Music production on a PowerMac G5 DP 2.0 GHZ, is that a viable option?

[stasp]

So I'm a blind music producer. I'm currently running a Precision T7810 hack with Sequoia, a bunch of NI libraries that I don't even take that much advantage of, so I want to try using a G5 as a dedicated machine for some beat making.
My plan is to use the G5 with Logic Pro 9.0.2, and a Roland Fantom-XR hooked up to it.
I suppose I have the following questions:
Is there some kind of of a list with the latest DAWs, plugins, ETC supported in Leopard?
Which OS is better for this purpose, Tiger or Leopard?
And finally, a question that will likely not get a response, but just in case any blind musicians who used to compose / produce on macs in the 2005 - 2009 time frame see this thread, how accessible is the software from that era? Which DAW and plugins are best for VoiceOver accessibility?
I also have a 2007 Macbook on the way (non pro) would that potentially be a better machine to use for this kind of purpose?
Thanks in advance for any insight!

 

[TheShortTimer]

Which OS is better for this purpose, Tiger or Leopard?

Hi there. I would wager that Leopard might be better because it will probably have access to later software. Regarding the other questions I will let those who are more knowledgeable offer their insights.

What kinds of music do you produce?

 

[StoneJack]

So I'm a blind music producer. I'm currently running a Precision T7810 hack with Sequoia, a bunch of NI libraries that I don't even take that much advantage of, so I want to try using a G5 as a dedicated machine for some beat making.
My plan is to use the G5 with Logic Pro 9.0.2, and a Roland Fantom-XR hooked up to it.
I suppose I have the following questions:
Is there some kind of of a list with the latest DAWs, plugins, ETC supported in Leopard?
Which OS is better for this purpose, Tiger or Leopard?
And finally, a question that will likely not get a response, but just in case any blind musicians who used to compose / produce on macs in the 2005 - 2009 time frame see this thread, how accessible is the software from that era? Which DAW and plugins are best for VoiceOver accessibility?
I also have a 2007 Macbook on the way (non pro) would that potentially be a better machine to use for this kind of purpose?
Thanks in advance for any insight!

I would recommend you use what you have until it is too outdated and then move to M chip macs with latest software. If that old computers and OS do what you need, you may not need to upgrade but otherwise, software and hardware are progressing a lot. So make your choice. I would be surprised if anything modern supports Leopard OS X.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

According to Apple, in order to use Logic Pro 9, you need to be running a minimum osx version of 10.6.8 which is Intel only. This osx will not run on a PowerPC Mac, like a G5.

Logic Pro reqs

Because of this, IMO the MacBook is the option to move forward with if your workflow requires Logic Pro.

 

[ojfd]

Guys, why are you pushing @stasp towards Intel or ARM?
If he wants to use G5, so be it. If not Logic 9, then there was Logic 8 or 7 or other things.

I'm currently running a Precision T7810 hack with Sequoia.

Sequoia as a Mac operating system or Sequoia, the multitrack editor on PC? If latter, it is way superior to anything native on a Mac. I am a Mac person and I rarely say something like that.

Is there some kind of of a list with the latest DAWs, plugins, ETC supported in Leopard?

No, not really. You have to ask around.
How are you going to record/produce? Multitrack audio sessions, or one track at a time at home? Live audio material or virtual instruments? MIDI instruments? Audio plug-ins - yes/no? How many tracks?

Which OS is better for this purpose, Tiger or Leopard?

Tiger is probably lighter on resources, but you definitely will find more software that only works in Leopard.

(I skipped the G5 generation entirely, but I kept my eye on what was going on)

 

[TheShortTimer]

Guys, why are you pushing @stasp towards Intel or ARM?
If he wants to use G5, so be it. If not Logic 9, then there was Logic 8 or 7 or other things.

Hey, I answered in the context of Leopard, Tiger and the G5. After all, this is a PowerPC forum...

 

[m1maverick]

Guys, why are you pushing @stasp towards Intel or ARM?
If he wants to use G5, so be it. If not Logic 9, then there was Logic 8 or 7 or other things.

