dont know if youll get much response out of this thread tbh. for the most part you should go for as much computing power as you can for your next one, even though itll never be enough no matter what kind of beast you get. generally you learn to manage the resources you have through either the age-old tricks or through your own.

to get back on topic though, is a Mac out of the question? I could give you a comparison if youd like since i run Arp2600 on my intel macbook every now and then.

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aCtually a mac is not out of question....

Do shoot.

Yah i know i should go for as much computing power as possible but really PC's have gone into Dual Core and now Quad Core and 8 cores and its not like the programs have jumped tremendously in cpu usage to follow them in stride...so im guessing blowing a lot of money might be overkilll?

And 8 Core CPUs are probably not optimized for the programs today or the programs arent optimized for 8 cores

quote:

Originally posted by MoBreakz aCtually a mac is not out of question.... Do shoot. Yah i know i should go for as much computing power as possible but really PC's have gone into Dual Core and now Quad Core and 8 cores and its not like the programs have jumped tremendously in cpu usage to follow them in stride...so im guessing blowing a lot of money might be overkilll? And 8 Core CPUs are probably not optimized for the programs today or the programs arent optimized for 8 cores

True but I mean clockspeed and core count arent everything. You can also make sure to get atleast 1-2gb of DDR2 ram, max capacity hard drive, if its a desktop getting PCI extra USB interfaces, extra fan(s) if need be and so forth. you get the gist.

So i've gone ahead and done some testing for you. I'm currently on the road, and as such only have my Macbook with me to produce.

Macbook, OS 10.4.9. Intel core duo 1.83ghz.
1GB of DDR2 ram.
80GB hdd.

My latest production was entirely software, no audio interface, and I dont have my PC so Cubase was out of the question, but I was running Ableton 6 for the record.

The production I used for benchmarking ran a total of 26 channels. 15 vst channels, the rest were audio or aux busses.

I ran 11 instances of the Vanguard synth, 1 instance of linplug's Alpha, 3 instances of Arp2600 (I bounced 3 previous entire channels of Arp2600 to audio as Arp2600 tends to be a little CPU heavy).

All 26 channels had an average of 1 effect vst or ableton effect unit on them. One of the channels was running a Simpler unit And all 26 channels had a relatively cpu-light parametric eq.

The results were an 87% CPU load when doing a live playback. Live playback was uninterupted except by a slight stuttering once throughout the entire playback. Otherwise, the machine didnt flinch. Usually I can run up to a 93% load without CPU spiking.

When disabling all instances of the Arp 2600, CPU dropped down 70% CPU load.

Hope this helps. If you have any questions about this particular setup or about anything feel free to ask or PM.

Cheers,
Andrew

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quote:

Originally posted by SPAWNmaster True but I mean clockspeed and core count arent everything. You can also make sure to get atleast 1-2gb of DDR2 ram, max capacity hard drive, if its a desktop getting PCI extra USB interfaces, extra fan(s) if need be and so forth. you get the gist. So i've gone ahead and done some testing for you. I'm currently on the road, and as such only have my Macbook with me to produce. Macbook, OS 10.4.9. Intel core duo 1.83ghz. 1GB of DDR2 ram. 80GB hdd. My latest production was entirely software, no audio interface, and I dont have my PC so Cubase was out of the question, but I was running Ableton 6 for the record. The production I used for benchmarking ran a total of 26 channels. 15 vst channels, the rest were audio or aux busses. I ran 11 instances of the Vanguard synth, 1 instance of linplug's Alpha, 3 instances of Arp2600 (I bounced 3 previous entire channels of Arp2600 to audio as Arp2600 tends to be a little CPU heavy). All 26 channels had an average of 1 effect vst or ableton effect unit on them. One of the channels was running a Simpler unit And all 26 channels had a relatively cpu-light parametric eq. The results were an 87% CPU load when doing a live playback. Live playback was uninterupted except by a slight stuttering once throughout the entire playback. Otherwise, the machine didnt flinch. Usually I can run up to a 93% load without CPU spiking. When disabling all instances of the Arp 2600, CPU dropped down 70% CPU load. Hope this helps. If you have any questions about this particular setup or about anything feel free to ask or PM. Cheers, Andrew

nice.

When you say you bounced the arp2600 instances to audio...you turned it to wav and the audio was being played as a wav file instead of midi through the Arp VST....right, so that ligtens the load. For the Test itself did you use the bounced audio or the Vst stream, im kinda lost in translation.

How much does your current Mac setup cost in todays monies.

i had 6 channels running Arp before and bounced 3 of them to audio so was only running 3 actual instances of Arp2600 in addition to everything else previously mentioned.
Spent ~1300 on my Macbook. And yes the intel macs are beasts.

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awesome.

What about VST support for MACs OS? Or do you run Windows on it?

Can i get pretty much any VST there is for a Mac computer?

Im not too hyped about Windows Vista so im definately thinking about Mac. Trying to time it right as well, i hear price drops are coming for Core2Duos in July.

quote:

Originally posted by MoBreakz awesome. What about VST support for MACs OS? Or do you run Windows on it? Can i get pretty much any VST there is for a Mac computer? Im not too hyped about Windows Vista so im definately thinking about Mac. Trying to time it right as well, i hear price drops are coming for Core2Duos in July.

There are compatibility issues with Vista and besides that its very resource hungry, you might as well run a dedicated machine with an audio OS or a tweaked version of whatever operating system you like.

As far as compatibility is concerned the vast majority of the big name software companies and most of the small ones as well have compatibility for OSX, however with the new Macs you will need Universal Binary apps which are a bit harder to find (but by no means limiting...its really a matter of opinion.)

The day I got my mac I told myself to give it 2 or 3 days to adjust and see if I would run Windows on it...after those two days I realized Windows is a joke and havent looked back since. Again this is a matter of opinion, some will swear by windows for production, others will stand by OSX, both have pros and cons.

Cheers,
Andrew

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