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Mac mini for music?
Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 7:53 am
by Kaszper
Does anyone have experience of using one of these wee beasties for music making? I run a parallel MIDI setup, so my audio requirements are currently pretty modest ••“ probably 12 tracks maximum.
I know the mini has only a slower laptop hard-drive, but I am being totally unrealistic in expecting the above?
Re: Mac mini for music?
Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 8:29 am
by MIDI Life Crisis
Kaszper wrote:Does anyone have experience of using one of these wee beasties for music making? I run a parallel MIDI setup, so my audio requirements are currently pretty modest ••“ probably 12 tracks maximum.
I know the mini has only a slower laptop hard-drive, but I am being totally unrealistic in expecting the above?
Should work just fine. Should also be able to handle a fair # of audio traacks. The main problem with the MINI is not performance as much as expandability.
Mac mini
Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 8:34 am
by Kaszper
Yes, I realise its expandability seems limited. But if I get the 1.42Ghz processor and max the RAM out to 1Gb, d'you feel I should be able to get 12-16 tracks and reasonable plug-in processing?
Thanks for responding, btw.
Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:43 am
by giles117
I have plenty of buddies who are using a mac mini for musi production
Reason/DP/Pro tools
They all run external firewire Audio interfaces (Digidesign and Motu) and have USB 2.0 Hard Drives
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 1:23 am
by Kaszper
Thanks for your advice, chaps.
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 1:24 am
by Kaszper
Thanks for your advice, chaps.
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 2:10 am
by papageno
I have MacMini 1,25 GHz 1GB RAM as a backup computer.
At one point I had to take it to travel and use it for work.
The programs I used were MSI 1.0 and Finale 2006.
Even for a small piece (6 staves), playback was not smooth, missing/hanging notes were quite usual.
The reasons were probably:
1) slow processor, motherboard buses, ram
2) slow 5400rpm internal HD
My opinion is this: Mini is a nice computer for easy tasks but not for processor-intensive applications. Maybe it is good for portable recording usage if you have a good FW400 box (with Oxford chipset) and fast HD. For any seriious usage, the RAM should be maximum (1 GB).