Sometimes it's not just about answering the specific question but rather making recommendations about potentially better alternatives which the OP may not have considered. Especially when his requirements (using Logic Pro 9.0.2) cannot be met with his proposed solution (I am taking CoE's statement about Logic 9 as accurate).

I realize this is a PPC forum but that doesn't mean non PPC alternatives should not be proposed.

 

[AdamBuker]

If you want a fully compatible version of Logic Studio that works similarly to 9 that is guaranteed PowerPC compatible, use Logic 8/Logic Studio. If you absolutely must run Logic Pro 9/Logic Studio 2 and need all apps that come in the studio bundle to work, you should look at a cheese grater Mac Pro instead of running it on a G5. If you only need Logic 9, you'll probably just fine on your G5 but it is not directly supported.

I run Logic 8 Pro myself on my Late 2005 2.0ghz Dual Core G5 in 10.5.8 and it does everything that I need it to do.

You can install Logic 9 on PPC but it was never supported officially by Apple. You might consider Logic 8 unless you know there is a feature you need/want that 9 has that 8 does not. From what I understand, not all of the Logic apps in version 9 will install (like Compressor and Soundtrack Pro) but Logic itself does as does Waveburner. Check this thread on the Logic User's Group forum for more info.

Here's info on Logic 8, and Logic 9.

If you work mostly with midi sequences and software instruments, you probably won't notice a difference. If you record mostly audio and rely on quantization, it might be worth it to install 9 instead of 8 since that gets you the Flex Time feature. Beyond that they are very similar and I have never found myself wanting with Logic 8.

I stick with 8 because I don't do a lot of heavy production and editing and it is perfectly compatible with PowerPC. I'm a one-man-band outfit myself and I would rather do another take till it's right than try to edit a given take into perfection. I use a combination of software instruments and real instrument along with about 2-4 plug-ins per track with most projects having between 8 and 24 tracks. For me what I value most is that this setup is stable and it works. It has served me for nearly 15 years. Having used even the newest version of Logic on Apple Silicon, the stability, UI, and everything about Logic 8 just seems to get out of my way so that I can work.

Hope this helps.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

As he’s a blind producer, my thought was he is choosing LP9 for a work flow related reason and as such, his work flow requires logic pro 9. In order to use LP9, Apple states it requires at least 10.6.8. In order to achieve 10.6.8 he requires an Intel Mac. The Intel Mac available to him is a MacBook.

If his requirement instead is hardware, then there are a number of alternative DAWs he can use with PowerPC and should work great.

As he has specific needs being blind, stated software preferences of OP was IMO paramount to a hardware directive of a forum. I’m sure OP will clarify if using the PM G5 is more important to him than the software. If that is the case he can look at earlier versions of LP or others.

 

[AdamBuker]

As he’s a blind producer, my thought was he is choosing LP9 for a work flow related reason and as such, his work flow requires logic pro 9. In order to use LP9, Apple states it requires at least 10.6.8. In order to achieve 10.6.8 he requires an Intel Mac. The Intel Mac available to him is a MacBook.

If his requirement instead is hardware, then there are a number of alternative DAWs he can use with PowerPC and should work great.

As he has specific needs being blind, stated software preferences of OP was IMO paramount to a hardware directive of a forum. I’m sure OP will clarify if using the PM G5 is more important to him than the software. If that is the case he can look at earlier versions of LP or others.

If it's a problem of visualization, the UI of Logic 8 is exactly same as that of Logic 9 and I don't know of any features in either app that would impact his particular use case in that regard.

 

[stasp]

What kinds of music do you produce?

Mostly electronic. Primarily Boom Bap, J Dilla style beats, but I do tend to experiment with other genres too. Not much acoustic stuff, mostly virtual instruments.

 

[stasp]

I would recommend you use what you have until it is too outdated and then move to M chip macs with latest software. If that old computers and OS do what you need, you may not need to upgrade but otherwise, software and hardware are progressing a lot. So make your choice. I would be surprised if anything modern supports Leopard OS X.

