Digi 001 on a G4 Power Mac

[markjay]

Hi Guys,
I know for most of you the Digi 001 is a quaint antiquity, but I am currently running it (and PT 6.4 LE) on a PC - P4 3GHz 2gig Ram but finding it a bit unstable and can't record many tracks before it maxes out the processor (even with hw buffers suitably adjusted).

I am looking at changing over to a G4 Power Mac. Can anyone tell me if it will be better or worse? Is anyone running that combo? Can you get a decent track count and use a few plugins?

Any wisdom gratefully accepted - Thanks.

PS I am currently watching a dual 1.42GHz G4 on eBay that ends in a few days.

 

[pezking]

We just binned that exact G4 at work... such a shame.

I honestly doubt it'll be much faster.

Look for a dual processor G5 with PCI cards I think...

 

[LouieV702]

Hi Guys,
I know for most of you the Digi 001 is a quaint antiquity, but I am currently running it (and PT 6.4 LE) on a PC - P4 3GHz 2gig Ram but finding it a bit unstable and can't record many tracks before it maxes out the processor (even with hw buffers suitably adjusted).

I'm running a dell dimension 5150 p4 3ghz 4gig ram xp pro sp2 and running 6.4 LE with the digi 001 and have no problem maxing out tracks with atleast 40 plug-ins total and my cpu reaches about 75 to 80% usage! Playback engine is set to 512 samples with 95% cpu usage!
Are you putting plug-ins on every track your recordingor just recording tracks and your system seems to slow down when adding more tracks

maybe you need just 2 more gigs of ram and that could fix your problem. I remember using only 2 sticks of 1 gig ram and my computer would get choppy when mixing down with just 20 or so plug-ins! but never had the problem of recording 24 tracks without plugs, and having a couple bus tracks!
I would try buying 2 more gigs of ram, instead of buying a new computer!

 

[markjay]

We just binned that exact G4 at work... such a shame.

I honestly doubt it'll be much faster.

Look for a dual processor G5 with PCI cards I think...

Thanks for your input. I would have loved a G5, but I believe the PCI supply voltage in them is different, so the Digi 001 can't be installed in them. Now THAT is a shame!

 

[markjay]

I'm running a dell dimension 5150 p4 3ghz 4gig ram xp pro sp2 and running 6.4 LE with the digi 001 and have no problem maxing out tracks with atleast 40 plug-ins total and my cpu reaches about 75 to 80% usage! Playback engine is set to 512 samples with 95% cpu usage!
Are you putting plug-ins on every track your recordingor just recording tracks and your system seems to slow down when adding more tracks

maybe you need just 2 more gigs of ram and that could fix your problem. I remember using only 2 sticks of 1 gig ram and my computer would get choppy when mixing down with just 20 or so plug-ins! but never had the problem of recording 24 tracks without plugs, and having a couple bus tracks!
I would try buying 2 more gigs of ram, instead of buying a new computer!

Thankyou for your insights. I am running an intel P4 3GHz 2Mb RAM Win XP Pro SP3. Audio drive is a Seagate SATA 750gig.

I have not been using Digi 001/Pro Tools long and have never come close to maxing out the track count. The last project would have had about 8 audio tracks and 4 or 5 midi tracks. I had a plugin or two on most of the audio tracks. When I tried to play it back, it would get halfway through the track and come up with a error message saying something like "DAE has been holding off (something) for as log as possible...." and playback would abruptly stop. The more tracks I added, the quicker it happened. When I took off some of the plugins, it was ok. I increased the cpu usage and that seemed to help also, but, I will admit, never to 95%. I will try that.

I just figured that if it was struggling now, what would it be like with a bigger project and triple the track count! I have never used a Mac, but it seems that a lot of home (and professional) recording enthusiasts do and I thought that there might be a reason for that. But you may be right, more ram may be the answer.

Thanks.