MacPro/Studio Use.

Neoni · 19 May 2009 at 01:21

Right i wont give away too much,

but what mac should i be looking for, for commercial studio use? i mean it could be going through pretty heavy recording sessions, and due to the application and hardware, relying on the "Host" processing, Quad core be enough, tackle everything i throw at it?

or all out with an 8 core?

-Alex

Neoni · 19 May 2009 at 11:21

LordSplodge said:
How can we tell you what Mac Pro is best if you won't tell us what you plan on running and what your budget is?

Anyway the standard Apple buying advice fits here and that is buy the best Mac Pro you can afford.

budget pretty much, hopefully wont be an issue?

and itll be used for Music production, mainly pro-tools, quite heavy track and extensive use.

Neoni · 20 May 2009 at 02:52

Phate said:
Oh for sure, recently I've been working on some HUGE images and doing rendering across the whole image and it just keeps going

Thats the kinda power im after as ill be definately exceeding 48+ tracks

Neoni · 20 May 2009 at 07:35

visibleman said:
If it's a pro setup i'm assuming you'll be running a PT HD rig? As the DSPs will do some of the processing.
However, i would stretch to what ever you can get to be honest, so get an octo, but PT is fairly efficient - i've seen quad's easily handle 60+ tracks with a load of plugins. Even my cacky Q6600 with an LE rig happily chugs away with 32 tracks, loaded up with virtual instruments and plugins.
Also note that plugins like Altiverb and virtual instruments will use a lot of ram and processing power, compared to compressors/gates/delays etc which use very little (certainly less ram compared to cpu usage). But the norm is usually 8GB, i've seen more than this is most PTHD rigged studios, apart from a few big 5/6/7/8.1 mixing studios that have "to the max" mac's.

Again, throw some cash at the drives - decent OS drive, huge fast audio drive etc + backup solution!!!!

Not HD, theres no need for it with the current power of LE.

Neoni · 20 May 2009 at 15:23

visibleman said:
In which case you're limited to 32 tracks (currently PT8 allows you two record 32 tracks as well but i think they'll take it out like they did with 7.x), so an octo would be overkill!!! Same with 12GB ram, you won't use it. Get a quad, 8GB ram, plenty of storage and spend the rest of pre's - especially if you're planning to use the 002/003, horrible horrible pre's.

Protools 8 allows 48 Tracks+ Music production tool kit i believe can push it to 100+, im not going to be using a 002, 002 pres are awful, but the 003 pre's arent that bad, im currently hooked up to an old school 01v, but im going to be investing in a desk when alls up and running.