Help Me Get The Best Setup For Me.. Thanks Options

[shaneblyth]

I am totally new to Macs so new I have not bought one yet but want to in the next little while purely for Music.
I have a really good Keyboard Midi Synth, and a proffessional Mixer, PA, and Mics as well as an electric guitar and base.
I am a one man band who wants to record on this equipment using a MAC.. I dont expect to be selling my stuff but who knows one day

Can people suggest what is a good system to buy ?
and what about additional hardware ? I intend to be recoding only 1 audio track at a time so what should I use to interface with my external gear and MIDI . what spec of MAC would you suggest ?
and what would you recommend for software and why..

I know it is a big ask but you would be helping a soon to be EX PC user get into some good gear and systems finally where i can hopefully create some good quality Music.

Cheers I appreciate your time and input

Shane

[shaneblyth]

would be interesting to know what is the most important in order
Ram Size
CPU Grunt ... single or duel
Hard drive speed/separation from OS.

I mean if you have say a 1ghz G4 with 1 gig of RAM and an external firewaire hard drive
is it gonna be better than say a fast G4/5 with say 512 ram and no external drive.
where is the cross over point ?

Here's my take on it
RAM - smoother ride
CPU - faster ride (but is not noticable on all software)
external - depends on the software, but usually recomended.

Certainly for your needs a G4 will do everything you ask of it, and is $600 - $1600 cheaper than the G5's
you could max the ram on the 4 for about $800 (http://dealram.com/), although I wouln't be surprised if 1G of ram will be sufficient for you.

I don't think you will see much speed dif between the two models or even with a dual proc for what you want to do, so, yes, it is better in that you get the same work done for cheaper.

cool so max the ram out and keep a fast G4 then and what about the need for another drive .. if so what do you recommend ? I have not settled on a notebook style unit for portability or maybe an imac or similar which do u think is a better one to go for... how portable are imacs? if i had to move it once very 3-6 months total I assume it is easy enough to do but i doubt I would have to but who knows

cheers again