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Best mbp for logic 9?

C

carsy88

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 26, 2009
5
0
This is my first post, but I have been lingering around the forums for a while now trying to learn as much as possible.
I am going to get a mbp soon, and want it mostly for the new logic 9, and possibly to do some djing down the road with some pioneer cdjs.
My first instinct is to get the bottom end 13 inch, and upgrade the ram and hard drive myself.
I do 0 gaming, and have nothing to do with video editing or anything, but might like to get into it at some point.
Will the 2.26 13 inch macbook pro do me well? Will i run into any problems down the road with this machine and logic? or are there better options of mbp's to go with for what I am trying to accomplish here??
I plan to get an external monitor in the future to make life easier using logic.

Any kind of help is greatly appreciated.
 
You pretty much said it all yourself. You don't do any gaming or video editing but may dabble in it in the future, so the 15" with discreet graphics (9600m) will be a minimum. You can get away with the 13" as it'll work fine, and that little sucker can drive even the beastly of moniters (the 30" ACD for example) but you will have done little in the way of future proofing. If you go with it, don't curse yourself later if you decide to dabble and find the system can't handle it quite as well as you expected.

I don't DJ so I don't know how well a 13" screen would work in the field, although I hear people still do so with the 12" powerbook. I do tethered photo work though and the 15 inch is the bare minimum.
 
You will be fine with a base model MBP, make sure you have 4GB ram though whichever processor speed you get. Ram is important when running Music Apps of any kind.
Any of the new MBP's should be WELL prepared to run Logic and any other Pro Audio apps you want to dabble with. I personally dont think that spending the extra $600 or more to get the 9600M graphics card is worth it for audio work. I know this openCL part of snow leopard is meant to allocate some processing power to the graphics card, but who knows how well it will end up working. Especially with CPU heavy apps like Logic Pro. I highly doubt it will be worth spending the extra money on the better graphics card.
I would get whichever you feel comfortable with, but spending hundreds more for a slightly faster processor wont make the biggest deal in the world. Just make sure you have 4GB ram in whatever model you get.
 
As someone who works with Logic and records professionally, I can tell you that the 13" 2.53 would be more than enough. I can record 10 tracks and playback 50 tracks with eqs, compressors, and convolution reverbs without my MBP even straining.
 
glad to hear that any mbp would work, cause i really dont wanna spend a whole lot on the computer, id rather spend it on equipment etc.

I definately plan to upgrade the ram to 4 gigs.

In regards to a hd upgrade, would the 5400 500 gig WD scorpio blue suit me well for logic?
iv heard negative things about the 7200 hds, and seen good numbers for the WD 5400, so would that be a good HD to throw in the MBP to use with logic or are there better options?? dont wanna spend the money on ssd
 
carsy88 said:
glad to hear that any mbp would work, cause i really dont wanna spend a whole lot on the computer, id rather spend it on equipment etc.

I definately plan to upgrade the ram to 4 gigs.

In regards to a hd upgrade, would the 5400 500 gig WD scorpio blue suit me well for logic?
iv heard negative things about the 7200 hds, and seen good numbers for the WD 5400, so would that be a good HD to throw in the MBP to use with logic or are there better options?? dont wanna spend the money on ssd
Click to expand...

Yup, that'll suit you just fine. If you want to do audio work, beware of the single audio port on the 13". I would go with the baseline 15" for the 2 audio ports.
 
If you plan to use Logic Pro, you should consider more than processor power with the MBP line, the screen size. The 13 incher is too small for using Logic Pro practically speaking. In fact, I started with the 13 incher, because I liked the compact size, but traded it in for the 15 incher and am more than happy with the screen size while using Logic Pro 9.
 
when i checked out all the mbps at the apple store i really liked the size of the 13 inch, and do plan to use an external monitor to fix the screen size issue.

