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Logic & New Mac Pro...

L

Level103

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 10, 2008
2
0
Hey guys,
I'm going to purchase one of the new Mac Pro's over the next month or so, and am probably going to go with the 2.8 8 Core, as I can get it for £1600 with my student discount :)

However...I'm currently using a Powerbook G4 1.67Ghz and 2GB RAM, and I run Logic 8, on Leopard, and its pretty fustrating but it works.

I know I'll see a big difference between Powerbook G4 and new Mac Pro 2.8 but how much difference?!

I'm going to use my Powerbook G4 for internet and iTunes etc.

Will my Mac Pro last me two years of use with Logic? I'm going to load it with a Raptor for my apps, and 6GB RAM from Crucial taking it up to 8GB.

Any thoughts?

p.s This is my first post! :D
 
Welcome to the forum.

For that type of work, this mac should last you a very long time. The audio guy I work with on a lot of projects has a three year old 2x 2.?? G5 running Logic 8, and pro tools. He says that is enough for him so he is not updating (yet).
 
Level103 said:
Will my Mac Pro last me two years of use with Logic? I'm going to load it with a Raptor for my apps, and 6GB RAM from Crucial taking it up to 8GB.
D
Click to expand...

Crucial aren't doing the new macpro ram yet i had to order from america.
 
It is going to be about 12-15 times faster, in fact feck it, more. You cannot even comprehend how much faster...

It will last you a lot longer than 2 years...
 
Well, I use Logic and just ordered a 2.8 Octo. I'm expecting a lot more than 2 years from it. :)
 
I'll let you know in 3-5 weeks when mine comes in. I've used Logic on my 12" Powerbook w/ Leopard (frustrating, yes..), and on an AMD Hackintosh which was a lot better. So I would imagine it will be a significant difference.


*Edit* - I was just dreaming out loud of how GREAT it will be to be able to work in Logic now without having to lock every single track except for the one I'm working on at the time.
 
um, yeah, the new MP's will kill it.

kill it!


i got mine for my home studio (cubase 4, reason and native instruments plugs) and i set it at 124 samples (~8ms latency) and iStat tells me that all 8 cores were at about 20%.

KILLS IT!!!!!!

(heheheheh sorry, i'm a little giddy about the fact that all my latency problems are looooong gooooone.....)
 
I use Logic 8 with my stalk base Mac Pro, 2.66 in June 07.
I purchased all the upgrades from 3rd party people.
Then grabbed 2X2 gigs of ram and 3 Seagate 320 gig drives.
I use lots of plugs and instruments from Waves to BFD, EzDrummer etc.
Make sure you have a dedicated HD for your Audio files and another for Samples. Then I use the 4th drive as a back-up (timemachine) for my OS drive. I have yet to use over 35% CPU power and ram tends to use about 2 gigs. It is plenty of power for the Audio Recording doing roughly 30 stereo tracks as well as instruments, with 4-5 plugs on each.
It just works great, I've had no problems in Tiger or Leopard.
Only had one issue with a 3rd party plugin (Ivory) that would not work in Leopard after I migrated a month ago. But Synthogy has since updated the plug and it's working great now.
even though I like to stay on the bleeding edge, I have no real need to.
Eventually I'd like the SSD disks in it when they become affordable and I can easily get more ram as those prices have come way down. Works great with my Acer 22" widescreen, may go to a dual someday, but I don't have to.
As well I can do lot's of downloading, email, surfing etc. while a heavy loaded song is playing back @ a low buffer setting.
It's a workhorse that's for sure.
I think an 8 core would just be idling for what I'd have to do with it.
Later
Brian
 
I just did the exact same upgrade as you. I had been using a 1.67GHz PowerBook for Logic 8 and I just upgraded to the 2.8GHz Octopus. Oh boy does the PowerBook get frustrating! We are in for a treat!
 
£1600 - Are you in college or university? I just bought a Mac Pro yesterday and it was £1565 including Airport and a £70 printer! So you should be paying more in the range of £1470 (provided you're in uni - if you're not, find someone who is!)
 
jnc said:
£1600 - Are you in college or university? I just bought a Mac Pro yesterday and it was £1565 including Airport and a £70 printer! So you should be paying more in the range of £1470 (provided you're in uni - if you're not, find someone who is!)
Click to expand...

