This post is for any Logic users who are currently shopping for a new mac and considering the new Mac Mini M4 Pro. I bought one and have had it for a week and a half so far and want to share the small and un-scientific stress tests I've run with it in case it helps you make a decision.

For comparison my previous machine that I will be comparing this to was the 2018 Intel Mac Mini with the following spec:
• Intel i7-8700 Processor - 3.2GHz 6-core
• 64 GB RAM
• 1TB SSD Hard drive
• Mac OS Ventura

New Mac Mini Spec:
• M4 Pro Chip - 14 core CPU (10 performance, 4 efficiency)
• 64 GB RAM
• 1TB SSD Hard drive
• Mac OS Seqouia 15.1.1
• I'm running all my sessions off an external SSD, and the Mac Mini's hard drive has about 700GB of free space.

Overall impressions:

The M4 Pro computer runs my Logic composing template sessions smoothly (around 375 software instruments in the template, instruments are divided into 15 track stacks, each stack has it's own reverbs/delays, a total of 31 reverbs, 14 delays), and allows me to print stems within the same session with no need for offline bouncing. My template is setup so that Logic doesn't load any instruments when I open it, it loads each instrument as I click them and start using them. The session is setup so that each stem is mastered while it prints. There are 14 stems, each stem has it's own instance of UADx Studer A800 Tape Recorder, Waves Vitamin, UADx Manley Massive Passive MST, and Fabfilter Pro L2 Limiter.

This meets all of my needs so I'm happy with this outcome, but of course it's abilities are not limitless. For example the Fabfilter L2 limiter, currently there are 14 instances and each one is set to 2x oversampling, any higher and the session cannot run without hiccups (the limiter has 4x, 8x, 16x, and 32x oversampling options).

Logic Stress Tests / Comparisons

Here are some stress test comparisons between the 2018 Intel Mac, and the M4 Pro where I tested how many instances of different software instruments I could run in Logic at once, with a I/O buffer size of 1024. In general the M4 Pro Mac is able to run about twice or more instances of any given software instrument.

The first number is the M4 Pro, and the second smaller number is the Intel Mac.

Alchemy - 58 vs 21
Logic Retro Synth - 1050 vs 550
Slate & Ash Landforms - 55 vs 10
Crow Hill Concussion Drums - 100+ vs 26
Output Exhale - 100+ vs 30

I also did a test where I loaded every instrument in the Spitfire Symphonic series and had them all playing at once. This consisted of every instrument in Symphonic Strings, Brass, and Woodwinds, as well as every percussion instrument in Spitfire Percussion (which consists of all tuned and untuned orchestral percussion). For the Strings, Brass, and WW, every instrument had two instances, one for longs and one for shorts, and where applicable I also loaded soloists, so Flutes for instance had 4 tracks, 1 Flute Solo longs, 1 Flute solo shorts, 1 Flutes a2 longs, 1 Flutes a2 shorts. I was able to run the entire orchestra multiplied by 3 without any playback issues. By the time it was multiplied by 3 the session became very sluggish and laggy. By comparison the Intel computer was able to run the same session with the orchestra multiplied by 2.

Other Notes

• Logic is still very buggy and still crashes too frequently for my liking. I'm planning to migrate to Cubase in the near future.
• Logic does not use any efficiency cores, but if you use Pro Tools, Reaper, Cubase, or another DAW that does use the efficiency cores, you can expect about a 7% increase in CPU headroom with the M4 Pro Chip, as demonstrated in James Zhan's excellent Mac for music production comparison video.
• I've never had Memory Pressure go into yellow or red in the Activity Monitor.
• Your Logic session load times will still be restrained by the transfer speed of your sample library hard drives. As a result I don't see much of an improvement in session load times since I've yet to upgrade my sample library storage.

Conclusions

If you don't have a bottomless budget, I think the M4 Pro Mac Mini is the best option in many cases, as opposed to the current Mac Studio or Macbook Pro offerings which would be more than twice the cost for an Apple Ultra chip. As for the M2 Max chips, I'm skeptical they would be worth the increase in cost for Logic users given that they only have 8 performance cores as opposed to the M4 Pro chips 10.

Hope this info helps someone!

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