DP8 and new set up question?????

[twistedtom]

I am thinking of starting a clean drive, taking one of the drives in my computer and installing 10.8 Mt. Lion on it and keep the other drive with 10.6.8 on it as a second boot drive. On the new drive I will only install a limited amount of software. For music software I would put Dp8 M5-3, MX4, NI, Waves, Reason and a few more VI's and plug-ins on the new drive. I am going to upgrade my Adobe Production Suite to CS6 and this will go on the drive as well along with a few 64 bit programs that I use like some 3d apps.
I am thinking I may get better performance with 10.8, or do you think this is a waste of time and I should stay with 10.6.8 and just load the new software on that drive. What about upgrading to 10.8 on the drive that has 10.6 on it now? Will this effect the content on that drive?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Good question. +1.

[kgdrum]

I was told by Magic Dave,Nicole & Loren DP8 runs well on OSX 10.68.
I see no need for now to upgrade the OS.
There's still too many incompatibility issues with MLion.
If we were to update the OS to MLion & DP8 @ the same time and there were issues,it would be very confusing to try to figure out the potential cause and solutions.
I'm parked in Snow Leopard until I actually need to upgrade to use a program that actually requires it,as of now I can't think of any I use that do.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Yeah, but then again we will eventually have to fight or switch (was that a Tarryton commercial?). I have extra drives I could do that with and this might be the time to test out what is working or not in the big cat OS. It all depends on what work comes in over the next few weeks. If its slow, I may play lion tamer. I have to use that costume for sump'ting!

[kgdrum]

I thought you hung up your tutu

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Tutu? More like an eight-eight in my case.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Oh wait... the tutu goes in the lion? I always thought the lion hated that top hat.

[twistedtom]

I got Mt. Lion and put it on a new drive and I played around with it a little bit, I am not sure how much I like it yet. (if) kept my 10.6 drive intact.

[Surf Whammy]

I am thinking of starting a clean drive, taking one of the drives in my computer and installing 10.8 Mt. Lion on it and keep the other drive with 10.6.8 on it as a second boot drive. On the new drive I will only install a limited amount of software. For music software I would put Dp8 M5-3, MX4, NI, Waves, Reason and a few more VI's and plug-ins on the new drive. I am going to upgrade my Adobe Production Suite to CS6 and this will go on the drive as well along with a few 64 bit programs that I use like some 3d apps.
I am thinking I may get better performance with 10.8, or do you think this is a waste of time and I should stay with 10.6.8 and just load the new software on that drive. What about upgrading to 10.8 on the drive that has 10.6 on it now? Will this effect the content on that drive?

The strategy I use here in the sound isolation studio is based on the way software is managed in the corporate and government universes, where for large systems there usually are three or so flavors of everything, typically development, test, and production, where the people using the software run the production version, but developers use various development versions to work on upcoming stuff, and quality control and testing folks evaluate the current test system, which is everything passes, then at some time in the future becomes the new production system . . .

[NOTE: Sometimes there are more flavorsor levels, but three levels is sufficient for practical purposes . . . ]

For digital music production, I think the same logic applies, even though there might be only one actual production user, who typically will be you . . .

For all the Apple computers except the Mac Pro, the strategy I use is possible but perhaps not so ideal, but I have a 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro, hence it is my primary focus . . .

Whenever any major software is released and I decide to use it, the first thing I do is to order a new internal hard drive, which I use for purposes of cloning the current primary hard drive via SuperDuper! (Shirt Pocket), which does full clones . . .

[NOTE: The FREE version of SuperDuper! does the required cloning, but after using it a few times I purchased a license as a way of saying "Thanks and keep up the great work!" . . . ]

SuperDuper! (Shirt Pocket)

Once I create the clone of the current internal hard drive, I boot to it and do a bit of testing, and if everything is working nicely, I make the newly cloned internal hard drive the primary drive and then install whatever new software is in the queue, where for reference I do this with every major version of Mac OS X, as well as with major upgrades to digital music production software although to put it into perspective I did not do this when moving from DP5 to DP6 to DP7, which is the case for nearly everything else so long as there are no major changes, where I define "major" in a very conservative way, with the move from DP7 to DP8 qualifying as a "major" change for sure . . .

For sure!

At present, I am running Mac OS X 10.8.2 (Mountain Lion), Digital Performer 7.24 (MOTU), MachFive 3 (MOTU), all the IK Multimedia VSTi and VST products, Kontakt 5 (Native Instruments), Addictive Drums (XLN Audio), some of the FabFilter Software Instruments products, some of the Wave Arts products, a few of the sampled sound libraries for Kontakt from Bolder Sounds (Crystal Glasses and Hand Bells), Reason 6.5 (Propellerhead Software), Logic Pro 9 (Apple), and NOTION 3 (Notion Music), while on the hardware side I use a MOTU 828mk3 Hyrbrid and MOTU 828mkII, all with no problems beyond the usual 32-bit application workspace limitations and the associated software engineering "Do we really need to check array bounds and pointers?" nonsense, where in part as the direct result of doing advanced software engineering for over a quarter century, I can do just about everything imaginable by using a virtual festival of "workarounds", where for example NOTION 3 goes out to lunch somewhere around the time there are 20 to 25 "heavy" VSTi virtual instruments, so the "workaround" is (a) to limit NOTION 3 scores to 20 to 25 VSTi virtual instruments with no VST plug-ins and (b) to clone the initial NOTION 3 score for a song whenever I need another 20 VSTi virtual instruments, where I keep 5 VSTi virtual instruments common to the entire set of cloned scores to serve as reference points for such things as beat, rhythm guitar chords, simple melody, bass, or whatever is sufficient to keep track of what is happening in the song at any given time, and done this way I can have 500 to 1,000 instruments in a song, which maps to a set of 50 or so cloned and modified NOTION 3 scores, where the other part of the strategy is to record the NOTION 3 generated audio as soundbites in Digital Performer 7.24 via ReWire, where I do the effects plug-in work in Digital Performer 7.24, since it also is a 32-bit application and has the same set of 32-bit application workspace limitations, problems, and quirks, but can handle a reasonably elaborate set of effects plug-ins when you do a bit of "bounce to disk" soundbite consolidation as the song increases in complexity to keep the total number of tracks around 50 in Digital Performer 7.24, which mostly is a matter of doing a bit of layer planning, which is a key aspect of devising a practical system when the goal is to be able to do a new DISCO or Pop song every few days . . .

