New Mac ? DP ? please not the 5th quarter

[Frodo]

.... Who knows, by the time it catches up, I might want a PC... ok, probably not ...

Dude, that this even crossed your mind for a split second...

I can't figure out if I'm genuinely nervous about all this or if what I'm feeling are the old wounds from 2002-2003 and the slow healing process since...

[kelldammit]

...I'm not going to repeat that mistake. Sticking to my PowerBook G4 and my G5 until music production is viable on Intel hardware.

that's a good move. it's the ONLY move if you're in a mission-critical situation. at very least, wait for the better plugs to catch up...

I feel as if I've only just arrived at some point of relative stability since DP 3.x in OS 9.2. DP4 was, I believe, a 2003 release-- that was three years ago!!
2009. Hmm.

that's scary. if it's any consolation, at least the ub stuff i've tried thus far (drivers, and a couple of instruments) does seem to work very well. as long as the transition for dp goes relatively smoothly, i don't think it'll be so bad. then again, there will be 10.5 to contend with...if you're feeling particularly brave, or masochistic, or whatever...

Ditto. My G5 is only a year old (not even!) and I can wait for the intel stuff to catch up. Who knows, by the time it catches up, I might want a PC... ok, probably not, but it sort of sucks for people just getting into the market or just about to upgrade. They HAVE TO buy an Intel Mac. So perhaps there is more wisdom to NOT waiting to upgrade after all... This one, however, is a pretty big bug bite to accept.

it sounds like you're in good shape. for a new user, a new macbook will only run you a couple hundred more bucks than a used g4 powerbook, so no doubt intel would be the choice to make. afaik, logic and metro are the only two ub proggies out there for now, so i'd guess that garageband/logic would be the choice for most. but, a new user's only gonna spend the $ anyway...i think it's the established users who wanted to upgrade, but now have to wait that get shafted in this deal.
as for me, i took the plunge...the timing worked out okay. i can spend the summer writing on my macbook, and by the time dp ub/intel desktops hit, i should be ready to roll with actual recording/mixing. granted, i'm a rank amateur. my situation is obviously NOT mission critical...lucky for me, as dp in rosetta didn't inspire much confidence on the vi front.

oh, and if you go pc, murphy's law dictates that you'll do it at just such a time as to be waiting for everything to be updated for vista

kell

[MIDI Life Crisis]

.... Who knows, by the time it catches up, I might want a PC... ok, probably not ...

Dude, that this even crossed your mind for a split second...

I never really thought about it for a nano second. I think I'd go back to an Atari ST before I did a PC. But my old G4 @ 1.4 gHz is safely in storage as a backup should I need it and the HD's would just pop in. The 800 mHz iBook is prety useless, however and if I need a travel companion, I'd probably HAVE TO go with an Intel machine from Apple. Hopefully, that won;t be necessary until all the apps (at least DP & Finale) are native.

[Frodo]

UB. Rosetta. Native Intel. That's a lot to chew around. I though I'd digested the impact of most of it, but the term "mission critical" weighs heavily. Investment in high end software requires a certain confidence in the hardware to build a proper application library.

It goes so much further than just to know that the Intels are kicking butt.

I guess this is why it's so important to me that DP5 is rock solid and without reproach. Swapping out a ton of hardware and software is not an option right now, and the latter day PPC versions of all of my toys have got to be fully functional until such time a full transition can be made.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

That's a lot to chew around.

Chew on THIS: We BOTH hit 1000 posts today! Congrats to you... to US, my friend! And in the SAME topic!!!

Woohoo!

[Frodo]

That's a lot to chew around.

Chew on THIS: We BOTH hit 1000 posts today! Congrats to you... to US, my friend! And in the SAME topic!!!

Woohoo!

I'll drink to that!!

Congrats!!

We still have a long way to go to catch up with the Shooshmeister...

[MIDI Life Crisis]

That's a lot to chew around.

Chew on THIS: We BOTH hit 1000 posts today! Congrats to you... to US, my friend! And in the SAME topic!!!

Woohoo!

I'll drink to that!!

Congrats!!

We still have a long way to go to catch up with the Shooshmeister...

Yeah, well, you know sax players. What a pianist might say in 5 notes takes a sax players 10 and three repeats... And they slur!

MM

(ok, I'm a little jealous about the slurs... but not after a few drinks.)

[kelldammit]

kids today. that's all they wanna see. sax and violins.

congrats to you both!

[Proklaim Recording]

Boy reading all this has me wondering? I am in a position where I have to do something... I either have to upgrade NOW, or go back to plug-ins that don't sound as good as the current ones I am using, which are the Waves V5 Gold bundle and Ren Maxx. I just upgraded them a few weeks ago when a good deal came along. I currently have a G4 dual 800mhz and it has started dropping audio with the load I now have on it, but boy does it sound a lot better than before. So I am faced with the decision to either upgrade to a G5 now or wait and go back to using what I was. I hate the thought of giving up something that sounds better. I think the new G5s now would be supported for a while yet and I am really thinking of going ahead and upgrading to a G5 dual core 2.0ghz and waiting till the bugs get worked out of the new intel macs and the new UB software. That could take a while and I could be using all my nice sounding plugs. I can always use the G5 later on a VI or something, maybe run my Pro Tools LE on it. Thing is, it is a hard decision to make though.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Boy reading all this has me wondering? I am in a position where I have to do something... I either have to upgrade NOW

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/encore_stg4.html

Worked for me... and you won't have to go Intel for a while. Let the 3rd party apps catch up!

