Choosing Macbook or Macbook Pro - Use with MOTU 828 mkII

[towerofbabel]

I have a MOTU 828 mkII as my audio interface, and I use Live 7 as my main sequencer. Until now, I have been on a PC desktop, but now, I will be moving to a laptop and specifically, either a Macbook or a Macbook Pro.

Of course, the Macbook Pro is probably the ideal solution. But, from reading the Macbook specs, I think it is all I need. The only obvious advantage of the Macbook Pro for me is the two firewire ports, one for the audio card and one for my external drive. However, I can use USB2 for my external drive too.

So, my whole setup, if I got a Macbook would be:

1 Firewire Port used with the 828mkII
1 USB 2.0 port used for my external drive (probably will record audio to the internal drive though)
Live 7 for my recording/sequencing

Where are the bottlenecks with such a Macbook setup, and how many, say, tracks of stereo audio could I comfortably record/playback at a time with this config?

Does anyone use the Macbook, or have any comments/suggestions in using the Macbook for audio with a MOTU 828 mkII?

[HCMarkus]

I have used my 828 mkII with an iBook on many occasions with only one issue, and the issue arose from use of my Yamahah Motif ES. I had a low-level hum arise on the Motif audio when connecting Motif MIDI via USB directly to the iBook. This problem was completely resolved by cutting the shield and ground wire on the USB cable that went to the Motif. Check the web and you will see how to ID the ground wire in a USB cable. The shield is, of course, readily apparent.

I had the same issue when using the 828 with my G5 Quad, and the ground-lift USB cable did the trick there as well.

Apparently, a ground loop is created between the Firewire and USB cables. I tried lifting the ground from the audio cables, but only removing the USB ground caused the problem to vanish completely.

[PostPCMan]

The persistent rumor is that the MacBooks and MacBook Pros will be updated in a major way in August or early September. The designs are about 18 months old, so they're due for a major redesign. The new Intel laptop chips - faster & lower power - are just about to ship. So, if you're not in a hurry, you might want to wait just a bit. More info on what's to come shows up on macrumors.com and cultofmac.com.

If you need to do this now, I think either laptop would work, unless you need the larger display, though the Pro might give you more simultaneous channels, and more compute power if you use lots of effects. The biggest bottleneck with many laptops is the 5400RPM disc that they ship with. There are 7200RPM laptop discs available now, but I don't know if either of the MacBooks are available with it. If so, and if you're recording many channels, that would be worthwhile. If you can't buy with one, it can be added in the aftermarket.

[fekete]

if you aint gonna do some cpu intensive graphics or video, and if you dont need larger displays , i'd say go macbook.
im on a macbook intelcore duo 2 , 2 ghz with 4 gb ram and everything flows fine.
obviously i use an external 7200 rpm usb2 500gb iomega hd.

i agree with you the only inconvenient is the poor amount of usb\fw ports.
havin my usb controller and my hd i cant connect my usb mous, for example...maybe is time for a wireless one...but wireless peripherals interfere with audio streaming usually, so i think im gonna stick with the damn trackpad.

anyway, comparing a same setup (processor\hd\ram) macbook and pro ends up that the two are actually identical in performance, but not in price...
make up yer mind....

[towerofbabel]

if you aint gonna do some cpu intensive graphics or video, and if you dont need larger displays , i'd say go macbook.
im on a macbook intelcore duo 2 , 2 ghz with 4 gb ram and everything flows fine.
obviously i use an external 7200 rpm usb2 500gb iomega hd.

i agree with you the only inconvenient is the poor amount of usb\fw ports.
havin my usb controller and my hd i cant connect my usb mous, for example...maybe is time for a wireless one...but wireless peripherals interfere with audio streaming usually, so i think im gonna stick with the damn trackpad.

anyway, comparing a same setup (processor\hd\ram) macbook and pro ends up that the two are actually identical in performance, but not in price...
make up yer mind....

Hi,

thanks for the answers people.

fekete: so, you are using a firewire audio card, and recording directly to an external disk via USB, and performance is fine? I was worried about recording externally actually, performance wise, but that would be an ideal setup for me.

I have limited graphics/video needs, so looks like I'll go for the Macbook.

Are they noisy??

[nick danger]

The 828 has two firewire ports, so you could run your external hard drive into that port.

It also seems to be the general consensus around here to run your DAW on your internal drive, but record your project data onto the external drive (or perhaps vice-versa-- the main goal is to spread the load over two separate drives.)

[spirit]

A 13.3 inch screen can be more difficult to read small stuff with than one might think compared to a 15.4" screen. PT 7.1 is bad (bad color scheme). Live not as bad. And if you know where everything is that you use then not as much a consideration. But 13.3 subjectively seems to go below the threshold of readilbility on some things, making more difference than the 10% reduction is size would make you think. You could always hook up an external monitor for $150 when not mobile (2 monitors is a better solution anyway- except Live probably won't put mixer view on one monitor and the other view on the other monitor)