Downgrade from M2 to M1?

I would suggest keeping your M2 Mac mini and adding an external SSD. You probably want to skip SATA SSDs, as you can now get faster USB-C (USB 3.1 Gen 2) / NVMe SSDs for only a little bit more money.

If you need a SSD that runs at internal speeds, you could look into a NVMe SSD in a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure or a USB4 40 Gbps enclosure.

E.g.,

• A Crucial X9 Pro connects via USB-C (USB 3.1 Gen 2).
• An OWC Express 1M2 connects via USB4 40 Gbps (but can fall back to USB 3.1 Gen 2).
• An OWC Envoy Express connects via Thunderbolt 3.

The Crucial X9 Pro is preassembled. With the OWC SSDs, you can either buy a preassembled SSD, or buy just the enclosure, and install your own separately-purchased NVMe M.2 blade SSD.

There is nothing wrong with your base model M2.

Any audio glitches you are getting are almost certainly due to user-error or some other factor that needs correcting.

Regarding the use of external SSDs, I have my base model M2 mini booted from a cheap £60 Crucial 1TB USB 3.0 SSD.

This has the added advantage of protecting the vital internal SSD from overuse leading to failure.

Although the USB SSD is only a third the speed of the internal, the performance is just as fast for all normal tasks such as video editing and Geekbench test scores are identical.

The only minor drawback is that copying gigantic files takes 3 times longer but most people rarely do that.

I can thoroughly recommend booting from an external.

Initially I did it because of all the negative publicity suggesting that the small 256 GB SSD would probably have a short life due to memory swapping with the 8 GB RAM.

These fears are probably overrated but just to be extra safe I decided to do it, expecting to see a performance hit due to booting from a much slower SSD.

To my surprise I discovered that all normal tasks including intensive video editing were just as fast as using the internal and over twice as fast as my 2017 iMac.

As mentioned earlier, the only downside was that copying huge amounts of data (tens of gigabytes) would take 3 times longer but how often do you do that?

lesparapluies wrote:

So, it would seem that the way forward would be to get a Thunderbolt hub, run both displays from that, and use the freed up USB-C port on the M2 to attach an external SSD which would then be the main recording disk?

You might be able to get away without a Thunderbolt dock if one of your monitors has a HDMI input. That would let you drive one monitor from a USB-C port (or a "plain" USB-C dock), and one from your HDMI port.

Let's say that you can free up one USB-C port – using whatever monitor and/or dock arrangement that works for you. Assuming that you have a NVMe SSD whose enclosure

• Requires Thunderbolt 3,
• Requires USB4, or
• Can take advantage of USB 3.1 Gen 2 speeds

putting it on its own USB-C (USB, USB4, Thunderbolt) port seems like a good plan. Plugging the SSD into one of your slower USB-A (USB 3.0) ports would only make sense for a USB / SATA SSD..

One further question if I may - am I correct in assuming that the 2 older-format USB ports on the M2, as well as being physically different from the USB-C / Thunderbolt ports, are also slower?

Yes. The USB-C ports support USB 3.x at up to 10 Gigabits per second (USB 3.1 Gen 2 speed). The USB-A ports support USB 3.x at up to 5 Gigabits per second (USB 3.0 speed). I believe that USB standards would allow for the implementation of USB-A (USB 3.1 Gen 2) ports, but these particular USB-A ports are USB 3.0 ones.

The USB-C ports are also the only ones that support DisplayPort, USB4 20 & 40 Gbps, and Thunderbolt. They do not support USB 3.2 Gen 2x2. If you plug in a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 drive, things will fall back to USB 3.1 Gen 2 speed. (Before you ask, USB4 20 Gbps has the same speed as USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, but is incompatible with it.)

Mac mini (2023) - Technical Specifications - Apple Support

I was merely pointing out that a spinning HDD using USB 3.0 has more than enough speed for most activities and not many are more intensive than video editing.

Plugging a USB SSD into the USB-C port only increases the speed marginally.

Plugging in a Thunderbolt SSD/NVME will produce a dramatic speed increase but these speed increases are only really significant if you want to copy hundreds of GBs all day long. They won't speed up your web browsing or audio/video activities . . . the CPU + RAM determine their performance.

One thing that I believe we haven't discussed so far is the amount of RAM you have – versus the amount that you need.

Once you're sure that you are connecting any external drives directly to the Mac, or through a powered dock/hub, you may want to test if recording audio to an external drive still "results in glitches and frequent crashes." If so, run Activity Monitor and leave it open to the Memory tab while doing audio recording stuff that results in the unwanted behavior. Then look at the color-coded Memory Pressure graph.

• Green = You had enough RAM for what you were doing,
• Yellow = The amount of RAM you have was marginal for what you were doing,
• Red = The amount of RAM you have was inadequate for what you were doing, and caused performance issues.

If you see a lot of Yellows and Reds, that may be a sign that you should have gotten more RAM (or that you should run fewer applications at once). Unfortunately, there is no way of expanding RAM after purchase on any M-series Mac desktop. But if you see Greens, you can check "insufficient RAM" off the list and look for other root causes.

A higher capacity internal SSD comes with risks - if it fails you lose a lot more, not just data but the entire board.

