Mac Mini :: Music Production - Deal With Heat Under Stress?
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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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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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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Apr 17, 2009
Hi guys
I have been looking at the new mac minis (self upgrading the HDD and RAM), but for not too much more it looks like I could get a 12-18 month old mac pro.
Is it worth getting the older machine with better specs or will the new mini actually be more capable?
I will use it for photography (lightroom, PSE6, iphoto) word processing (MS Office 08) and obviously email/safari.
I have done quite a bit of searching around but can't seem to find much info on this topic, plenty about G5 powermacs vs mini but nothing on the dual xeon dual core 2.0ghz pros.
Any info/advice much appreciated
Thanks
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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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Dec 2, 2008
I'm using a 2GHz MacBook Pro as a HTPC, but it has developed some major heat issues and is not much longer for this world. I have read some threads regarding overheating issues with Minis and wonder if that is still an issue? I want to replace the laptop with a Mini and don't want to run into the same problems.
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Aug 24, 2009
Any ways to stress my mac. I just want to see how it handles under those conditions.
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Mar 24, 2012
I'm presently using the Toslink connection for my DAC to room speakers. Can anyone confirm that a second USB connected DAC for headphones would also be live? In short, run two DAC's simultaneously?
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Dec 2, 2010
I was noticing a lot of slow-down while playing computer games on my MBP. My computer far exceeds the minimum requirements for everything, so I reckoned it must have been something other than a slow processor (2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo), low ram (4 GB) or a completely inadequate graphics card (Nvidia 9400M). The games range from 'Day of Defeat: Source' to the 8 year-old 'Return to Castle Wolfenstein'. After a bit of research, I came to realise that my exhaust fan is never speeding up past 2005 RPM no matter WHAT the load on the CPU is. To test this, I downloaded smcFanControl and ran CPUTest. As the CPU went from 50*C to 95*C, there was hardly any change in the fan's speed. The variation went between 1995 and 2005 RPM.
In order to keep the computer relatively cool when playing games or doing anything that is CPU-heavy, I have to manually increase the fan's RPM in smcFanControl. I find that setting the fans to the maximum, 6000 RPM, keeps the computer cool enough to process these games. This program works wonders and I've not had any slow-down in games as a result. However, I am worried that there might be something wrong with my Mac. Why does it not automatically increase fan speed when reaching higher temperatures? I've even reset my SMC (SHIFT-CONTROL-OPTION-Power) on start-up just to be sure I've tried everything. Any suggestions as to why my fan seems stuck at 2000 RPM?
MBP, 13-inch, 4GB RAM, 2.53 GHz
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Oct 12, 2010
I really like the new design of the Magsafe power cord connector. But both designs still put stress on the cord at the connector, if your Macbook is moved. I hope Apple gives the Magsafe a swivel, so the cord can move more freely as the laptop is moved. Am I the only one thinking this would be a good idea?
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Jul 20, 2010
I've now seen 2 machines have a logic board failure from letting the battery run dry (which shuts the computer down). I suspect the voltage regulator based on what I've seen and reading up on what the board level repair guys are finding. My question is does letting the battery run out stress the voltage regulator and is this situation to be avoided at all cost?
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Jun 3, 2012
at the sms Fan Controll Tempreture 51, 1999 rpqm-using only Safari- in the activity window CPU 7%-No other Pocesses!!!
Info:
MacBook
Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.10)
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Jan 22, 2010
It seems that everytime I visit a tech site like anandtech and stumble on CPU articles or discussions, they talk about overclocking. On the latest i3 CPU, the author overclocked the 2.93GHz to a stable 4GHz wihtout even needing additional cooling. Why is overclocking such a big deal on the PC side, but not on the Mac side even though we're using the same family of chips?
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Sep 27, 2009
I've been playing a bit of Poker using the PKR application (It's a cider port from what I've seen). I'm finding that on my iMac (and not my MacBook Pro), after playing for a while the graphics go a little bit screwy then it freezes the entire system. To try and diagnose the problem I want to see if it's the app or the GPU which is causing the problem. Does anyone know how I can stress test the GPU?
What's odd is that even though the app seems to be very CPU and GPU heavy, I don't really notice any fan noise from the iMac. I'm just concerned that it may be overheating.
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Apr 14, 2010
I have a strange problem with my SyncServer, every time I use any application that has anything to do with syncing information such as iSync or even iTunes with my iPhone or even mobileme sync, the syncserver crashes and nothing gets synced.
I haven't been able to sync anything for a while because of that problem and I do not know what to do.
Does any one know how to deal with it?
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Oct 21, 2010
Most of my educational DVD are in ISO format. As Handbrake sees it, each lecture on the disk is one title, and it converts one title to a destinationfile at a time.
How do I convert the entire disk (iso file) to one file in Handbrake?chris650
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Aug 24, 2010
I am in market to upgrade RAM from 4GB to 16 GB on my refurb iMac which i bought early this year , not too good with finding correct ram and a good price..
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Oct 6, 2009
I have an iPhoto library with 15.000 photo's and videos and I cannot stand the way iPhoto organizes all of them.
To get my photo's organized in a decent fashion I came up with the following ideas:
1. Switch to Aperture. (But Aperture does not accept videos, so that won't work for me.)
2. Use albums in iPhoto. (But the events are still under events, albums just create a shortcut.)
3. Switch to Picasa, but it seems like it is hard to get all the metadata (keywords, geotags, etc) correctly exported out of iPhoto.
None of these seem to work for me. How do you guys deal with your large photo libraries?
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Apr 13, 2010
What was the deal-breaker for you to pass on the 13"?
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May 30, 2010
I've just done a video on my Canon stills camera and it imported into iPhoto. But the video doesn't then appear to sync with my iPad. So I found the file in Finder and dragged it into iTunes. Problem there is that it isn't really a Movie or a TV show - I don't want a short clip of my cat in amongst feature films.
So how do you arrange/sync personal videos?
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Nov 1, 2009
I was just wondering what other iPhoto users are doing when importing some random shots into iPhoto, that doesn't belong to any particular event? Having all those unnamed events in the Events folder is cluttering it all up.
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May 9, 2012
I went through some fairly difficult procedures to rid my computer of Flashback and quickly got in over my head. So I called tech support, and they told me, if I have OS X 10.7 and do software updates regularly, that I have nothing to worry about. They said Safari is not compromised, and there's no reason not to enable Java. They said software updates is more important than any third party anti-virus or anti-malware software that I could run. I would like to know what some of you in the forum think about these issues.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.2)
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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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