Calling knowledgeable Mac people!

[aimusic]

PC Is Reality.... what? I thought we were going for a rhyming thing...I tried a mac once, nearly through it out the window - that and it's freakishly small mouse.... what's up with that???Can someone explain to me why Mac's are now using P.c. hardware...

[slideboardouts]

May 19, 2008, 7:16am, aimusic wrote:I tried a mac once, nearly through it out the window - that and it's freakishly small mouse.... what's up with that???Were you using OS9 by any chance? I've heard horror stories about OS 9, even seen a video on youtube about it that was quite funny. Using OSX when I get home after a long day of being on windows though is like a breath of fresh air I agree about the mouse. Its not very ergonomical. It looks nice and the mighty mouse has cool features but geez.... I usually just plug in a logitech or *gasp* a microsoft mouse -Steve

[rlcmusic]

Hi Steve,Thanks a lot for your post.It's all very difficult to narrow down. I was on Panther for ages and Logic Express. I wanted Logic Pro 8 and therefore upgraded to Leopard at the same time as getting Logic - so they came together. I added 1 GB of RAM at the time too (that's another story - after that - loads of system crashes - exchanged 'faulty' RAM and those went away). So unfortunately, I've also just recently got East West and Kontakt 3 all at once - had upgrades generally everywhere apart from the Mac. I have had occasional problems before with stuttering etc...but since this track is the most involved with this new 3rd party software, I can only think the system cannot cope. Also - Kontakt 3 seems to be a bit "buggy" - seems to crash a fair bit.This obviously is a classic case of don't do too many upgrades at once because it's impossible for me to say when/where the problem is. I probably need to work on various projects and experiment more to see if it really is only with more involved projects. Thanks again,Rachel

[wodinlord]

Rachel, now to actually answer your earlier question about bouncing and avoid the Mac/PC playing around.I have never used Logic, but I assume you can bus the out of your plug to another track and record on that track. So, what I was suggesting was to reduce the instruments paying to a number that will play, say violins part one or something and bus that and record it on a new recorded track. Then, turn off that part and bus another, say cellos, to a new track and record that and so on until you have them all recorded. Once you have them all recorded, you can mute/deactivate the east/west plugin and the associated midi tracks so that ithey are no longer using any CPU and you are only monitoring recorded tracks and not virtual tracks. That uses much less CPU and should enable you to play back. Or, I would certainly think that you should be able to set up your bounce in Logic so that you are only bouncing selected tracks and then importing/assigning them to recorded tracks. It may be a little time consuming but should let you continue at least. Hope it helps.Wodinlord

[mazz]

Check to see if you have the latest DFD software for the East West libraries. If you're not using DFD then you're actually loading all your instruments in to RAM, which could begin to overload your system. DFD means Direct From Disk. The software loads the first short part of the sample in to RAM and then streams the rest from the hard disk.If you're using a convolution reverb in Logic or Kontakt, that could cause some heavy CPU usage as well.I use both Mac and PC, Mac for the sequencing/notation side of things and PCs for sample streaming only. The only PCs I have were purpose-built for audio by experts. I learned my lesson a long time ago that mucking around trying to get Windows machines to work with audio soft/hardware wasn't how I wanted to spend my time.BTW: The new Macs use Intel CPU chips because the IBM power PC chips they were using couldn't achieve the performance necessary without generating a lot of heat. The G5s were the last ones to use the Power PC chips. My wife was deliberating what to do after she threw her Toshiba Windows XP laptop out of the window in frustration (not really but almost). She got a MacBook Pro and is seamlessly running Windows XP and Mac OS at the same time using software called Parallels. So now she can use all of her PC only business software and all the great Mac software (now she wants Logic!) and she can shift between them with a "command tab". The best of both worlds on one machine. Try that on a PC!Cheers!Mazz

[rlcmusic]

Wodinlord / Mazz,Thank you both very much for your posts. I'm going to look into everything you've both suggested. First point of call will be to look into the DFD discussion as I'm not entirely sure I'm set up correctly in that respect. I'll be looking into everything tomorrow! Thanks again.Rachel

[stick]

Rachel, I'm running an older G5 too, and I'm pretty sure I can get more going than you're talking about. Though, I've got 6 GB of RAM in my G5. I'm sure that's the key. That said, you might look into the newer iMacs. I'm not sure how much RAM you can stick in them, but I bet it'd be a huge step up from where you are. It seems like a lot of expense to spring for a Mac Pro if you're not going to using the PCI slots for audio hardware (like my ProTools rig). You get a lot of power with the newest processors, and a nice monitor too. As far as Freezing... Freezing is your friend. Basically, it's just recording your virtual tracks to an audio track, which is much easier for it to play back than trying to stream all the samples and whatnot. You absolutely should start messing with that. Of course, if you're running everything from one instance of Kontakt, that's not really going to work. You'd need individual instances to freeze. The closer I get to the end of a big Logic session, the more tracks I've got Frozen. Rock on!b

[rlcmusic]

Hi Stick,Thanks for your reply - Had a look at the new iMacs earlier - it seems the maximum is 4GB RAM. I'm on 2 at the mo. I may have to start freezing loads then - alternatively, I could set the whole thing on fire!!Hi Mazz or anyone that can help!I've been looking into this DFD option and am still not entirely sure what my system is loading from where. I understand the concept of DFD and have been playing with the slider in the DFD tab but considering it doesn't really work anywhere when I'm setting it to low RAM, less voices etc, it doesn't convince me I'm set up right. I went into the "update manager" in my NI account and yes a DFD extension was shown....it said go to the E/W website - so I did........then....for the Gold orchestra on the E/W update site(I bought the bundle) it lists a DFD extension for Mac OSX for the KompaKt player (from 2005??) but says "Do not download if you are a Gold XP user?! Well, I got the bundle so I have both.Does Kontakt 3 come with the DFD extension (even if it is old etc...) or are these extensions always something you need to download separately? I cross-graded from KompaKt (with E/W software) to KontaKt 3 - so until issues like this come up, I'm not familiar with what comes with what and 'behind the scenes'.And....just to help matters it says on the NI website that it cannot guarantee that its products will work under Leopard 10.5.2 so don't do the update! - great.......Would be great if anyone can shed light on the DFD extension questions - thanks.All the best,Rachel

[sgs4u]

I have a 1.8 G5. Logic 7 Freezing helps a lot. But if you have a lot of instances of anything, sooner or later the CPU is gonna slow down. What I have been told is that if you really wanna free up CPU power, bounce your virtual instrument track to an audio file. Because when you freeze a track, all the software that runs it, is still waiting to be engaged, at the touch of the unfreeze button. If you know an instrument's midi track isn't in need of editing, bounce the track, and delete the instance of the VI.

[rlcmusic]

Thanks Steve - yeah, I'll have to concentrate on finishing individual tracks more! - don't you love technology. Hopefully updates in the future may help too.Thanks again and best wishes,Rachel