Help me buy a new computer

Have you looked into open legacy patcher, to confirm if you can update the os on your computer: am running ventura on a 2912 mbp here, no probs.

Also, agree a new m series Mac, (also have an m1 mini) is the way to go but compare the m2 pro specs to studio too !

Oh, and buy it off of Apple's refurbished site to save some $$.
www.apple.com/shop/refurbished

I like Dan's suggestion too, if you don't need the extra power and connectivity of the Studio -- you could save some dough!

With your budget you should be close to mac book air m2. That will run you great. The mac book pro new 14” will run a little over your budget but could be worth for a longer life span and getting the 16gb ram. The new mac mini M2 with 24gb ram will only set you back half your budget and will give you a good run. Probably the most cost effective choice.

I have one.  

Running a hundred tracks easy on an old I7-9700 lenovo. I imagine that anything newer would be even better.

Also, avoid laptops or small form factor computers that use lower wattage CPUs. Laptop-class CPUs are low wattage devices which will throttle the processing power to maintain the low wattage and you'll see strange jumps in performance.

If you want a Mac, go for it, but a 600$ PC will do the same work for 200% cheaper.

I’m kinda shocked Walmart.com is selling refurbed PC’s for around $100?

link to a $92 quad core i5 dell

link to a Lenovo i5

I’ve been running small Pro Tools studio sessions off of a Mac Mini M1 8gb and have been exceedingly pleased. At a budget of 2k, I’d say the sky is the limit really. Just bulk up on the usual suspects like RAM, processing speed, etc.

Storage is relatively cheap. I keep my big files off the main hard drive.

I’ll admit it I love the Mac Book Air form factor.

In praxis not really that much. Both will fly way past what any audio processing can drain. The difference you might see some day in the future far away is os compatibility. But i doubt even that will be as much of an issue with M processors as it was with intel. If the price difference is substantial I would probably do well with M1. I use my computers for image and video editing in my daily job and put a strain on them. I run an M1 mb pro and am in no hurry to upgrade. It actually replaced my mac pro tower. The M is superseding all we knew about fast macs and the bottlenecks will be elsewhere than in M1 vs M2. You will also need to invest in good ssd drives for working as the M chip is super slow with hdd. So leave some money also for that. I use raid hdd setups for archiving, but all external work drives are ssd.

If you're looking to buy a new computer and have a budget of around 2k, going for an Apple product sounds like a solid choice. Since you're using Cubase and the latest version doesn't install on your current MacBook Pro, it's time for an upgrade."If you're looking to buy a new computer and have a budget of around 2k, going for an Apple product sounds like a solid choice. Since you're using Cubase and the latest version doesn't install on your current MacBook Pro, it's time for an upgrade. Apple offers a range of options that can meet your needs within your budget. Whether it's the MacBook Pro or the iMac, they provide powerful hardware for music production. By the way, if you're into video editing as well, you might find this online video editor handy at https://www.movavi.com/online-video-editor.html. It's a user-friendly tool that allows you to edit videos without the need for complex software installations.