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  #31  
Old 04-14-2010, 10:29 PM
BLenmark BLenmark is offline
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Default Sounds like I have really hit the jackpot...

...with Mac power users. Perhaps I can toss out an additional scenario and question:

I have been guided that MacBook Pro's (especially those with Intel processors >2 Gigs are preferred in that they have upgradable RAM up to 4 Gigs (among other specs). I believe Macbooks only have 2 megs, and I think that the RAM is intergrated on the chip. Am I asking for trouble if I use a Macbook (not pro) with only 2 megs RAM for a small in home studio? All I really want to do is capture my guitar and perhaps vocal sound, add is some tasty bass, drums, and persussion, edit and mix.

Or is 4 megs RAM needed for virtally any home recording aplication? When is enough RAM enough to do the job? Are there other concerns I have overlooked in considering a Macbook over a Macbook Pro? Latency, noise, something else?

Thanks for all the thoughts on the thread...it has been a great learning process for me.
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  #32  
Old 04-15-2010, 09:06 AM
Kurt Kurt is offline
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I, too, started with a MacBook and did just fine running Logic through Duet. Bigger is typically better, but sometimes sufficiency is just fine. If it's working for you -- and it sounds as though it is -- then that's terrific!

And Bob: My head is spinning just thinking about all the peripherals and software you mentioned! It's no wonder there are ghosts lurking in the machine. Best wishes as you continue to sort them out, and thank you for lending your knowledge, skill and experience to this forum. It's always a learning experience when I read your posts.
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  #33  
Old 04-23-2010, 02:48 PM
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Over the last couple of days we replaced my boot drive because of errors and took the time to migrate to Snow Leopard. The changes necessary to rebuild a DAW to restore it to the point where I could return to full-speed operation were staggering. As late as this morning I was still pulling out generous tufts of my hair trying to get control of the machine, largely because Macs just don't do large-scale networking all that well. Sorry. With the help of three IT specialists and a specialist each for audio and video software and some unbooked time, I've pretty much wrestled the beast back into its pen at this point, however.

The changes necessary to migrate to Snow Leopard and the learning process, on the other hand, were minuscule - it is almost transparent at first blush. We waited until Steinberg, Final Cut, Calibrated, and Sony all got their software compatible before we made the move. Now just two more DAWs to migrate....

Bob
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  #34  
Old 04-23-2010, 03:08 PM
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That sounds very strange, Bob. Mac OS is Unix with a nice UI on it, and Unix is pretty much the standard for mass scale networking. Google probably has over a million Linux machines all networked and doing fine, as do many major internet companies. My home Mac is simply connected to my ISP, so I've not needed to experience this myself on my Mac (lots of experience using networked Unix systems in the past tho), but I'm curious what was so difficult?

It also sounds like you got some bad disks? They do go out, tho that would have nothing to do with the Mac, of course - the disk hardware's the same across Macs, PCs, etc.
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  #35  
Old 04-23-2010, 03:36 PM
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That sounds very strange, Bob. Mac OS is Unix with a nice UI on it, and Unix is pretty much the standard for mass scale networking. Google probably has over a million Linux machines all networked and doing fine, as do many major internet companies. My home Mac is simply connected to my ISP, so I've not needed to experience this myself on my Mac (lots of experience using networked Unix systems in the past tho), but I'm curious what was so difficult?

It also sounds like you got some bad disks? They do go out, tho that would have nothing to do with the Mac, of course - the disk hardware's the same across Macs, PCs, etc.
The Mac farms out sharing permissions to a number of arcane locations. It has no central control over power saving options - whomever logs on last determines how the computer behaves after log-off. If he doesn't turn off sleep options on an always-active computer, sweet dreams! Also, if one person from your workgroup accesses a shared directory and changes the view or color tags files, everyone gets to enjoy the changes until someone changes it back. Support files for programs can be spread across the computer. Programs may need to be either installed as one instance for all users or on a user-by-user basis but no-one seems to publicize the info. Etc. I could go on and on.

Bob
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  #36  
Old 04-23-2010, 04:58 PM
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The Mac farms out sharing permissions to a number of arcane locations. It has no central control over power saving options - whomever logs on last determines how the computer behaves after log-off.
I've seen a lot of cases like this on all kinds of devices (and websites) lately. The world's starting to assume 1 person== 1 computer. Probably true 99% of the time.
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  #37  
Old 04-23-2010, 05:59 PM
Joseph Hanna Joseph Hanna is offline
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Originally Posted by Bob Womack View Post
The Mac farms out sharing permissions to a number of arcane locations. It has no central control over power saving options - whomever logs on last determines how the computer behaves after log-off. If he doesn't turn off sleep options on an always-active computer, sweet dreams! Also, if one person from your workgroup accesses a shared directory and changes the view or color tags files, everyone gets to enjoy the changes until someone changes it back. Support files for programs can be spread across the computer. Programs may need to be either installed as one instance for all users or on a user-by-user basis but no-one seems to publicize the info. Etc. I could go on and on.

Bob
Oh my Bob

As I've mentioned here before we have 4 bays and at busy times of the year those bays are running 24/7. Inevitably during crunch periods we simply must hire free-lance guys. That's 12 guys pounding some ridiculous dead lines. If anyone for ANY reason tried to log in as a separate user or if anyone had the balls to even think about touching preferences for Pro Tools, Pro Tools templates or gawd forbid the Mac Preferences, I simply and with prejudice would fire em on the spot.

If I come in in the morning to some network "feed" crisis and I'm forced to figure out what preference switch someone has thrown the night before in order to correct some "fixes" pass down the line, while some PC is breathing down my neck about deadlines, someone's gonna have to clean up the mess from my head that's just exploded and someone else is gonna be out of work.

