Need some Mac/GPO help?

[Karl Garrett]

Hi Everyone,

Following Tony's PC support lead, I'm putting together Mac support.

I am able to offer only the help I can with your Mac. I have been an Apple user since 1979 and I've been a user of Performer (long before there was a "Digital") from version 1.0, and have grown up with successive versions until the present Digital Performer 4.6. I have also been a daily user of GPO with DP on my Mac since it was born almost two years ago. I have recently purchased Logic Pro 7.1, and I am trying my best to get up to speed with this product. I am pleased to offer assistance with any problems that you may encounter with GPO.

I am working on contributing to the Knowledgebase with Tony. I am setting up a Skype account or you can reach me by email gpo@garrettguitar.com. Also, I can be available a few hours a day if you want to call me at 215-752-5618 between 1 and 4 p.m. United States, Eastern, time, Monday through Friday.

I ask Mac users to contribute to the knowledgebase.

While I would hope that everyone's music flows flawlessly from his/her computer, we know that with things as complex as they are, sometimes this is not the case. With this in mind, I'll try to help, and look forward to helping you in any way I can.

Karl Garrett

[Tony Monaghan]

That's excellent news Karl, I look forward to your contributions!

[DPDAN]

Excellent Karl, that's just great! :)

Dan

[Fabio]

THANKS!
I hope to help people if I can, and to be helped by you when I'll need.

I'm a Mac User too. Since 1983. I also had the pleasure of running Performer 1.0 on my Mac SE HD. It was science fiction for the early MIDI era.

Anyway I'm no longer a professional, and then I can't afford very expensive applications, but I destroied my finances buying a G5 that runs GPO in a OSX 10.4 set up. (thanks Gary for the very complete package you created) :)

OT:
I'm forced to use sometime the cheap-but-powerful PC of my wife and the almost complete tools collection of my friends still working at pro level for additional works.
:(

[Jerry W.]

Thanks Karl for this!

I will be glad to help those with REALLY LOW powered computers. (Just look at my specs in my signature!) I have been able to achieve some modest success with my setup. I have little tricks, setting changes, etc.

If I can help, please let me know.

Jerry

[Styxx]

Karl? I'll have a Big Mac with and medium order of fries, a hot apple pie, coke (no Pepsi) coke and can you make that with ... wha? Huh? What do you mean he’s not offering ... it is? … oh, never mind Karl. :D

Well, if some day things start looking up and I can get me a Mac this will Shirley come in handy.

[Karl Garrett]

Hey Styxx,

Wouldn‘t you be surprised if FEDEX brought the above to you tomorrow? :D

Karl

[BlueMax]

Super! Maybe you could even offer some frugal advice for someone wanting to switch from PC to Mac for the purpose of composing with GPO!

[Karl Garrett]

Super! Maybe you could even offer some frugal advice for someone wanting to switch from PC to Mac for the purpose of composing with GPO!

What kind of advice would you require? :)

Karl

[DPDAN]

BlueMax, I just started using computers for mixing and editing music related stuff about two years ago at the recommendation of my friend Jay. He told me that I really need to get a Mac so I can use Digital Performer, I can not say anything about any other workstation software because I have never used them, but I can't say enough about how incredible Digital Performer is, and how absolutely wonderful the Mac environment is. I use a nice Dell PC for GPO and Gigastudio/GOS, and it has served me well too, but having a Mac as the heart of my system is just wonderful.

There is always the argument that some software is not compatlble between the two different platforms, and that is true, but if you bought a nice G5 you would not be sorry. For me, I need both platforms, and it is nice to be familiar with both. :)

dpDan

[chmara]

I am becoming quite an expert in reloading Challenge/Respose instruments and packages since I mechanically had main drive go out two-three months ago, and last week had a fireware piece try to eat four drives alive. (See: It's All Gary's Fault")

Finally saved two of four drives - two corrupted beyond belief -- including, of course the main drive. Complete wipe and reinstalls required on main drive and of all samples for all instruments.

On its side the CD pile added up to 34". Got through six inches of reloads in the past two days.

Consultation with experts final solution -- firmware on older Firewire Drive corrupted system -- then linked to the other firewire drives in daisy chain -- and then the additive effect entered (like a virus) the disc functions in systyem, rendering main drive unopenable but salvageable with disc warrior.

