Being a 50+ year old person, in the past I always did build ( assemble ) my own pc’s.
The pc I use right now is 7 years old, but still runs fantastic with Debian, Ardour 8.10 and an RME usb audio-interface for audio production.
Recently I did discover these MINI PC’s, those little boxes, from Minisforum, Beelink and Geekom ect.
Are there any Ardour users over here using a linux based mini pc with Ardour for audio production ?
Maybe someone reading this can post a reply about their experience with a mini pc ?
Just being curious,
I have only used Raspberry Pis and MiniMacs (M1 chip), the latter for actual film sound design work at a studio. Minimacs work, but of course, they do not have enough ports to be comfortable in my opinion, and I suspect most mini PCs will have that issue, so docks and HUBs are a must.
Hello JcVardy, thank you for your fast reply.
Appreciate you take the time to give a reaction !
Are you mentioning the lack of usb ports ( maybe for an usb audio interface ) ?
As a linux user, I’m not partically interested into a minimac M1, but it seems those other brands have several usb ports ( >4 ) and a similar or faster performance, depending on the cpu.
Are those tiny machine’s powerfull enough to run 40 audio tracks with some plugins in inserted ? Maybe you know…
Thanx again.
I would personally not recommend Mac at all, and I agree all those brands you mentioned probably offer better suited products. I was given that to work by my boss. I prepared sessions for film and TV editing, and handled all the dialog and production FX, and I can tell you they can definitely run 40 tracks with some plugins. Would certainly use them for simple mixes. I would not try to edit the whole season of a show in one session with that, tho, heh.
Did just watch a minimac m1 with Logic on youtube.
Seems like those little machines are really powerfull, enough to run even 1000 plugin’s.
Really unbelievable.
Assuming Ardour is powerfull enough to match a similar performance on a mini pc.
Greetings from the european continent to Argentina
Did you run the Intel or ARM based Mac? It is frankly amazing what I can run on the ARM macs without it breaking much sweat.
EDIT: Nevermind you mentioned M1 chip, I am a bit surprised to felt constrained on that honestly. Would be curious to see what you were doing, if a bunch of audio restoration in real time I suppose I could see that, but just curious.
Yes, arm M1 with integrated NPU (I think they have that, right?), 8gbs of ram. It did well. Took some time for some stuff, wouldn’t compare it with an actual work station. But great computers for daily driving and casual work. I am hoping the PIs get to that point eventually, heh.
Ok that may be the difference. I am just now getting to the point where i am looking to upgrade my M1 with 16GB of Ram which I have used for all sorts of workstation tasks honestly, both audio and video. I am likely to replace it with a M4 with at least 24GB of Ram, but keep in mind what my daily workload involves (Everything below is all at the same time):
Typical Office Stuff
Excel (Multiple multi-sheet documents, usually at least 6, with 10 sheets per and decently loaded formulas)
Word (probably up to 6 Docs)
Teams including video conferencing
Zoom for video conferencing
Occasionally Meet for video
IRC/Limechat
Discord
Mail (With typically 20 or so emails open for me to reply to)
Slack
Music
Messages
Preview with a half dozen to dozen 20 page or so graphically intensive PDFs open
Calendar with a few different calendar windows open
Obsidian with at least 3 vaults open at a time
Security Cameras (Viewing typically 20 or so cameras)
Then we get to the more intensive things:
Vectorworks (Typically between 3 and 6 drawings open, of systems, buildings and events, mixtures of 2D and 3D but usually all decently large)
OBS Running with a Camera and Video Capture and Virtual Camera for the above video conference platforms
Mixbus/Ardour generally with at least 24 tracks, up to as many as 70 or 80 depending on the student project
Remote Desktop with between 2-4 computers open for remote IT support and AV support for clients
And for fun some video editing on occasion in Davinci Resolve, but that is generally pretty mild with some basic generated FX or processing
The fact it can even do all that is frankly amazing, but I definitely am feeling the RAM limitations these days (Imagine that).
So it may make a big difference for media between 8GB of RAM and 16GB of RAM on those ARM computers is my point.
Wow Seablade, you are a very busy person, I already start having problems with 3 or 4 different tasks, but of course I am dyslexic and I can’t do much more in parallel.
