need your advice

[Len911]

Fast all-flash storage. Ready. Set. Done.

Part of what makes MacBook Air so responsive is that it’s designed entirely around flash storage. Not only does this make MacBook Air much lighter and more portable than traditional notebooks, it also provides faster access to data. Available in capacities up to 512GB,3 this PCIe-based flash storage is up to 17x faster than a traditional 5400-rpm notebook hard drive.4 So when you flip open MacBook Air, it’s ready to go right away. Even after a month in standby mode, the screen springs to life.

PCIe-based flash storage vs Sata SSD??? Faster?

[andygabrys]

PCI def faster.

SATA III bottleneck is the interface speed. (SATA III)

PCI SSD bottleneck is generally the SSD read write speed - especially with the Sonnet Tempo cards that allow RAID 1 configs on the card. They are pretty close to the Apple built in PCI based Flash drives. For much less $$$ and you can upgrade the size when newer cheaper SSD's hit the market.

Its hard to tell without seeing benchmarks of the whole performance though - if the rest of the machine keeps up to the super fast flash drive then great. But the amount of RAM you can put in the "air" is limited.

plus - comparing a flash or SSD drive against a 5400 rpm mech HD is a sort of silly comparison. Anyone who has an interest in performance is going to be replacing that 5400 RPM drive with the biggest fastest SSD they can afford straight off.

as always my completely opinionated opinion.

[Len911]

PCI def faster.

SATA III bottleneck is the interface speed. (SATA III)

PCI SSD bottleneck is generally the SSD read write speed - especially with the Sonnet Tempo cards that allow RAID 1 configs on the card. They are pretty close to the Apple built in PCI based Flash drives. For much less $$$ and you can upgrade the size when newer cheaper SSD's hit the market.

Its hard to tell without seeing benchmarks of the whole performance though - if the rest of the machine keeps up to the super fast flash drive then great. But the amount of RAM you can put in the "air" is limited.

plus - comparing a flash or SSD drive against a 5400 rpm mech HD is a sort of silly comparison. Anyone who has an interest in performance is going to be replacing that 5400 RPM drive with the biggest fastest SSD they can afford straight off.

as always my completely opinionated opinion.

I agree Andy! Especially the silly comparison, that was quoted from Apple!
I agree with the benchmarks. The i-5 speed seems a little slow by today's standards maybe,

but for someone like Charlie, or the info Charlie has given us, seems to be more of a composer focused on a specific set of tools and not a gear-obsessed studio fanatic, as many of us??
That macbook air is possibly the best choice. New with a warranty, staying current in terms of the pci-e flash, battery life. Feather-lite for composing on the veranda or front porch.

I know other's have said I have an opinionated opinion too,lol, or passionate passion??
It's gotta be helpful, surely!!

[charlie2]

now boys, lets not fight.

i can see everyone has my welfare in mind.

And that person was right. I'm a composer. not a tech person at all. and ty andy if i can im u.

half of these posts i couldn't understand....and worst still...i don't want to understand. i hate this stuff....but love music.

on top of this, i'm in the process of moving which is bad enough.

i needed an email computer for work and the one i have is dead so i said let me get an apple and also use it for composing. but then i have to reformat all my drives (around 9 of them) if i get a mac. plus i may have a problem with reinstalling east west again...shhh

anyway, i thought the 8 gb is memory. or ram? what's the difference? also i heard that the size of the hard drive is important for storing all your east west/addictive drums/garritan programs. not the ram or memory. is that true?

whatever i do. thanx to everyone

[andygabrys]

well....it could be thought of this way:

computer has a brain (CPU + RAM memory)
has storage: the hard disk drive or Solid State Drive (SSD).

Connecting the two are pathways (like garden hoses) that will let a certain amount of info flow in a certain amount of time.


Depending on what you are trying to do - there might be one part of the machine that is the rate determining step.

In the old days with slow CPU and limited amounts of RAM, the brain was often underpowered.

