Calling Apple experts

[Josh]

I have decided I want a mac... G5. Should I go insane and get the quan g5 or is the middle of the road G5 ok?

I'm looking to record audio. Also... iI guess I need software recomendations. Not Garage Band... pro level stuff on a non pro level budget (no pro tools )

I went to a Apple store to ask questions and those motherfuckers are useless.

my aim is joshwilkesbooth if anyone wants to contact me there. I'm looking to order this by the end of the week.

Are there cheaper places to buy hard drives and RAM and shit than Apple's website? The prices are nutso.

P.S. Don't try to sell me a PC that can do the same thing for less money. I already know about all of that.

[napalm]

I thought you meant apples for eating, and being from Washington, I got awfully excited

[Josh]

Those are delicious... but not what I was talking about.

I'm partial to Granny Smith myself. Just the right bit of sour.

[Eirikur]

The Quad G5 would be great for your sound recording/mixing/editing/whatever, although you could definently get by with just the Dual 2.0 with 1 GB of RAM.

Aren't you like the KING of torrents? You shouldn't have to buy it. I recommend Propellerhead's Reason for an extremely intuitive mixing board and shizzle. Le Tigre, the band, uses that for all their music. You could also get Pro Tools, which is pretty much the industry standard. Those are the two most used and best sound programs available.

[Josh]

The Quad G5 would be great for your sound recording/mixing/editing/whatever, although you could definently get by with just the Dual 2.0 with 1 GB of RAM.

Aren't you like the KING of torrents? You shouldn't have to buy it. I recommend Propellerhead's Reason for an extremely intuitive mixing board and shizzle. Le Tigre, the band, uses that for all their music. You could also get Pro Tools, which is pretty much the industry standard. Those are the two most used and best sound programs available.

I'm also fairly ignorant when it comes to Mac software and shit. I never look for it so I assume its not there... and I was still unter the impression that Pro Tools only worked with dedicated hardware, but again I don't know.

I don't know what I don't know, so its hard to do reserch... you know?

[Mykozo]

If you have an M-Audio card, you can get Pro-Tools for 300 bucks now. Reason costs the same. Are you looking for something more for recording, or for MIDI sequencing? Recording? Pro Tools. Sequencing? Reason, or even better Cubase SL/SX (the only better thing about Reason is that it comes with lots of great sounding virtual instruments, Cubase not so much) They make Nuendo for Mac too ya know. As a matter of fact, just about every audio program is made for both Mac and PC. If you so desire you need not pay for any of this, keep in mind though that finding cracked stuff for Mac is a little tougher than PC.

EDIT: Wait, aren't you Pro Tools Certified?

[Josh]

More MIDI sequencing I guess... but I'd love to record some live stuff every now and again.

I'd like the freedom to do non-choking 8 track simultaneous recording.

Trying to work on my laptop is making me lose my mind.

EDIT: Wait, aren't you Pro Tools Certified?

I don't have the certificate. I took a year of non-certification classes because (in philly at the time) thats all that was being offered.

[kedawa]

If you're thinking of going with Pro Tools, you should see what kind of interface you need for the card.
I don't think the newer G5s have PCI slots, just PCI-Express.
And don't bother with a quad just for audio, since it won't make much of a difference.
Audio apps are bandwidth intensive, not CPU intensive, so you'd be better off putting that cash toward faster hard drives (maybe RAID?) and more RAM.

And don't get any upgrades from Apple.
Buy the most barebones system you can get and upgrade it yourself, or get a reseller to do the upgrades if you have to.

[ChaoofNee]

Do you know a student or teacher? You can get quite the discount that way...

[Mykozo]

If you're thinking of going with Pro Tools, you should see what kind of interface you need for the card.
I don't think the newer G5s have PCI slots, just PCI-Express.
And don't bother with a quad just for audio, since it won't make much of a difference.

Pro Tools M-Powered will use almost any M-Audio interface (I mean, they did buy out the company). I'm not sure if M-Audio offers any PCI-E interfaces yet, so that will be an issue if the G5's don't have PCI slots. And as for the Quad Processors, read below. The new Pro-Tools LE room we are building at my post house will be getting a quad machine.

Audio apps are bandwidth intensive, not CPU intensive, so you'd be better off putting that cash toward faster hard drives (maybe RAID?) and more RAM.

No sir. Getting the audio in and out of the computer, yes, but plugins, if not using add on DSP cards, are using the native processing power of your computer. Hence, faster processors equal higher plug in counts and lower latencies. And as a matter of fact RAM is the least important part of your rig when it comes to audio, unless you are using alot of virtual instruments or software samplers, which, of course, require lots of RAM because you are loading samples into it.