Got a Mac Book

[BlueRadio]

Dear Slutz...

I just picked up my first Apple...a Mac Book (black):

160 GB HD
2 GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo
2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Steinberg Cubase 4
MOTU 828MKII

My questions...

1. Should you leave this thing on all day? Let it sleep? Shut it down every use?

2. With a 160GB external backup drive, do you think that this computer will be able to handle tracking a full-length album for a band? Two? Three? Thanks guys

[Geert van den Berg]

Congrats with your new MacBook!

I'd say let the book sleep (close the lid) once you won't use it when you know that you're going to be using again in a short period of time... If you go to the loo, let it on!

When you're tracking turn of all the energy saving stuff in the preferences especially on the harddrives...

160GB could be easily enough for a whole album, but offcourse this depends on many factors. How many takes? How much tracks? Lots of overdubs? The sample and bitrates of the recording?

[BlueRadio]

I ask the hard drive question because...

When I used Cakewalk on my HP Pavilion, the more storage needed for Wav. files on the C: drive, the slower and slower and slower Cakewalk would run.

Is there a correlation between your computer speed and available storage? Could this affect frontside bus speed? I was very confused when this was happening, and don't want it to happen with my Mac Book

[Geert van den Berg]

Well you'd want to have 2 drives anyway, one for the system and one, the external (because it can be faster), for audio... preferable a 7200rpm drive.

As a rule of thumb you should never use more than 80% of the storage, after this you'll likely to get more errors, I don't know why, maybe not enough space for temporary system/program files.

The performance however will not really suffer if you keep the system disk clean and under 70% of usage.

[pan]

What's the word on partitioning your internal drive under OSX? - unless you are going the dual boot scenario.

Audio on a seperate partition on the same internal disk?
Might this be a bad thing regarding virtual memory access of the system?




Waiting for a refurb pro!

[BlueRadio]

Originally Posted by Geert van den Berg

Well you'd want to have 2 drives anyway, one for the system and one, the external (because it can be faster), for audio... preferable a 7200rpm drive.

I'm not sure I understand this...should I install Cubase and all of its files to my external USB 2.0 drive? Is that how this works? Please explain the logistics behind this...computer tech is my weak spot.

Thanks!

[CZ101]

Originally Posted by BlueRadio

I'm not sure I understand this...should I install Cubase and all of its files to my external USB 2.0 drive? Is that how this works? Please explain the logistics behind this...computer tech is my weak spot.

Thanks!

Install Cubase and all of its files on your system drive. The Cubase installer will automatically set this up for you if you just do an easy install - install into the "Applications" folder on the system drive. You can setup your external harddrive in Cubase as a "scratch" drive where your Cubase projects and audio files should go.

[BlueRadio]

Thanks again, but I'm still not sure that I understand the logic.

I can only use an external HD with USB 2.0...due to my firewire slot being occupied. My question is, won't my internal mac hard drive store files MUCH faster than on the external 2.0 drive? I mean, isn't the transfer rate much much slower on the USB 2.0 drive? Even at high RPMs? Maybe not...I'm confused, help!

[statikcat]

Originally Posted by BlueRadio

2. With a 160GB external backup drive, do you think that this computer will be able to handle tracking a full-length album for a band? Two? Three? Thanks guys

Well the last 3 piece I tracked was 12 songs and about 12-14 gigs (at work not sure exactl size). Mostly 3ish minute songs though. You should have plenty in 160gb.. but add in things like OS, applications, plugins, software content and we could be looking it totally different.

[blaugruen7]

what is the idea behind leaving electronic gear on all day?

save your money and the planet and shut it down.

[statikcat]

Originally Posted by blaugruen7

what is the idea behind leaving electronic gear on all day?

save your money and the planet and shut it down.

Powering on takes up a lot more power than you would think. I know some odd years ago it was debatable that restarting your computer took as much power as leaving it on idle/standy all day. I really don't know if it is true or not though.

[jonutarr]

is the glossy screen bearable for you?

still cant get over it, im keeping my iBook till they give me a matte option