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my mac pro odyssey (or..."i believe in harvey dent")
- Thread starter john turner
- Start date
well, as i see it, i'm going to be working with mixes that have as much as 48 tracks in em (limit with the protools music production toolkit). this way i can use the main 30 inch widescreen lcd monitor for the standard track view, and the 20 " i'll use for auxilliary windows like fader view, track mapping, send/returns etc.
plus it looks badass.
seriously though, if this is as stable and productive as i think it will be in conjunction with the motu unit this may be an option for some positive income flow for me, hiring out the studio space to some bands i know.
plus it looks badass.
seriously though, if this is as stable and productive as i think it will be in conjunction with the motu unit this may be an option for some positive income flow for me, hiring out the studio space to some bands i know.
Ok. Yeah it looks cool if you can pull it off. I personally don't have the space. I use Ableton Live and take advantage of the minimized track view whenever possible. I have songs that have somewhere around 65 tracks going on there too. Cool man. Well enjoy your Mac. 
My sis made that for me when I got mine....she is a genius!
heh, that's pretty cool.
and yeah, this is definitely not my first mac - i have a g4 MDD, and of course i also still have my apple ][e with 80 col card/128k ram. still boots too
. learned how to program on that machine, back in 10th grade. what i did on it, more than anything else (including my georgia tech electrical engineering degree) was responsible for me landing my first real job outta college, that paid for all my basses. that being said, i still stick to my guns about most of the mac-nanigans. but my mac pro is certainly, and definitely happening.
Ok. Yeah it looks cool if you can pull it off. I personally don't have the space. I use Ableton Live and take advantage of the minimized track view whenever possible. I have songs that have somewhere around 65 tracks going on there too. Cool man. Well enjoy your Mac.
see, i wish i could use some of the other software packages out there (would really dig using digital performer, i think) but i made a kind of commitment to protools a while back to maintain pro studio compatibility.
pro tools is so overpriced/overhyped though. sheesh.
Yeah. I completely scoffed at it. There's no way I can afford that, plus there are programs out there that can perform very well. I like Ableton LIVE because (well it was free for me) of how quick it is to do edits, and the looping mechanism is super sweet. But the ability to run it Live and record your mixing sessions (think dub reggae in the fashion of Mad Professor) just creates a lot of possibilities. A new copy is around 400 bucks. Still there are patches out there for it that can put beyond the cost of ProTools though. But I like this because you can customize it to your liking.
A lot of people really like Logic. Have you checked that out? It's cheaper than ProTools and very powerful straight up DAW.
I wanna feel cool too
Sometime in the spring (when i have the money) ill be picking up a Macbook pro and Logic to further my recording endeavours.
I have a couple of friends who want to record their side projects, so it would be a good way to get started.
Ive already been working on my bands recordings on Nuendo (cause thats what the guy we recorded with used) and Im starting to get a decent idea of how things work in a mixing sense. I also picked up a couple of books during christmas (gifts) and ive been reading through those.
All in all i really enjoy it. It's fun stuff to learn, cause the possibilities are only limited to your imagination.
Sometime in the spring (when i have the money) ill be picking up a Macbook pro and Logic to further my recording endeavours.
I have a couple of friends who want to record their side projects, so it would be a good way to get started.
Ive already been working on my bands recordings on Nuendo (cause thats what the guy we recorded with used) and Im starting to get a decent idea of how things work in a mixing sense. I also picked up a couple of books during christmas (gifts) and ive been reading through those.
All in all i really enjoy it. It's fun stuff to learn, cause the possibilities are only limited to your imagination.
You know, instead of the dual screens, you could use Spaces. I use it quite a bit and the only time I need a second monitor is if someone else is looking at the other one.
Also, I'd download a copy of Logic Express to see if that would work for you. Pro quality recording, no dongles, much cheaper than Pro Tools and if you like Logic enough to need more than Express (probably not unless you're mastering in 5.1 surround sound or scoring movies), you can just get the upgrade for the difference between Logic Pro and Logic Express.