Hey,
I'm looking at getting a Mac Pro (I'm a university student, studying IT (how ironic)).

Just wondering if you'd recommend the Mac Pro over the iMac for a bit of sound recording, video editing, etc.

I'm currently using a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo Windows PC with 4GB Ram, 500GB HDD, and a 320GB HDD. But I HATE WINDOZE!!!

Anyway, let me know your thoughts...Only thing I think I'd miss choosing the Mac Pro over the iMac is the aesthetics.
 
gazfocus said:
Hey,
I'm looking at getting a Mac Pro (I'm a university student, studying IT (how ironic)).

Just wondering if you'd recommend the Mac Pro over the iMac for a bit of sound recording, video editing, etc.

I'm currently using a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo Windows PC with 4GB Ram, 500GB HDD, and a 320GB HDD. But I HATE WINDOZE!!!

Anyway, let me know your thoughts...Only thing I think I'd miss choosing the Mac Pro over the iMac is the aesthetics.
Click to expand...

you could run quite a bit of stuff w/ the new imacs. just make sure you have an external drive for audio files and another for samples if you're into that.

but you could do even more with a pro....
 
Thanks. As I say, I'm just debating between the iMac and the Mac Pro. If I bought either, I would have to upgrade the hard drives and RAM but the Mac Pro offers a higher level of RAM rather than the iMac's 4GB barrier.

Does anyone know if Apple are likely to do anything about this RAM limit in the iMacs?
 
gazfocus said:
Thanks. As I say, I'm just debating between the iMac and the Mac Pro. If I bought either, I would have to upgrade the hard drives and RAM but the Mac Pro offers a higher level of RAM rather than the iMac's 4GB barrier.

Does anyone know if Apple are likely to do anything about this RAM limit in the iMacs?
Click to expand...


The only people that "know" are Apple themselves. My guess (and it's nothing more than a random guess) is that Apple won't raise the RAM ceiling till the next generation of motherboards. Could be middle of the year or could be later...

For "...a bit of sound recording, video editing, etc." the new iMac is plenty good. Max out the RAM, get a fast external drive for Audio and a good interface and it's happy days. The new iMacs come with 7200RPM internal drives so there's little reason to mess with those.
 
Any Logic users out there, I'd be obliged if you could help me out. A loved one went way over the top at Christmas and bought me a copy of Logic Studio.

It's way over my head, but before I devote the entire rest of my life to reading the manuals, can someone tell me how to access Sculpture? Or any plugins? I'm stuck, staring blankly at the screen, feeling very small.

TIA
 
Curious,

What's the benefit to having the samples on one drive and your audio (recording) files on another? I was under the assumption that the OS should be on one drive and the audio on another. Can someone outline the benefit of separating audio content and samples?

Thanks. :D
 
Blogger said:
Any Logic users out there, I'd be obliged if you could help me out. A loved one went way over the top at Christmas and bought me a copy of Logic Studio.

It's way over my head, but before I devote the entire rest of my life to reading the manuals, can someone tell me how to access Sculpture? Or any plugins? I'm stuck, staring blankly at the screen, feeling very small.

TIA
Click to expand...

Create a new track - mark the option for software instrument. That should give you a green icon in the arrange section.

Bottom left, above the fader you should see an option labelled I/O

Click and hold the first button and a contextual window opens with all the softsynths. Look for sculpture and choose the stereo option. If you MIDI controller is working it should play.

Plugin insert effects work the same way from the inserts buttons.

The Manual is surprisingly helpful but also check out the Apple Pro training books. Very good and totally updated for Logic 8.

I was in the same position as you - my wife bought me a copy of Logic 7 for Christmas just after the programme was released. It took my a while to make the transition from a standalone HD recorder. Truth is, a lot of people who know what they are doing have also struggled.
 
