G4 Powerbook For Music Production

[greenbd]

Marble,

Thanks for the more specific link. I'm looking for something such as the Uno on that page--a single device that plugs directly into my MIDI I/O ports and a USB port on my computer.

Sabenth,

PowerBooks charge their batteries when plugged in. Running on battery power alone, battery life will depend on what you're doing with your computer. If the computer's asleep, it'll last between two and three days. If you're using it with the screen dimmed, you can get close to three hours. If you're playing a DVD or doing something else that keeps the computer busy, it probably won't get above two hours. Newer PowerBook models have longer battery life than older ones, but they also have brighter screens and faster disks. As far as I know, you can't change the sound cards in a Mac laptop. In fact, I don't think they even have them. I know video cards and processors are nearly impossible to upgrade.

 

[Marble]

As a quick clarification I'd like to point out that no Macintosh comes with a soundcard these days. All of the audio processing is done by the CPU through a part of the system that you'll hear called CoreAudio (and its subvariants, CoreMIDI etc. etc.). CoreAudio is actually very efficient, and my Powerbook gets about 2ms of average latency (slightly more when the computer is disconnected from a power source, as I have enabled an option to reduce processor performance to increase battery life - but you probably won't be using a lot of MIDI on the go). If you own a Macintosh with slots for PCI expansions, you can add soundcards like the M-Audio Revolution (which though not exactly geared directly towards musicians like its Audiophile line, will get you good latencies and take the work off of your poor G4 or G5 and has a nice high resolution).

In other words, I can't think of a single Powerbook user who has seriously missed soundcard capabilities in their laptop enough to complain about it.

Greenbd, the Uno is good but if you're ever going to consider another MIDI device, a 2x2 box might be appropriate, though obviously less portable. But that's what you're looking for I'm sure.

 

[adamjay]

i'm running a G4 12" powerbook 867mhz, 640mb and i gotta say it handles all my audio app's so smoothly. There are 4 main programs i use, Reason 2.5, Ableton Live 3.0, Bias Peak 4, and Final Scratch. aside from waiting on the new Final Scratch update (with new Panther drivers). i have never been more confident with a machine in the studio or on the stage than i am with my 12" G4. The Audio output and input are extremely clean, with very low latency. Compared to my old windows machine (P4 1.7ghz) the latency is practically non-existent on my Mac.
It handles my Evolution UC-33 very well, as well as my Edirol Um-1.

 

[Marble]

I've only ever had problems with my machine running enormous fat-ass VSTs like FXpansion's BFD, which streams lots and lots of audio data from the hard drive (which is too slow and consequently creates horrible stutters), and just dominates the computer to the point where opening Mail at the same time takes maybe two minutes.

More RAM would probably help that issue, as I am only working with 512 MB.