5.1 UB on PPC, faster or slower?

[Saintmatthew]

I suppose a good question to bring up, btw, - are the fixes worth an OS upgrade taking in consideration both the hassle and cost? Are there DP related pitfalls and or benefits in general in Tiger over Panther that might make it worthwhile/ill-advised not taking into account the 5.1 udpate?

[emulatorloo]

I think I'm still going to hold off on the upgrade on account of other issues as well. <SNIP> I'm in the midle of a writing stage and haven't had to bounce anything complicated to disk. I'm hoping this doesn't bite me in the ass later. Thanks for the link though. Maybe I'll take a weekend of from writing and make the plunge.

My feeling has always been if it aint broke don't fix it. So that sounds good to me. I'd be real scared to take on an upgrade while I was in the middle of a project! The computer gods would be sure to punish me for my hubris.

And ON YET ANOTHER HAND, it seems like LEOPARD may be around the corner . . . apparently Apple is "previewing" it at the developer conference coming up.

probably more than you want to know but my approach to major OS upgrades is to put them on an external firewire drive first to see if everything is all ok.

Another thing that has always made since for me too is to follow a procedure similar to this article -- it is about Final Cut Pro, but the sense of it applies to us too.

http://www.lafcpug.org/tutorials/basic_ ... grade.html

Upgrading to Tiger 10.4.x & FCP 5 Suite
A Procedure That Works For Me

Apple has both substantially upgraded its operating system, and started shipping the Final Cut Pro 5 application suite, which consists of new versions of Final Cut Pro, Motion, DVD SP, SoundTrack Pro, Compressor, etc. Although the Suite will run in 10.3.9, Tiger (10.4.1) is the recommended OS to take full advantage of many of the Suite's new features and capabilities.

The question remains as to how to move to FCP5 and 10.4 with the minimum of issues. The process delineated below is the path I always follow for both "dot-one" OS maintenance upgrades, and a wholesale upgrade such as Panther to Tiger. It is a tedious, time consuming process. It involves a number of steps, safeguards to preserve critical data, and some advanced preparation. However, at least for me, it rarely results in any substantial issue in the upgrade. However, while and I others recommend it, your mileage may vary.

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GOOD LUCK with the current project -- be sure to post some stuff in the showcase.

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[Timeline]

Is 5.1 on PPC running under Rosetta?

[emulatorloo]

Is 5.1 on PPC running under Rosetta?

No -- Universal Binary means it is native for both intel and PowerPC

So basically the categories are:

Intel only -- runs only on intel macs

PowerPC only -- runs native on powerPC macs, and in emulation under Rosetta on intel macs

Universal Binary -- runs native on PowerPC macs, and native on Intel Macs.

Most developers are going to ship universal binaries, rather than intel only or powerpc only.

[Timeline]

Thanks. That clears it up. I wonder how the Rosetta will work if I don't upgrade say on a quad intel 3.2ghz machine?

[Resonant Alien]

I'm curious how many bug fixes and how much more optimized this release is. This may sound a bit pissy, but if it is a significant improvement I'll have to upgrade my OS since I'm still on 10.3.9 and I think that sucks. When I paid for my upgrade in good faith, the requirements were 10.3.9 and above.

I sympathize with you, but it's the reality of computer recording....upgrades, upgrades, upgrades. You can't get mad at MOTU that UB code requires Tiger. Maybe you can get mad at Apple for updating OSX, but then if they didn't update the OS, we would all be bitching about that...."when is Apple gonna fix this or do that"....and you can't expect them to just keep churning out new versions of OSX for free.

In the past 3 years, I've spent about $600 on 2 DP upgrades (DP4.5 for $149 and DP5 for $195) plus two OSX upgrades (Panther and Tiger). That's about $200 / year.

When you really think about it, if we were all still using 24 track tape machines and large format consoles instead of DAWs, we would probably be spending at least that much / year in maintenance and upkeep on that equipment, so it's probably pretty equitable.

I think it's human nature to feel that software should be free or cheap because you don't get a big huge piece of furniture to look at when you buy it.....the same reason that a lot of people think downloading music without paying is not stealing.

It's a choice - you don't have to upgrade. Although I bought DP5, I still haven't upgraded from 4.61 yet because I have been in the middle of a project, and there were so many bad reports here about 5.0 and 5.01. I figured I would wait until my project was complete or the reports improved. DP 5.1 seems to be smoothing out after the initial flurry of reports that were mostly related to people not having the right versions of plugs, so I may jump now.

I would definitely wait until your project is done. And the reality is, you may want to wait a couple of more months for Leopard to come out. You may just want to skip Tiger altogether and go straight to Leopard....

[Resonant Alien]

Thanks. That clears it up. I wonder how the Rosetta will work if I don't upgrade say on a quad intel 3.2ghz machine?

