The old 'Which Mac?' question

Mr Fingers · Post by **Mr Fingers** » Tue May 13, 2008 8:24 am

Dear Tape Op'ers,

I need your help!

I need a new Mac for tracking and mixing small projects. Using processing plugs - not soft instruments.

There seems to be so much overlap with current and recent Apple models that I'm having a hard time deciding. I'm not loaded, so I need this to be a wise decision - a computer with minimum fuss (using MH MIO 2882) that will last me a few years.

My main interest is in a second hand Santa Rosa MBP, either the 2.16GHz or the 2.2GHz machines. Is there really much performance difference between these two? There's certainly a price difference! It seems I would be better going for the 2.16GHz one and spending the difference maxing out the RAM? Is this fair to say? I also like the idea of the Express card slot and the dual firewire bus on these.

Then there are the Macbooks. I could buy new. The recent specs are plenty fast enough, but what about the firewire chipset? Good enough using the 2882 with a Firewire HD daisy-chained?

Finally, the new iMacs. Great new specs, nice big screen, are they portable enough for the odd location recording? What about the firewire situation? It seems they are not Agere, but Lucent. The same Lucent chipset as in the Macbooks?

Your advice is greatly appreciated in these confusing times!

dubsymmetry · Post by **dubsymmetry** » Tue May 13, 2008 9:18 am

the advise I can give you, is that the plastic macbook case is not so great.. it didn?t break on me, but I have the feeling it might... never got this feeling from my old titanium G4 powerbook..
but the macbook has enough power for the stuff I do and is cheaper..

I never tried connecting a HD into a FW interface yet, so I can?t comment on this from first hand, but what I got from unicornation (when I still hung around there) is that it wont work, USB2.0 HD is the way to go.. but keep in mind that the macbook pro has 2 firewire ports (1 FW800, 1 FW400 i think), but only 1 FW bus - so both ports share the same bandwidth on the bus, so here it won?t work as well.
but you can put a FW express card into the macbook pro...

calaverasgrandes · Post by **calaverasgrandes** » Tue May 13, 2008 11:05 am

I'd stay away from the Imacs. For the sole reason that you are essentially buying a very big notebook when you get one of those. I would only ever get a Tower (expandability) or a notebook (portability).

Apple always has that midrange price bump in its notebook models. Like the current 2.4 and 2.5 ghz mbp. $500 difference for 100mhz more (and 256mb vidcard as opposed to 128mb video).
Pretty asinine really!
Though to be honest the 3ghz imac is tempting. Too bad its inteh price range of the MBP!
And of course you know to get the base cofig and add your own ram. Unless you can get the student disc. My housemate got an imac recently and got the ram doubled for only like $50?! But I think art students get a special consideration because their diplomas will be worthless.

Mr Fingers · Post by **Mr Fingers** » Tue May 13, 2008 11:44 am

Thanks for the replies.

My girlfriend and I have the current base model macbook for general internetery and I can agree with your sentiment. Not so much that it will break but that it will be filthy and covered in scratches in about a month!

Re: the MBP's firewire. It's my understanding that you're right about the single bus on the more recent models but not on the older ones with Texas Instruments chipsets?

The difference in the 2.16 and 2.2 does seem pretty odd to me. I guess it does to others too! On the second hand market It's strange how much more money people will pay for a 2.2 model in comparison, about ?100 difference. Crazy.

The iMacs look very appealing but I think you're right, spec-wise they seem sort of half-way between a macbook and a macbook pro but with a big screen and a nice price...

I think I've made my mind up - I'll just wait on confirmation on the firewire situation, but I'm siding with a Santa Rosa MBP 2.16GHz.

A bit of reassurance goes a long way!

rwc · Post by **rwc** » Tue May 13, 2008 12:00 pm

calaverasgrandes wrote:I'd stay away from the Imacs. For the sole reason that you are essentially buying a very big notebook when you get one of those. I would only ever get a Tower (expandability) or a notebook (portability).

AMEN! the imac is useless.

I'd recommend one of the newer intel ones. I hear they have less of the spinny wheel nonsense the PPC based macs had.

calaverasgrandes · Post by **calaverasgrandes** » Tue May 13, 2008 12:16 pm

I would suggest you dig around on unicornation.com. Its a forum for MOTU stuff. There is a mac hardware forum that may have answers to your 1394 questions.

Jeff White · Post by **Jeff White** » Tue May 13, 2008 12:29 pm

I'm a mac dude.

I'm also a Unicornation dude.

My advice to you is to get a Mac Book Pro. This year's or last year's models (Core 2 Duo) smoke my 1.8GHz G5, which is a great machine for making records. You can EASILY add another firewire bus by using the expansion slot. I've been doing this on my G4 Powerbook for over two years and it works great. The MBP is like 10 times as fast as my PB.

I personally will be purchasing a MBP in late 2008 or early 2009 to replace my PowerBook, and at that point my G5 will be used for VIs and Graphic Design (and as a backup and a library) until it dies. The MBP will be set up for recording and will be my main audio machine.

