Mac Mini Question

[logik101]

Hi everyone...

My friend just bought a Mac Mini 1.25MHz.
We're aware that there are no realistic expectations to use it as a heavy audio recording machine..but, I have a question...

I ran DP4 on my Sawtooth G4 (Single 450Mhz) with about 2 gigs of RAM, and I got about 15 tracks going pretty nicely.

My question is, the Mac Mini has a processor that's more than twice as fast as the one on that G4.

I know the hard drive in the mini's are slow.
But what if he used and external FireWire drive? (Which is good practice anyway)

Could he at least get 8 tracks running smoothly? I doubt he'll use more that some reverb and minor effects (if at all).

Is there something about front side buses and all that that would make the Mini unusable for DP4?
How much of a role will RAM (about 1G max on the Mini) play?
(I know maxing out the RAM is always recommended. Just curious how the interplay between RAM and CPU plays out).

Also, do things like lowering the the bit-depth of the colors for the monitor help the overall speed?
How about using an app I've heard of that even shuts down the finder, leaving DP the only app running?

Any suggestions/comments?

[bezzy]

Take this for what its worth, but I could not get Mac Mini to load garage band at the local store. The sales guy told me it wasn't meant to run an app like that.

[billf]

Originally posted by logik101:
Hi everyone...

My friend just bought a Mac Mini 1.25MHz.
We're aware that there are no realistic expectations to use it as a heavy audio recording machine..but, I have a question...

I ran DP4 on my Sawtooth G4 (Single 450Mhz) with about 2 gigs of RAM, and I got about 15 tracks going pretty nicely.

My question is, the Mac Mini has a processor that's more than twice as fast as the one on that G4.

I know the hard drive in the mini's are slow.
But what if he used and external FireWire drive? (Which is good practice anyway)

Could he at least get 8 tracks running smoothly? I doubt he'll use more that some reverb and minor effects (if at all).

Is there something about front side buses and all that that would make the Mini unusable for DP4?
How much of a role will RAM (about 1G max on the Mini) play?
(I know maxing out the RAM is always recommended. Just curious how the interplay between RAM and CPU plays out).

Also, do things like lowering the the bit-depth of the colors for the monitor help the overall speed?
How about using an app I've heard of that even shuts down the finder, leaving DP the only app running?

Any suggestions/comments?

It should work. GarageBand comfortably handles eight concurrent tracks on my brothers system. Of course DP 4.52 was a bit slow on his Mini, but once he turned off Beat Detection in the preferences, it now does eight tracks.

<small>[ March 19, 2005, 06:45 PM: Message edited by: TimeMist ]</small>

[Meltdown]

On my powerbook 1ghz i can run 24+ tracks easily on the slow
internal drive alone. Now why the negative reactions when it comes to the mac mini? Isn't it a powerbook without screen and key/mouse anyway? It should outperform most of the iBooks/Powerbooks.

[billf]

Originally posted by bezzy:
Take this for what its worth, but I could not get Mac Mini to load garage band at the local store. The sales guy told me it wasn't meant to run an app like that.

The Mac Mini comes bundled with GarageBand as part of iLife 05, and you can check and see that there are tons of people successfully using that setup over at icompositions.com.

Sounds like you had a bad sales guy.

[bmonroney]

Originally posted by bezzy:
Take this for what its worth, but I could not get Mac Mini to load garage band at the local store. The sales guy told me it wasn't meant to run an app like that.

The Mini in the store probably had the pathetic stock 256MB of RAM. This machine should have no trouble running a few tracks in GB with more RAM installed. The salesman sounds like a...well, uninformed.

To answer the original poster's question, I think with an external 7200 RPM FW drive, and 1GB of RAM, the Mini should work pretty nicely for basic audio recording with DP. Major softsynth and plugin processing will bring it to its knees, but 8 tracks of audio with a few plugins should be no sweat.

[logik101]

Originally posted by Meltdown:
On my powerbook 1ghz i can run 24+ tracks easily on the slow
internal drive alone. Now why the negative reactions when it comes to the mac mini? Isn't it a powerbook without screen and key/mouse anyway? It should outperform most of the iBooks/Powerbooks.

OK. This is what I was thinking.
Is this really far off?
What other computer components play a role?
The mini has a faster processor than this Powerbook.
The hard drive should be a non-factor, since it's only being used to host the app.
And a gig of RAM isn't a whole lot, but again, we're not aiming for 50 tracks or tons of effects.

The only thing that comes to mind is the front side bus and I don't know, the video card or something?

But thanks to all you guys for such great response.
It's giving us some hope.

[bcastagna]

logik101: The video card in the mini and my 1.0gHz powerbook are the same. Also, the current powerbooks and the mini both have a 167-mHz system bus with 333-mHz RAM modules and a 512k L2 cache on die. The mini should be considered a screenless powerbook as others have suggested.

http://www.apple.com/powerbook/specs.html
http://www.apple.com/macmini/specs.html