G5 With Ibm Chips Options

[music sucks]

petra my man
I am in the same shoe you are in, though I am sure that I am going to get a Mac. The question is when. This is the way I am looking at things:
An Apple rep told me that they first set the dual G4 prices back in october (though he may have said august). Just recently Apple announced faster G4's at much cheaper prices! I may wait save all my pennies to be the first one to buy one when they drop them again which will probably happen in july or august, but I may have to buy one now! hehe.
I was worried about the G4's becoming absolete in wake of G5's surfacing. But they probably wont. Lets say that you wait all year until the G5's come out. Are you going to pay $3,000 dollars for one?? you would have to wait at LEAST half a year for the prices of them to drop. In the mean time G4's will be very, very fairly priced.
When G4's were first released, do you remember how long they continued to make G3's? And G3's still are not obsolete as far as speed and power recommandations go for audio apps, they are just lower end. G4's will still rock the house when G5's come out. So lets say you get a G4 now; by the time you are ready for your next upgrade in a few years G5's will be very cheap by than and you won't mind paying the extra to get one if they are going to be as fantastic as expected. But if you wait that long or settle for a PC, think of all the time you will have wasted. I dont care what anyone says, Macs are a much more invisable tool than PC's are for audio. And Apple's are sooo solidly stable that you will forget that you are using a machine. All things considered my G3 is very reliable when I think of how much I put it through. Go with the Mac. Get a G4 as they get cheaper. You dont want to spend twice the amount on a G5 when they first come out.
You want a Mac. OSX has largely considered Audio into how it works. It has never been a better time to invest in a Mac for audio.

[Presto]

Hey, Mr MusicS,

You say "Macs are a much more invisable tool than PC's are for audio"

Do you mean invisible? Yes, that's it. Oh! yes, isn't she pretty. I've just noticed my ibook is not always invisible. I once got quite upset though when I couldn't find it - it was hiding between two other books, but fortunately I'd left my headphones next to the little pile.

I also have a cold office/studio (a barn), so I sometimes work in an armchair with the ibook on my lap to keep me warm. (The Mbox is uncomfortable though, as it has pokey bits sticking out due to some strange design freak. Has anybody tried sawing them off? The silly wings tend to scratch the ibook when I shove all my stuff in my little shoulder bag and go out to record - oops off topic).

By the way, I'm not an Apple rep. Not me wink wink

[petra]

Thanks everyone. I will do some more reading around.

I think that I secretly want to go in the direction of Mac because 1. they have the reputation of being more stable than PCs 2. they just look so much better - what a shallow statement, but hey I like the design:)

BUT the price is an issue, unless I keep the Mac for 5 years. Would I do the same with a PC? I don't know.

Lepetitmartien, thanks for the compliments on Down By The Water. There is so much more material in that direction that I need to record

Before I go on reading other posts, I do have some more specific questions.

1. Mac users. Exactly what kind of Macintosh/sound card/software combination are you using? What are the minimum recommended requirements for the computer to be a stable, reliable music machine?
(I do need Midi, so PT LE by itself is probably not good enough for me. It looks like Logic is. )

2. I know that most professional studios use Macs and Pro Tools. I was advised to get, for example Digi 001 to be compatible with the pros. What would it mean for me, however, if I had a PC with Cubase SX on it and wanted to take it for mixing and mastering to a pro studio that is using ProTools?

Please let me know. Thanks

[lepetitmartien]

I think that I secretly want to go in the direction of Mac

One of Us One of Us One of Us

BUT the price is an issue, unless I keep the Mac for 5 years. Would I do the same with a PC? I don't know.

Obsolescence is to view this way : what you can do now, you'll can do still in 5 years. With the computers you'll have by then it'll be possible to do much more, but you can still use the old one for the same thing as today. I use for work (graphic design) a computer 5 years old, I want a new one, but I can still work The only trade off is at some time you'll have to give up the updates as they won't fit on your computer. usually, it's more than 5 years for the buying.
Obsolescence on PCs as far as I know is a different thing. People (well the ones who go for it) use to upgrade their pc bits by bits until nothing can be bettered on the motherboard, or the new software (softs or systems) don't run on it anymore. On the mac, save ram, disks, maybe a processors card or a new garphic card, you can't rebuild the computer from the ground up. The advantage : it works as the choices are few and usually well tested. The drawback: finetunig to the limits is limited, but you don't meddle with the inners too much.

1. Mac users. Exactly what kind of Macintosh/sound card/software combination are you using? What are the minimum recommended requirements for the computer to be a stable, reliable music machine?
(I do need Midi, so PT LE by itself is probably not good enough for me. It looks like Logic is. )

A good combo now is a double G4, PCI or Firewire I/O card (PC need Soudcards, on mac only I/O-DSP cards, we have already Sound on the motherboard, we need only more power/quality), lots of ram, (more than 512), SCSI HD (fast ones)
You can do with less… depends your need/budget.
Some USB interfaces are really good, if you need only 1 or 2 inputs at a time, it's great. (more on other threads)

My dream computer? a 4X G4/G5, 6 PCI, 2 AGP, Firewire 2, USB 2.
the low end mac have plenty of power for small setup/budget. You can't run 52457 zillions of plugins/virtual instruments (we want big badder fasters powerPCs NOW but it's not the number of them that makes your music anyway.