I was thinking of this, I will likely combine the G5 setup with modern computers for certain things that might require it, but I tend to do a lot of random experimenting on my computers and as such sometimes I find my self wanting to make music but something doesn't work because I just reinstalled my OS for the 3rd time this month lol.
I just want a workstation that I set up once, chuck in a 2TB drive for a bunch of samples, hook up my Mbox2 Pro interface to it and just have it always available, no matter if I feel like running Arch on my daily driver with no blind accessible way to make music, and knowing my tendency to reinstall all the time I wouldn't be that surprised if this happens.

 

[stasp]

According to Apple, in order to use Logic Pro 9, you need to be running a minimum osx version of 10.6.8 which is Intel only. This osx will not run on a PowerPC Mac, like a G5.

Logic Pro reqs

Because of this, IMO the MacBook is the option to move forward with if your workflow requires Logic Pro.

You can actually use Logic 9.0.2 on PowerPC, but not anything higher than that. I'd be fine sticking with Logic 8 just as long as the VoiceOver accessibility is adequate.

 

[stasp]

Guys, why are you pushing @stasp towards Intel or ARM?
If he wants to use G5, so be it. If not Logic 9, then there was Logic 8 or 7 or other things.


Sequoia as a Mac operating system or Sequoia, the multitrack editor on PC? If latter, it is way superior to anything native on a Mac. I am a Mac person and I rarely say something like that.

No, not really. You have to ask around.
How are you going to record/produce? Multitrack audio sessions, or one track at a time at home? Live audio material or virtual instruments? MIDI instruments? Audio plug-ins - yes/no? How many tracks?

Tiger is probably lighter on resources, but you definitely will find more software that only works in Leopard.

(I skipped the G5 generation entirely, but I kept my eye on what was going on)

I ment Sequoia as the OS, that's what I currently daily-drive and do all my work on.
I've never had more than 10 tracks in my project. Most of them are either audio tracks with samples on them, or things that I bounce in place after I'm done processing it through whatever FX chain I want since it's often easier to do edits to it in audio form.
Sometimes I find my self using virtual instruments, but I'm planning to get a Fantom X6 to take care of that aspect of my workflow.

 

[stasp]

If you want a fully compatible version of Logic Studio that works similarly to 9 that is guaranteed PowerPC compatible, use Logic 8/Logic Studio. If you absolutely must run Logic Pro 9/Logic Studio 2 and need all apps that come in the studio bundle to work, you should look at a cheese grater Mac Pro instead of running it on a G5. If you only need Logic 9, you'll probably just fine on your G5 but it is not directly supported.

I run Logic 8 Pro myself on my Late 2005 2.0ghz Dual Core G5 in 10.5.8 and it does everything that I need it to do.

You can install Logic 9 on PPC but it was never supported officially by Apple. You might consider Logic 8 unless you know there is a feature you need/want that 9 has that 8 does not. From what I understand, not all of the Logic apps in version 9 will install (like Compressor and Soundtrack Pro) but Logic itself does as does Waveburner. Check this thread on the Logic User's Group forum for more info.

Here's info on Logic 8, and Logic 9.

If you work mostly with midi sequences and software instruments, you probably won't notice a difference. If you record mostly audio and rely on quantization, it might be worth it to install 9 instead of 8 since that gets you the Flex Time feature. Beyond that they are very similar and I have never found myself wanting with Logic 8.

I stick with 8 because I don't do a lot of heavy production and editing and it is perfectly compatible with PowerPC. I'm a one-man-band outfit myself and I would rather do another take till it's right than try to edit a given take into perfection. I use a combination of software instruments and real instrument along with about 2-4 plug-ins per track with most projects having between 8 and 24 tracks. For me what I value most is that this setup is stable and it works. It has served me for nearly 15 years. Having used even the newest version of Logic on Apple Silicon, the stability, UI, and everything about Logic 8 just seems to get out of my way so that I can work.

Hope this helps.

The biggest reason why I wanted LP9 is because of accessibility, as I mentioned earlier. The information on blind producers utilising LP8 / LP9 for production is so limitted that I might just have to test them my self side-by-side, then revive my blog and publish an article so someone else looking for this info in the future doesn't have to struggle like I do.

I think that's all the questions y'all had answered, I'll check if I missed something in a moment and respond to it if so.

I had another question regarding memory, I'm getting the early-2005 model with only 4GB of maximum memory. Will this be enough for my kind of workflow?