On the Mac side, I've actually had better luck with ATI cards rather than the Invidia ones.
As for modding your macs, they can be done. You haven't crapped your pants until you have heard the warranty-voiding CRACK of opening an Intel Imac to upgrade the wireless G card to an N card.
Welcome to the mac side. Enjoy your stay.
Psychbass
Also, I'd download a copy of Logic Express to see if that would work for you. Pro quality recording, no dongles, much cheaper than Pro Tools and if you like Logic enough to need more than Express (probably not unless you're mastering in 5.1 surround sound or scoring movies), you can just get the upgrade for the difference between Logic Pro and Logic Express.
On the Mac side, I've actually had better luck with ATI cards rather than the Invidia ones.
As for modding your macs, they can be done. You haven't crapped your pants until you have heard the warranty-voiding CRACK of opening an Intel Imac to upgrade the wireless G card to an N card.
Welcome to the mac side. Enjoy your stay.
Psychbass
i've heard good things about logic - lots of pro folks seem to use their stuff.
i'm by no means married to pro tools, just have already dumped a load into it (with the digi 002 and then getting the music production toolkit this summer). also, all the old lordonly source tracks have been migrated from the adat tapes to protools sessions now, so there's that.
i'm by no means married to pro tools, just have already dumped a load into it (with the digi 002 and then getting the music production toolkit this summer). also, all the old lordonly source tracks have been migrated from the adat tapes to protools sessions now, so there's that.
yeah, ati seems to have more of a history with macs than nvidia does. still, the 8800 gt comes on some new mac pros, and with 2x the memory i think it would be good to have, especially since it's at least two generations of video cards old right now, and can be had super cheap.
well, let me qualify that. the standard 8800 gt can be had super cheap. the ones branded to be for macs are 2x as much, although i have yet to find any specific differences between the two (other than mac likes to charge 2x as much for their peripherals, and forces other folks to sell "mac verified" stuff at 2x the price too).
Apparently there's a universal sound source filetype things can be saved into to transfer stuff between programs. I forget the name of it. I'm actually going to be dabbling into this in the coming months as I will be taking stuff that my old band recorded in ProTools and importing it into Live. I'm sure that you could do this if you wished to migrate from PT to something like Logic.
enjoy the mac, great machine.
i'd suggest crucial for ram:
http://www.crucial.com/mac/index.aspx
logic is amazing for midi functionality, although not a very intuitive program....
takes a bit of a learning curve compared to ptools.
ableton is my mainstay, with the mx/jitter partnership version8 is going to be incredible.
i also run an ancient 5.1 pt system on a g4 tower for tracking at a facility with the motu 888 interface, gets the job done just fine.... but i prefer using ableton, no dongle or proprietary interface necessary, a real plus for going mobile. my favorite interfaces by far are the
rme, i'll typically do 16 tracks effortlessly with a fireface400 and a lightpipe/octapre. no matter what the platform, in the end, it is all about the converters imho. can't make fidelity happen in the box imho,
it has to get captured correctly.
cheers!
i'd suggest crucial for ram:
http://www.crucial.com/mac/index.aspx
logic is amazing for midi functionality, although not a very intuitive program....
takes a bit of a learning curve compared to ptools.
ableton is my mainstay, with the mx/jitter partnership version8 is going to be incredible.
i also run an ancient 5.1 pt system on a g4 tower for tracking at a facility with the motu 888 interface, gets the job done just fine.... but i prefer using ableton, no dongle or proprietary interface necessary, a real plus for going mobile. my favorite interfaces by far are the
rme, i'll typically do 16 tracks effortlessly with a fireface400 and a lightpipe/octapre. no matter what the platform, in the end, it is all about the converters imho. can't make fidelity happen in the box imho,
it has to get captured correctly.
cheers!
That might be the single best quote ever about Vista and Macs. I'm going to take my name and CFF links out of my signature to make room for that. And welcome to the dark side. I've been using my Mac w/ Motu's Ultralite and Digital Performer 5 for about two years now. Good stuff.
