If you were buying a Mac...

[Francis Belardino]

Hi all,

I will be purchasing Digidesign\'s, Digi002 running Pro Tools LE 32 track software.

My budget for the Mac PC affords me the two choices below ... your thoughts on which one?

iMac Super Drive
15-inch LCD flat screen
800MHz PowerPC G4
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX
256MB SDRAM
60GB Ultra ATA hard drive
10/100BASE-T Ethernet
56K internal modem
Apple Pro Speakers

OR

Power Mac
800MHz PowerPC G4
256K L2
cache
256MB SDRAM memory
40GB Ultra ATA drive
CD-RW drive
ATI Radeon 7500
56K internal modem

My project room will be about 60% post work and 40% bands.

Thanks in advance images/icons/tongue.gif
PS. Sorry to abuse the GIGA forum with my MAC/Digi stuff ... I\'m on a mission images/icons/smile.gif

[Veron]

I don`t know if this will help ,
but inthe forum below some kind people
helped me (gave me advice`s) alot .
I hope you take a peek.

http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=002851 (\"http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=002851\")

BTW, I`m thinking of buying G4 933 or a
G4 800 Dual .It depends on the price .

How I`m going to use it :

I`m going to use,
Digital Performer 3.0 and
read samples ( GIG too. ) with Unity Session or
Kontakt. I`m a little towards Unity Session 3 .
( It costs about $890 in Japan. )
And in the future I think I will run
Altiverb too.But I think running it with
DP3.0 and Unity Session is impossible,
because of the Machine Power.
So I`m thinking of using the DP3.0 reverb
when I`m composing using Unity and
when I finish ,HDR it and use DP+Altiverb.

This is what i`m thinking right now.

I`m sorry if this doesn`t help.

Also,about which to buy, its a very difficult question.
iMAC has more HDD space, and Power MAC has
PCI Slots.

Veron

[Joris de Man]

Hey Francis,

I would go for the Powermac G4...but I would wait for about 2 weeks to see what kind of announcements are made on the apple expo.
If new mac models are announced, there\'s a good chance there will be a pricedrop on current models.
The reason for not going for an iMac in my case are:
-fixed screensize, attached to the computer. What if you decide to connect one of those nice Apple cinema displays at some point? images/icons/tongue.gif
-One pci slot; although it seems that you\'ll be doing the bulk of your work with firewire, you never know what the future holds. Say you wanted to add an extra card for dual monitor support, or another soundcard that only works as PCI or whatever, you would be out of luck with an Imac.
-Check what the cache size is for the Imac; I don\'t know from the top of my head but my guess is the Powermac\'s cache is bigger..this can make a big difference on general performance, especially audio.

Disk size is not really an issue; although the internal drives these days are fast enough for at least 24-32 tracks of playback, you might want to get an external 7200 rpm firewire drive for audio, which is fast and portable.

I\'m also unsure about how much the Imac\'s memory can be expanded..the new models might forego all this but up until a few months ago it was always better to go with a Powermac for doing serious audio.

Just my 2 cents,

Cheerio,

Joris

[Francis Belardino]

Hey all!

Thanks so much for all the great words of wisdom!!

I won\'t be spending $$$ for at least 6 months, so I have plenty of time to swim around. I think an iMac might be best for me ... I believe the memory can go up to 1 gig (sweet) and the digi002 as an additional firewire port (extra drive)...

Most of my projects for this \"away from the big studio at work\" will involve working with multimedia firms...so, DVD buring will be a big plus!

But, as I said ... I have plenty of time.

Again... thank you so much. The Giga forum, as always, rocks!! images/icons/tongue.gif

[Brett Rosenberg]

In 6 months everything will be twice as fast! January(6 months away) is traditionally a time whan Apple announces new models (at Macworld?) and the rumor is that G5s are coming then...
BTW you didn\'t mention a monitor in your Power Mac set up(is \'ATI Radeon 7500\' a monitor or only a video card?). The Power mac set up is far more flexible, expandible, and to get a bigger disk drive is pretty cheap these days..(even here in the land of the pacific peso...)
Brett