Audio/DAW with MacBook Air

yep. +1.

I am also pondering this question Air vs Pro. The main consideration I think is what does your work require? Are you using a lot of plugins and tons of tracks? Then good multicore CPU performance is a consideration. Do you need to run lots of VI 's and synths? - say for a film score. Then you would need a lot of RAM, disk speed, and disk space for sample streaming in addition to good multicore performance. Although of course you could use an external SSD for samples.

For my workflow primarily as a composer, the latter is important. So a MacBook Air - even maxed out with 24GB of RAM is not really enough... and by the time you do the upgrade you're not that far off in price from getting an entry level 14" MacBook Pro.

So I guess the answer is whatever your workflow and performance requirements are (as well as your screen size preference). An entry to mid level MacBook Air for basically running a DAW and a descent number of tracks and plugins and not trying to do the next Blade Runner score... then you should be ok with an Air.

One thing to keep in mind is the chassis size with respect to proper cooling and how much you will be taxing the CPU. You don't want fans goin off all the time if you're using a MacBook Pro (Air has no fans I think) and then take a performance hit due to thermal throttling. So that's also worth considering

Anyway, hope that helps.

My main use cases would be being able to comp/edit while I'm on flights and then doing simple overdubs at the cabin or other locations. I print a lot of hardware and don't use a huge amount of DSP so none of this is will be all that computationally expensive. Drawn to the Air for its price and form factor.

This would not be my main studio machine.  I have the last Intel iMac they made, maxed out, and I'll be using it as the main studio machine for several more years.   

Yes the M3 MacBook Air should be more than enough for this type of use, especially if you're coming from an older Intel laptop or getting the Air as a second editing machine.  The ARM Macs are really a huge leap forward compared to the older Intel ones and you can get a lot more horsepower out of these, even with the older M1 laptops.

Look into like a refurbed or use M2 MBA. Would imagine 2 is better than one and I use the M1 every day with the Studio…but it has 32gb Ram.

Apple also sell refurbed/ Reboxed with full warranty.

15" Macbook Air M2 is the best laptop I've ever owned. Not the most powerful. Not the most portable. Not the most anything specific... just the best all around laptop I've ever owned.

And I use it all the time for tracking. It's absurdly overpowered for that task (all live instruments, a few plugins). It actually handles basic video editing pretty well too. I can render a lot of the Fusion effects from DaVinci Resolve in realtime (camera shake, etc) though the lighting effects do slow it down.

But the form factor is just perfect. I got mine with 1tb hard drive and 24gb RAM. Highly recommended.

EDIT: Except as Dr Bill mentioned for the connectivity. Sucks for that. Dongle city over here.

No noise from fans vs actual processing: agreed on the 16 gig, but wiz keeps trucking along, I think with 8 ?

Ordered a refurbished 15” M2 from Apple. Thanks for the insights everyone.

I think you're gonna love it.

Doh. Forgot I had a MBA M2 laptop lol. Well, didn’t forget I had a laptop…guess I didn’t really think about it because I’ve never done music on it. I would probably think about going with 16gb ram - but yeah, it would probably work great.