Hi everyone, hope someone can enlighten me a bit here. I am about to set up a home recording studio with my iMac, Cubase SX a midi keyboard and the Roland XV2020 module. I am also thinking about using a number of soft synths, including Spectrasonics Atmosphere and Absynth.

Unfourtunately, the computer is one of the older models, G3 406, 400MHz. I am about to install 512 Mb of additional RAM, and MacOSX (version 10.2).

I am a bit concerned about latency problems. Anyone know if I will experience serious problems with this matter with the setup described above?

Apple says in their notes on MacOSX that it vastly improves the sound and the way the computer handles latency issues etc. Maybe this is a stupid question, but I was wondering if this is true independently of the hardware and the soundcard on my (old) iMac.

Any input here would be very valuable for me! Thanks!

I haven't run 10.2 on a 400mhz iMac before, but I can guess that you probably won't be able to run too many softsynths at once before you run out of cpu overhead. You should experience excellent midi latency, though. The 512 Mb of extra RAM is a bit excessive for your needs, but then again it never hurts to have too much. You should be fine with your proposed setup, as long as you don't plan on using a lot of soft synths and plug-ins.

Thanks PlasTree for the quick reply. If I haven't misunderstood things completely, a way to avoid CPU overload is to record midi tracks using soft synth sounds as audio tracks instead?



All the best,

Mikael

Spectrasonics Atmosphere will almost certainly overwhelm your G3/400 Mac. It's enormous, apparently, and demands a hefty chunk of CPU power and RAM to run effectively. G4 definitely recommended, the newer the better. I've not used it - I'm just passing on what the Sound on Sound reviewer said. He absolutely loved Atmosphere, mind you.

As for the audio/midi track business, SX handles soft synths automatically: they're automatically lined up in the mixer as audio channels. This makes it nice and easy on mixdown. If you're recording external synths, you will need to record their output as audio anyway.