Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I still own and operate my first G5 for music production, which was purchased in 2004. It is no longer my primary DAW, but I keep it running with the original software configuration I used to produce music during my 20s and can open all my original sessions, recordings and many of my original plugin combinations and presets.

I've never put any time into using Logic, as I started with Pro Tools LE, and moved onto Ableton Live (which I now have running at Live Standard 12 on an iMac 27-inch Late 2015 Retina 5K)

My PowerPC rig is a Power Mac G5 Dual 1.8GHz with 8GB RAM and 1TB 7200rpm HDD.

Mac OS X: Leopard 10.5.8

My DAWs and plugins that run on the G5 in Leopard:
  • Pro Tools LE 7.4.2cs4 with Original USB Digidesign Mbox I/O
  • Ableton Live 8.4.2
  • Propellerheads Reason 4.0.1
  • Native Instruments:
    • Absynth 3.0.2.11
    • Reaktor 5.1.5.002
    • Guitar Rig 2.2.0.007
    • Massive 1.1.4
    • Spektral Delay 1.6.0.011
    • Vokator 1.2.0.012
  • Spectrasonics Stylus RMX plugin 1.5.1c
  • FabFilter Volcano plugin 2.1.4
  • Melodyne plugin 1.0.1.0
  • X-treme FX plugin 1.0
Some Digidesign Pro Tools only RTAS plugins that I like:
  • Xpand! 1.0.3.7471
  • Waves Diamond suite - I think I used to use v5(?) but I lost it at one stage and was never able to get it back.

For Pro Tools users there is an application called "VST to Rtas Adapter 2.1" which creates RTAS wrappers for VST plugins to run many different VSTs in Pro Tools systems. I have used this for VST-only plugins like Stylus RMX and Melodyne.

Note that Digidesign Pro Tools 8.0.1 is compatible with Leopard and can be found on the Macintosh Garden, but will require some kind of compatible hardware such as the Original Mbox (like mine), an Mbox 2, or a Firewire 002R or similar. I never updated the DAW though because it will cause projects to be updated to v8, and I wanted to leave my files all as they were produced at the time.

For full disclosure, I will mention that although I have this setup still running on my original G5 (humming away), I also cloned the HDD (using Disk Utility over Firewire TDM) to a late 2009 Mac mini with a Core 2 Duo 2.53GHz, 8GB of RAM and a 500GB 7200rpm HDD.

With this little Intel replica of my G5 system, I am able to fire up and run almost everything exactly as I did on the G5. Almost all plugins work (the VST to RTAS wrappers needed to be rebuilt), and there were a few updates required such as Absynth 4.

The Mac mini handles this setup perfectly and it can run many more simultaneous plugins and tracks than the G5 can, all while remaining almost absolutely silent.

Unfortunately I do not know how you will go with VoiceOver compatibility, but I hope this post helps to shed some light on your options.

Cheers!
 
Last edited:
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.