Powerbooks

Will · Post by **Will** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 7:19 pm

I'm thinking of lashing out and getting a Maccy lappy.

What's my best bet for $3500?

Are those new Intel ones much chop for audio?

I've heard they're generally pretty shit.

Help.

gb · Post by gb » Thu Feb 02, 2006 3:55 pm

Where'd you hear that they were shit at audio? I'd be keen to hear as I'm thinking of lashing out on one myself...

Dave_wratH · Post by **Dave_wratH** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 7:04 pm

I'd like to see those reports also as I will be updating my iMac shortly to the dual core intel. Apple are going all intell after 07 so it'd be silly to get something else that will be outdated shortly. Having said that - I have a 12" G4 Powerbook and its the duck's nuts. I wouldn't buy a laptop that wasn't 12" purerly because its my second computer and its supposed to be portable (in my STM backpack with all my other shit). They can't keep the new dual core's cool enough to put into a 12" yet though, which is a big ghey. I think the magnet safe A/c connetor is beautiful. Someone tripped over Jordo's iBook cord while it was plugged into a PA at soundcheck. It fell about 1m onto carpet and turned off. Rebooted and did the gig no problems tho. It's also drunk half a beer with no problems.

As far as audio goes, I wouldn't ever work on a PC by choice again. I'm a graphic designer also and mac's are the shit (and usually standard) for a lot creative applications purely because they don't fall over.

No spyware, no pop-ups, no real virus threat, plug-n-play (that works) on any USB / Firewire device, I could go on...

valuetime · Post by **valuetime** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 8:19 pm

imo, you're prolly better off getting a desktop g5 mac (or even a pc?). even my tricked out 17" powerbook can't keep up with ableton. i don't even know if an external firewire soundcard will free up my cpu (can anyone shed light on this?).

i wouldn't bother with a powerbook unless you get a) a superdrive, b) a 7200rpm HD and c) 2GB of ram. which will cost you over $4K for a 15".

unf, i don't anything about the new ones. they seem to only cost about $300 more than a similar powerbook.

i think i helped you a lot.

Realm Korrupt · Post by **Realm Korrupt** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 8:57 pm

valuetime wrote:imo, you're prolly better off getting a desktop g5 mac (or even a pc?). even my tricked out 17" powerbook can't keep up with ableton. i don't even know if an external firewire soundcard will free up my cpu (can anyone shed light on this?).

i wouldn't bother with a powerbook unless you get a) a superdrive, b) a 7200rpm HD and c) 2GB of ram. which will cost you over $4K for a 15".

unf, i don't anything about the new ones. they seem to only cost about $300 more than a similar powerbook.

i think i helped you a lot.

Your PBook can't keep up wit Ableton??

My 15" runs no probs with heaps of audio/MIDI tracks, automation and VSTs running. I run all my audio off an External FW drive. Are u using Ableton 4 or 5? If using 5 its as easy as using Freeze to free up CPU.

Shadowgames · Post by **Shadowgames** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 9:55 pm

valuetime wrote:i don't even know if an external firewire soundcard will free up my cpu (can anyone shed light on this?)

it will only free up your CPU is the card has on board DSP.

...most dont. you could get a firewire DSP system, (such as the TC electronics 'powercore' series) but they will only run plug-ins which were desinged for the unit.

so the only thing you can do is render/bounce/freeze some track to free up some cpu power.

Rob M · Post by **Rob M** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 10:11 pm

will there be G6 desktops using the dual core? or are they a long way off?

I'll definately get one of those if they hit the market.

I switched from Windows too, best decision i ever made. Thanks to ac23 stevo for the heads up and showing up my ignorant ways!

windows for the lose. it's good not to worry about spyware, virii or shit failing. apple knows the score.

Will · Post by **Will** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 10:16 pm

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/01/23 ... pc_faster/

Under the Rosetta emulation - a British invention from Manchester - PPC applications running in x86 performed at about half speed. With the exception of iTunes, which encoded audio files a third as fast as it would have done running on a decent processor, such as the IBM G5.

Hmmm...

valuetime · Post by **valuetime** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 10:29 pm

Realm Korrupt wrote:Your PBook can't keep up wit Ableton?? My 15" runs no probs with heaps of audio/MIDI tracks, automation and VSTs running. I run all my audio off an External FW drive. Are u using Ableton 4 or 5? If using 5 its as easy as using Freeze to free up CPU.

ableton 5. i've never kept live files on my external drive. would that help? everything sits locally on my hd. as soon as i've got more than 10 tracks running with comps, eqs and reverbs or whatever (i don't even use vst's) it starts to stutter and playback becomes unpossible.

an example of why i don't like freezing: today i wanted to add 16 bars to the middle of a track, so i had to unfreeze 12 bass, drum and perc tracks, drag and drop, and then sit there and wait for it to refreeze every single fucking one (can't do it in bulk, either). took me about an hour. it's the only thing i don't like about ableton on my setup.

rarara

Motive · Post by **Motive** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 9:56 am

my advice - just wait on getting a new MacBook Pro. the accounts i've read is that they're good - they're a fair bit faster with audio apps - about 30-50%. but because the new Intel Macs require the new Universal binaries and very few programs have them it's not worth getting one until all this is sorted out. without the universal binary it runs under emulation (Rosetta). plus u have only the choice of one model, you're better off waiting another quarter for the release of the other MacBook models and the new iBook. the new iBook promises to be loads faster than the current, with a new design, a widescreen and a lower price.

VT - yep, get a soundcard. in my experience they run better when they have an external soundcard. my last mac would run less than ten channels on its native card, with the soundcard i got to around 36 and it was slowing down a bit but still fine. it's faster for the computer if they're kept on your local drive, firewire have a slower connection than internals.

valuetime · Post by **valuetime** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 10:18 am

so, something along the lines of an m-audio audiophile? or do i need one with DSP like shadowgames is saying?

Motive · Post by **Motive** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 11:13 am

the ones Shadowgames is talking about have DSPs for offloading audio processing to the soundcard's chip (like effects basically). But any soundcard will help the processor as it frees up the host CPU from dealing with streaming and cacheing the audio. if u know someone with an external why not just take your laptop around, install the software and try it out for yourself so u know what you're getting into.

Ag3nT[]0raNg3 · Post by **Ag3nT[]0raNg3** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 10:58 am

interesting article about the performance of the Intel Core Duo chip that laptops as MacBook Pro's have. They say the chip exceeds in some cases the P4 Extreme Edition and even the AMD dual core FX60

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060418-6624.html

safire · Post by **safire** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 1:27 am

i have a 15" Mac Book Pro dual 2gb, & 2gb Ram, runnin logic.

as already been stated alot of software does not run natively.Logic 7.2 already has the update, although although the 3rd party plugin's arent updated as yet so it wont recognise them.

im runnin it in Rosetta mode, it runs ok although nothing like it can nativly. when runnin logic 7.2 nativly it runs close to the speed my g5

ALTHOUGH the main thing u must understand is that u can run this macbook as a node with logic, so the G5 paired up with the Mac book = 4 processors and 4.5GB ram. it connects thru ethernet. this is crazy!

jeez im realy starting to sound like a geek now, just like the rest of you!!