Jeff

Andy Peters · Post by **Andy Peters** » Wed May 14, 2008 9:55 pm

Mr Fingers wrote:Re: the MBP's firewire. It's my understanding that you're right about the single bus on the more recent models but not on the older ones with Texas Instruments chipsets?

FWIW, I have a 15" first-generation MacBook Pro (Core Duo, not even Core 2 Duo) and it has a single FW400 port. I've had zero problems using that single port to record 18 simultaneous tracks from a MOTU 828 mk2 to a SmartDisk FireLite disk. I haven't noticed any difference in the order of the devices on the FW chain. It just works.

-a

calaverasgrandes · Post by **calaverasgrandes** » Wed May 14, 2008 10:05 pm

in theory FW 400 should have enough bandwidth. And Apple is the company that owns the lisc for FW so I would think they would implement it best.
That said I think you are asking for trouble whenever you stick two contending devices on the same buss. Be it PCI, FW or USB. I think you get a more robust solution if you run your hard drive on one buss ( USB or Esata) and audio box on another. After all, even the fastest drives around dont do much better than 60mb sec. easily in the realm of USB 2.0.

GooberNumber9 · Post by **GooberNumber9** » Thu May 15, 2008 7:59 am

????? wrote:AMEN! the imac is useless.

I don't disagree that a Mac Pro is the best way to go if you can afford it, but I think "useless" is going a little far on the iMac. I have a 24" iMac and it does very well for me. I love this thing.

Is it an overblown laptop? Well, when I bought it I compared it to a fully upgraded MBP and for the same price, my iMac is faster, has a larger hard drive, better graphics, and a 24" display instead of 17". So it's better than an MBP of the same price, it's just not as portable.

It's got nothing on a Mac Pro, except its price point. For the same as what I spent I could have gotten a Mac Pro with no display at all. If you have a great monitor, you're wasting your money on an iMac (I totally agree with that). If you NEED a great monitor, then the iMac is a deal.

Also, I've run FW400 and 800 drives on my iMac at the same time as Pro Tools w/ 003 with no problems.

Todd Wilcox

frankz · Post by **frankz** » Sat May 31, 2008 3:30 pm

Have an end of 2007 MacBook Pro, 2.2 Ghz, Intel, running 10.4.11, MAudio Firewire 410 interface, OWC external firewire drive daisy chained off the back of the 410, Digital Performer and Reason in Rewire mode, usually only 1 mic at a time, sometimes 2.
So far no problems. the single firewire bus seems to handle recording to the external drive fine but I don't know how it would do with a different interface and say 8 tracks all at once.
I find that where the extra computing power of the newer models is especially needed is when mixing and using plugins. Some of my plugs really drag down the cpu and I'm saving for the UAD expander or possibly the Focusrite Liquid Mix.
Audio Damage and Izotope plugs are pretty cpu intensive.

calaverasgrandes · Post by **calaverasgrandes** » Sat May 31, 2008 7:34 pm

I dont think you get into trouble daisy chaining firewire stuff at low track counts. It's more when you have fireface or 828MKII with all 20 inputs blazing that you get close to htting the cieling. Remember, whn you daisy chain, the audio data doesnt just go out of your interface and into the external hard drive (wouldnt that be neat? Note to self, patent that.) It goes into the computer and back out again to the hard drive. And vice versa for overdub tracks played back while you are recording. I have kind of an IT background so I always try to engineer systems to be pretty foolproof. So when I say you should run the hard drive off the USB buss and the interface off of the 1394 buss. Its not because it wont work. Its because in a worst case scenario daisy chained firewire stuff will manifest an issue precisely when you are recording the take of a lifetime.

PS my own DAW was way overspec about 3 years ago. It is just now starting to show its age. 2gigs of ram is no longer remarkable. And a 2.2ghz opteron is easily bested by many laptop chips. But my dual raid arrays are still spinning away just fine!

pps from what I have seen MOTU firewire stuff doesnt like to be daisy chained. not even with other motu stuff! This being said I am sure someone will post that they do it all the time!

percussion boy · Post by **percussion boy** » Sat May 31, 2008 8:46 pm

Here's a stack of detailed info on the ongoing "what-firewire-chip-is-in-a-given-Mac?" thing

Sounds like the original poster might know this stuff already, but if not here it is. Definitely need to know about the TI vs. Agere chipset thing, many people have had problems.

calaverasgrandes · Post by **calaverasgrandes** » Sat May 31, 2008 9:08 pm

wow thats pretty stunning that Apple would go there. Its long been known in audio techie circles that Agere FW chips blow. The only chips that I know of which are worse are Via. EG; Agere FW will work sometimes. Via FW just tends to not work at all.
I was planning on saving up for a MBP. then setting it up as a dual boot with XP so I can still do Sonar (until the Mac version comes out) and maybe play with some MAC audio apps as well. heck the last time I did audio on a mac it was system 8.5 or something.

percussion boy · Post by **percussion boy** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 2:15 am

calaverasgrandes wrote:wow thats pretty stunning that Apple would go there.

It's not clear if they went there on purpose, or if a supplier changed parts on them.

Keep an eye on the thread linked above to get the latest fw chip info for various mac models made at various times.

It's possible they've gone back to the Texas Instrument chips or will.

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