music recording, high end PB 15 needed or go with low end?

[whw5]

I am getting a new powerbook soon and I know it will be a 15 inch combo. I am going to be recording music on it from my guitar and will be using Garage band fairly heavily. Does the difference betweeen the 1.33 ghz and 1.5 ghz proccessors make a huge difference in performance? If I get the higher end I will downgrade everything except the ram which will be 512. I will also go at the fastest hard drive speed on both. I guess what it comes down to is, is the speed bumb enough to justify spending 200 more to get 128 mb video ram for games, and a faster proccessor speed. I will be also playing games quite a bit, such as halo.

 

[Edge100]

I am getting a new powerbook soon and I know it will be a 15 inch combo. I am going to be recording music on it from my guitar and will be using Garage band fairly heavily. Does the difference betweeen the 1.33 ghz and 1.5 ghz proccessors make a huge difference in performance? If I get the higher end I will downgrade everything except the ram which will be 512. I will also go at the fastest hard drive speed on both. I guess what it comes down to is, is the speed bumb enough to justify spending 200 more to get 128 mb video ram for games, and a faster proccessor speed. I will be also playing games quite a bit, such as halo.

It depends (what a crappy answer..I know! ;-))

If you're going to be using the computer primarily for audio, I'd say get as much RAM as you can, ditch the upgrade on the internal HD and get a 7200 RPM Firewire drive (yes, it makes a difference, particularly for high track counts).

You wont notice much difference between 1.33 and 1.5GHz. I'm still doing audio on a 500MHz iBook, and I'm getting 16 tracks, with plugins and soft instruments. Sure, I've got to bounce tracks down every now and then to keep things running smoothly, but I've got the RAM maxed to 640MB and a nice fast HD. I think those things make MUCH more difference in the day to day operation of an audio system, compared to a small increase in processor speed. We've gotten to the point that a small difference in GHz makes very little actual difference.

Also (and I might get flamed for this) consider using something other than Garageband. Dont get me wrong, its a great program and will help you get into audio recording like nothing else. But you will run into its limitations pretty quickly. If you're willing to spend $2000 on a computer to do audio on, spend the extra $250 and get Logic Express or Cubase SE. You'll get a lot more milage out of these programs than you will with GB. If its just a hobby, GB is fine. If its a serious hobby, get something that you can grow with.

Hope this helps! Just my $0.02

Mike

 

[JzzTrump22]

I've been using sonar 3 producer edition on pc. It is an amazing program that has endless features. I highly reccommend it. It's also $500. I was able to get it for free... i have my sources. I have the disk right here, i can upload it to anyone that wants it. My AIM name is JzzTrump22. I guess if you have virtual pc it could work too. But this is a pc program, not mac.

 

[JzzTrump22]

Oh and it does have a lot of plugins

 

[Edge100]

I've been using sonar 3 producer edition on pc. It is an amazing program that has endless features. I highly reccommend it. It's also $500. I was able to get it for free... i have my sources. I have the disk right here, i can upload it to anyone that wants it. My AIM name is JzzTrump22. I guess if you have virtual pc it could work too. But this is a pc program, not mac.

Ummm...I dont think the moderators look kindly on discussions of software piracy.

Besides, Sonar would run REALLY badly on VPC!

Mike