Sorry for the chain-posting, I just wasn't sure if it was possible to reply to multiple posts at the same time, and thought it might be easier to do it this way, but if that's not advised to let me know.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Mostly electronic. Primarily Boom Bap, J Dilla style beats, but I do tend to experiment with other genres too. Not much acoustic stuff, mostly virtual instruments.

Nice! J Dilla is dearly missed. Maybe you can share some tracks or snippets eventually.

 

[AdamBuker]

I’d recommend 8GB ram otherwise you might have to start freezing tracks.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

You can actually use Logic 9.0.2 on PowerPC, but not anything higher than that. I'd be fine sticking with Logic 8 just as long as the VoiceOver accessibility is adequate.

Thats very cool. I did some deeper digging and yeah LP9 is a universal binary so it will install just fine on PPC. It looks like 10.6.8 is the req for compatibility of stability features that exist starting in SL; For example Logic node requires SL so Intel.

I had another question regarding memory, I'm getting the early-2005 model with only 4GB of maximum memory. Will this be enough for my kind of workflow?

Apple states 2gb as the min and recommends at least 4gb for optimal operation, so while more ram is always wecome, Apple says you should be ok with 4gb. If you had access to Node, you could offload audio processing tasks to other Intel macs on your network.

What type of macbook do you have on the way?

 

[AdamBuker]

I just tried to use Logic 8 with Voice Over, and I don't think it will work for your needs. It did not distinguish any of the transport control buttons. The voice only called each item as 'button' with nothing descriptive about function. The mixing console was worse in that nothing I moused over seemed to indicate that it was a button, slider, pop-up menu let alone label anything functional. It did read the sub-menus in the arrange window just fine.

I have no idea if Logic 9 is better in this regard. I have not found any info on Logic 9 and its compatibility with Voice Over. I don't know if it's going to be much different to be honest.

However, Logic X in Sequoia has Voice Over features working functionally. If you have an Intel/Apple Silicon based mac, Logic should work well enough for your needs. If you already have such a mac available, it might be worth the purchase price. I know you mentioned about wanting a box to just have for music. I don't know what budget you are working with, but you might consider a used mac and put a 2TB nvme drive in a thunderbolt enclosure for your libraries and just leave that offline and never update it once you have it running the way you want.

 

[barracuda156]

In order to use LP9, Apple states it requires at least 10.6.8. In order to achieve 10.6.8 he requires an Intel Mac.

This may not be exactly so, since 10.6.8 (well, with some fixes here and there) can run now on PowerPC, but the primary question is different: does Logic Pro 9 itself have ppc slices? If not, then OS version requirement is just irrelevant. If yes, then likely it can run on 10.6 ppc, if not 10.5.8.

 

[stasp]

Thats very cool. I did some deeper digging and yeah LP9 is a universal binary so it will install just fine on PPC. It looks like 10.6.8 is the req for compatibility of stability features that exist starting in SL; For example Logic node requires SL so Intel.


Apple states 2gb as the min and recommends at least 4gb for optimal operation, so while more ram is always wecome, Apple says you should be ok with 4gb. If you had access to Node, you could offload audio processing tasks to other Intel macs on your network.

What type of macbook do you have on the way?

The seller just said 2007 Macbook, so I suspect either the mid-2007 model or late-2007, I guess we'll find out tomorrow once it arrives.

I just tried to use Logic 8 with Voice Over, and I don't think it will work for your needs. It did not distinguish any of the transport control buttons. The voice only called each item as 'button' with nothing descriptive about function. The mixing console was worse in that nothing I moused over seemed to indicate that it was a button, slider, pop-up menu let alone label anything functional. It did read the sub-menus in the arrange window just fine.

I have no idea if Logic 9 is better in this regard. I have not found any info on Logic 9 and its compatibility with Voice Over. I don't know if it's going to be much different to be honest.

However, Logic X in Sequoia has Voice Over features working functionally. If you have an Intel/Apple Silicon based mac, Logic should work well enough for your needs. If you already have such a mac available, it might be worth the purchase price. I know you mentioned about wanting a box to just have for music. I don't know what budget you are working with, but you might consider a used mac and put a 2TB nvme drive in a thunderbolt enclosure for your libraries and just leave that offline and never update it once you have it running the way you want.

