Is anyone using the Power Mac G5 for recorcing/mixing?

  • Thread starter Thread starter ONEsnowRIDER
  • Start date Start date
O

ONEsnowRIDER

New member
Trying to decide on my next recording/mixing station. I'm been used and abused by the IBM compatible for years and am ready to try something new. I've been leaning toward the Power Mac G5 with its new OS X v10.2. Does anyone have any experience with the Power Mac G5 that could give me some direction. I'm using cakewalk mainly, and do some video editing with Vegas video.

:P
 
speaking of the G5, Digidesign announced that some of their hardware is not compatible with that machine, since they changed the PCI bus architecture. Among those is the Digi 001. :-(
 
Does anyone have any experience with the Power Mac G5 that could give me some direction. I'm using cakewalk mainly, and do some video editing with Vegas video.
You do realize that they aren't for sale yet, right? And why do you want to spend thousands of dollars on new hardware, software, and an OS that you aren't familiar with? Just curious.
 
elevate said:
You do realize that they aren't for sale yet, right? And why do you want to spend thousands of dollars on new hardware, software, and an OS that you aren't familiar with? Just curious.

I wasn't aware of this, if you go to The Apple Store you can order one. Are you saying this is a per-order thing??

I'm really sick of Microsoft products (to much weekly tweaking, or monthly reghost) I also like the idea the G5 OS is built on BSD.

I haven't tried the XP OS to do recording on ...this is yet another option I'm researching.
 
I wasn't aware of this, if you go to The Apple Store you can order one. Are you saying this is a per-order thing??
As is the case with most of Apple's products, yes.
I'm really sick of Microsoft products (to much weekly tweaking, or monthly reghost)
Are you using Windows 95 or something?
I also like the idea the G5 OS is built on BSD.
G5 is a processor, not an OS....really it's just what Apple calls IBM's PPC970 (who's IBM compatible?). OS X has some BSD components in it, but calling it "built on BSD" is a bit of a stretch. It really has more in common with Next OS.
I haven't tried the XP OS to do recording on ...this is yet another option I'm researching.
If you're having stability problems, you should definitely be using Windows 2000 or XP.
 
Ya, I wasn't saying the G5 was an OS, I was talking about it's OS (OS X v10.2) which according to what I read it's based on BSD.

So do you think the 2 G5's on ebay are on back order as well???

I started on 95 and on to 98, which is really just 95 #2 edition. So ya, you could say I'm using 95. Which is the whole point of the upgrade. I use 2000 and NT at work ...not very impressed at all. I'll give XP a try though.
 
Never mind, I kept reading and got my answer...

We expect delivery of our G5 inventory sometime between August 30th-September 5th. If you buy this unit now, we will guarantee you delivery from our first allocation we receive. Apple is currently quoting 9-10 week delivery times from today! We'll have them in late August/early September! We require NO DEPOSIT. We require no payment until the G5 is ready to ship. If the unit is delayed for any reason, you may cancel this auction after September 5th...no questions asked, with no negative impact against your eBay rating.

doh!
 
ONEsnowRIDER said:
Trying to decide on my next recording/mixing station. I'm been used and abused by the IBM compatible for years and am ready to try something new. I've been leaning toward the Power Mac G5 with its new OS X v10.2. Does anyone have any experience with the Power Mac G5 that could give me some direction. I'm using cakewalk mainly, and do some video editing with Vegas video.

:P

If you wanna stick with Vegas and Cakewalk, you're gonna have to stick with the pc.

Logic Audio and Final Cut Pro are arguably better alternatives available on the Mac.
But you'd have to factor in the cost of buying and learning those programs along with the price of the G5.

I switched back to the Mac last year. Switching from Cakewalk to Logic. Having alot of fun again.

If you're not familiar with the Mac, head over to an Apple Store to see if it's really something you want to make the jump to.
http://www.apple.com/retail/
 
Re: Re: Is anyone using the Power Mac G5 for recorcing/mixing?

DaisyCutter said:
I switched back to the Mac last year. Switching from Cakewalk to Logic. Having alot of fun again.



DaisyCutter, thanks for the comments. You sentiments are exactly what I've been reading from other PC to MAC switchers.
Can you give me some examples of the differences between the two/pros and cons. What kind of PC were you running cakewalk on?


[/B]If you're not familiar with the Mac, head over to an Apple Store to see if it's really something you want to make the jump to.
http://www.apple.com/retail/ [/B]


Ya, I was over their yesterday, the looked good to me.

Thanks again!
 
Re: Re: Re: Is anyone using the Power Mac G5 for recorcing/mixing?

ONEsnowRIDER said:
DaisyCutter, thanks for the comments. You sentiments are exactly what I've been reading from other PC to MAC switchers.
Can you give me some examples of the differences between the two/pros and cons. What kind of PC were you running cakewalk on?

Thanks again!

