Father Jack Hackett

On another thread AllanB mentions some Powerbook G4's at cost. Those are sexy machines. Does anyone have experience of using them for music production? I'm using a Dell Inspiron P4 2.4mHz 1GB RAM, and using Pro Tools. Runs fine but is clearly going to strain a bit with a lot of plug-ins, especially reverb. Thinking of getting a G4 Powerbook to do this and let the wife use the Wintel machine. Looks like the new G5's will p1ss on the Wintel machines but they are around 2k even without a monitor ...

Anyone got experience they can share?

andym172

I bought a new 17" Powerbook off Allan and love it - it is excellent!

Can't comment on how good it would be for music production, but you might want to have a look at a few of the case studies here: http://www.apple.com/uk/pro/.

I bought an extra 512mb stick of ram taking it up to 1gb ram and it flies I've got 15gb's worth of music, 1.5gb's worth of photo's and usually have numerous other programmes open at the same time - no problem at all!

I reckon you go for it! You won't regret it...

DominicA

Our senior developer/tech director here at work has quite a few PCs at home, but all of his music production is done on a mac g4. The PC can in no way match the latency figures of the mac... I'll find out what software he is using but i do recall him talking about protools (i think you can use the licence for this on both machines?)

angrynorth

Considering almost every CD out there was produced on a Mac, I would imagine that they are pretty good at Music production

AllanB

Andy how did you get one getting your money back from the Apple Store ? . Hope it worked out OK.

I can vouch for the fact that many music customers use Macs. We've just supplied a load of kit to Simon Cowall, Darius, Will Young etc. Abbey Road Studios (EMI) is Mac based, Lasgo Exports part of the Chrysalis group are Mac based as is a big chunk of BMG to name just a few.

Cat Stevens has a Mac. I've also supplied Macs to Blur, Richard E Grant, Jonothan Ross to name but a few.

Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails has Macs and his last DVD was all done on Macs.

The Butthole Surfers use Mac on stage for much of thier music.

Thier is plenty of software out there. One package won best software at the MacUser awards by a mile last year, music software called Reason, you might want to look at that. I should have a copy of Apples lastest music software soon and don't forget Apple bought emagic shwoing Apple are serious in maintaining thier lead in this area.


AllanB

andym172

Hi Allan,

Still not heard anything! My cc company asked to see all receipts etc so I've sent them off again.

Still feeling pretty positive though!

My bloody adsl modem has now given up the ghost
I contacted the manufacturer (D-Link) 2 weeks ago and was told that I would have to wait for a week, they would then send me an e-mail of where to send my modem to get fixed, and then I should receive it back around a week later. Never received an e-mail and have had to phone them on quite a few occasions. Pretty poor service in my opinion...

I'm currently having to use a <shrivel> pc. Horrible, truly horrible!

Markus

Anyone ever heard of the composer Nic Raine? Nic uses a mac for all his work. Helped him out on a few occasions with a few mac problems he had as he was a good friend of one of my bosses. So macs are rather well used and liked in the music community, especially for MIDI type stuff.

ScoobyDoo555

I'm a music producer using a Mac. Do alot of corporate and commercial release stuff. I've got a G4 (supplied by Allan ). Prior to this I was using a G3. Prior to that, it was a big Powermac 9x00 using ProTools.

I've also got a G3 PowerBook. Which do I use most? The G4 tower. Ask yourself whether you're going to use it for location-based work or static work. I had my G3 in custom rack (known as a "rackintosh"!!! I kid you not - from the States!!!)

Now I've got a studio setup, I don't really need a portable setup, although the PowerBook is ready to go at anytime, using Logic Platinum 6 & my MOTU 828.

A laptop is am essential piece of kit for location work, but for studio, the towers walk all over them.

Also, bear in mind that Mac ain't cheap - it's an expensive mistake to make for tha sake of looks.

Dan



[Edited by ScoobyDoo555 - 12/17/2003 6:52:46 PM]