How Powerful of a Mac do i need??

[eligit]

I'll be running logic 24bit/88.2 audio.

probably recording 2-4 tracks at any one time and then playing back 6-20 tracks with plugs of various sizes running in real time. i might be messing with some soft synths but nothing really serious.

the goal is to avoid all the error messages that pop up on my creaky old G4 when it tries to run and process too much audio (which happens quite often unless i freeze lots of tracks and even then i sometimes get it).

so

audio pros who use the new "mac pro"...how far do i need to go? the "standard model" starts around 2400-2500 and goes up from there depending on how powerful a machine you want.

processors (how many and how powerful) ? memory? video card? (only using one display her btw).

ps...this is NOT a mac vs pc thread....just looking for info on how powerful of a mac pro desk top to get.

thanks for any thoughts guys!!

[jcool]

faster than 1.5GHz and more than 2 gigs of RAM

[jcool]

get a PC if you feel like spending much less.

[eligit]

Originally Posted by jcool

faster than 1.5GHz and more than 2 gigs of RAM

well the basic model already has two 2.66Ghz.....so.....

[eligit]

Originally Posted by jcool

get a PC if you feel like spending much less.

thanks

any mac/logic users want to throw in?

[Tibbon]

I have a full loaded G4 dual 1.25 MDD that works like a charm. It's got 2gb of memory in it, which helps a lot. Seriously, I have a 1.83ghz Mac Mini here and haven't even thought of switching to it instead. I record my drums, my synths, voice, guitar, etc... all into Logic Pro. Almost never have a problem really. I never track with plugins on (or very very rarely) but it works great. I've only started recording at 88/24 recently, but it still works fine.

[hogo]

get a quad mac pro. load it up with 4 gigs of ram from crucial.com (not from apple) You will be happy with this setup for awhile. oh yeah, if you want it to crash all the time, and get viruses, and spyware, and look like a cheap microwave....get a pc!!

[eligit]

Originally Posted by hogo

get a quad mac pro. load it up with 4 gigs of ram from crucial.com (not from apple) You will be happy with this setup for awhile. oh yeah, if you want it to crash all the time, and get viruses, and spyware, and look like a cheap microwave....get a pc!!

i think the quad might be a BIT of overkill for my needs. also it's an extra $1500 compared to the dual 2.66! i was thinking the dual 2.66 or maybe if need be 3.0 would be more than enough.

if i was running 48 track mixes......but i'm not.

[melodic_disaster]

are you sure your error messages are not hard disk related?

anyways, its true many plugs use more memory than necessary at 96k and actually don't sound any better regardless of the mind games people have thinking its more precise

the basic entry dual core with 2-4 gigs of ram should be fine

you may want to raid two or three drives for your audio disk, in the new macs this is a total breeze!

other than that you should be set

[eligit]

Originally Posted by melodic_disaster

are you sure your error messages are not hard disk related?

anyways, its true many plugs use more memory than necessary at 96k and actually don't sound any better regardless of the mind games people have thinking its more precise

the basic entry dual core with 2-4 gigs of ram should be fine

you may want to raid two or three drives for your audio disk, in the new macs this is a total breeze!

other than that you should be set

i'm pretty sure all the errors are from trying to process too much audio. i'm trying to remember the "number" of the error....audio engine blah blah. when i would then freeze a bunch of stuff the errors would be much less frequent.

the machine is an single 867 g4...maybe 7 years old?

when you get past maybe 6-8 tracks of 24/88.2 plus a bit of processing (including 1 or 2 instances of THE verb...the big one that hogs all the processing power) the machine will choke. that is what i want to avoid.

it is true that the new macs have a very nice systems for extra drives, unlike mine, which is something of a pain.