Everyone here agrees to work off the same pref's...period. No exceptions EVER! Otherwise mayhem is inevitable.
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  #38  
Old 04-23-2010, 06:29 PM
Joseph Hanna Joseph Hanna is offline
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My other thought Bob is "rebuilding" your system should be thought out ahead of time. We rarely have more than two hours to start from scratch. You should have a primary clone of your working hard drive in an anti-static bag ready to plop in at a moments notice. All your authorizations and the primary software itself (be it Pro Tools, Avid or what have you is clone-able) and easily dropped in the primary computer. Every software manufacturer allows this based off of the computers digital id number. This process should take 5 minutes max.

I do it all the time as no one in my business would EVER accept the excuse that "we're havin' computer problems today". Over the last ten years I've seen every Pro Tools, Avid, sync, storage, backup, lost file, lost session, layback, lip sync problem known to mankind. In the end the Mac is beyond reproach for those who's job depend upon results. And further I can't think of a single situation in all these years where the solution wasn't fairly straight forward and almost ALWAYS pilot error.

We've got 25 Avid bays and 4 Pro Tools bays and we're satellite linked to multiple feed facilities as well as multiple studios throughout the area. We're Unity tied and every bay is both dataily linked as well as audio linked. We've got one IT guy and he ain't ever gonna give the audio dept the "time of day". Too much time sensitive crap on his table to worry about audio. It's up to me to keep things a float on a daily basis.

If you've got 3 IT guys working on these problems something has gone seriously, seriously wrong. From time to time I wish our IT guy would give me a hand but the thought of 3 IT guys snooping around our bays makes me uneasy.

YMMV
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  #39  
Old 04-24-2010, 05:36 AM
Ty Ford Ty Ford is offline
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Quote:
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Hello all,
Some sort of USB interface.
Bret
If you plan to do overdubbing, get a firewire interface, not USB. USB's latency is a problem.

Regards,

Ty Ford
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  #40  
Old 04-24-2010, 09:18 AM
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Bob Womack Bob Womack is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Joseph Hanna View Post
My other thought Bob is "rebuilding" your system should be thought out ahead of time. We rarely have more than two hours to start from scratch. You should have a primary clone of your working hard drive in an anti-static bag ready to plop in at a moments notice. All your authorizations and the primary software itself (be it Pro Tools, Avid or what have you is clone-able) and easily dropped in the primary computer. Every software manufacturer allows this based off of the computers digital id number. This process should take 5 minutes max.

I do it all the time as no one in my business would EVER accept the excuse that "we're havin' computer problems today". Over the last ten years I've seen every Pro Tools, Avid, sync, storage, backup, lost file, lost session, layback, lip sync problem known to mankind. In the end the Mac is beyond reproach for those who's job depend upon results. And further I can't think of a single situation in all these years where the solution wasn't fairly straight forward and almost ALWAYS pilot error.

We've got 25 Avid bays and 4 Pro Tools bays and we're satellite linked to multiple feed facilities as well as multiple studios throughout the area. We're Unity tied and every bay is both dataily linked as well as audio linked. We've got one IT guy and he ain't ever gonna give the audio dept the "time of day". Too much time sensitive crap on his table to worry about audio. It's up to me to keep things a float on a daily basis.

If you've got 3 IT guys working on these problems something has gone seriously, seriously wrong. From time to time I wish our IT guy would give me a hand but the thought of 3 IT guys snooping around our bays makes me uneasy.

YMMV
You know, were I in management, I might feel quite, *ahem*, chagrined by your analysis. But I'm just a little sound designer and recording engineer, you know, down at the pointy end of the lance.



Bob
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  #41  
Old 04-24-2010, 10:13 AM
Joseph Hanna Joseph Hanna is offline
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You know, were I in management, I might feel quite, *ahem*, chagrined by your analysis. But I'm just a little sound designer and recording engineer, you know, down at the pointy end of the lance.



Bob
..........
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  #42  
Old 04-24-2010, 03:12 PM
hazmuz hazmuz is offline
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you can find some helpful thoughts here (in case you haven't come across it already):

http://tweakheadz.com/guide.htm
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  #43  
Old 04-25-2010, 07:19 AM
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I also upgraded my mackbook Ram. But unless someone already has a PPC mac , I would shy away from intentionally getting one anyway and just get a used Intel mac . I would guess that for PT at least the support will go away as I believe that PT 8 will be the last able to run on PPC .
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  #44  
Old 05-01-2010, 01:11 PM
BLenmark BLenmark is offline
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Default I got one!

A friend of mine had a Macbook Pro with an Intel duo core 2.16 GHz and 1 GB RAM. I am configuring it now, so I don't know if the RAM will be enough, but it is easily upgradable. Needs a new battery, but the price was right, and it is running other applications I was considering. I have loaded the POD XT drivers...more to follow.
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  #45  
Old 05-01-2010, 02:45 PM
RRuskin RRuskin is offline
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From the other side: I'll take a PC running Adobe Audition over a Mac running ProTools every time, if for no other reason than compatibility.

All of my work can still be played, edited & otherwise manipulated with any version of Audition from present back to CoolEdit Pro 1.2. On the cpu side: When Macs change, old programs cease to work properly or at all. On the software side: Work done on newer ProTools versions are not playable on older ones.

Then there's cost. I know one person who put over $20K into a Mac/ProTools rig that he can't get $250 for today even though it works perfectly. A PC system with compatible audio software & hardware is much less expensive and won't become obsolete with every upgrade, regardless of where you do it.
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