And if 8gb of ram seems a bit scarce, I have a basic linux pc with 8gb and 2 cores (not arm) for tasks that are not sound or video, the one I use for sound is something more powerful from 8 years ago that has 16gb, and soon I will upgrade (when I finish buying the components that are quite expensive) to a new pc with better features.
The only macs I used were 2 G5s when with a partner we recorded groups live, in studios or rehearsal rooms, and I have good memories of them.
I usually read good reviews (almost always) about these ARM Macs, but since I’ve always assembled the PCs I use myself, well, on a Mac it’s more difficult to DIY… and more expensive, but the cost, if the device is certainly competent and you need it for work and you can afford it, is definitely worth it.
When a family member or acquaintance (all of them use Windows, except me) asks me, I tell them to buy a Mac, I tell them this mainly so that they abandon Windows and stop calling me to try to solve problems with Windows, which I can’t solve for the most part, on a Mac it just works… as it almost always does on Linux ; )
I’ve always favoured Macs because they’re quiet but I never really warmed to MacOS, so I dual-boot them into Wndows. The thing I like about Windows is that it’s always offered several ways to achieve things. When I did try getting into MacOS (a long time ago) it seemed like there was only ever one way to do things and either you did it Apple’s way, or did without it
Which often seems to be why Mac users like it! Different strokes for different folks I guess…
Hi, I only recommend Mac for stability and reliability, but I personally don’t like the Mac ecosystem per se, the very high prices and that idea of Mac elitism that some people seem to have. I don’t have an iPad, an iPhone, or any kind of Mac computer.
Both reasons, Mac prices and that closed ecosystem, depending on a single brand, led me to Linux. It’s not perfect, but it can be stable and very malleable at the same time, if you know what you’re doing of course.
The endless updates of Windows are simply frustrating (Linux updates in a few minutes at most), not to mention the update errors. My sister has a Windows 10 PC that she can’t update because an update gives an error and I haven’t been able to fix it. She wants to update to Windows 11 (I don’t know why, really), and she can’t because of that error in an update. Windows has too many things patched (menus and configuration pages from years ago, mixed with other new parts, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to improve in Windows 11 with recall and other “functionalities”.
I got a 400 dollar ryzon9 with 16 cores, 1tb nvme, and 32g of ram. I use a guitar pedal and usb nice stereo mic. It does what it needs to, and never runs into double digits on the dsp. Oh, it’s sleek, aluminum (only 4 usb ports, but hey) and it’s smaller than a paperback novel.
You might be sensitive to the fan. Being small and not good on thermals, this machine whirs up pretty good, but it doesn’t bother me. I could see how it would be inappropriate for a sound-proofed studio.
It’s a good option if you can scoop one up cheap like I did from the aliverse.
I run Ubuntu Studio and it works flawless with pipewire and jack and everything.
“Mini Boxes” spans a wide range of capabilities and cost. I’ve had success with a Beelink as a low power 12V PC & monitor in a vehicle. One huge determinant of speed/reliability/expandability is the form of the drive/boot drive. Early models had fixed soldered (slow) drives, think it was called eMMC. A recent one had m.2 and is silent, seems to be immunce to vibration and shock compared to hdd, and expandable.
Perhaps your use case for Ardour could tolerate one of these. Mine includes merely running in a VM.
Long story short: YMMV
if you have success with one, let us know.
Most of the mini PC devices use the same style of components which would be used in a laptop, so you can expect around the same range of performance differences as you see across different laptop computers. A laptop using the same processor and similar amount of memory would be a relevant comparison to a specific model of mini PC.
Yeah, the main difference between a mini-PC and a laptop is that changing/replacing/upgrading parts in the laptop will be hard to impossible, mostly; conversely this is pretty easy with a mini-PC. I’m ignoring the “builtin screen” and “builtin keyboard” parts because they’re not so relevant.
I had a couple of 12VDC mini PCs some years back, one of which would travel in our van and run directly off the solar-powered battery system. Alas, you can’t fit the sort of cooling required by the massively multicore processors I use now (outside of the apple ecosystem), so despite those being nice little boxes, I had to give up using them for ardour development.
