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I am buying an apple laptop for heavy music making Logic + Pro Tools

If you're going MBP, check and make sure that any FW devices you have or want are going to work with the new chipset.

I'm reading that Apple used the same Agere chips that caused problems in the Pre-2008 MBPs (they switched to TI earlier this year).

http://www.cubase.net/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=106153&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&sid=057ddceaed9178d25a289fc3b5b25bba

This pisses me off beyond words!! As I sit here looking at my PC and Firebox knowing I may not be able to switch to Mac and Logic anytime soon :(
 
Well it would be great to hear from someone who has bought the new MBP and is using it for music production, if you have had any problems please share!
Could they be using an updated Agere chip? and what was the problems with it?
 
I think FW will be an issue. If you are doing "heavy" recording you are going to want to say away from the M-Box. Any USB interface will be crushed by heavy audio usage.
 
Well i used the Mbox through usb at my music school and they worked pretty good, as the m box i am buying does not have enough inputs anyway to record something like drums so it does not really matter. But your probably right if i buy a proper 8+ input audio interface.
 
If you are spending so much money on software, why not get good hardware too? It should be a no brainer to get a MacBook Pro. First and most importantly is Firewire. I couldn't imagine not using Firewire for audio. Second, the larger screen will come in in handy. I would say go MacBook Pro and you won't be disappointed.
 
Yes i totally agree, i am def. going for MBP and Firewire is just the def. the best data transfer standard so i think its a must as well, i just hope apple feels the same way.
 
Emmett22 said:
Well the thing is i use Logic Pro because i like the software instruments but i like recording and editing in pro tools and plus its very nice to have when transporting stuff to a studio. I think i am going to buy a digidesign mbox which i think uses usb, but in any case, if we pretend that firewire is not an problem, is there anything else i should be aware of?

(thank for the speedy response btw.)
Click to expand...

well all I can say is you are going to buy yourself a bag of pain If you go with the USB Audio Interfaces. The MBox in particular has a long and checkered history of being problematic.

I think it would be a mistake for any pro to attempt to use the macbook. The screen is way too small even if you use an external its still far too small to be useful. There is also zero expansion options. You can't expect to do anything more than a few tracks using a USB interface and then there is the external disk you will need to record to and playback from. Again the Macbook doesn't have Firewire or expansion so you have not external drive options available.

You really need a machine with Firewire and preferably an ExpressCard/34 eSATA card for your external storage. I'd hesitate to advise you to go out and drop cash on a new MBP either without some serious evaluation on the stability of that hardware. Firstly, you need to wait for Digidesign to test and then approve the new MBP for Pro Tools use. If they don't qualify it and it has problems you out of luck. Many people do the same thing every time and complain like mad why PT is acting wieird or doesnt work when they either updated the OS or bought new untested hardware. Don't get caught out by that!!

The other thing you should be aware of is the new MBP's use a new NVidia chipset (not just the GPU) these are completely unknown and if NVidia's history of unreliably flakey chipset's have anything to go by id be extremely cautious especially for audio use.

Lastly, this really is the wrong place to be asking questions related to audio as most of the audience are not really that involved in this area of computing.

I have selected a few links below, which I urge you to read and become aware some potential caveats.

http://www.gearspace.com/board/musi...ets-can-troublesome-okt-07-till-feb-08-a.html

http://www.gearspace.com/board/musi...-use-texas-instruments-firewire-chipsets.html

http://www.gearspace.com/board/so-m.../102722-about-all-firewire-laptop-issues.html

http://www.gearspace.com/board/music-computers/335773-new-macbook-pro-lucent-agere-fw-chipset.html

best
 
I am less cautious about the Nvidia chipset (my desktop is running an NForce4 with superb audio performance), but about the Agere/LSI Firewire (and ExpressCard?) chipset. Those have lead to problems last year, so why should they be any better this year? Apple uses them because they are cheaper than TI, not because they are better.

Apart from that and screen size there is only one thing that you really need to consider when working on digital audio: CPU performance (floating-point mostly)

The 2.4 versions will perform worse then the bigger ones because of the slower clockrate and because of the smaller cache (lots digital effects algorithm and summing plus the data will likely fit better into the larger cache and make less use of RAM). The new 2.53 will perform worth than the old 2.6 and the new 2.8 will perform best.

USB2 could be very capable of delivering very good low latency performance as long as your CPU has enough headroom to push the data around (Firewire does that by itself), but most current USB devices suffer from non-optimal/bad driver implementation. Saying that I should underline that my USB2 NI Kore 1 interface has better performing Windows MME Midi drivers than my FW RME Fireface 400.
 
synth3tik said:
I think FW will be an issue. If you are doing "heavy" recording you are going to want to say away from the M-Box. Any USB interface will be crushed by heavy audio usage.
Click to expand...

Not only that, it's advisable to record larger files to a seperate hard disk rather than the system hard disk... firewire comes in handy here too.