[freestyle tromb]

i guess i could throw in some experience, because i have a similar (though completely different) setup.
i'm running logic pro 7.2 on a macbook pro. it's a core duo, 2.16 dual core, 1 gb ram; my primary audio drive is 5400 rpm, firewire 400. i run around 12-14 tracks, with plugins; 1-3 instances of space designer, usually 10-12 eqs, 6-10 compressors, various others. it generally works fine for me, although sometimes when a new track enters (with plugins, fades, etc.) i will get that same error message. kind of a pain in the ass; when i freeze the track, the error goes away, no problem. i'm sure i could run more tracks, i haven't had opportunity to push it yet. i think the thing i really should do is get another gig of ram; that would probably make it smooth as a baby's behind.

so yeah, dual 2.66 with 2-4 gb ram should suit you just fine.

oh yeah, and i'm running 88.2/24bit also. also sometimes messing with soft synths (which is, again, where i start to get error messages; again, the extra gig of ram should do it for me.).

[hangman]

I don't think it would be too hard to really out perform the G4 with anything in the current mac lineup.

I was using a Powerbook G4 1.5Ghz with 1.25gigs of ram... and it choked HARD whenever I used more than 6tracks of audio with some plugins and software instruments.
JUST got the SR MBP, and its AWESOME. I haven't done any serious 30plus track sessions with it yet... but, just loading up old stuff and comparing it to my desktop (Power mac G5 dual 1.8Ghz, 4Gigs ram) I'm Really impressed. it seems to outperform the G5! CPU usage is considerably less on the MBP.

heres my two cents. If you can find a Used Powermac G5 for a cheap price... and don't mind the wind tunnel. go for it. otherwise... the core 2 duo imacs are actually quite similar to some of the G5s in terms of computing ability.
The Mac pro would be awesome though.

[goldenlotus]

I've got a dual 2.6 mac pro with 2 gigs of ram. I highly recommend this machine. I frequently run 32 track sessions in PTLE with tons of plugs and have absolutly no problems at all! Since I got the mac in January I have never run out of processing power. I'd love to have the quad mac pro, but at this point I really wouldn't benefit from it as I have all the power I need for quite a while.

I've also heard that logic can use the processors more efficiently than PT so you would probably have even better performance than me.

Don't worry about the video card unless you're not only working on audio. I use the stock card with 2 20" wide screens which seems to work fine. I say just go for the base model, you'll be very happy.

[hogo]

Originally Posted by eligit

i think the quad might be a BIT of overkill for my needs. also it's an extra $1500 compared to the dual 2.66! i was thinking the dual 2.66 or maybe if need be 3.0 would be more than enough.

if i was running 48 track mixes......but i'm not.

...this IS gearslutz !!

[NoisyNarrowBand]

generally if you can afford it, get a new intel based mac. they are the future and new logic versions are optimized for them. this also means that if you run an old ppc version of logic shit will be slow and there will be issues since the program runs on an emulation layer. so intel mac = logic upgrade!

that said: the 2.66 macs are great and have plenty of power. the bigger versions are currently to expensive. but having 8 cores @ 3ghz will prove useful at some point in the future...

anyhow - ram and disk speed is more limiting than processors. so get at least 2 gigs, better 3 and two harddrives. one for system, one for audio. make sure that the second one is 7200rpm and has big caches.

vid-card doesn't matter to much. just get the basic one. will be good for two displays once you need that and has enough power for the eye-candy of next osx version.

and get the bluethooth and wlan modules. it's a small amount of money and you don't have to deal with it anymore later.

[Tibbon]

If you're not looking to break the bank, just get a mac Mini. They are plenty powerful enough to do most audio tasks, and can hold 2gb memory. Just add external hard drives and DSP via firewire, and you're all set. The video card isn't too much, but it's enough to drive pretty high resolutions. My only video card complaint is that it can't do two monitors :(

[max cooper]

About to sell my G5 and get a new Mac desktop; anyone know how much of the processors and RAM DAWs like Logic and PTLE can use?

Thanks!

[FFTT]

I would go for the 2.66 GHz with at least 4 GB of correct Mac Pro Certified RAM if at all possible.

They are proven, powerful and virtually dead quiet during operation.

I would buy my hard drives third party and personally prefer Seagate or Western Digital
to any Maxtor drive.