I might honestly do that. Budget isn't huge especially since I also considered picking up a Fantom X6 which isn't the cheapest, but this whole entire thing started because I wanted to get a PPC Mac to play around with and thought to my self "What if I make it a dedicated music machine?" I also care about Firewire support because I use two legacy interfaces, the MOTU 828 MKII and the Mbox2 Pro.
I might just get an older CMP or Imac. I had a CMP 3,1 and 5,1 but I gave both away to my family members. The 3,1 was my daily driver from december 2020 to basically almost the same time in 2022, it was a great machine. Super easy to manage drives in that thing with no sight as well.
In terms of Logic with VO, I use LP11.1 regularly on my hackintosh, and it works largely fine. A lot of what we do in Logic as blind users is use quite a few keybinds. Ironically, even though I was born blind, I still prefer DAWs that have a nice visual interface that I can cursor around so Logic works great for this purpose.
This is why I was unable to master Reaper when I wanted to do that, because the Osara accessibility plugin basically turns Reaper in to almost an entirely keybind driven interface for blind users.
I did find some information about Logic accessibility from 2013 on the Applevis forums, people seem to say that Protools is better so I might look in to it.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

This may not be exactly so, since 10.6.8 (well, with some fixes here and there) can run now on PowerPC, but the primary question is different: does Logic Pro 9 itself have ppc slices? If not, then OS version requirement is just irrelevant. If yes, then likely it can run on 10.6 ppc, if not 10.5.8.

Being that LP9 is a universal binary, I’d assume it would install ok on a ppc box running the community 10.6.8 ppc build. If that build includes the stability and compatibility components Apple spoke to, it might work pretty flawlessly.

That would be pretty amazing. I have a spare a1047 identical it sounds to OP. If I can find the time (and I can find my boxed LP9 -which I temporarily have misplaced it seems LOL) I’ll give this a shot on my G5.

 

[AdamBuker]

Being that LP9 is a universal binary, I’d assume it would install ok on a ppc box running the community 10.6.8 ppc build. If that build includes the stability and compatibility components Apple spoke to, it might work pretty flawlessly.

That would be pretty amazing. I have a spare a1047 identical it sounds to OP. If I can find the time (and I can find my boxed LP9 -which I temporarily have misplaced it seems LOL) I’ll give this a shot on my G5.

I think the process is fairly similar to that of installing Final Cut Pro 7 on PPC. I think in both cases you can install the app in question by using Pacifist or some other method to bypass the installer checks.

 

[barracuda156]

Being that LP9 is a universal binary, I’d assume it would install ok on a ppc box running the community 10.6.8 ppc build. If that build includes the stability and compatibility components Apple spoke to, it might work pretty flawlessly.

That would be pretty amazing. I have a spare a1047 identical it sounds to OP. If I can find the time (and I can find my boxed LP9 -which I temporarily have misplaced it seems LOL) I’ll give this a shot on my G5.

For anything offline that build should work reasonably well, though I have some concerns, in principle, re some OpenGL stuff (but it is likely not an issue with LP anyway). So worth trying.

 

[stasp]

Being that LP9 is a universal binary, I’d assume it would install ok on a ppc box running the community 10.6.8 ppc build. If that build includes the stability and compatibility components Apple spoke to, it might work pretty flawlessly.

That would be pretty amazing. I have a spare a1047 identical it sounds to OP. If I can find the time (and I can find my boxed LP9 -which I temporarily have misplaced it seems LOL) I’ll give this a shot on my G5.
Wow, I didn't know there was a 10.6.8 unofficial build! I thought all we had was the preview build, and Sorbet Leopard with some of it's components. I'll have to check that out.

Anyway, the Macbook arrived. As I thought, it is indeed a Macbook2.1. It's quite filthy, but I wouldn't expect much more for 25 bucks.
Everything seems to work though, I successfully installed Snow Leopard and Windows XP via BootCamp. I'll get on to testing daw accessibility and report back here.

Edit: Oops, I ment to say 25 instead of 225. I wouldn't dare to buy a broken MB for that much lol.