I got the lowest end M chip possible... M1 MacBook Air 8GB RAM and it runs great, it used around 3.5/4Gb of Ram with STEMS turned on.

GPU doesent matter much unless you want to use Serato Video, even so my M1 does just fine.

So if you get a current gen M3 or M4 you should be golden... Go for 16GB of ram if you can for future proofing or if you also use the laptop for other stufff.

Air works good? I've always gone for a Pro, but no longer play in clubs (bloody kids and work!)

if you can afford a 32gb model I would buy that if not then 16gb will do if your just at home.

Get minimum an M1 Pro with 16gb ram.

I think having a pro is important instead of an air, because the pro comes with fans which is important when you play outside in the sun

Go Pro, fan is important here as I have seen Airs, while good, suffer with heat and throttle down to freezing. 16GB will be just fineas mentioned above by Despo.

totally agree Pros the way

The fanless Air M1 has done me well even in peak summer during the day (39C / 100F), or really hot sweaty clubs. My old intel MacBook (2015) would absolutely melt in those conditions

32GB for an app that uses 3 or 4 GB is kind of crazy but its your $$...

Serato uses more ram especially with stems.

I also take it you dont carry much music, people with large librarys will have issues, if you only have 8gb ram. over 100k files



i wonder if your speeds throttle cause of the heat?

What's confusing me is that none of the new macbooks state RAM. I'll most likely be looking at an M2 with 16gb RAM but are they now referring to RAM as something different?

Unified Memory = RAM (Random Access Memory)

Why makes Serato require 16GB RAM? How does Serato suffer on a Silicon Mac equipped with only 8GB RAM?

I guess what matters is what you experience, not what everyones talking about. if 8gb works for you then happy days,

a lot of factors go into why 8gb work for some people and it doesnt for you.

sorry I meant the other way around.

It's not really serato. It's just the fact that 8gb is barely enough to run the OS itself without memory swapping

Amen Despo.

Sounds like Mac Sillicon OS itself is eating up a ton of RAM. Aside from FX Serato is basically just playing back 2 or 4 .wav files at any given time so I couldn't see what the need for all this RAM was.

you could be right electro77

Serato 3.2.3 has been doing some wierd things, on my intel mac its actually running slow when I analyze my files, but when I switch to 3.2.2 it analyzes faster.

also on my windows laptop music analyzation would take forever, but now it works fine, the scans are more faster than usual but not as a fast as 3.2.2 on my intel mac

I think there is bugs in the new serato updates hopefully it gets ironed out on the next one.

Is an M1 sufficient or should I look at at least an M2?

I would stick to M1 and make sure it has 32gbram

And to supplement Despo's response, when this memory swapping haappen to you SSD, it reduces its life. Many users, and not necessarily DJs, woke up to dead Macbooks one day due to SSD failure and not have expensive paperweights...Well unless they know like Dosdude, who will solder new SSDs in there and pair them.

I would stick to M1 and make sure it has 32gbram

Is 32gb RAM really essential? From what I've read etc 16gb should be plenty?

in most cases if you have a small library 16gb should be good but if you experience gliching and sound dropouts, then youll have to upgrade. really up to you.