G5 Surround and DP

dubbeljee · Post by **dubbeljee** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 9:20 am

I used to work with Motu hard and sofware at school, since I've got a job at a studio over here i'm using protools all the time, I left motu a bit untouched.

Curruntly I'm working at home on a annimation short and it's time to use MOTU again i've never worked in surround with it so my question:

Will a 2,3 Ghz DP G5 wich i'm planning to buy second hand, do the trick
I have not even tried it with my powerbook 1ghz but it is already slow just in stereo.

JJ

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 10:19 am

I did a few 5.1 mixes on my old PBG4 1GHz, so I'd assume that your G5 will work just fine.

I wonder why you say your G4 is slow in stereo. I didn't find that to be the case.

dubbeljee · Post by **dubbeljee** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 2:54 pm

I'm just spoiled I guess. I've done a 15 min. stereo feature on my PB with 60 tracks and two altiverbs it all worked but at the final mixing stage it wass really hard with a lot of spinning balls and automation not working properly.

So if all stems are going to be 5.1 busses it isn't going to make it smoother

JJ

Douglas Nagel · Post by **Douglas Nagel** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 11:26 am

I had that same problem mixing a surround proj on my old powerbook g4 1.25Ghz. Once I discovered how to switch the processor into "fast" mode in the system preferences, it was pretty smooth sailing after that. Not sure if this is your deal, but it couldn't hurt to check.

dubbeljee · Post by **dubbeljee** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 3:45 pm

that's one of the feature I checked all the time before 10.3.9.
it seemed to switch automatic from time to time. But no that's not it. I'm convinced that 60 tracks is over the edge with 1gHz PB and 1 GB ram.

i've bought the G5 second hand and its working fine. The only things I really miss in comparision with protools are a workspace browser for easy soundeffects searching ( i'm not planning to buy soundminer at this moment) and a command list witch is simmelary to protools ( shortcuts) altough I might be asking to much. I've tried to make one myself but it didn't work well.

sorry for my bad english.

JJ

Douglas Nagel · Post by **Douglas Nagel** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 7:01 am

yeah, probably just too much to handle for the old PB. I recall that my old PB couldn't handle too many heavy-duty plugs. Two or more instances of Soundsoap and it would start choking. If only I could actually USE Soundsoap on my new intel mac, that would really be something.

martian · Post by **martian** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 11:12 pm

dual 2g g5 will handle 20 min reels - 4 or 5 surround sub busses and at least 24mono and 17 stereo - with room to power some plugins

use zoom presets to navigate to avoid spinnin balls......

martian · Post by **martian** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 10:01 pm

you need audio finder for sfx browsing....

it's the replacement for the digibase browser you are looking for....

dubbeljee · Post by **dubbeljee** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:42 pm

tnx martian
I'm still editing so i'll find out later myself how well is it going to work in the mixing stage.

I'm aware of audiofinder I've tried the demo but at the moment i'm trying to get along with Itunes. and hoping for a quick release of audio eases snapper

the zoom preset thing I will haveto take a look at, this can indeed help me avoiding spinning balls

grtzz

JJ

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 3:46 pm

Feste wrote: If only I could actually USE Soundsoap on my new intel mac, that would really be something.

It is UB now, and seems to be working OK on my system.

dubbeljee · Post by **dubbeljee** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 12:56 pm

Now I'm in the mixing stage Dp crashes regulary on save.

Very annoying!!

dubbeljee · Post by **dubbeljee** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 1:21 pm

once every 5 min

dubbeljee · Post by **dubbeljee** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:34 pm

Okay, Just recoverd from a haevy weekend
The project is finished but I probably never do it this way again.
All was gooing very well on friday. Showed my first temp mix to the director and got de def picture
saturday morning I did the final editing and prepared for mix
as I turned me monitors up to get 85 dB with Pink noise I discovered every time I put DP in Play I got some High frequency noise. out of the 828. I even did insert the sounddevices firewire filter between the G5 and The 828 but no dice. I then gave my backup project on lacie FW800 drive A shot and found out the High freq noise was gone. so my internal drive inserts noise into the firewire buss while running. Is this Just my HDdrive or is there anyone with a similar problem? (did not yet check if it comes out of the digital outs to)

I continued to mix with the FW drive and my internal as back up
(syncronise them every few minutes )

after a while I got Dp crashes (unexpectly quits) on Save while not having saved at all, very frustrating first just occasionaly later regulary mostly after I saved not in the last 5 min.

Sunday morning I opened the project and all I heared were high frequency bleeps just at random. big panik!
Made myselff aan AAF and OMF File
packed all my stuff, motu out of the Rack G5 in the box and in the back of the car including Hard disks And drove to studio were I have my dayjob opened the AAF and I was running again.
This time on Protools HD but with only volume automation and spikes in all my edits (fades) ( this may have something to do with the settings I used to make the AAF file)

After A long and heavy day and night all wass ready just in time

today I rebuild my home studio and was looking after the possibility's
repaired permissions, used some of my previous versions of the project they all (internall and external FWdrive) played High freq. bleeps exept when I used the internal sound of the G5. Other (smaller) pojects do not suffer from this problem. the same when I use my back up boot partition.

Any thoughts? or Ideas?

i might have not been so lucky If I had didn't have acces to an commercial studio

martian · Post by **martian** » Sun Jun 24, 2007 7:51 pm

OK I have experienced this crash on save issue too....

I found the best way for me was to change the save key to be

SAVE A COPY AS...

then keep incrementing...

I usually get to about 100 every day.... ( i mostly just throw them away..)

Yes some days DP will crash like a bitch...

mostly it goes all day with out crash...

I recommend running all your plugs in realtime

auptown · Post by **auptown** » Sun Jun 24, 2007 9:06 pm

dubbeljee,

I am wondering after reading about your problems -- first, which version of DP are you running? And were you running first off of only one hard drive? Then you added an external FW drive? And are you using Altiverb?

One thing, is there a possibility of fragmented audio files? I found that I had to do Merge Soundbites on all of the tracks of a film I was working on, using my G5 2x2.0 machine, when I started to have problems.

Just some thoughts.