In other words, good for bragging but little else. I would stick with 256 and move all data to external, using it for Apps, Cloud and OS only. That should leave you with 100GB + for recordings (move them to external once done).

Which Satechi device are you using? If it is USB based "hub" with internal NVMe slot, it could explain some of your issues. For whatever reason, these seem to have been problematic with Macs depending on which NVMe card is used and some just problematic depending on the users setup. I have seen a few post related to these hubs posted here, Actually, whether hubs or just drive enclosures, there are certain computer/NVMe/enclosure combos that work and some are problematic. This is also not limited to Macs as the same issue appears on PCs as well. So, your particular combination may be one that might fall into the problematic category.

Also, if it is one of the hubs, the way the hub handles USB data could also be a source of the glitching. For recording, you should be using a drive that is directly connected to one of the Mac's ports and you may even want to consider a Thunderbolt or USB4 solution directly connected.

Been working with a mac mini 2018 for years with a 2TB internal ssd, using Pro Tools, Cubase, Native Komplete, lots of UA plug-ins, never faced a glitch.

Obviously, solid backups of projects to 1-2 external drive is a must, as someone pointed out here, in case your internal drive fails. But a 256 or 500 could also fail. So while active and ongoing projects will work smoothly on internal drive, good idea to go for the 2tb.

Now, M1 or M2: if you have to make a financial trade off between larger drive or more recent tech, i’d pribably consider a boosted (maxed) one version behind (M1) with maxed memory, large ssd, rather than entry level M2 or M3…. One consideration: if i’m not wrong’ M1 is limited to 16 gb ram (please check). In those years, some claimed it was more than enough with that processor, but i doubt it could bear with lots of plug-ins (i never pushed it as i don’t use my MBP as a DAW). Nevertheless, i’m sure my maxed mini 2018 will easily cream out an entry level M1 or even M2.

One more consideration: as a DAW, more recent minis have limited ports (usbc/tb, usb3), so it you (likely) have an external audio interface, perhaps a licence manager (even Cubase still use it as an option, while Protool’s iLok is a must), need for those external drives, compared to your iMac 2009, you’ll need some usb hubs. This sucks sometimes.

Hope this helps

lesparapluies wrote:

Thanks for the info, all useful stuff. But.. an external enclosure with an NVMe.. isn't that what I've already got with the Satechi USB-C? Or is the problem that the Satechi is poor quality?

Not exactly as it as is connected internally as one of the USB ports on the hub that all the external ports are connected to. So, you are actually going through two USB hubs as one is internal to the Mac to create the external ports and then another one between the NVMe and the Mac connection. With just an enclosure there is not that additional USB layer.

Don't worry about the speed of the USB 3.0 ports because though they are much slower than Thunderbolt, they are more than fast enough for anything you are doing. . . . I use mine on the iMac to connect an old USB 3.0 HDD (not SSD) which is used for editing multiple tracks of 1080p and 4K video with no problems.

lanstrad1 wrote:

Now, M1 or M2: if you have to make a financial trade off between larger drive or more recent tech, i’d pribably consider a boosted (maxed) one version behind (M1) with maxed memory, large ssd, rather than entry level M2 or M3…. One consideration: if i’m not wrong’ M1 is limited to 16 gb ram (please check).

• M1 Mac mini – 8 or 16 GB of RAM.
• M2 Mac mini – 8, 16, or 24 GB of RAM.
• M2 Pro Mac mini – 16 or 32 GB of RAM.
• M1 Max or M2 Max Mac Studio – 32 GB of RAM and up. These are probably out of the price range that the OP is considering, but if the OP starts looking at higher-end Mac minis, then it may make sense to compare them with entry-level Mac Studios (including Certified Refurbished ones).

lesparapluies wrote:

Yes I can see what you mean. Unfortunately that's always going to be the case as one of my USB-C ports is driving the second display, which only leaves one, so without some kind of hub I'm not going to have any spare ports available if I use the 2nd one for an external SSD. Incidentally I wasn't aware that the boot drive could be an external one, so that's food for thought too. I'm not sure if the 2nd display will work through a hub, will check that out

Mac minis with base M1 and M2 chips have a limit of two displays. With the M1 Mac mini, the only way to attach two displays is to attach one via USB-C or Thunderbolt, and the other via HDMI. WIth the M2 Mac mini, you can attach both displays via USB-C or Thunderbolt.

To hang two displays off a single port on the M2 Mac mini,

• You need to hang them off a Thunderbolt port.
• The device plugged into that port has to be a Thunderbolt device (a Thunderbolt dock, hub, or adapter – not a "plain" USB-C device of any sort).

If you look at the Thunderbolt offerings from Other World Computing (MacSales), SonnetTech, and CalDigit, you will find lots of Thunderbolt docks and hub, and the occasional Thunderbolt dual-monitor adapter, that would let you plug two non-Thunderbolt monitors into one port on a M2 Mac mini.

If you are looking for more ports on the Mac itself, the M2 Pro Mac mini and M2 Max Mac Studio have more – but there would be some expense to upgrading to one of these Macs, even if you bought a Certified Refurbished one from the online Apple Store.