As for the audio ports, i am pretty sure that i read on some posts that its a none issue. That anyone serious about recording or production work uses some kind of usb attachment or something along those lines to solve the issue, but correct me if im wrong.
 
i have the 2.8ghz 17", and when i loaded up logic 9 a basic song came along with it.. any my computer couldnt handle it.

weeeiiiiirrrrddddd. the song sucked too .
 
Thats strange that your computer couldnt handle it, seems to be plenty powerful, maby its an older mbp and you dont have an intel processor, which i beleive is needed for logic studio 9
 
carsy88 said:
Thats strange that your computer couldnt handle it, seems to be plenty powerful, maby its an older mbp and you dont have an intel processor, which i beleive is needed for logic studio 9
Click to expand...

Don't all MBP's have Intel processors? I agree, odd though. I think the Apple stores have Logic loaded on to most of the computers, you can always go fiddle with it there to get an idea. Granted you won't be able to lug all of your equipment in, it was nice to see how fast I could cruise around in Logic.
 
Mac Book for portable recording studio with logic

2 days ago, my 8 core Mac Pro broke (about 1yr old) - started switching off suddenly without warning. Contacted apple support and it was deemed a hardware issue.

So, I had planned to buy a MBP for a backup system but when I googled, "Mac Pro Suddenly Shutdown Faulty" I got all these reports of problems with Mac Book Pros shutting down automatically as well. That's got me really concerned.

I've read other accounts of Macbook, Mac Pro's and MacBook Pro's have shutdown issues.

Has anyone experience issues with the newer/current Mac Book Pro 13?

Josef Horhay
Mixing Engineer
www.acoosticzoo.com
 
I have..well, it's in my sig and works flawlessly with Logic 9. To the poster above me..WTH?
 
It depends how big your project is but a 13" macbook pro can run Logic just fine. You can put in in a 7200 rpm drive because with larger projects it will be a bottleneck if you have a slower harddrive.
4GB MEMORY is also a must for running larger projects.
If you really want FAST responds with logic go with (Intel)SSD.
 
ssdar said:
It depends how big your project is but a 13" macbook pro can run Logic just fine. You can put in in a 7200 rpm drive because with larger projects it will be a bottleneck if you have a slower harddrive.
4GB MEMORY is also a must for running larger projects.
If you really want FAST responds with logic go with (Intel)SSD.
Click to expand...

That would be much faster, but good lord is it expensive. A 160 GB Intel SSD is over $500. Plus, full Logic 9 will take up over 50GB of HD space. Add 8-12 GB for OS X, 10-20 fro iTunes, iPhoto, etc. and you could easily have well under 100 GB left. So, seeing as how the OP seems to be on a budget, he should probably steer clear of an SSD for now.
 
i would say anything over 2.0GHz with 4GB of ram and a 7200rpm drive preferably western digital
 
logic 9 runs fine on my 13" Used it for an hour today while adobe media encoder was working heavily at the same time. no problem. even on the 5400 rpm drive!

I agree with the upgrade to at least 4 GB ram.


I also use CS4, photoshop and premiere mostly, just edited my brother's wedding video completely on this thing, and it worked fine.


Remember that in a couple years when SSDs are cheaper the computer will be cheaply upgradeable to even better performance. the 5400 rpm suits me fine for now but I do salivate at the idea of an intel ssd


Id say don't worry about the 13 holding you back. Eventually you can put an SSD in for cheaper and upgrade to 8 gigs of ram. Itll be as good as ever.


PS - Get an external monitor if you dont have one! the 13" can replace a desktop if you have extra screen real estate.
 
Unless you have money burning a hole in your pocket, paying hundreds more for discreet video really isn't worth it for you. Get the cheapest MBP you can and upgrade the RAM and hard drive.
 
thats exactly what i wanted to hear. Im no professional in anything computer related, so everything top notch probably wouldnt benefit me. if i can do logic on the 13 without trouble than thats what i wanted to hear.
 
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