[Karl Garrett]

I am becoming quite an expert in reloading Challenge/Respose instruments and packages since I mechanically had main drive go out two-three months ago, and last week had a fireware piece try to eat four drives alive. (See: It's All Gary's Fault")

Finally saved two of four drives - two corrupted beyond belief -- including, of course the main drive. Complete wipe and reinstalls required on main drive and of all samples for all instruments.

On its side the CD pile added up to 34". Got through six inches of reloads in the past two days.

Consultation with experts final solution -- firmware on older Firewire Drive corrupted system -- then linked to the other firewire drives in daisy chain -- and then the additive effect entered (like a virus) the disc functions in systyem, rendering main drive unopenable but salvageable with disc warrior.

This is really terrible. I’m really sorry to here that with the advanced technology we are using today, that problems like this can exist. I feel so fortunate not to have had problems like this in almost 20 years.

I have really tried to be meticulous with backups because of losing almost 6 months of work a long time ago. I now do two things to try and minimize these kinds of disasters.

I look at it this way. I value my time on this earth at about $30 an hour. Now in truth once in a while it’s worth much more and most of the time it’s not worth much of anything. But I hate having to go through things like you are now. The toll on your physical being is just too much to suffer if it can be avoided.

My system consists of an internal and 3 external hard drives that are connected all the time. I figure that at it would take me about 20 hours to reinstall, reconfigure, reconstruct, and who knows what else to get my system operational again, and that even after all this I might have lost some important data. So at my hourly worth, I could invest the $600 in a real nice big drive and only use it to do weekly backups of the entire system. I don’t keep it connected to my FireWire chain except during these backups. I use the program Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html) to do this about once a week. This program makes an exact copy of your drive, and it is easy to get up and running if a disaster strikes.

Most sequencers allow you to make incremental backups of your projects as you go along. I do this after every major step in the creative process. And once a week I save these backups to DVD

Thanks for sharing your problems with us. Perhaps in doing this you will save someone else from this type of heartache. So often things work so well for us, that we tend to forget our systems are only a heartbeat away from death.

Karl

[BlueMax]

How does the internal Mac audio (Mac mini, iMac G5) fare for GPO? Decent latency? Decent quality? Or do you pretty much NEED to replace the audio with something like the Audiophile USB?

[Fabio]

How does the internal Mac audio (Mac mini, iMac G5) fare for GPO? Decent latency? Decent quality? Or do you pretty much NEED to replace the audio with something like the Audiophile USB?

The PowerPC G5 has an excellent internal audio, and light-speed sound processing. The quality of iMac is still good, but speed may be a problem, and the best connection is the optical-digital one. Mac mini sounds good, I've not direct experience, but being a G4 the cpu is not really efficient with large setup or massive dsp effects. All machines need a wide ram to work well: 1Gb strongly recommended, but some little arrangement is possible with 512Mb also. I've a 2Gb RAM PPC G5, and it's working with very very large setup in real time (audio set up must be tuned anyway to avoid clics and sync issues, but one time you find the right one, and in Mac OS it's quite easy, you go on quickly).

[Styxx]

Hey Styxx,

Wouldn‘t you be surprised if FEDEX brought the above to you tomorrow? :D

Karl Wow Karl how close can you come!:eek: Only, the FEDEX truck did come about the same time a UPS truck both collided and now we have two drivers who are totally 'FEDUP"! :D
But no big mac ... :o

[chmara]

Six days later - a total of 21 hours sleep AND crashing a prime back up drive (mechanical this time - ask me about Western Digital sometime) I am down to only 5" of discs to reload. Of course this is not without some of the software companies sending wrong update materials, and losing all my REX to RMX converted files on the back-up that died.

So, this week back to converting Brush Artistry and the whole blooming Drums on Demand library right after I reinstall/convert GPO, VOA and Diva.

Wiping out three of four drives and starting over has given me a new hatred, BTW, of challenge and response security. Especially when you try and type 40 numbers accurately into those darned little boxes at 4:30 a.m.

I expect to be up and working again by Monday-- so if anyone has questions on Mac re-installation of this stuff -- I have plenty (too much) experience.