Hey Gary -

Are you saying that you want to upgrade to a Intel Mac but stay on DP 4.x or DP 5.01? Pretty sure you can't do that. I don't believe DP 4.x or 5.01 will run under Rosetta - I think on Intel, your only choice is DP 5.1, and then Rosetta is not applicable because 5.1 is UB and doesn't use it.

[Timeline]

Well then I guess I will wait on everything for a while. The other issue is I can't find my original DP 4 box which has the serial number. I emailed DP and Corento has not replied.

I would like to make the leap but that holds me off anyway. The fact that I would need a new computer, cards for my scsi's and UAD makes it a very costly upgrade anyway. I would have to sell my LA2A pair, C12 pair or TELE 251 pair to have the cash to make it happen anyway.

Oh well.

[cridarco]

DP5.1 Installed!

For me, It seems has not increase performance, but also it surely has not decrease.
My first test is "DP5 instruments demo" song provided with DP5.0 installation CD, and CPU level are about 40% (like v.5.01).
I use buffer size of 256 for small delay when I play VIs.

No problem with third part plug-ins and VIs, all freeware or shareware.

The same random CPU peak of previous version are present in this one.

I think there are not performance improvements for PPC in this verion, but also bug fixing, some function addiction and, of course, UB compiling.

A great news is MIDI control of instrumenst settings.
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G5 x 2 x 1.8Mhz / 1GB ram / OS 10.4.7
DP5.1 / Automat / Crystal / ticky clav / Smartelectronix plug-ins

[Resonant Alien]

The fact that I would need a new computer, cards for my scsi's and UAD makes it a very costly upgrade anyway.

Oh well.

I hear ya man. I was gonna buy a new "MacIntelTower" later this year or next, whenever they show up, but after UAD announced their plans with the UAD-1e, I realized that just upgrading to a new Mac was gonna cost me a good $4500!! (2 UADs, plus new hard disks since my ATAs won't work in the new machines, plus new memory since my 2700 won't work......Yikes.) So, at this point, I'm hoping to sweat as much juice out of my G4 as possible.

Still.....you may want to jump to DP5.1 - I am probably going to make the jump if for no other reason than to get the automatic freezing on plugins - that should free up enough CPU to keep me happy on my G4 for a while. From what I have heard in the past day, DP5.1 on the PPC machines is working pretty well, so my G4 ought to like it!~

[Hide]

Installed dp5.1 here too.

And.... wow, 5.1 is CPU efficient more than 5.01 on my Mac(Dual G5 2.5GHz).
I compared CPU load between 5.01 and 5.1.
I got around 90-95% of CPU load with 5.01,
and same file I loaded on 5.1, it was around 80-85% of CPU load.
Definitely 5.1 is a bit lighter than 5.01 for me!

More smooth without any problem. So nice!

[retroz311]

Maybe I am confused, I thought DP was NOT, repeat WAS NOT UB yet?


Edit never mind, just saw it!

[Hide]

Maybe I am confused, I thought DP was NOT, repeat WAS NOT UB yet?

dp5.1 is UB. Previous ver 5.01 is not UB.

[bone.china]

Anybody else noticing that the relatively simple idea of Universal Binary plugins are starting to confuse more than a few people?

[tommymandel]

I think I'm still going to hold off on the upgrade on account of other issues as well. Mainly those related to completely reinstalling a system such as returning to driver setups that play well together and such. Reinstalling everything else I run and making sure I know how to do things in Tiger that I do now in Panther. Creating postscript files is one example. I've used my neighbors machine which has Tiger and noticed tweaks. Thankfully I'm running quite stable so I'm not crying bloody tears over not being able able to do this upgrade (just being slightly pissy). But I also haven't had the opportunity to encounter certain bugs I've seen discussed, as for example, I'm in the midle of a writing stage and haven't had to bounce anything complicated to disk. I'm hoping this doesn't bite me in the ass later. Thanks for the link though. Maybe I'll take a weekend of from writing and make the plunge.

Saintmatthew, I'm in a similar position to yours on my Titanium PowerBook - it works so well with 10.3.9, that I'm loathe to upgrade to Tiger, which might be too much animal for its 4 year old brain...so DP 5.1 will go on my Tower, but 5.0.1 will stay on the PB. (for now )
However I must sympathise with MOTU and point out that in order for them to have conformed with your concept of how this 5.1 upgrade should have been released, they would have had to do 2 different upgrades, using more programmers or taking a longer time to release the upgrades. Perhaps this factored into their decision to require Tiger, since I believe that an Intel-compatible version was their primary goal with this release. (and, as was pointed out, Tiger is an Apple requirement for all software meant to run native on any Intel powered Mac computer.)