[Tibbon]

Originally Posted by hangman

I don't think it would be too hard to really out perform the G4 with anything in the current mac lineup.

I was using a Powerbook G4 1.5Ghz with 1.25gigs of ram... and it choked HARD whenever I used more than 6tracks of audio with some plugins and software instruments.
JUST got the SR MBP, and its AWESOME. I haven't done any serious 30plus track sessions with it yet... but, just loading up old stuff and comparing it to my desktop (Power mac G5 dual 1.8Ghz, 4Gigs ram) I'm Really impressed. it seems to outperform the G5! CPU usage is considerably less on the MBP.

heres my two cents. If you can find a Used Powermac G5 for a cheap price... and don't mind the wind tunnel. go for it. otherwise... the core 2 duo imacs are actually quite similar to some of the G5s in terms of computing ability.
The Mac pro would be awesome though.

A G4 should be able to handle FAR more than 6 tracks of audio. I mixed several albums in Protools LE on a G4 766, using 24 tracks of audio in OS 9, several plugins and little outboard. With even lesser G3/G4s and Protools TDM I got even higher track counts (LE had a track limit or I could have done more).

No I wasn't doing convolution modeling, physical modeling or such, but the albums sound good still!

That's like saying you NEED a G5 or better to run photoshop. Shit, I had photoshop 4 on a Pentium 3 300mhz for a LONG time, and even with 100mb files with multiple layers it did the trick. Yes, there were waits when processing layers, but so is life.

[goldenlotus]

Originally Posted by max cooper

About to sell my G5 and get a new Mac desktop; anyone know how much of the processors and RAM DAWs like Logic and PTLE can use?

Thanks!

PTLE can see all 4 cores in my 2.6 mac pro. Not sure if it can see more on 8 core machines.

[Jay Lee]

Originally Posted by eligit

i think the quad might be a BIT of overkill for my needs. also it's an extra $1500 compared to the dual 2.66! i was thinking the dual 2.66 or maybe if need be 3.0 would be more than enough.

if i was running 48 track mixes......but i'm not.

Errr... Both 2.66 and 3.0 are quad's (it has two processors, both dual cores, that makes it quad core). The dual quad core is octo (it has two quad core processors making it octo core)... The octo is the extra 1500$.

[goldenlotus]

Acutually each processor is dual core.

Since all new mac's have two processors it's easier to refer to them by the number of cores on the chip.

[eligit]

thanks for the input guys....

it's looking like 4 gigs ram, dual 2.66 config should do the trick.

obviously the "big mamma" quad is the deluxe way to go for full fledged studios with huge sessions.....but my sub 24 track stuff should really be ok (and then some) on the dual 2.66 with enough ram.

question: if the hard drives that come with the macs are not ideal can you order them that way from mac? with NO hard drives?

have people had problems with stock drives on the their mac pros?

[NoisyNarrowBand]

the stock hd's coming with the machines are good. just order two or even three. one will hold system - and the smallest option is big enough here, the other the audio. osx has nice raid-support build in, so if you have two additional hd's you can setup a raid1, giving you data security.

and get apple care. totally worth the money!

[NoisyNarrowBand]

just checked prices for hd's on apple site. $329 for 500gb is way to expensive. buy the mac with one hd in bay1 and get two other drives on the market. the mac-pros are super-serviceable. sticking them in is easy.

[eligit]

Originally Posted by NoisyNarrowBand

just checked prices for hd's on apple site. $329 for 500gb is way to expensive. buy the mac with one hd in bay1 and get two other drives on the market. the mac-pros are super-serviceable. sticking them in is easy.

sounds right. i just got a 320GB backup drive in it's own external enclosure...for $150!

mac has this new system for taking drives in and out that is really sweet....and i think the way they are implemented is new as well.

[hogo]

Originally Posted by max cooper

About to sell my G5 and get a new Mac desktop; anyone know how much of the processors and RAM DAWs like Logic and PTLE can use?

Thanks!

Logic can only use 4 cores, and up to 4gigs of RAM right now. Of course some sample libraries can load entirely into ram up to 16 gigs.