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Music Business: iMac or Mac Pro

N

No1Roots4Goliat

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 25, 2008
20
0
Hey all. A friend and I are jump starting a new music label in the coming weeks and were looking into purchasing a new Mac to finish off the label's first artist's debut album.

Initially, we were very interested in a maxed-out specs iMac, but upon further research, I realized the Mac Pro has a quad core processor. I already own Logic Pro Studio as well as Pro Tools, so software isn't necessarily a question in the buying processor as far as pre-installation is concerned.

Can anyone here give me a little advice on which would be better bang for the buck (considering a budget of ~$4000 at max [don't mind keyboards & monitors, we got them])? Is there a true performance differential between a dual-core and a quad-core? Thanks all :D
 
For what your doing, yes, definitel, in your line of business, a crash or a page out will lose you money, definitely get an absolute "standard" imac, with 8 cores, and you'll be set for a few years, if your staing in this industry.
 
I would definitely go with the Mac pro. More longevity. Plus, the iMac is pretty much as-is aside from RAM, whereas you can customize the Mac Pro aftermarket (meaning the future).
 
The iMac has tons of power of music and is great as a personal writing rig buuuut....

It's your business, so I would go for the Mac Pro. Even the standard model currently has so much power that it will be good for years. It has proper expansion if you decided to go "more pro" and add truly low latency audio (Pro Tools TDM or Apogee Symphony). It has space for dedicated internal audio drives (if you want a dedicated audio drive on the iMac it will have to be firewire, and will be sharing a bus with any firewire audio interface, since they are all extensions of the same fw800 bus).

I would get the basic config, then add a chunk of memory and an extra drive (which you can get much cheaper than from Apple), plus AppleCare (it's your business!) and not forgetting one or two big firewire drives for regular backups.
 
Sweet. Thank you all.

A few more questions...

Exactly where could I find the RAM to upgrade on the MP, as well as hard drives (for the hard drive bays), etc. etc.?

And how hard is adding this stuff on? I have a MB (Mid-2007 edition) and found adding RAM is a simple task.

Does adding on myself break the AppleCare protection?
 
No1Roots4Goliat said:
Sweet. Thank you all.

A few more questions...

Exactly where could I find the RAM to upgrade on the MP, as well as hard drives (for the hard drive bays), etc. etc.?

And how hard is adding this stuff on? I have a MB (Mid-2007 edition) and found adding RAM is a simple task.

Does adding on myself break the AppleCare protection?
Click to expand...

I have a 2008 Mac Pro and recommend crucial.com for the ram and newegg.com for the drives. Adding these to a Mac Pro is very easy and does not break the AppleCare contract.
 
Yes sorry, I meant mac pro, for sure, time is money, you do NOT want page outs and having artists have to wait while you reboot.
 
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