I've heard good things about the presonus firefox, though yet to try one myself.
 
Well, one could argue that there is an eSATA connector missing on the "Pro" machines, eh?

FW Audio + eSATA HD = maximum performance (unless the LSI/Agere chip spoils it)
 
didnt they upgrade the HD connector in the new MBP. What is the performance differences between a normal firewire or USB 2 and a eSATA HD?
 
SATA is the native and much faster protocol of HDs. Firewire and USB have to translate between SATA from the HD to FW/USB which not only suffers from overhead, but also from being slower. eSATA is just the same as SATA, but "e"xternal.

FW800 = upto 800 mBIT/s = 100 mBYTE/s
eSATA = upto 300 mBYTE/s!

Modern 3,5" HDs already reach maximum physical transfer rates (reading from the platter) higher than 100 mBYTE/s, even more when reading out of their cache.

FW800 is still fine for most HDs, but if you want to connect your audio interface as well then both the audio and the HD compete for the same bus (they share it). :(
 
Ok i see, say i buy a eSATA express card, do normal extern HDs have connectors for that or do i need special eSATA HDs?
 
You need an external HD/enclosure that comes with an eSATA port. There are several around that offer a combination of eSATA + USB2 (which sounds like the best option for maximum performance + compatibility). With these you can use either depending on where you want to plug it.
 
Alright, but what is better, buy a HD and then a separate enclosure or a ready made one?
 
I don't think that matters much. In any case you don't know how good the controller is until you try it (or find some reviews on the web). I'd buy an extra enclosure just because that gives me the option to decide upon the harddrive that I build into it myself.

I'll most likely chose a 320gb 7200k HD for my laptop and then use a large 1TB 3,5" HD as external (or maybe a 500gb 2,5" one for more travelling convinience).
 
I buy my enclosures and drives separate. A) Because a raw case costs less and B) buying a raw drive is cheaper while you have more flexibility in deciding what drive you want. Personally I only use Seagate, because i've found them to be the most reliable, still offer 5 year warranty where as all the other manufacturers offer only 3 year sometimes 1. Performance may not be the highest peak but they usually have an average higher rate over the range of the platters when full.

For 2.5" enclosure solutions I use the EB2-S it covers all bases eSATA, Firewire 800 and USB2. wikid performance Oxford Semi chipset

best price on the net

http://oyendigital.com/hard-drives/store/EB2-S.html

for 3.5" I use Sarotech Hardbox M cases primarily because they have internal power (I hate external power bricks)

FHD-354USFb is my current case of choice, again covers all bases eSATA, Firewire 800, USB 2 Oxford Semi chipset. Only caveat in this case is the eSATA is only 1.5Gb not 3.0Gb. There still is no 3.0Gb eSATA,Firewire 800, USB 2 case yet. They just released a few SATA II cases with eSATA and USB2, so i've not tested a 3Gb eSATA case and compared it with the 1.5Gb eSATA case.

http://www.sarotech.com/english/product/hardbox_m_sata.html
http://www.sarotech.com/english/product/fhd-354usfb.html
 
Emmett22 said:
I think i am going to go for the 2.8
Click to expand...

I registered just so I could reply. I've been lurking the forums for a while now.

I teach at a university in a lab with 8 Mac Pros and two G5 workstations. The G5's have 003 systems, the Pros all have Mbox Minis.

I wanted to mention that you will see a lot more of a performance impact from the amount of RAM than from the processor speed with the current configurations. 2.4 - 2.53 - 2.8, you are talking about a maximum of a 400mhz difference.

I find that in virtual instrument usage the G5s in the lab are way more usable as they were originally installed as Final Cut Pro workstations and as such were given more RAM. About double what the Mac Pros have. I'm not in the room right now, but I believe it is 2GB vs 1GB (I know, I know, but I didn't consult on the install, I just added the PT setups and hardware to teach my classes).

In Native Instruments (currently Komplete 4) we can get any two instruments humming along fine. On the Pros if we add a third the machine dies. We can get two or three more on the G5's. Opening Activity Monitor shows that a ton of VM paging is the issue.

Both sets of machines are 4 core, and honestly I don't know the speeds, but the Mac Pros, if configured correctly, should annihilate the G5's.

To answer your original question, I have the original Macbook Core Duo (not 2) with 2GB of RAM, and I'm pretty happy with Pro Tools 7.4 performance on it. I also use the Native Instruments Komplete 4 package and have had pretty good luck. I don't often use more than a couple of VIs at a time though as I'm doing Sound Design work, not so much music production. I was also able to generate some HD video, and do a small amount of post-production work in PT with the HD video on this Macbook. So either new machine should be totally fine for you in that aspect.

And it sounds like you've decided, but I did want to say, that in my opinion, for me, I could never consider a non-firewire equipped machine. Of course I have a 002 at home and a few firewire drives. To take that with a grain of salt. :)
 
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