New Mac for audio recording

[mazz]

There's a composer named Deane Ogden (he's easy to find on FB, etc.) that apparently has set up a pretty sophisticated Mac Mini farm that can do some pretty heavy lifting. Probably worth checking it out.

I'm of the opinion (today, anyway) that a master computer and one or more slaves is a way to get a few more years out of an aging master computer (assuming it can run the most modern OS of the time). With the advent of software such as Vienna Ensemble Pro, the slave computers act as if they are actually onboard the master computer. Once the initial setup is perfected, there is no reason to access the slaves except to boot them up and load up the samples.

I vote for a Mac Mini and adding one every so often along with Vienna Ensemble Pro. No sound card needed for the slaves, just a 15 dollar ethernet cable from Radio Shack and an inexpensive gigabit ethernet switch that can handle 4 or more networked computers easily.

It's nice to have it all in one box, but if that box goes down you're hosed. In the scheme of computers, Mac Minis are very affordable and seem to be very robust. With SSDs coming down in price, there's not even going to be any moving parts in them (they don't have fans, right?).

More pennies FWIW

Mazz

[andygabrys]

TOnce the initial setup is perfected, there is no reason to access the slaves except to boot them up and load up the samples.

which with modern remote desktop apps (like Mavericks has one right?) you only need one monitor as well. good points Mazz.

[mazz]

TOnce the initial setup is perfected, there is no reason to access the slaves except to boot them up and load up the samples.

which with modern remote desktop apps (like Mavericks has one right?) you only need one monitor as well. good points Mazz.

I don't have Mavericks on my studio computer yet, but my slaves are PCs so I'm not sure if that would work, but for the slaves you don't need a super high end monitor. I have a cheapo 15" one for the slaves and use a switcher to switch the keyboard/mouse/monitor from one to the other. Works just fine.

Which brings up another point: with slaves you can mix/match Macs and PCs because Vienna Ensemble Pro is cross platform. My master Mac/DAW doesn't care what type of computer is on the other end of the Ethernet cable because the Vienna server takes care of all of that. It's pretty miraculous the first time you realize that all of that audio data is traveling down one Ethernet cable! Amazing!

[andygabrys]

right got it.

some clever peeps over there who made VE PRO. its really something. when you think about midi over LAN before that......

[admin]

The screeners and many of my staff use Mac Minis... about 20 in all. They're a lot of bang for the buck. We've also purchased some as refurbs, and have had really good luck with those as well. Do you think music made and listened to on Mac Minis has a higher probability of getting forwarded?

Michael

[andygabrys]

The screeners and many of my staff use Mac Minis... about 20 in all. They're a lot of bang for the buck. We've also purchased some as refurbs, and have had really good luck with those as well. Do you think music made and listened to on Mac Minis has a higher probability of getting forwarded?

Michael

there you go. Mac MINI all the WAY

happy new year Michael.

[Warmchordmusic]

Thanks for all the info guys, I really appreciate it. My Vdrums are supposed to ship today, so I can get going on my drum tracks and finish some songs. I'm hoping to get the Mac Mini when the new models come out, so that gives me some time to save. I will research the VE software in the meantime, it sounds like a solid program and I found some helpful "step-by-step" instructions online the other day.

Talk to you guys soon,

Jay

[remmet]

I still wonder about the 16-gig ram limitation. On my dual quad-core Mac Pro, I have 23 gigs of ram, and it still gets bogged down once a project fills up with vst's and plugins. Would farming out the job to a number of Mac Minis reduce the strain even with the ram limitations?

Richard

[TimWalter]

This is a phenomenal thread. I myself am running up against computer limits with my modest setup (2008 Macbook , 2.4 ghtz dualcore with 4 g ram) and need to upgrade and need advice, and this thread is exactly what I need. Glad to hear that the Mac Mini is working so well for so many. I'll work toward that.

Thanks again to all the generous sharing of knowledge and info on these boards.

Happy New Year everyone! Hope it will be the most happy and prosperous one yet for all of us!

Tim

[Paulie]

It's been a year since this thread was last commented on, what has everyone done since then to their systems? I have just a MacBook Air, 8gb ram, 256gb ssd internal drive. I run Logic Pro X, and I've installed The Kontakt 10 bundle (the smaller one) with the sample library on a USB3 thumb drive. So far so good, I've not recorded anything huge yet. I do have problems with stuck midi notes but I don't know if that is because of the thumb drive or logic itself. There are plenty of threads online about the stuck midi note problem, some heated debates of drivers vs. Logic causing the problem.

Now after reading this thread I'm wondering if I need a Mac mini with a larger ssd hd and a bunch of ram.