What iMac to get - Logic Pro user

[newuser2310]

Thanks. I'll look into latency and other CPU saving strategies. It turns out I've got istat already running and I tool a look. It seems that when Logic is idle, I've got 55% or so of CPU free. When I run a section, it goes down to about 24%.

I'm guessing that loading instruments uses up RAM, so if you have tons of instruments loaded into tracks that you're not using, you're still using RAM, is that right?

My other guess is that when audio trachs and midi tracks play (and use their attendant processing, reverb etc etc) that's when the CPU gets taxed.

Do you know if it works pretty much that way?

I'm not sure but that does makes sense. The instruments and effects need to be ready as they could be triggered at any point in the track. So having them already loaded in the memory would be sensible.

 

[Arrandale]

I think my 2.16 ghz imac may have bitten the dust (logic board might be dead) so I may need to get a new mac.

I'm running Logic Pro, the latest, using basically the instruments that come with it, and have garritan personal orchestra as well. I'm doing a short film scoring job now which is orchestral hans zimmer, danny elfman kind of stuff. For the most part I do soul/blues/funk kind of stuff using EZ drummer and groove monkee grooves, recording a fair amount of guitar and vocals etc.

Is a Core 2 Duo enough for what I need? The current one is 1699. Or there's the i5 or quad core whatever it is for 1999.

What should I buy at this point?? Crap! Help!

Thanks!

simple answer: if you can afford it, get the better tech
if you can't, it's possible to get by with c2d... you'll just have to lock down processor-intensive tracks... this can waste as much as an hour of your time a day if you unlock/edit/lock tracks frequently

with the high end c2d machine you should be able to handle 24 tracks and upto 50 simultaneous effects easily, so I'm guessing you won't lose too much time with constantly bouncing tracks... anyway, it's your call