I'm enjoying OSX alot. Lot of fun...stable, straight forward. When OSX gets finicky, I find it doesn't irratate me as much as when XP does. :) You get the feeling that Apple has spent alot of time and pride in creating the OS. And it shows in the attention of detail and how it stays out of your way.

I was using practically every bargain sequencer available on my PC: Cubasis, Cakewalk Home Studio 2002, Magix Music Studio Deluxe, Pro Tools Free, Muzy's, Wave Lab LE, etc.

I decided to stop wasting my time and money on all the little bargain apps. And got Logic Audio.

I was running WinXP on an older system. An Athlon 750 with an Audiophile2496 card.

I'm running Logic on a 700Mhz iBook now. Logic runs great on my iBook. It's something I can grow into and learn. The freeze function is useful for slower systems. Though, I doubt the freeze function would be needed for a G5 :)

It just rocks. The iBook is dead quiet - perfect for recording acoustic guitar. My Athlon PC was unbelievably loud and could heat up a small room in no time.

OSX's CoreAudio is real cool. Really simplifies things. No more OMS silliness like in OS9.

You might want to check out Final Cut Express if you want a low cost video editor. It might have too many features cut out from Final Cut Pro for you, but I think it only runs around two to three hundred dollars rather than a grand for FCP.
 
DaisyCutter thanks for the input.

I've done a little research and found that Microsoft is developing as OS for the NW 64 bit PCs that hopefully will be coming to fruition in a couple of years. I think the OS is getting ready for first beta. I'm going to go to the local apple shop and try and play with the G5 ...if possible.

Again, thanks!
 
i have a good pc with XP...never had a recording problem...update the software about once a month it takes about 3 minutes and the computer does all the work...unless you're using a mac only software package or you want to impress your friends i'd say go with an XP computer.
 
I've done a little research and found that Microsoft is developing as OS for the NW 64 bit PCs that hopefully will be coming to fruition in a couple of years.
64-bit Windows already exists for IA64, with support for AMD's x86-64 scheduled to coincide with its release, which I believe is in a couple months.
 
elevate said:
64-bit Windows already exists for IA64, with support for AMD's x86-64 scheduled to coincide with its release, which I believe is in a couple months.

That's what I had heard too.
 
But then how many years will it be before competent 64 bit software is developed?

I'll wait for at least 2 yrs to go 64 bit, otherwise it's like buying a new car that can run on superfuel to double the horsepower, but the fuel won't be available for another 2 yrs, but your going to pay the most extreme premium price to have the technology first. Then by the time you can get the fuel, you have an old beat up car with fewer features than what you could have for cheaper if you waited...
 
WinXP was a big quantum leap for pc's in terms of stability. Combined with the cheap hardware you can get a rock stable and ultra-fast system which doesn't break your bank. After all, for less than 2000 buxx you get a ~3GHz processor with 1Gbyte of RAM, looots of disk space and even two flat-panel screens. How can you beat that?

If money was not a problem, I'd still get a G5 simply because I find that Logic is the best and most powerful audio software on the market.

So, in order to combine the best of two worlds (pc: lots of power for little money -- Logic, one of the most powerful audio programs), I decided to stick with Logic 5.5 on my new pc. That of course means that I won't be able to upgrade, but hey -- that's exactly what I need: a powerful & stable recording software with great effects that I keep as is. Saves me a LOT of money and I'll be familiar with my system to get the most out of it. Constant upgrading can cost productivity. The bottom line is that a very powerful & stable system with two big flat-panel monitors that cost me like half of what a MAC would have cost me. That saved me more than $1000 or so which I've invested in good mics.

However, if I'd run a recording studio for a living (like many of you, I guess), I'd certainly have a G5 with Logic 6 and ProTools to attract customers. In that case it would have been a business investment which might pay off.
 
WinXP was a big quantum leap for pc's in terms of stability.
Only for Windows users who came from the Win9x line. Those of us who've been using NT-based OSs have enjoyed stability for a number of years now.
 
I'll wait for at least 2 yrs to go 64 bit, otherwise it's like buying a new car that can run on superfuel to double the horsepower, but the fuel won't be available for another 2 yrs...
There seems to be, for some reason, a widespread belief that 64-bit equates to monster performance. This isn't the case. On the same processor at the same clock speed, a 64-bit version is going to be a little slower as the wordlength of data is twice as long. At least that's my understanding of it.
 
elevate said:
There seems to be, for some reason, a widespread belief that 64-bit equates to monster performance. This isn't the case. On the same processor at the same clock speed, a 64-bit version is going to be a little slower as the wordlength of data is twice as long. At least that's my understanding of it.

Would you say 16 bit programs, processors or systems perform as well as todays 32 bit?
 
twice the bus size = twice the throughout = twice the speed minus increase in bit length. That's almost twice the overall performance! There's no questions that 64 bit systems are significantly faster than 32 bit systems.
 
Back
Top