[Frodo]

Yeah, PR. That's a tough call. I broke down and bought my G5 last year after waiting a while, thinking that my old G4 was going to serve my needs until the Intel puzzle was solved.

In your case, I would suggest keeping what you've got at this point unless you are certain your needs over the next 6-12 months demand something other than what you've got going at the moment. Can you hold out for that long? Or is your back against the wall right now?

If what you have now is doing the job, don't underestimate the value of that. Keep what you've got and watch for announcements of the new versions.

If you're just aching today to be more productive, I'd say look into another PPC just to get your work done.

For UB and Intel, I would strongly suggest that you talk to all of the manufacturers of your peripherals right away to get some idea of when UB or Native compatibility will be in place before making the move-- whether you make that move sooner or later. As it was mentioned, some things are available today, but the Intel Towers haven't even been officially announced. We KNOW they are on they way-- once they are announced (next month?) it will be a matter of waiting for them to ship-- (and in my case) a matter of reading up on how other users are doing with them in the real world.

[Proklaim Recording]

Thanks for the input guys, I can't seem to get the G4 to run everything I am putting on it now. I have maxed out the RAM and all and it just does not have the power to run all the plugs I want to now. I can't hold out for that long Frodo with what I want to use, I would have to go back to using the older plugs I have that did not sound as good or did not take as long to get a good sound as the new ones I now have. I like what MLC says, I can wait till all the software guys catch up and then make my move to the Intels after the first bugs are all worked out. Not totally decided yet, but I am leaning to getting the new G5 right now.........


PR.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I like what MLC says, I can wait till all the software guys catch up and then make my move to the Intels after the first bugs are all worked out. Not totally decided yet, but I am leaning to getting the new G5 right now.........


PR.

I put that same 1.4 gHz upgrade in a G4 800 mHz for the same reasons. Had I not won a G5 last year from Macworld, I'd still be quite happy on the G4 (except for the fan noise!) Highly recommend it. You might find an online source for close to $300. I got mine in LA for $325 about 2 or 3 years ago.

[medienhexer]

I wonder...

Don‘t the V5 Waves Pluggs work with the APAs?

http://www.waves.com/content.asp?id=1622

Even if you chose to switch to the intel macs sometime, some extra horse
power will always come in handy. You could buy the APA32 at the same
price tag, an upgrade would cost you (or even less) and get convolution
reverb and QClone for free.
This thingy should boost your PT le-Performance, as well.

[thanatopsis]

Yes, be patient. Unless you'd rather drive yourself crazy and end up _being_ a patient... in a mental hospital!
Others have mentioned the transition from 9 to X. It took a good two years before I wasn't rebooting a dozen times each day. And does anybody remember the 680x0 to PPC switch? Yeah, a 66MHz PPC was over twice as fast as a 33MHz 68030, but non-native programs ran slower than frozen snot in emulation mode, if they ran at all. Rosetta is far better than that. Apple, MOTU, and _all_ of us survived both of those switches. Give it time.
How many UB apps does Native Instruments have? Lots of big companies have yet to make the transition.
Hash's Animation Master (3-D software) is now a Universal Binary, but their program wouldn't load for months and months after the 10.3 to 10.4 switch. They had to re-code everything at that point.
Apple hasn't even unveiled a pro-level desktop Intel Mac yet!
MOTU has UB version of their instruments and drivers. Maybe people who bought a MacBook or iMac can use the new Mac as a slave computer for sound apps while DP runs on the old G4 or G5. I use two other old Macs that way.
Yeah, the MacBook Pros are fast, but not that fast. I did some tests with UB programs like Handbrake (DVD-to-MP4) and a Core Duo 2.16GHz MacBook Pro wasn't nearly as fast as my dual 2.5GHz G5 (well, they were equal until I vacuumed out my G5; now it is still faster).
I then tested audio stuff with UB programs like Apple's AU Lab, Rax, and AUs like Linplug's Albino 3. The 2.16MHz Core Duo MacBook Pro got about 40% more sounds out of it than my 1.5MHz G4 PowerBook without spikes and glitches. I would have thought it would have been at least twice as efficient, especially for processor-intesive analog-modeled synths that don't access that hard drive, etc. But no. They aren't 5X faster like Apple sometimes claims.
I am lucky to have a dual 2.5 G5 during the transition. It is two years old and still faster than the newest Mac laptop in my tests. My old dual 800 G4 has been a slave computer for years. But it still runs a lot of instances of Albino, Pro-53, and EWQLSO Gold.
Hang in there, it will all come together and work perfectly eventually. And just when it does, well be suffering through another technological makeover a few years from now.
But at least we won't be alone.

Jim