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Post by inthemix on Jul 24, 2013 20:27:47 GMT -6
I've always built my own Pc's in the past, but I think it's time to step into the Mac world. My budget is about 4 grand, but I also need to get the UAD powered plugins in some format. I've also noticed in my research that FireWire seems to be moving into antiquity and my interface is a FireWire device. Looking into thunderbolt and USB 3 but don't know how these would work with a FireWire adapter. Anyone have any experience/opinions on this? I've been considering the Mac mini since I've already got a nice big monitor/kbd/external drives/etc... What should I do?  Btw- running Cubendo at the moment but would like to explore logic... I can record 10 trks at once now with my Presonas FireStudio into the PC and it does a great job. Mainly doing songwriter demos and I track live drums occasionally. I also use a lot of midi and also do some true pop stuff.. Thoughts anyone? |
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Post by matt on Jul 24, 2013 20:40:18 GMT -6
I've always built my own Pc's in the past, but I think it's time to step into the Mac world. My budget is about 4 grand, but I also need to get the UAD powered plugins in some format. I've also noticed in my research that FireWire seems to be moving into antiquity and my interface is a FireWire device. Looking into thunderbolt and USB 3 but don't know how these would work with a FireWire adapter. Anyone have any experience/opinions on this? I've been considering the Mac mini since I've already got a nice big monitor/kbd/external drives/etc... What should I do? Btw- running Cubendo at the moment but would like to explore logic... I can record 10 trks at once now with my Presonas FireStudio into the PC and it does a great job. Mainly doing songwriter demos and I track live drums occasionally. I also use a lot of midi and also do some true pop stuff.. Thoughts anyone? Late 2012 Mac mini user here. Maxed, 2.6 gig i7 cpu, 16 gig ram, apple-sourced ssd. Running PT10/11, UA Apollo Quad on TBolt, Avid MBox Pro 3rd gen. Storing data on 2 G-Raid 4tb TBolt arrays. This last choice was a mistake, since for some reason Mac OS gets confused on which array is which when I boot the Mini, so my data paths get "lost". Gonna drop back to one external array for sample data and install a second ssd in the Mini for PT audio files. I think you will find a number of Mini users on this forum. Good luck! |
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Post by Johnkenn on Jul 24, 2013 20:44:52 GMT -6
I have a 2013 Mac Mini 2.3 i7 Quad Core 16gb RAM, SSD HD and 4TB USB3 external drive. I was coming from a 2006 Mac Pro.
It SMOKES it. I do about the same thing you do and the mini is more than enough. The real winner is the SSD. Blazing fast. If I had it to do over again, I might go with an External SSD drive too. You can do all that for around $1100...although you have to put the drive in yourself...I had to do it so I can help.
Logic is awesome...read the post about Drummer...Fantastic writing tool.
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Post by inthemix on Jul 24, 2013 20:48:41 GMT -6
Thanks matt! Can you record audio directly to SSD drives? And if so, is that what you would recommend? Any drawbacks? I keep reading that SSD is the future...
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Post by inthemix on Jul 24, 2013 20:50:54 GMT -6
Thank JK! I think this is the route I'm going to go.
What are you using as an audio interface?
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Post by Johnkenn on Jul 24, 2013 20:52:11 GMT -6
Yeah - SSD is the biggest speed improvement you could possibly do...It takes 10 seconds to boot my computers with SSD's in them. Latency is reduced too.
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Post by Johnkenn on Jul 24, 2013 20:53:01 GMT -6
Thank JK! I think this is the route I'm going to go. What are you using as an audio interface? Symphony...but these guys are making me want a Burl. |
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Post by matt on Jul 24, 2013 20:55:56 GMT -6
Thanks matt! Can you record audio directly to SSD drives? And if so, is that what you would recommend? Any drawbacks? I keep reading that SSD is the future... Yes, you can, no problem. OSX sees an ssd as a hard drive volume, and seems to make no distinction between spinning drives and static memory. My problem is I bought two identical arrays, and it took me a while to figure it out. So I have PT audio files on both arrays, which was not the plan. Somehow PT can handle it though. |
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Post by matt on Jul 24, 2013 20:59:47 GMT -6
Thanks matt! Can you record audio directly to SSD drives? And if so, is that what you would recommend? Any drawbacks? I keep reading that SSD is the future... Yes, you can, no problem. OSX sees an ssd as a hard drive volume, and seems to make no distinction between spinning drives and static memory. My problem is I bought two identical arrays, and it took me a while to figure it out. So I have PT audio files on both arrays, which was not the plan. Somehow PT can handle it though. I'm going to pull one array and add a second internal ssd when I move to PT11. Whenever that is! Thunderbolt is the shit. I have had zero problems with the Apollo or anything else hanging off the TBolt bus, which is feeding: Apollo > array 1 > array 2 > 27" monitor @ 1920x1080 |
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Post by matt on Jul 24, 2013 21:01:50 GMT -6
You also get aggregate I/O on OSX/PT. Not sure about Logic on this.
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Post by inthemix on Jul 24, 2013 21:03:17 GMT -6
Thanks guys! I'm getting excited about putting this thing together
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