Mac Pro :: Right System For Music Production?
Mar 11, 2009
I've been tracking this forum for about a year now reading some great discussion on 2008 MacPro and actually held off buying one b/c of the comments recommending waiting for the new 2009 MacPro. So I did, and now I've been reading a lot of less than excited posts about how this is a step backwards in the price vs speed camp. Rather than hijacking a thread that is really providing a lot of great discussion on benchmarks and other more general pros/cons of 2008 vs 2009 I wanted to get some advice on a very specific request. I produce music on a PC now which is way past it's prime. Originally I spec'd a 2008 model and was prepared to buy with my company discount when I was advised to wait until the new 2009 MP came out. Right now the cost is equal for a 2009 system (with my corp discount) and a used/refurb 2008 system so $$$ can't help me make a decision. The machine I'm spec'ing is
* Two 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
* 8GB (4x2GB)
* 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
* NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB
* One 18x SuperDrive
* Apple Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter
My question is, is this the right move for my specific needs? I run Cubase, Ableton Live, and mainly Native Instrument plug ins (synths) In terms of hyperthreading and quad vs. octo cores: will I even be able to realize this potential given my software? Is there any value in trying to sink in the large amount to take me to 2.66 or 2.93 Octo 2009? As I understand it, music on a Mac relys more on Ram (number of effects and synths that can run without latency) vs. raw CPU speed. But I've even heard debate on that. If all things are equal I'd rather take advantage of my corporate discount as well as emerging technology.
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Aug 16, 2010
I hope this conversation hasnt come up, cos I did do a search for it. I mainly use my MBP for music production, running Logic 9 with one or 2 other soft synths. I was going thinking about getting a new 13" MBP but upgrading to the C2D 2.66 and the HD to 500G. I was wondering whether the 15" i5/i7 would provide any real benefits to me for what I mainly use it for, i.e. recording/producing music. Almost all of the apple docs and threads relating to the new to new processors seem to concentrate on graphics, and visual stuff. 13" will be limiting my screen real estate...but ill be travelling extensively but when in the studio can always connect up to a monitor.
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Sep 11, 2010
I am looking to upgrade to a new mac and have been set on getting the new 8 Core tower. A few people have told me I would be better off getting the new imac i7 instead. I am only going to be running logic 9, ableton 8, and protools le 8.. My sound card is a digi002 rack. I will only be using this machine for these purposes and no other. Would it be better to just go ahead and get an 8 core tower or would the imac i7 be just as good if not better? And, would the imac i7 be as durable with a full time work load?
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Jul 14, 2010
what new imac to get. I really need to upgrade my macbook because I do a lot of music production and I need more cpu power. Currently I have a C2D 2.0 ghz T7200 and 2gb of RAM. What I need to run: Around 40-45 tracks (24 bit 44100Hz) in Ableton/Logic with around 4 devices (EQ, reverb etc) on each track. As one can imagine my macbook doesn't cope with this. Audio starts lagging and I need to freeze tracks which dramatically decreases my working efficiency. So I decided to get a new imac, I don't need more power than what the above requires. Other apps I will run is the CS4 suite but that doesn't require as much power as my music production. So mainly for music I was thinking a 3.06 ghz would do the trick. From benchmarks I see it's about twice as powerful as my current CPU. Would it be enough? By the way, I know about the coming update, but that can only be better than the 3.06 C2D so that's not the issue here.
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Apr 5, 2009
Just bought myself a 2.8 mac pro with a stock WD Caviar SE 3200AAJS drive and would like some opinions about which hard drives to get and how to partition them.
From what I've read on digilloyds site, I've concluded that it would be best to get a rather large harddrive with a small partition as bootdrive. The reasoning behind this is that data on drives gets read faster when that data is on the outside of the drive. So an 80gb partition on a 640gb drive would be faster than an 80gb partition on a 120gb drive, because with option 1, the partition physically remains small in regards to the whole, and therefore physically remains on the outside of the drive where seek speed is fast.
So my questions are about the technical details really:
1) Is there a measured percentage as to where drives begin to lose their fast outer rim performance? If that's say 10%, then I could calculate: I need 80gb boot partition, so the drive must be 800gb. Also, to calculate how tiny my bootpartition should be, I need to know how many gigs "breathing space" the boot partition needs. Anyone?
2) What's your drives config and partitioning? I myself was thinking:
- boot drive (how big?)
- drive with 2 partitions, one 10gb scratch partition for the current project and one projects partition for things I'm not working on.
