Hi All.

I've had a search of the forum, and I've looked at the compatibility tables elsewhere..

Am hoping to hear experiences good and bad and any advice on which Mac to choose
for running a 002r which I will be acquiring soon.

iBook, Mac Mini, iMac, Maybe Powerbook - with around 1800 ish AUD to spend (1300 US, round 800 quid tho I don't know if that translates local price wise)...
Am I kidding myself? I'll have a little extra for memory and external drive that kinda stuff.

Been a 001 user and an Mbox user for some years.
Greatly appreciate any suggestions or links to helpful threads.

I am upgrading - apart from the basic desire to do so - as I have a session coming up that requires it and will cover some of the expense.

Thanks in Advance

Hey,

Log onto

www.digidesign.com

and go to their support section and then to the user conference. Scroll down to the Mac LE section and all your questions should be answered...

Also, what are you planning on doing with your gear? How many tracks and how many plug-in's will you typically be wanting to use and expect the gear to run smoothly?

I have 002 on my Power Mac G5 Dual Processor. It's perfect.

I reckon as long as you bought extra memory and saved all your files externally, you could get away with a smaller & cheaper computer. Maybe the gruntiest before you get into the PowerMac range...not sure which that is.

I didn't bother trying ProTools on my PowerBook G4. I find it has a hard enough time coping with Garage Band.

Ask the shop you bought the 002 from.

You would be moosemaster :P

What software do you want to run? ProTools?

If it's anything else (Logic Pro etc) then I'd recommend using different hardware.

moosemaster i am indeed at digi user conference
you may notice how there are no replies there and folks here are jumping in with much appreciated help - time difference noted but still -


As far as plugins go - many as I can really...I'm currently outboard deficient.
Prob wont be recording a great many tracks ever at one time.
Overdubs and mixing will be it's main tasks.

yes it will be protools, thanks tho - noted

Stating the obvious here but don't go for an intel machine. Although it runs quick enough under rosetta it's not very stable..

I use my ibook G4 1.33 or whatever it is.. 1.2? and that's fine.. Seriously i don't "need" any more power than my ibook to run a pretty extensive recording session using every mic input on a 002 with a few plugins here and there (just the standard compressions, slight eq) during recording. Mixing is also fine, however i must stress i don't play with midi or sequencing at all, purely recording

I'd suggest a nice PPC Imac 20" if you can get your hands on one, unless you want portablity then an ibook or a powerbook would be fine

Thanks Razer - v interesting , since dude at AppleCentre was just telling me how
Rosetta'll get me through without a hitch.
I was most suspicious, though, in fairness, he was trying to sell me a crankin laptop lol

Thanks for the enlightening words here. Just the kind of info I seek.

I am actually quite impressed with rosetta when doing some tinkering in photoshop or writing a letter in Word. Final Cut Pro and Protools are a completely different story as i rely on these programs to make a living. I can easily recommend a PPC Imac G5or based mac for protools LE projects which is what the 002 system use for a couple of reasons.

1. Protools has been on the PPC system for years now, it just works. The first couple of iterations of the software will have some teething issues... You don't want to be worrying about software stability while the best drum track of the session is being recorded.

2. I can pretty much promise* you won't run into performance issues using the last powerbook or even a G5 Imac, all A/D conversion is done in the 002 anyway.


* I can't promise anything to do with computers.

I don't know where you live but go to a professional music store that specialise in protools and macs and have a chat with those guys. If by any random chance you live in Adelaide go down to derringers, those guys know their stuff and are nice guys. Don't go to an applecentre and ask about protools they will most likely make stuff up.


P.S. Put the most amount of RAM in the machine you can afford.

Take what I say with a pinch of salt, I'm not exactly an expert.

What systems were you using with the digi 001 and mbox systems? The software should be approximately the same and the hardware between the digi 001 and digi 002 aren't worlds apart (firewire vs. pci but the same general idea behind them).

Essentially, were those systems good enough or did you need more power? Use that for a starting point when looking at what you are after.

Even with a high speed machine you will need to have components that are set up with protools in mind. 2 hard drives at least 7200rpm (and quiet). Lots of memory. Fast processor should be one of the choices but second behind the first two.

I'm personally getting a dirt cheap protools setup myself at the moment, essentially for home use but with the ability to record a drum kit when necessary.

I am hoping that what I've arranged will do what I want, it seems awfully budget but I'm not exactly rich: Second hand digi 001, second hand G4 dual 500 tower with a lot of ram in it (1g at this stage, bumping that up as I can afford it). If I need to I'll look into processor upgrades but that's a long way off being affordable at the moment.

From the experience I've had using similar underpowered systems, you can get by if you are economic with your resources. Don't use pluggins while recording, sub mix multiple tracks together and use busses for effects, especially reverb.

Rosetta will NOT cut it for real-time, mission-critical stuff. This includes audio recording. Just don't bother. It'll work for everything else, but when you need to record audio with low latency, it's not going to happen. At least not reliably.

Do you have a monitor? If so, I'd look at a second hand power mac. I don't know what you could expect to find for that price. Maybe look at a second hand G5 iMac.

If you really need rock solid pro-tools now, get a PPC system. If you want a system that'll be worth more in the long run and be more powerful when all the software/firmware bugs are ironed out, get an intel.

so is a mac book intel as good as a g5 for pro tools

No, the PowerPC's still run multiple rings around the Intel Macs when it comes to audio, with the eception of Ableton Live! which is Intel-ready and multicore-aware.

An iMac G5 with the most RAM you can afford to shovel into it will run Pro Tools and its plug-in collection far better than even a maxed-out Mac Pro will.

Whilst most of the big-name audio-workstation apps are now universal binaries, many of the most popular RTAS/TDM/VST plug-ins are not.

B.

Can you please provide some evidence that PowerPC's "still run multiple rings around Intel Macs when it comes to audio"? I would suggest that perhaps that is incorrect. I don't quite know how a single core G5 would out perform a quad core Mac Pro, considering that Pro Tools is multi-core capable?

Plugins is a different story - if you have non-UB plugins then you will have to wait, but I don't quite know what gives you the impression that the G5s are so superior to the Xeons.