Which Mac should one buy?

W

WalrusWasPaul

New member
Ello there, I hope you're all bloody good.

I recently recorded a song on GarageBand, (I have access to another daw which came with my Focusrite but I'm quite happy with simplicity at the moment). I've purchased waves abbey road and kontakt Alicia's keys. I have maybe 7 tracks running but each with 5 plugins, overkill probably.. but I'm new to this!

I've borrowed my brothers Mac, late 2009 8gb ram and garage band is seriously not handling it!! Lots of popping, overload errors etc. I've decided to spend my savings on a new Mac. What should I look out for, I intend to use a lot of plugins to make up for my lack of skill. What specifics should I be looking for in a Mac? Ram or ghz? Do I need to save my plug ins to an ext hard drive.

I figured writing the song was the hardpart.. This feels like navigating a minefield with my eyes blindfolded whilst I'm being foced onto said field by a sumo wrestler.

Any reply would be welcome and is rewarded with good karma

Much love
 
Hi,
First off, Garageband is a toy and lacks the features which let you get the best from your hardware.
Most recording suites will let you adjust audio buffer sizes.
Large buffer size = high latency (delay when recording) but high performance.
Small buffer size = low latency and lower performance, hardware depending.

With clicks and pops and what not, the first thing you'd usually do is check your buffer size settings but, as far as I know, garageband doesn't let you do that.

What mac do you have, specifically. Model and cpu model/speed, please.
Regardless, I'd try the DAW that came with your focusrite, or Reaper, before buying anything. :)
 
Steenamaroo said:
Hi,
First off, Garageband is a toy and lacks the features which let you get the best from your hardware.
Most recording suites will let you adjust audio buffer sizes.
Large buffer size = high latency (delay when recording) but high performance.
Small buffer size = low latency and lower performance, hardware depending.

With clicks and pops and what not, the first thing you'd usually do is check your buffer size settings but, as far as I know, garageband doesn't let you do that.

What mac do you have, specifically. Model and cpu model/speed, please.
Regardless, I'd try the DAW that came with your focusrite, or Reaper, before buying anything. :)
Click to expand...

Thank you for the reply Steenamaroo, great cover of last dance with mary jane by the way.

My mac is 3.06Ghz intel core 2 duo, late 2009 , 4gb ram, 500gb data HD.
 
WalrusWasPaul said:
Thank you for the reply Steenamaroo, great cover of last dance with mary jane by the way.
Click to expand...
Hey, Thanks! :)

WalrusWasPaul said:
My mac is 3.06Ghz intel core 2 duo, late 2009 , 4gb ram, 500gb data HD.
Click to expand...

Ok, so core2duo isn't exactly cutting edge but you can still do a lot with them.
First I'd try real software and understand buffer size settings.
If you still run into issues after that, pretty much any modern i5 or i7 mac mini/book/imac is going to kill any core2udo.
Avoid airs, though. Something with an SSD is preferable. They make a huge difference where loading times and sample libraries are concerned.
 
I would get an external drive 7200rpm to record audio to and also get an internal that fast. I have an iMac i7 2.8ghz, 8gb from 2010 and it's hanging in there.
Don't forget you can always freeze or bounce tracks, although I rarely do. I would recommend logic x as I'm happy with it, note I'm using Mavericks...I wouldn't recommend upgrading your O.S. version very often(if ever), because that can be a nightmare.

If you record audio to a external HD it could take away your pops, with your current setup.IDK
 
I keep my plugins on my internal with O.S. and logic x. The external is just where the project is recorded too. It's too much work for one drive to read logic/plugins ect. and write audio at the same time to that internal drive.
Hope that helps.
 
threeheavens said:
I keep my plugins on my internal with O.S. and logic x. The external is just where the project is recorded too. It's too much work for one drive to read logic/plugins ect. and write audio at the same time to that internal drive.
Hope that helps.
Click to expand...

Thank you for this! So I'm looking at this

Add To Favourites 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display
3.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz
16GB 1867MHz DDR3 SDRAM - two 8GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm
AMD Radeon R9 M380 with 2GB video memory
Magic Mouse 2
Magic Keyboard (British) & User’s Guide (English)
Accessory Kit

How long will this last and cope with production? If Brian eno took this to record Coldplay would it deal with the pressure?

Thanks !
 
threeheavens said:
I keep my plugins on my internal with O.S. and logic x. The external is just where the project is recorded too. It's too much work for one drive to read logic/plugins ect. and write audio at the same time to that internal drive.
Hope that helps.
Click to expand...

769.99 for 16GB RAM 600GB SDD Macbook Pro
The Specifics
2.5 GHz Intel “Core i5” processor
Intel HD graphics: 4000 graphics processor
4GB, 8GB or 16GB of RAM
Integrated 720p FaceTime HD webcam
LED-backlit 13.3” widescreen
TFT active-matrix “glossy” display (1280x800 native resolution)
Designed to provide up to 7 hours of battery life
‘Unibody’ aluminum case design – milled from a single piece of aluminum
Features a backlit keyboard, a ‘‘no button’’ glass ‘‘inertial’’ multi-touch trackpad
Connectivity: AirPort Extreme (802.11a/b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.0, Gigabit Ethernet, a Firewire “800” port, two USB 3.0 ports, a “Thunderbolt” port, audio in/out, and an SDXC card slot
Six-month warranty

Also found this one! It's a refurbished but with 16gb ram looks promising
 
A site to look at iPhone, iPad, Mac Buyer's Guide: Know When to Buy
You have to decide if it's worth the trade off between the two.
The small screen on the macbook will get very tiresome, but it's more portable...The iMac has more power. I don't keep up with how the latest computers perform and all the variables.That being said, Any Studio with the right interface and setup should be able to operate with that iMac.

Note- I do occasionally see people on forums with a Mac Pro and a zillion GB ram and they have problems they shouldn't. IDK it could be driver,settings OS,hardware,user. My advice is to over research, you probably can find someone whose done testing online, for what you need to know.
I recommend buying apple care, I needed it.
It took me a long time to figure out my workflow, learn the software and get everything working as it should. For the most part things just work now.
 
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