- drive for reading samples from for drums etc.
- drive for time machining the projects drive, the samples I can always reinstall from cd, so won't need space for that..
3) What brand should I get? I was thinking Western Digital caviar black for the first three drives, and a more energy efficient caviar blue/green as timemachine drive. Do I need server drives like the R3 for any of this?
4) Where can my stock 320 drive fit in? Is it good enough for one of these jobs or is it just too old? I'm willing to replace it but I don't want to be splitting hairs. The potential replacement DOES have to add something in real world feel.
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Sep 11, 2010
I'm eyeing the mini right now because os x >>> windows for music (inherent midi drivers instead of 3rd party, stability, etc etc).amittedly I currently run a hackintosh on a previously windows pc. It is stable with the exception of gfx crashes every few hours and its inability to use the gfx card to its full extent. This gets to me though and is kind of a bitch. So I'm thinking about getting a mini when I have the money for one. I would get the standard with the 4gb ram option. How well does it deal with heat under stress? and is the HDD 7200 rpm for the non server edition?(edit: roarrrr just read that its 5400, so lame)
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Nov 28, 2010
I am going to buy my very first mac and I've decided it's going to be an imac. I'm completely new to mac and don't know which one of the two 21.5 inches (i3 3.06 or i3 3.2) to buy. Like the title says the main usage is going to be for music production and Logic or logic express is going to be used with lots of midi plug-ins. I'm also going to work with some photo and video (nothing serious yet), some web browsing and mailing (the regular things to do on a pc). And maybe some WoW. No heavy gaming on the mac, I have a nice windows pc for that I have a discount when buying that makes it harder to choose:
21,5" 3,06GHz - 1079$
21,5" 3,2GHz - 1349$
Which imac is for me and which one is most future proof?
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Jun 18, 2010
I currently have a 6 years old Dell XPS PC and want a mac. I've used imacs a lot during college years and now want one for myself, no more PC for me. Now, the question is: what do I need? I would use this mac for pretty much anything, but mostly mostly mostly for music production. I will use it to record songs, I have decided I probably do not need to wait for the refresh, as all I would need is to be able to run plugins and multiple tracks at the same time.. I'm pretty much sold on the imac 27 quad core with 8gb ram right now, but would I be able to make a wiser choice?
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Mar 23, 2008
I do not own any Mac at home, but looking into one for college. I have read up on all the pros/ cons of the MBA (non-removable battery and RAM, lack of ports and optical drive, etc). I am not a computer gamer, so I stick to the consoles. I was wondering if a MBA is ideal for any kind of music production. Can it handle heavy music editing with GB or Logic Pro? Is it ideal with the somewhat "lack" of external ports? share your opinions and/ or experiences with music production for fun or work on a MBA. (By the way, I am asking this to decide whether I should be looking into a MBA or MBP for college September of 2009, so I have LOTS of time to wait for newer models).
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Mar 21, 2008
If you purchase the CS3 Prod Premium can you purchase another license at a cheaper price so that you can install it on another machine? and is there ANY place that sells the darn thing cheaper than the $1700 bones you have to pay for it? And how 'bout us folks who have Final Cut Studio 2 and just need Photoshop and After Effects? If you buy these two separately, it's MORE expensive than buying the Creative Suite Prod Premium so you buy the Production Premium box and you get all that other stuff you may not use.
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Sep 24, 2009
What's the best way to uninstall this Snow Leopard beast? I've backup files in Time Machine but I'm not sure of what system folders and/or files should be restored.
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Feb 1, 2010
AI reporting production lines for 27" imac have halted [URL]
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Jun 23, 2012
I purchased a 21 inch iMac computer approximately 3 years ago. The computer ceased working a few months ago and I have since been informed that Apple have recognised this model as faulty. inform me of my options given this is a reasonably new computer with minimal usage. Someone I know had the same issue and Apple replaced thier iMac even though it was out of Warranty due to faulty parts, thus why this model was ceased production.
Info:
iMac
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Jul 15, 2009
[URL:..] As our current MacBook Pros are assembled & manufactured by Foxconn, Apple is shifting to have Quanta Computer in 2010 to assemble and manufacture the next Macbook Pros. Somehow, Foxconn has a hit or miss on quality control, especially the issues we encounter like warped lids, dust under the glass, dead pixels, bad ram, black screen of death, video artifacts, etc. Does this CHANGE of manufacturers mean better quality control?
