Which mac pro is better for audio production work?

[charlie2]

Hi everyone

I hope I'm not asking too many questions. Let me know if I am.

Apple just dropped their prices from a few weeks ago.

Which mac pro would be better for a composer with pro tools 8. The entire east west composer's collection, and finale.

An 8 core 2.26 or

a 4 core 2.93????

They both would have 8 gigs of memory and 2 internal drives 1 TB each

I forgot to ask about what mazz told me....get enough bandwidth with the fw bus

by the way....when mazz said..."make sure your interface works with your drives". Is the interface he's talking about the software?....pt...east west...etc... or something else?

Thanks again

[mazz]

I'd go with the 8 core if possible.

With the Mac Pro, you would use internal drives for your audio and samples (get a 3rd drive you you can so you can have your samples and your audio projects separate), which means that you really don't need to worry too much about FW bandwidth for your interface because you would only have the interface on the FW bus.

BTW: The Mac Pros only have FW800 which is a different cable connector but is backwards compatible with FW400, which is probably what your interface is. Just get a FW800 to FW400 cable and you'll be just fine.

Mac Pro is a better choice just because of the upgradeability.

Good luck!

Mazz

[fusilierb]

Mazz is right. More cores the better. This is going to be more important in the future than right this second, but you will get more horsepower out of more cores than a faster clock speed.

Until everything is really 64 bit I'd throw in 6-8 gigs of RAM. Third party is cheaper by a longshot. And definitely do 3 drives. One for the OS, one for streaming samples and the last one for your sessions. You do NOT have to buy these drives from apple. They are way too proud of their RAM and harddrives to be worth it. Just make sure your drives are from a good manufacturer and are as fast as you can buy.

You're system will scream. Have fun with it!
B

[charlie2]

Would I still need 3 drives if I already have a glyph external drive which I use for my audio projects?

It's a GT 050Q professional which I'm gonna reformat.

[fusilierb]

If it's a firewire drive then I'd say no.
B

[mazz]

If it's a firewire drive then I'd say no.
B

+1