Multitrack Track Counts?, How many tracks, and how much Mac? Options

[TylerEss]

First Post!

Hi, all. I'm assembling a PowerMac 8100 as a Macromedia Deck workstation so I can do some recording with my father-in-law. I'm still fine-tuning the audio drive performance, but it's looking like when everythings finished it'll be doing 24 tracks rock-solid. (I'm not going to tolerate dropouts or inconsistent performance!)

I wonder how it stacks up against more modern workstations in price and performance, so:

How many tracks do you get?
What software are you using?
What's the Mac's hardware configuration?

Thanks so much!

Tyler Sable
http://www.fenestrated.net/~macman/mac.html
http://www.lowendmac.com/sable/

[gdoubleyou]

Disk speed is the primary factor of track count, with a fast SCSI drive you should be OK.

Using the effects in Deck is where you WILL have problems at. I used to have an 8600, I tested playback up to 64 tracks before i became bored. You might want to look a 3rd party CPU upgrade, but a prudent choice would be to pick up a Mini, G4, or Intel.

I'm currently doing sessions of 32-48 24bit tracks using native effects, and virtual instruments exclusively, on my 1.4GHz mini. And once you experience the difference between 16bit recording vs 24bit. you will be looking for another app besides Deck.

The new MacIntels on the lowend have about the same processing power as the current dual G5's.