Audacity performance on M1 Macbook Air

Hello (my first post so go easy)
I use audacity a tonne on my 2019 Macbook Pro.
Im considering buying the m1 Macbook Air but I can’t find anything online where someone has given a review of how it performs on it.
Can anyone give any insight?
Thanks so much!

I don’t have an M1 Mac, but from what I hear, the performance is pretty similar to the older Macbook Air.
Note that to run Audacity on an M1 Mac you will need to have Rosetta2 installed.

Note also that if you use many peripherals, the Air M1 only has two thunderbolt / USB-C ports

Thanks for replying! Does audacity not have a native M1 version of the app? Or is that coming?
Good shout on peripherals!

Our developers and testers only have Intel Macs, so we are not likely to be releasing a separate M1 version yet. Also, we don’t want to drop support for Intel Macs as that’s what the vast majority of our Mac users use, and we really don’t want to have to duplicate all testing for macOS.
It’s a lot easier for Apple to switch to M1 versions as they have enormous wealth and don’t care about users on older machines.

Thats fair enough, and makes total sense. I’ve been using Audacity on an intel chip so appreciate the support!
But as I look to get a new Mac its probably going to be an M1 chip.
So from what you’re saying, it sounds like eventually there will be an M1 version of audacity?

Don’t quote me, but my guess is that Apple will gradually migrate all of their Macs to M1 and drop all support for Intel based Macs, so I’d expect that it’s likely that Audacity will follow suit eventually. Then again, I have no interest in ever buying another Mac, so I’ll not be doing any testing for an M1 version.

They do have an illustrious history of dropping support for older products, which is a shame given, as you say, that most people own intel based Macs.
That being said, I do see the reason for everything to migrate to M1 eventually. It’s clearly an impressive leap in computing power.

Thanks for the help though, I assumed there was already an M1 version of Audacity, but its good to know it can still run (presumably securely by all accounts) through Rosetta.

Many recent youtube postings clearly demonstrate that the M1 Air is more powerful than the existing MacPros.

I’ve had Audacity running on my M1 Air and it loads quickly and sounds great through the onboard speakers.

I’m trying to configure Audacity “devices” to include my Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 to provide access to my AT4040 mic and AT-M50x headphones for doing voice-over work.

I’ve been using Audacity since 2017 on a Dell, and the Audacity 3.0.3 version is familiar, but the M1 Air doesn’t display the Scarlett 2i2 options in the device fields. I added the Scarlett to the Air preferences for outputs and inputs and they work for YouTube, but not for Audacity.

Going to restart and see if that solves the problem with Audacity.

Have you given Audacity permission to use your microphone? See: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-access-to-your-microphone-on-mac-mchla1b1e1fe/mac

(first time forum user here so apologies if I’m not replying the message correctly)
Hey snorkalman!
Did you get to connect Scarlett with your M1 Air in the end?
I’m thinking of getting the Macbook Air M1 for my voice work (I’m a full time voice actor) and have the same setup as you, well, with AT2020 XLR and Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. So am curious if you manage to get those up and going?

Thanks!
Sam