[petra]

Would you reccommend a second hand Mac? If so, what specs?

[Presto]

If you don't want it to be portable, get a new iMac with plenty of ram. Its not all that expensive and, well, have you seen them? That's only my opinion.

Remember though "shit in shit out"

[lepetitmartien]

Would you reccommend a second hand Mac? If so, what specs?

You can do marvels with an Imac G4, but for expendability and power, a tower G4 the faster the better. Remember that in OSX (you'll be on it sooner or later) the 2 processors are used in standrad by the system and the apps. And it helps…

To be more on the spot would need some input from you, how many tracks audio do you want to mix ? Do you use/intend to use a lot of plug ins…

On RAM, the more the better. 512 is the beginning of comfort.
On HD, 7200 IDE are ok, but having 2 HD one for system, one for audio is good practice.

[petra]

You can do marvels with an Imac G4, but for expendability and power, a tower G4 the faster the better. Remember that in OSX (you'll be on it sooner or later) the 2 processors are used in standrad by the system and the apps. And it helps…

I suppose you cannot add another processor to an iMac, right? Can you add another hard disk?

On HD, 7200 IDE are ok, but having 2 HD one for system, one for audio is good practice.

Excuse me? I'm still new to this.


Ok, so my input is.

I suppose I will be recording plenty of audio tracks and using a lot of plug-ins - or at least I want to have the potential to do it.
For example: I want to do vocals - double, triple; background vocals, also double/triple; drums - probably dedicated track for each drum sound to be able to apply individual effects to them; (acoustic) guitar, bass and synth sounds and EFX, and plug-ins. Enough? I'm afraid it's going to require quite a powerful machine to handle it.

[Presto]

If you can afford the G4 tower and all the rest of the stuff you'll need, that's great.

Still, if you have a 'small' budget, I still say the G4 imac is probably quite sufficient. Even a second hand G3 imac will get you going a long way. You only need two audio I/O (in/out) + midi as you're working on your own, right? That doesn't stop you having loads of tracks in a session. If you don't spend 8hrs a day everyday on your mixing, you can manage with a good pair of headphones and your stereo set before investing $1000+ on monitors etc etc. If voice recording quality is important, the mics need to be good and they cost! Still, you could well be using them in 10 years time

We would all like the biggest and best for little money, but that doesn't work.

My G3 ibook is more than sufficient for what I want to do. Apparently OS9 needs less power and works quicker than OSX so I don't see the need to rush into OSX.

An idea: if you can get a very cheap G3 iMac (not the first ones - they make too much noise), by the time you find you need G4 tower power, they will have dropped much more in price than what you paid for the G3. That would give you time to determine your needs more precisely.

For what I need to do, the power of the computer is not important. I prefer spending money on the other stuff, but then I'm more interested in live imperfection than electronic perfection. In fact I hate perfection

[lepetitmartien]

I suppose you cannot add another processor to an iMac, right? Can you add another hard disk?

If I remember well you could accelerate the first Imacs but they are really closed computers so… and they are slow G3 so can be used for midi but audio work will be painful.

On HD, 7200 IDE are ok, but having 2 HD one for system, one for audio is good practice.

Excuse me? I'm still new to this.

HD is hard drive… IDE is a type of interface for CDrw, HD… 7200 is RPM (the turning speed)
I can do worse if I want

I suppose I will be recording plenty of audio tracks and using a lot of plug-ins - or at least I want to have the potential to do it.
For example: I want to do vocals - double, triple; background vocals, also double/triple; drums - probably dedicated track for each drum sound to be able to apply individual effects to them; (acoustic) guitar, bass and synth sounds and EFX, and plug-ins. Enough? I'm afraid it's going to require quite a powerful machine to handle it.

You bet!
You can breathe a little by bouncing tracks but if you want to use a bit of plugins at the same time, G4 at least and best is dual processor.
The Presto way is interesting, if you have a limited budget but still have a quality I/O on a good stylish computer. You are limited on the I/Os you can use at the same time, but you have a good interface, and a mac not too expensive that is kind on the eyes and powerfull enough to handle audio and plug-in reasonably. Later you can go with a bigger badder better one and keep the G4 imac for midi or internet
You can't upgrade the processor, but you can have firewire interfaces, HDs without problem.
One thing, as I've seen on a other thread… you don't rely on Apple screens only, with a little adaptor for the ADC and DVI ports on the cards of the G4 towers you can plug a iiyama or mitsubishi screen big and heavy, but less expensive.
Anyway, go for the more powerfull you can reasonnably afford. But don't neglect the G4 iMac it's a good little computer if you can round its "weaknesses" regarding the towers.