Hello all!

      I am either looking to buy an Imac or a powermac to do audio stuff. I want to run the new logic studio, VDL2.5, sibelius, garritan etc. I want to be able to run a band's worth instruments and have it play back smoothly without having to lock my tracks.

      I suppose the question i'm really asking is ";is there any way i can do this on the current imacs, or do I need a powermac to load all of those samples up?"; 

      I would love a powermac, but putting my wife through school and being a math/music teacher isn't exactly raking in the millions :) What do you guys think?

You could build your own much cheaper, but you want mac...  :(

Hummm I just found this...

https://www.tapspace.com/forums/index.php?topic=1362.0

That was from a year ago, does it still hold true with the new line of duo core imacs? Maybe this is a duu moment for me, but isn't apple charging ��a whole lot if the imacs were designed to be just a normal average computer?

Honestly if you want to be true to what you asked (firing a lot of samples smoothly) you're going to want a Mac Pro.

There are 8-cores (gew) rumored on the horizon, but if a pro is out of budget I'd definitely go for no less than top-of-the-line iMac. 

[quote author=drumcat link=topic=2057.msg10460#msg10460 date=1193248694]
You could build your own much cheaper, but you want mac...�� :(
[/quote]

Hahaha yea. I know. I'm hooked. I need to join the AA.... apples anonymous.

[quote author=Justin Belcher link=topic=2057.msg10462#msg10462 date=1193248822]
Honestly if you want to be true to what you asked (firing a lot of samples smoothly) you're going to want a Mac Pro.

There are 8-cores (gew) rumored on the horizon, but if a pro is out of budget I'd definitely go for no less than top-of-the-line iMac.��
[/quote]

Isn't there a big apple conference coming up? I'll probably wait to see if they unveil anything new and awesome.

Isn't there a big apple conference coming up? [quote][/quote]

They are usually in Jan/Feb and Jun/July. The advantage to waiting is the speed bump for the new stuff and the price drop on the old machines.


Ted

Apple uses Intel hardware now, and they provide a clear road map of their products.  The days of big mysterious new Macs are over- as far as speed is concerned.  They might add a new case or new iSomething, but now you know exactly what cpu and graphics will be in desktops/laptops for the next 2-3 years. 

To load a full band, you probably need to run a 64-bit OS to get beyond the RAM hurdle.  Even if you have 1,000,000 GB of RAM, a 32-bit OS will only use 2 GB per program, with a limit of 4 GB.  I'm not sure if the upcoming OS 10.5 is a true 64-bit OS yet.  The alternative is 64-bit XP or Vista, which might not have drivers for your hardware.

10.5 is 64-bit, but that doesn't do much until the applications are built to take advantage of it. I don't know of any music apps on the Mac that are built for 64-bit. I remember hearing about some for Windows, but I don't think any of the standard notation programs built that way yet.

If you are running on a Mac you will see speed improvements from the Intel chips with the native versions (like Sibeilus 5) and more performance improvements from the rewritten Kontakt player.

Cubase is going to be ready shortly.  They have a 64-bit for Vista64 now, but there's a lot of shortcomings inherent in any conversion.  Also, Sonar is fully 64-bit and has been for a while.