[NOTE: The reason I got Logic Pro 9 was two-fold, (a) to help someone with a ReWire problem, since I love ReWire--and for reference it is vastly easier to do ReWire with Digital Performer 7.24 (MOTU) than with Logic Pro 9--and (b) to have a 64-bit DAW application for purposes of testing NOTION 4 (64-bits), based on the hypothesis that Digital Performer 8 might not be available before NOTION 4 is released, although the latter reason proved to be frivolous, but so what . . . ]

And I use Reason 6.5 as part of the system, where it is useful to understand that NOTION 3 is the foundation for everything, hence everything derives from the NOTION 3 score and its music notation, and at present I write the notes for Reason 6.5 in NOTION 3 using music notation and a plain VSTi virtual piano staff, followed by exporting the staff as MIDI, and then importing the MIDI to Reason 6.5, where I work with it until it sounds good, at which time I record the Reason 6.5 generated audio in Digital Performer 7.24 via ReWire, so that everything traces directly back to the NOTION 3 scores, except for whatever real instruments and singing I decide to record . . .

I think there is a way to have NOTION 3 control Reason 6.5 via music notation on an External MIDI staff in real-time on the fly, but MIDI is a bit of a new adventure for me, and it is a work in progress, although it is easy to control Reason 6.5 with NOTION 3 via ReWire for purposes of doing music notation in NOTION 3 using VSTi virtual instruments to augment whatever Reason 6.5 is doing, where for reference in this scenario NOTION 3 only is controlling the Reason 6.5 transport, not sending notes to Reason 6.5, and this is encouraging but is not the same as writing a phrase in music notation in NOTION 3 and having it played instantly in real-time on the fly by Reason 6.5 . . .

With this in mind and observing that it is my current production system, I certainly do not want to mess with it, since it took several years for me to discover how to make everything work, hence the "clone the internal hard drive" strategy, and at some point I probably will "freeze" the entire production system, including the Mac Pro, at which time I will embark on creating an entirely new production system using a new Mac Pro . . .

Nevertheless, my perspective is that it is important to keep current on software, which includes the operating system, and the "clone the internal hard drive" strategy makes this practical when your digital music production computer is a Mac Pro, but you can do it for other Mac models with a LaCie external hard drive, provided it is bootable, which will be the case for all or nearly all the LaCie external hard drives, although as I recall there is a caveat that on older Apple computers you need to use FireWire for bootable external hard drives . . .

And as a bit of heads-up for the folks running Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), moving to Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) and Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) is like to cause physical trauma if you are a "mouser", since the tiny triangle thingys on scroll bars that allow you to do single-step scrolling are gone, which maps to larger mouse motions, hence is quite likely to cause bursitis in your shoulder or whatever unless you use a Mighty Mouse with a "scroll pea", Magic Mouse, or some type of device that lets you scroll with your fingertip rather than by physically making large forward and backward arm and upper body motions . . .

Yet another vast annoyance is that with Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion), "Save As . . ." disappears from TextEdit and everything else, which is the stupidest thing any operating system company on this planet ever has done, with the possible exception of the error message which only has an "OK" button and reads (paraphrased), "The operating system has encountered a fatal error and all your data is lost. Your hard drive will be reformatted. Press 'OK' to continue.", where the solution for the latter problem is to unplug the computer immediately, followed by banging on the computer case with a hammer several times and flipping the ON/OFF switch rapidly for a minute or two, at which time you can reboot and everything probably will be fine, really . . .

Really!

Summarizing, if what you are doing is important--and I strongly suggest this certainly is the case here in the sound isolation studio, because when you think about it, can there ever be too many silly DISCO and Pop songs about personal hygiene products--then the additional cost of an internal or external hard drive to ensure that you have a verified working copy of your production system is a vastly smart strategy, since it costs perhaps $75 to $125 (US) for a peppy internal hard drive ranging from 1TB to 2TB, which should be plenty of space to clone the primary internal hard drive . . .

With Digital Performer 8 being 64-bits, this pretty much makes all the major Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) applications 64-bits, which now includes Reason 6.5 since it has a full-featured Mixer with real instrument and singing recording functionality, as well as the Rack Extension stuff, some of which is excellent, and the consequence is that all the virtual instrument and sampled sound library folks, as well as all the effects plug-in folks who are 32-bit only are going to have no options other than (a) moving quickly to 64-bits or (b) slowly but surely going out of business . . .

In other words, the perspective here in the sound isolation studio is based on the stellar advice in "Whip It" (Devo), which specifically is to "Go forward! Move ahead!", which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous!

[bayswater]

Tom, I partitioned my drive and have 10.8.2 and a 10.6.8 startups. I have some apps on both and have not noticed any performance differences at all. The latest versions of a couple of Apple apps need 10.8 so I'll keep it, but for now, all the music will stay on 10.6.8.