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Dec 26, 2008
I am about to purchase a new Macbook, and the main use of the computer will be to record and produce music. I have a limited budget so would it be better for me to get the 2.0 GHz with 4 GB of memory or the 2.4 GHz with only 2GB of memory?
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Oct 14, 2009
I have a 1st generation ipod (10g) and a new macbook pro. I don't have firewire on the macbook pro and need a cable that will work so I can transfer music from my old ipod onto my macbook. I have a 400/800 firewire adapter which connect fine to my ipod, but doesn't connect to my macbook.
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Aug 21, 2010
Just fired up my Mini Mac I purchased about 4 months ago. I bought it so I could hook it up directly to my Samsung Series 8 LED TV. I'm hooking up 2 External HD's to it; 1 with my music and music videos and 1 with all my movies. The Externals are WD 1 terabyte and LaCie 1 terabyte. My music and music videos will go on the WD because it only has USB 2.0 and the movies on my LaCie which has firewire.
1) on my TV (acting as a monitor) I cannot see the menu bar. I can access it, but is not visible. Even the dock items when activated are not totally visible.
2) I bought a mini dvi to dvi converter and have connected to my TV using a dvi to hdmi connector. My TV has 4 hdmi inputs. Using one for my DVD player and one for the Mini Mac. The issue is when I have my Mini Mac plugged into the TV and I try and watch regular TV, whether through a satellite TV or the same TV, the TV picture is very snowing. If I pull out the cord connecting the Mini Mac to the TV the snow immediately goes away.
I would like to move my music library from my MacBook Pro to my WD external HD and than play/access my music through my Mac Mini iTunes. I'm pretty sure how to move my library, but what about the music files?
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Jan 23, 2008
Is it true that you can't import music with remote disc on the MacBook Air?
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Jan 9, 2009
is their a version of myspace for a mac laptop, because music doesnt play on the profiles. It doesnt load it at all. So i was cerious to know if their was their own version of myspace for this defferent type of computer?
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Apr 25, 2012
Can I use iCloud to back up and then return my files for system restroe? I just wanna back up my music and photos so I can do a system restore if I have iCloud will it allow me to download them back on once I finish the system restore?
Info:
MacBook
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Sep 12, 2010
I took delivery of my new 27" imac on Saturday, previously I have always been a windows user. I love the feel of OSX however I am really struggling with getting my itunes to work.The NAS is split into different shares that I had mapped on my windows PCe.g R:Qmultimedia/Music (was on a windows 7 pc)ll my music files are located on this share: Qmultimedia/MusicI have mounted Qmultimedia as a Samba share using a automountmaker script. This connects at startup and the hard drive icon is on my desktop logged in as admin. I opened a brand new install of itunes today and did the following:Went into preferences and changed my library location to volumes/Qmultimedia/Music, then I selected add to library and picked my music folder from the mapped drive.
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Jan 30, 2009
good, free app to copy music from iPhone to Mac?
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Jul 8, 2010
All of my music is on an external hard drive connected via USB. It is now showing that instead of having 80+gb of data there is zero and now a file that says USBC and some other characters. I tried running disk utility and it said "filesystem verify or repair failed". Music folders and files disappeared from external hard drive now showing USBc file.
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Feb 27, 2012
Super drive ejects blank CD's & DVD's. Played music CD fine but could not run the system disk for an archive re-install. It made lots of noise & ejected.What can I do to try the re-install. G-5 PPC OS X 10.4.11
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.11), PPC
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Mar 14, 2012
Since doing a clean install of Lion onto my system, I have not been able to play music cd's bought from the high street. My system keep ejecting them after about 20 seconds. Movie DVD's play straight away.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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Oct 23, 2009
At the moment most of my music is either stored on my Macbook or on an external hard drive. Is it possible to transfer all my music and videos to an external hard drive and then sync it with Itune so that every time I plug it in I can access them?
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Jun 27, 2009
I just recently bought a white macbook and it came with over 2000 music files is this normal?
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Jun 4, 2012
Lost all music from wifes phone when she synced her phone. Only has my music. How do we reover her music?
Info:
iPhone 4, iOS 5.1.1
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Jun 8, 2012
lost all my music on laptop after trying to manually delete music from ipod. where did it go and how can i restore it?
Info:
Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Jun 15, 2009
I have set my website up in iWeb (so simple and great) and I have added to the homepage a QT music file for visitors to listen to. Unfortunately however when you do click on the song and then navigate to one of my other pages on the website such as my portfolio, the music stops. I was hoping that the song would play continuously while navigating through the website no matter what page the visitor was on. Is this even possible?
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