Hi, I have been producing dubstep/trap on a pc using fl studio for about two years, and I’m ready to switch to a macbook. I understand that FL studio is not made to run on macs, so i was thinking of switching to ableton. My question is, will the dual core 13" macbook pro be capable of running ableton AND a dj program such as Traktor or virtual dj smoothly? With my pc right now, its almost impossible to complete songs without the computer glitching and chopping up the sound. Im on a tight budget and just want to make sure that the dual core can handle ableton and virtual dj smoothly. Thanks!
Dual core 13" are more than enough for Traktor and Ableton Live. It’s more of if you like a bigger screen, 15" or smaller more compact, 13". If you are worried about screen estate, it’s super-easy to add more monitors to the laptop. So it’s more what size you like to use in the field.
If you just DJ I would even go with an Apple MacBook Air has those are compact and nifty. For production work, a dual core i5 is then again more practical.
To be honest, the 13" should be good enough for just that, but I feel that with the 15" (it has a quad core) is better because it’s more faster, and the screen isn’t as tiny. If you feel like you need the extra two inches for a bigger screen get the 15". I have a 15" and I Ableton on it runs really great, and the bigger screen size see more in Ableton without having to scroll so much or close big plugins. The MacBook Air, on the other hand, isn’t really for Ableton…the specs on it really seem slow for productions. Fry’s and B&H Photo have some good deals on MBP’s sometimes, so you can always look there.
I’m running an early 2011 MBP 13in with a Core i7, and it is more than enough to handle any application I throw at it. I’ve upgraded it to 16gb ram and a 1tb hard drive, but even before then, it was more than up to snuff (main difference is that I can run larger Ableton sets now with the 64gb version, etc). The main thing that irritates me is that I don’t have much room for track info in Traktor on screen-I can have my browse list or performance area, but if I try to do both I have a few lines of songs and less real-time feedback on my performance area than I would like. That said, that is what the full screen browse option is for. Virtual DJ is less of an issue-I can get a fair amount more on screen (depending on skin used), and VDJ is so CPU lite it isn’t even funny. A netbook could run it with no issues.
You should be plenty happy if it is a good price, I would go for it.