What Mac To Buy?, I am wondering if a quad intel is necessary or whether a dual g5 can c Options

[JonRaven]

Hello there,

first time visiter, first time poster here...

I am currently using a powerbook 1.25 and I want to move into the ability to use some robust virtual instruments like toon track's "ezdrummer" and spek's "atmosphere", along with interested in the new east west quantum leap app called "gypsy" and the like.

My powerbook just wont cut it of course so I am thinking about getting a desktop mac.

Can anyone tell me from real world knowledge whether I could do everything I want with a used dual g5 or whether I really need to bite the bullet and get the new quad 2.66 intel?

I know ram is a big thing so I will upgrade either machine wiith atleast 4 gig ram.

I will be looking to do realistic backing tracks for my songs with virtual instruments and then adding say 16 tracks of audio tracks as well to the track.

Any ideas? Of course the music stores and the mac store are just out to sell the newest greatest of everything so you can't really get any honest opinions based on personal experience so I came here.

Can anyone discuss this with me?

Thanks and glad to be part of the group.

[Jim Hoyland]

We have 8 dual G5s and 7 MacPros running in various studios with 2 G5 quads running FCP / Photoshop in a separate area.

The dual G5s have been awesomely reliable with the exception of one early model (with PCI-X) which is sluggish. By adding RAM we've been able to keep up with increasing demands of software and users, so we have no real plans to update any time soon. The only real annoyance with these machines is the restriction to 2 internal drive bays and the comparative lack of ports when compared with newer models. This has meant that we've had to look at external storage for sample libraries etc.

The MacPros were a nightmare to begin with, as we use ProTools in all studios and the initial Intel releases from Digidesign were horribly buggy. The more recent versions (and CS updates for version 7.1) have addressed this and we now appear to have some smooth machines with an endless supply of power. The four drive bays enable us to keep everything local and they run so quietly that we have no qualms about leaving them in the studio.

One issue you have to consider tho' is the cost of RAM for the MacPro. We bought ours loaded with 4Gb each, which added hundreds to the initial cost, whereas additional RAM for the G5s is easy to come by, at very reasonable prices.

The G5 quads are absolutely hopeless with large audio projects (fine for simple editing within Soundtrack Pro tho'), but killer for video editing and encoding. We've also installed Logic Nodes on these machines as they're often idle.

One other quick thought, our 3 newest MPs have 1.5TB of non-System Hard Disk space which we formatted as a RAID array so we didn't confuse some of our simpler students. Whilst this works fine in general operation, I've found that the system takes much longer to wake from sleep than our other set-ups.

So I guess I'd probably recommend getting a 2nd hand dual G5 with as much RAM as you can afford and a decent amount of external storage. I've heard really good things about using eSATA drives with a PCIe adaptor for the Mac but haven't tried this... and the FireWire option works fine anyway.

Best of luck!