Making The Digital Leap

G

GTRNSAX

New member
Hey...
I've been an analog guy for many years...recording to a Tascam MSR 24 1 inch tape machine. With recent developments making tape pretty hard to come by I'm thinking it's finally time to make the digital leap. I'm looking at Mac G4's on ebay and need advice about processor speeds. I've decided to go with a protools LE system (Mbox or maybe an 002). Do I need a dual processor? How fast should the processor be? Do I need the 1.25 MGH or will a 400 do? Something in the middle? I know that the bigger the hard drive the better but...is 80Gigs enough? Any advice on these topics will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks...

GTRNSAX
 
I don't know anything about macs.

80 gigs will be enough for the first year or two probably. then you can just get an external drive to archive the old stuff.

can I get dibs on that MSR 24?
 
If you going with something like the 002 or the Mbox(I wouldn't look at the mbox instead check out the m-powered version of pro tools) you'll want a G5. Many people still do just fine with G4 laptops but honestly if you're going to record any bands or more than two tracks at a time you'll probably want a G5 just so you won't need to upgrade in a year or so. I use an Imac G5 and its incredible I can load up all 32 tracks in ptle and load up all the tracks with plugs before it starts becoming unstable. You'll want at the very least 512mb of ram but I'd go for 1gb. An 80gb hard drive will do but really for not too much more you can get a 160 gb. If you're dead set on going with a G4 then maybe look at getting a 001, as long as you don't want to upgrade software versions past 6.4 you can use a digi 001 that combo would probably cost less than a grand I'd think. Anyway sorry to ramble on just puttin in my 2 cents.
 
Digidesign (PT) doesn't recommend that you record to your system drive, so you'll want to plan on having two. You could get a smaller system drive and a larger secondary or external drive. 80 GB is fine; but you can never really have too much. Check the digidesign site for compatibility information. The drives need to be 7200 rpm mininum and there used to be some deal about the chip set compatibility--they should have a list of compatible hard drives there.

As far as processing speed goes, I worked for a long time with a single 800 MHz processor and just recently upgraded to a 1.4 GHz single. I wouldn't go any lower than 800 and basically, I'd get the fastest processor you can afford. The plugins you'll use run off the CPU so if it's too small it will limit the amount of processing you can do real time.
 
And responding to the previous post; I run a G4 with PT 6.9 and a 002R without any problems. You don't need a G5 to run Protools.
 
AlexW said:
I'd get the fastest processor you can afford.
Click to expand...

That's really the bottom line! People have been using the G4 to record audio since, well, the stone age. Until last year, I recorded to a flat panel i-Mac with a single 800 mHz processor using a MOTU interface, Digital Performer, and Waves RennMax plugins. The computer worked fine, although it took 15 to 20 seconds to render a track to disk after recording. Also, using about 8-10 tracks and roughly 3-4 Waves plugins, my processor performance window would typically show about 80-90 percent used. I've since upgraded to an i-Mac G5 with a single 2 gHz processor and 1.5 GB of RAM. As you might expect, the difference is dramatic--No rendering time and (using multiple Waves plugins) the processor has yet to go above the 15-20 percent range. Of course, you end up paying for the extra power. So it's really a question of your patience versus your pocketbook!
 
Thanks

Hey...

Thanks to all who posted. Very helpful info! Sorry to FALKEN... not planning on dumping the MSR just yet. Might think about selling later. I'll let you know.

gtrnsax
 
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