hselburn wrote:I'm actually waiting for Apple to announce new Macs, which could happen Tuesday. I've been thinking about MacBook pros, and they currently have 8GB of ram. Perhaps the new ones will go up to 16. I know the only Macs that wouldn't work out are the MacBook airs. But all the other models will work. Too bad the new Mac Pros are likely to be cost prohibitive. I can't imagine them costing any less than $2500 to $3000. Too rich for my blood. I could get a MacBook Pro and really upgrade it. But with new models, I might not need to.
If you do not need the computer to be portable, then a new iMac is an excellent computer for digital music production . . .
A new MacBook Pro will work, but it needs to be the 15" model, since the 13" model has a screen that is too small, and the 15" screen is not so much larger. The 15" model is in the same price range as a 27" iMac, and the 27" iMac is so much faster in every respect that it is the best choice from my perspective . . .
The 15" MacBook Pro will be in the range of $2,000 (US), plus or minus a little bit, and this is the same price range for a new 27" iMac . . .
PowerMax in Oregon has a 27" iMac for $2,149 that has attractive features for both digital music production and video production, where these are the key enhancements:
(a) 3.4GHz Quad-core Intel Core i5
(b) 8GB memory
(c) 3TB 7200 RPM hard drive
(d) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2GB GDDR5 video processor . . .
Apple 27-inch iMac CTO 3.4GHz Quad-core Intel Core i5 (PowerMax)
The new iMac does not have a SuperDrive, so you need one for working with CD/DVD media, and they cost approximately $80 (US), which puts the price at approximately $2,250 (US) . . .
At the high-end of the practical range, it can make a bit of sense to get the quad-core I7 model with 16GB of memory; a 3TB 7200 RPM hard drive drive; and the same video processor, but this increases the price to approximately $2,700 (US) with a SuperDrive . . .
I have a 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro (Early 2008) with 20GB of memory, and the primary hard drive is a 3TB Seagate 7200 RPM drive, and it currently is using approximately 1.5TB of its available storage . . .
The 27" iMac with the link to PowerMax will be faster than the Mac Pro here in the sound isolation studio, and this is the reason that I think it is logical choice, since it has the larger hard drive and a video card with 2GB of memory rather than just 1GB, which is important for the larger display . . .
8GB of memory is sufficient for running 64-bit digital music production applications, and you can upgrade to 16GB by adding a pair of 4GB memory modules later, which is easy to do, where at present 8GB of memory (2x4GB) costs approximately $110 (US) at Other World Computing, and the modules plug-in to available slots, but you could get PowerMax to do the memory upgrade, which should cost about the same unless they use Apple memory, which costs more. Other World Computing memory costs less but is just as good, and it has a lifetime warranty . . .
Mac Memory (Other World Computing)
However, lately I have been getting memory modules from Amazon.com, since they cost less, and everything is working nicely, where it is useful to understand that I used Windows and built my own computers for 15 or so years, and there is nothing special about memory. If memory works for a week, it will work forever, but long-time Apple folks tend to think that Apple memory has some type of magical quality, hence should cost twice as much or more, which is nonsense, especially now that Apple computers are Intel-based the same as Windows computers. So long as memory has a 30-day moneyback guarantee or exchange, it is fine with me, because for the most part all of it is manufactured at the same facilities that make Apple-certified memory. The advantage to Other World Computing is that they have a lifetime warranty on their memory, and if it stops working then they replace it using a interesting strategy where you pay for the replacement memory but when they receive the memory that is being replaced they reverse the charge, which is a reasonable way to do it, except that none of their memory has failed, as is the case with the memory I got from Amazon.com (actually third-party vendors, but so what). As noted, if memory works for a week, then there you are, so long as you have a Tripp-Lite ISOBAR surge protector power strip, which is one of the rules here in the sound isolation studio . . .
ISOBAR8ULTRA (Tripp-Lite)
For reference, when I run NOTION 4, Studio One 2.6 Producer, and Reason 7, the Mac Pro is using approximately 12.5GB of memory, so there merit to having 16GB of memory, but so far I have not observed any time where more than 16GB of memory was used, and this is the reason that I stopped upgrading memory even though it is priced very reasonably at present and actually is similar to the price for newer memory. Several months ago it cost twice as much . . .
There is merit to getting a 27" iMac with the quad-core i7 processor, but again I am not certain that it maps to anything particularly useful in a practical way . . .
The primary leap in technology occurred when everything moved to 64-bits, although this has not happened with the IK Multimedia virtual instruments yet (which is becoming vastly annoying, since I like them), and I am not aware of anything as major being on the horizon over the next few years . . .
It also is useful to know that the Mac Pro processors tend to run at approximately 25 percent utilization when I am doing digital music production, and with a few exceptions nearly all the applications use only one or two of the eight cores, and this is a Mac Pro that is six years old, hence the new 27" iMac being faster puts everything into perspective, and I do not see any practical added value to getting the quad-core i7 processor or a 3TB Fusion drive . . .
Having 16GB of memory makes sense, as does having a 3TB 7200 RPM hard drive and a video processor with 2GB of memory, and I think the 3.4GHz Quad-core Intel Core i5 processor will be very fast, and having a 27" screen makes a lot of sense . . .
For reference, I have a 23" Apple Cinema Display, and it is nice but I am pondering the idea of getting a larger display or perhaps a second 23" Apple Cinema Display so that I can see more stuff without needing to switch from one application to another. I usually run NOTION 4, a DAW application, and Reason 7 together, and 23" screen is a bit small, but I manage it so that I have a smooth workflow . . .
I would consider the 21.5" iMac, except that the largest hard drive is 1TB, and you really need a larger drive, but for screen space the fact of the matter is that you cannot see all of a 23" screen, let alone all of a 27" screen, so if there were a way to get a larger hard drive for the 21.5" iMac I would put it on the list, since it can have a quad-core i7 processor . . .
THOUGHTS
The primary considerations for digital music production are (a) having fast processors; (b) having sufficient memory (where 16GB on the Mac is good); and having sufficient hard drive storage for sampled sound libraries and so forth . . .
Once everything is loaded into memory, the hard drive performance is not so critical, and if necessary one can get an external Thunderbolt drive . . .
Video production is a bit different in the sense that you want fast processors but also more memory and fast video processors, and you need a lot of hard drive storage, but this is more for doing longer videos as contrasted to YouTube videos that are no longer than 5 to 10 minutes . . .
The Mac Pro here in the sound isolation studio is plenty fast, but I can make it faster by upgrading the video processor (which costs approximately $250 [US] based on current pricing for the upgrade), and adding a PCI Express SSD drive can map to a performance boost, but they are a bit expensive at present . . .
Since the 27" iMac from PowerMax (see above) is faster than the Mac Pro here in the sound isolation studio, I think it should be fine, because looking into the future I do not see any new technological developments in software that actually require more computing power for digital music production, and few if any of the digital music production software companies are going to devote the required resources to do parallel computing or intentional multicore processing, because (a) it costs too much and (b) there are few people who know how to do it, mostly because for a good bit of the work it makes no sense unless you devote a lot of time to devising new architectures, since a lot of stuff needs to be done in a linear sequential way, which means that there is no practical way to divide some tasks into parts that can be computed independently, which is the reason that getting a quad-core i7 processor might make a bit of sense even though it increases the cost . . .
Explained another way, for all practical purposes the 8-core processors of the dual quad-cores on the Mac Pro here in the sound isolation studio mostly are 75 percent idle, so throwing more cores accomplishes nothing useful, and the limiting factor is the speed of the processors . . .
Lots of FUN!