iMac for Logic Pro

[workshed]

So I may be moving my day job business out of my house and into a real office space soon, which will remove my nice shiny new Mac Pro Intel Tower from the house, which is where my studio/recording setup is.

I'm thinking of buying a used G5 iMac just to have at home for recording and wasting time on the Internet. I can get one from Craigslist for about $800 used.

But I am wondering how these do with Logic Pro and recording up to 12 tracks live and/or mixing with a fair amount of plugins. My old dual g4 450 was getting taxed a lot with Logic Express, so I don't want to sacrifice recording capability just to save a few hundred bucks. If I have to, I'll save up for an Intel iMac.

Thoughts?

-Bret

[DryCounty]

I'm in a similar position and unfortunately don't have answers but I've found the discussions on Apple's Logic board to be helpful:

http://discussions.apple.com/category.j ... goryID=156

I've got an 800 (single proc) G4 that is totally taxed. I could go for a $200 upgrade to make it a 1.4GHz G4 but would rather just save and get that "entry level" used dual G5 when it hits below $1k. The problem with the G5 iMacs is that they all have a single processor. I think you'd outgrow it in no time.

I think a lot of it depends on usage. We're mostly just tracking 3-4 live mics at a time. Adding too much verb or vintage warmer can cause it glitch out while editing. I can't add more than 3 virtual instruments or it does the same. I've never done too much with ultrabeat, but I'd imagine it would glitch out as well.

[workshed]

Yeah, I record demos for bans here sometimes and in most cases have to do a full drum mic setup, plus scratch guitars and bass. I need to make sure that whatever machine I keep here isn't going to throw a bunch of processor errors while tracking basics on someone else's dime. Not sure a G5 will be able to keep up with MacOS updates and/or Logic updates that are written to take advantage of updates to the OS. Crap. Maybe I need to save up and get an Intel iMac afterall.

Thanks for your thoughts. Let me know what you end up doing if you can.

-Bret

[chuckfurok]

I just bought a iMac Intel Core 2 Duo and it screams. it was $1199. Would probably be worth the extra $400 to be up to date.

[DryCounty]

True. I think the Intel machines are an astounding value. My only problem is that I'm waiting on PSP and a few other plug in makers to go Universal before I start using them.

If you don't have any legacy plugins, I say go for that!