Hard drives were slow (spinning at 5400 rpm is slow today - 7200 rpm is better - the faster it spins the faster it can read and write information)

SSDs are pretty fast and reliable as they don't have any moving parts, but are newer technology so they are more expensive.

connecting the hard drive to the CPU and the RAM there is a "garden hose" (interface) which might limit the speed at which you can stream the information (like your DAW session, or the samples from East West that you are using).

If the CPU is slow, doesn't have multiple processing cores, and the RAM is a small amount (like 4 or 8 GB these days is small) then it might not matter how big the hard drive / SSD / Flash drive is or how fast it works as you will easily exceed the processing power of the "Brain" of the machine.

And conversely - having an i7 processor with 4 cores and 16GB of ram might give you plenty of processing power for what you are trying to do, but the machine might be limited because you have a 256 GB Flash drive. You use up 100 GB with your OS X and applications, and then you put your East West samples on it (lets say that's another 100 GB) and then all you have left is 56GB for your sessions and other stuff. And drives tend to slow down once they get full. Mechanical hard drives slow rapidly once they are more than 50% full. SSD and flash drives slow once they are 80% full. So in this example the relatively small hard drive is going to be an issue and slow things up. You could always get external hard drives to use as well, and the would be easy, but sort of negates the purpose of having a laptop because all the extra stuff connected to it makes it slightly less convenient and portable.

So balancing all these things out leads to the machine that has the least limitations, or at least the least limitations that still fits in your budget.

if you are buying something for work and then composing on the side, great. I would say get the most powerful laptop you can which at this point would be a new Macbook Pro. Its likely to cost you $2500 but its going to give you the most power and the longest life.

If that's too much, then you are back to one of the situations I detailed before, or get the Macbook Air and just deal with how powerful it is (or isn't).

It all depends on your budget ultimately.

Hope that helps.

[charlie2]

but after reading everything maybe the mac mini would be better. but a monitor and space is an issue. i don't know

thanx for the help anyway

[andygabrys]

the only problem is it has that display.

It having a retina display isn't a big deal. What i was trying to point out above is that newer models of MacBooks that have the Retina display have parts that are physically glued in to the machine, and are less user-upgradeable than previous generations of machine that did NOT have the Retina display. As a display the Retina models are awesome - very clear and crisp.

can i remove the display? or will it get in the way of my work?

so no, no need to remove the display.

Refurbished 13.3-inch MacBook Pro 2.7GHz Dual-core Intel i5 with Retina Display

There are differences between the i5 processors and the i7 which are more commonly found on the Macbook Pro.

if you want background - ready this: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2404674,00.asp

But basically the difference is this:

A single core processor runs one computation stream.
A dual core processor runs 2 separate streams.
a 4 core processor runs 4 separate streams.

A dual core processor with hyper threading will run 4 separate streams. This is like the dual core i5 you are thinking of buying.

A 4 core processor with hyper threading can run 8 separate streams. This is like most of the i7 processors in the Macbook Pro laptops.

In Logic (the DAW which I more commonly run although I use Pro Tools as well and I am sure the theory is close to the same) the path through one Virtual Instrument or VI (like East West Symphonic Orchestra with Cello patches) to the output is assigned to one core.

So on a massive computer with 12 cores (like my Mac Pro with Hyperthreading for a total of 24 virtual cores) I can run 24 VI tracks that each are taken care of by one "core". The benefit is that each of these VI's can really be loaded down and the CPU can handle it.

As you decrease the number of cores, you decrease the number of VI's you are going to be able to use as the few cores will be shared between all these different tracks with VI's on them. At some point, you will be asking the CPU to do more than it possibly can, and you will have to freeze tracks, bounce tracks to audio, or other workarounds so the computer can keep up.

8GB of 1866MHz LPDDR3 onboard memory

RAM basically holds information until it can be processed by the CPU. The start of Sounds / Samples are loaded into RAM and then the rest of the sample is streamed from the disk when the CPU is ready to compute it. Like when you press play on your machine and want to hear your orchestral arrangement play back. Its happening in milliseconds, but this is basically what happens.