Wild-Bill said:
Curious,

What's the benefit to having the samples on one drive and your audio (recording) files on another? I was under the assumption that the OS should be on one drive and the audio on another. Can someone outline the benefit of separating audio content and samples?

Thanks. :D
Click to expand...

Well it's the same advantage of separating the audio from the programme files.

In practice it depends on how you work. If you BOTH use a lot of heavy samples AND do a lot of recording, then it is advantageous to have two drives. If you use a lot of samples and do little recording of live audio, or do a lot of live audio and use few samples, then it doesn't matter as much.
 
Using separate drives for Os, Audio and Samples just let's the drives do what they are doing. As well for backups of the OS is easier and backups for clients for their Audio files are separate and lastly the Samples are usually huge files, like Ivory I think has 6-7 Dvd's to load all the stuff. You could easily fill you're OS drive full of samples in no time and some of those samples stream off the harddrive, so the reading is being hit hard but the writing isn't so bad, but stops a lot of glitches on it's own.
Lastly if any of those drives die, you have only one task to do. Not try and recover everything. I took the Mac pro for this over and iMac etc. as I wanted to simplify all that stuff. Some samples as of now don't let you load them on another drive as well.
Later
Brian
 
fernmeister said:
Create a new track - mark the option for software instrument. That should give you a green icon in the arrange section.

Bottom left, above the fader you should see an option labelled I/O

Click and hold the first button and a contextual window opens with all the softsynths. Look for sculpture and choose the stereo option. If you MIDI controller is working it should play.

Plugin insert effects work the same way from the inserts buttons.

The Manual is surprisingly helpful but also check out the Apple Pro training books. Very good and totally updated for Logic 8.

I was in the same position as you - my wife bought me a copy of Logic 7 for Christmas just after the programme was released. It took my a while to make the transition from a standalone HD recorder. Truth is, a lot of people who know what they are doing have also struggled.
Click to expand...

Hey. I really appreciate that. Thanks fernmeister!
 
hey guys..

can i ask- what do u mean by 'audio files'? do u mean the audio instrument files that partner their samples? or do u mean files made from live audio recording?

i use vienna symphonic library samples, and am waiting for my mac pro 8 core 2.8ghz to arrive together with logic studio. i ordered an extra internal hd to put my samples on, but with their partnering audio instrument files staying put in the 'logic instruments' file on the user hd as logic does not allow them to go anywhere else (correct me if i'm wrong here..?).

does the way i'm planning on organising my files make sense?

cheers for your help
 
when we say samples we are referring to those samples (say VSL) that are being triggered by your sampler (EXS). when we say audio we mean recorded files. two totally different worlds. one for streaming and the other for efficient no latency playback. so from one to the other bounce your vienna instrument and send it to the other drive so you can back to taking advantage of more live instruments off your sample drive. make sense?

i know of a guy that swears that the only way to efficiently do vienna and ivory is to have a seperate raptor drive for each library to ward off pops and clicks. he has 14 raptor drives hooked up to eSATA cards.
 
Composer87 said:
hey guys..

can i ask- what do u mean by 'audio files'? do u mean the audio instrument files that partner their samples? or do u mean files made from live audio recording?

i use vienna symphonic library samples, and am waiting for my mac pro 8 core 2.8ghz to arrive together with logic studio. i ordered an extra internal hd to put my samples on, but with their partnering audio instrument files staying put in the 'logic instruments' file on the user hd as logic does not allow them to go anywhere else (correct me if i'm wrong here..?).

does the way i'm planning on organising my files make sense?

cheers for your help
Click to expand...

i'm not a logic user, but you definitely don't want your samples on your boot drive.
i'm sure you can choose to put them on a different drive, though someone else would have to tell you how if you're not sure.....

edit: and oh yea, like bass108 said, audio file typically refers to what your recording and samples refers to virtual instrument stuff.
 
Bass108 said:
i know of a guy that swears that the only way to efficiently do vienna and ivory is to have a seperate raptor drive for each library to ward off pops and clicks. he has 14 raptor drives hooked up to eSATA cards.
Click to expand...

cheesum crow 14 drives? makes my paltry 4 sound much more reasonable....
 
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