Computer advice - trade my Mac Pro for a Macbook Pro?

Hey guys,


Looking for some mac-friendly advice.

I’m currently running a 2009 Mac Pro 4,1 tower. 2x quad core, 16gb ram, 4x 1TB barracuda 7200 HDD’s. It’s been my music production CPU for the last 2 years, and TBH it is massive overkill for what I am doing. I just checked a few dense sessions (100+ tracks) in both Pro Tools 12 and Ableton 9, and the CPU usage didn’t go above 12%, with RAM only using 7GB (in the PT session, only 3GB in the Ableton session). FWIW I don’t use a lot of softsynths, and the ones I do (Maschine, Massive, Monark, Prism, Operator) run fine on my crappy 2012 MBP. I’m def not doing 20+ instances of omnisphere - and don’t plan to.
I also don’t use the pcie slots, and I’m not even using the 5 (8 if you count the monitor hub) USB slots as I have a USB Hub I move between my studio and my live setup. I don’t do anything video related (nor do I plan to) so the big graphics card (AMD Radeon 7XXXsomething something) is wasted for the most part - except to run the meters and playhead in my DAW… I actually bought it in case I needed to upgrade using PCIE, graphic, etc, but have since moved the other direction completely. I leave any gaming for consoles.

Which brings me to my next point: my live Mac is a crappy old standard 2012 13" base model (albeit with 16gb ram). It’s actually not so bad for what I am doing, but something a little more robust/future-proof is probably a good idea. Some of my sessions from the Pro definitely run slower on the MBP.

SO, my question is - should I sell my Pro tower, replace it with a decent MBP (maybe 2015, 15" i7?) that I can then use for gigs etc? The main problems I can see with the MBP are: connectivity (solved by USB hub in my case), HDD space (I could keep 2 of the barracuda’s and get a sata enclosure for $60), and components in laptop vs tower (any???).

The bonus is I should have some $$$ spare after to spend on other things (read: synths)

Any help welcome!

NOTE: please don’t turn this into a mac vs. PC debate - I care not for it. I am no apple fan boy (still using an iPhone 4), but all my systems are Apple, my work systems are all Apple, and literally everyone I work with in music is Apple based.

not sure if this is 100% helpful. but i just recently doubled the ram on my 2008 MBP past the apple specs (from 4gb to 8gb)

and got a SSD. shit is super fast now!

also same for the ram on my 2010 mac mini which is my dedicated music computer to 16gb. (apple specs 8gb max)
may do the SSD too but swapping the drive is a lil more involved than the MBP was.

my point is, maybe u can upgrade your current system for not that much,
and get a new system when your shit is more out of date. or actually needs replacing.
(and technology has advanced further)

the SSD made such a difference in speed and loading times compared to a 7200rpm drive.
all my programs run so smooth and load so fast.
my whole computer boots in about 1/4 of the time maybe now too.