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David Polich wrote:Just to update, I queried all the Mac experts I know and got the same answer - a 7200 RPM external FireWire drive is a must for Powerbooks and audio (just as having dual drives in a desktop is necessary for audio). My favorite local Mac repair shop told me that replacing the 5400 RPM internal drive on a G4 powerbook with a 7200 RTPM internal drive was not a good idea due to incerased heat and increased drain on the battery, and most of all it wouldn't solve my audio recording situation.

I must repectfully disagree. This past summer I was recording 32 channels at a time, using two Mackie ONYX boards in tandem, over firewire. I ran this for 60 to 90 minutes at a time, over two nights (festival recording). The counter never even slowed down. You can dro a search on here and find my posts about it. Had I been using a firewire drive, there might have been bus-clogging issues. My internal drive is the 100 meg Seagate, which came with my powerbook 1.67 as a BTO option. Personally, I wouldn't waste my time with a 7200 rpm external fw drive, and would be far more nervous doing a live recording with it than without it.

Similar to coolcolin - tiBook 867 with 3 mk1 828's for live recording. works well for mixing if I'm not silly with too many verbs or hungry plugs. Us a g5 now for that. ;P

Icarus wrote:Powerbook 15" 1.67GHZ, 2GB RAM, Panther 10.3.9, Mobile IO ULN2+DSP, Novation X-Station 49, MOTU DP 4.6, Ableton Live 4.14, DSP Quattro 2.11, Altiverb 4.2.2, Absynth 2.05, Kontakt 1.5.3, Reaktor 4.1.3, Waves 5.0 (Mastering, Restoration, Renaissance)

I mostly use this for live performance using Live and soft synths, and classical concert recording using DP. Works so well I am quite sure I will never get another desktop again! My studio mac is a dual 800 but I only use that when I want to use my outboard equipment.

Wow! That line-up of softsynths would bring my Dual 800 to its knees and give my Dual 2.7 G5 a workout. You run a healthy smattering of these VIs and effects on your powerbook (Reaktor, Altiverb, Waves, Kontakt, etc.)? How do you work -- freeze tracks, commit to audio asap ...?

Magic Dave, thanks! Especially for the info about setting work priority to "medium".

I'll try using just the internal drive for playing back my DP projects for my live band situation. If it isn'ty happening I have the LaCie FW 800 7200 RPM drive here now, so I can always incorporate that in my system.

pb 1.25 15.inch 2gb ram 160gb lacie fw hard drive traveler pcmcia card the only thing that gives me trouble is tracking bfd with v-drums at a low sample rate so i usually just use the v-drum sounds while i track the MIDI but it does great for every thing i do. i am thinking about getting a powercore if i can make that work i think it would help me get a couple of more years out of this machine

magicd wrote:Work Priority is set to Medium. This is a critical setting.
Play and record buffers set to 250 each.

Magic Dave

Hey Dave -- could you elaborate as to why medium is better than high for this setting? After reading the manual on this, I'd have thought high is better for what I'm doing (VIs mainly like MachFive, Kontakt, etc). Maybe I'm wrong though -- thanks.

Some of you mention a BTO 7200 internal drive. I see on Apple site it is only an option with the 15 or larger screen. And its a $180 upgrade. Tell me, is user able to change out internal drives? Or is it just too tight in there? I've changed Drives in my iMac, G3, G4 and G5 before without probs. let me know
thanks
dad

filtertone wrote:

magicd wrote:Work Priority is set to Medium. This is a critical setting.
Play and record buffers set to 250 each.

Magic Dave

Hey Dave -- could you elaborate as to why medium is better than high for this setting? After reading the manual on this, I'd have thought high is better for what I'm doing (VIs mainly like MachFive, Kontakt, etc). Maybe I'm wrong though -- thanks.

also, my interface (Edirol FA-101) is unusable on any setting other than Low, so I'd say that Medium setting is pretty uncritical!

why is this?

I've got an older skimp system for recording our live shows...

12" PB G4 - 867Mhz - 640 MB RAM
828mkII and an Behringer ADA8000
LaCie d2 FireWire drive

The most I've ever tracked into DP4.6 was 16 tracks, no effects. Can't say I've ever had any problems.

Well I've had some more discussions with powerbook owners. All of them have told me that they just used the internal 5400 RPM drives, had no problems when recording as many as eight tracks at a time or playing back 30 to 35 tracks, with third-party plug-ins and a softsynth or two.

So it's my opinion now that the answer is - see what your Powerbook will do. Experiment. It will either record and playback quite a few tracks and a VI or two without problems, or it won't, depending on how many CPU hungry effects (like Convolution Reverbs) and CPU hungry softsynths (like Stylus RMX or Kontakt 2) that you're running and what your buffer and work priority settings are. If you have multiple FW devices attached then the order in which they're chained may also have something to do with things. Again, see what works.

There's an interesting assesment on MOTU and Apple hardware at Sweetwater's site (http://www.sweetwater.com). Read Mitch Gallagher's report on what he was able to get out of many Apple/MOTU hardware combinations, including Mac Minis.

Good Morning All,

My setup is list below. I recently completed a Alt. Rock demo for a young lady in Miami. Before I got Machfive, I used SampleTank 2XL. I was able to achieve a minimum of 8 MIDI Tracks from ST2, 16 Audio Tracks (No Plug-ins), with room to spare on the processor.

I have to admit that I getting use to the aspect of working with VI's as I LOVED using my favorite hardware synth and having control over the entire MIDI production before I commit to audio.

As I read through various article on Unicornation, I have to say that my old Powerbook is doing just fine now that I have upgraded to 10.3.9. Many users are reporting errors and problems that I just don't see on my system.

Guess I lucky for now

Follow-up on the Work Priority setting.

Unix is a multi thread operating system. However, on slower computers, it's possible for software to conflict over the thread priority. DP 4.5 and higher allows you to reduce the thread priority of the DP application. This allows other software to take thread priority when that software needs to.

Some audio hardware drivers are written to take a high thread priority. That's why with an Edirol interface for example, you may have to set the DP thread priority to Low. My original post described a setting of Medium. That's because I use MOTU interfaces, which don't have a thread priority conflict with DP. I find that in general, Medium works best for DP on single processor G4s. In the case of a single processor G4 and the Edirol interface for example, a setting of Low may work better.

Since a typical DAW is a combination of hardware and software made by different companies, you may need to experiment with various settings to find optimum efficiency.

Magic Dave

ah thanks for that Magic DAve

that clarifies things somewhat. Atleast I can rule out that the interface is a big stinker for DP. So this thread priority thing, does it effect how much cpu is used up by the interface?

daddyunicorn wrote:Some of you mention a BTO 7200 internal drive. I see on Apple site it is only an option with the 15 or larger screen. And its a $180 upgrade. Tell me, is user able to change out internal drives? Or is it just too tight in there? I've changed Drives in my iMac, G3, G4 and G5 before without probs. let me know
thanks
dad

Depending on your skill level and patience, it is possible to change out your own hard drive. Don't try it without proper instructions, as it is not intuitive, and you have to take a lot of stuff apart. Supposedly it will void your warranty if you do it yourself. I did it on my refurb Powerbook 1.5 as soon as I got it, as it came with a pokey 4200 rpm internal. Took about 45 minutes. Huge difference in performance, and I don't see any difference in heat or power consumption. You need a #1Phillips screwdriver, and I think a Torx T8. You can find directions at http://www.powerbookmedic.com/ (If you do a Google search, you might find them for free...)

As below...

Will check my settings are at MEDIUM.