Gb RAM. The next "addition’ is 36 Gb RAM, which comes at an extra £400, taking you to 3 grand.
A 14-inch MB Pro with 1 Tb storage, a ‘base’ M3 and 16 Gb RAM comes in at £2,099. You can bump the RAM to 24 for an extra 200. That gives you more storage and the M3 chip, at the cost of the slightly smaller screen.
There’s actually very little overlap between Apple’s options: generally, it’s just what you need and what your budget is…!
More RAM is always good but if you only use NotePerformer for your audio, 8MB would probably suffice.
I use an M2 airbook with 16MB and have no issues with Dorico using Noteperformer.
Because it doesn’t have a fan it can get warm if you do any heavy processing such as audio editing.
And when I use Noteperformer Playback Engine with Iconica Sketch and a full orchestra, I have no issues although I do have a slight temperature increase but nothing alarming.
The M2 airbook is powerful and good bang for the buck (or pound).
Recopying known scores from scratch is probably the best way to learn Dorico, bit by bit. But when you get familiar enough, do look into the wonders of MusicXML. It doesn’t convert everything perfectly, but it can save you tons of time and thought with note re-entry.
I found that initially importing some of my files from Finale via XML (starting with simple ones) let me get started with more of the features of Dorico (then in its infancy) without spending most of my time inputting notes.
From there (as Dorico and I both grew more capable) I started inputting original material straight into Dorico.
Last time I felt like this was Christmas morning many decades ago
A couple of things come to mind
I intend to keep this system simple but there’s a high likelihood the piece where I’ll go crazy is w sound libraries and I gather that means get more RAM
The XML thing is intriguing re some of my complete scores are stranded in old Finale files that wouldn’t open in the then (2012?) new OS, I think because that version of Finale was some kind of big remake. I had reconstructed parts of those from memory in Sibelius so now at least I have those to work from. Unfortunately I seem to have lost most of the printed scores
Some of the old files have “Unix Executable File” as file type and are dated late 90s and early 2000s. They’re now just dark spots that can’t be opened. If there’s a way to rescue any of it that would be something
Inputting what I have into a new laptop will be a way to learn Dorico and reconstructing from memory will be good exercise and a put a new spin on old ideas
Thanks to all for your help, until this morning this has been a frustrating search through hours of indecipherable and irrelevant info on youtube videos so this is a relief
The Unix file thing is just because the old-school Mac file type and creator codes aren’t recognized on newer Systems. I have Finale files going all the way back to 1988. At some point new versions stopped being able to open v.1 files, but many people have ways. I myself haven’t used Finale since 2002, but I can launch various versions on old computers when I need to convert files.
Some of the files do have that .mus thing but not sure what that signifies? I may have some of this also backed up on discs but would assume it’s just as stranded as what’s on the old Mac
If I could find someone with a functioning computer that’s 5-10 years older than mine I’d have it made
Apple M3 Max chip with 14-core CPU, 30-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
36GB unified memory
1TB SSD storage
16-inch Liquid Retina XDR display?
Three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI port, SDXC card slot, headphone
I do have a son who does some video editing so wouldn’t be total overkill
The other pro options are 512 storage which I think is not enough. The 15” Airs are 8 GIGs ram and upgrading sneaks things up toward pro prices. Otherwise in either case it’s a customized configuration
I’ve gone with an M3 max Macbook Pro. A lot of money, but I’m hoping it will last me 10 years at least. The M3 Max is just about as fast as an M2 Ultra, so it’s a significant performance jump.
The main reason I got a fast machine with a lot of RAM is so that I can run Noteperformer with its new playback engines on large orchestral arrangements, plus run heavy Cubase projects at high sample rates.
If you want to do this too with Noteperformer you’ll benefit from a lot more RAM. But if you’re sticking with vanilla Noteperformer you need much less.
The .mus ending is how the computer knows it’s a Finale file. I would not assume that it is lost so quickly, if you really value it.
It’s just names for concepts. Not that different from learning music!
As you can see from the specs I gave you, a 24Gb RAM Air would cost £1000 less than a 36Gb Pro, so it’s well worth looking at the Custom Configs. If you’re going to spend that much money, you want to have it exactly as you want.
36Gb should suffice, if you intend to use something like BBCSO Core with NotePerformer. If you just plan to use NotePerformer and the Dorico-bundled sounds (including Iconica Sketch), then you don’t need so much RAM.
However, I would recommend going for 24Gb in the Air, as that’s the most RAM for the least money.
It looks like RAM is the main limiting factor and hitting a ceiling w other specs less likely
RTownsend, I’m curious what you aimed for w the other specs and why? meaning this part of it - 14-core CPU, 30-core GPU vs one of the other options, and also storage