Although this is "fast" memory 8GB isn't this much these days. My full template for orchestral stuff has a load of about 25 GB, leaving some of the 32 GB of RAM in my computer left over just to run Logic and other stuff.

Most Macbook Pros top out at 16 GB and this seems like a reasonable amount and a good balance of power and portability. I would look for the capability to at least have 16 GB. Again, you might not be able to user upgrade to 16 GB from 8GB run this Macbook Air as the memory might be fixed in the computer, and so you will have to look for a machine that has more RAM in it to start. Again driving up the price.

128GB PCIe-based flash storage 1

A great very fast drive. But also incredibly small. My startup drive is about 180 GB worth of info. This contains almost no "samples", just lots of applications and the usual stuff needed to run those. If you only have a couple of things on your machine, this might be enough, but you will be looking at using external drives for saving projects and likely for streaming your East West samples.

At this point, 512 GB for a startup drive is more reasonable as you could leave your samples on it and even save your Pro Tools projects there too.

For me, buying that Macbook AIR doesn't make sense. But for somebody who is less picky, or requires less power, or has a lower budget, it might be fine.

If it were me I would look for the following:

Macbook Pro
i7 four core processor with hyper threading
16 GB RAM or at least capability to upgrade to 16 GB if its a 2011 machine
A decent sized internal hard drive. For me that's 512 GB or bigger, and either a Flash Drive, or SSD, or a 7200 RPM mechanical drive.

like this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-MacBook-P ... SwHoFXqj4Y

but with the Caveats:

Older machines won't allow you to buy AppleCare. This is not an issue with a lot of machines as there are plenty out there that can be had for spare parts. And in the case of my Mac Pros - they are incredibly over designed and will last a long long time. Laptops are a little less replaceable but its still possible to get spare parts and there are Apple service centers all over.

I bought a Mac Pro 1,1 in Jan 2007 and my wife is still using it here. Its limited with OS X upgrades as it can't go more modern than OS X 10.6.8 but it runs strong. Several years ago I bought a Mac Pro 5,1, and its likely I won't have to upgrade this machine until 2018 or maybe 2020.

If you cannot deal with the thought of having your machine go down and finding parts yourself, then you need to buy either 1) a brand new machine off the Apple Store or 2) a refurbished machine off the Apple Store which are brought up to new condition and allow you to get the AppleCare warranty.

If you are buying a new machine i would still look for similar specs:

Macbook Pro
i7 four core processor with hyper threading
16 GB RAM
A decent sized internal hard drive. For me that's 512 GB or bigger, and either a Flash Drive, or SSD, or a 7200 RPM mechanical drive.

again - its not that this is the only machine that will work, but its the best guess to find something that will have enough power to let you do the kinds of compositions you like with the East West samples and not get bogged down. And it will "future proof" you a little bit, as in a couple years when new versions of Pro Tools etc come out that require a little more power, you will have that available.


Hope that Helps.

[Len911]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productco ... D331%2D902

Charlie, from $899-$1249 you can do so much better than the macbookair

Intel i7 2.6 Ghz vs Intel i5 1.x Ghz
16 or 32gb ram vs 8gb
256GB ssd + 1Tb hdd vs 256gb ssd

[charlie2]

ok. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-MacBook-P ... SwHoFXqj4Y

This macbook here on E bay looks good for $1250. This would be able to hold my eastwest/addictive.drume/finale/garritan samples? sounds great!

But i never brought a computer on e bay. is it safe? anyone know?

i had trouble with pay pal in the past so i e mailed the buyer to pay by check

thanx for your help

[bramptontaxi]

for ProTools, you need a minimum of 32GB RAM. Don't go any smaller. I had a customer of mine who was looking for one and the computer sourced had a 32GB Ram. Its preferable to have an HDMI port and a USB 3.0 as well.