Kinda wonderin' exactly which machine would be best to purchase specifically for making music. Ready to make the switch from p.c. to Mac and getting alot of different vibes about what to get. Any thoughts welcome. Cheers.

My answer's simple: a G5. It's got plenty of power for soft synth's, effects and loads of track. Add a fast Firewire 800 array like the stuff from G-Tech and you've got world-class DAW power. No machine from any PC maker can come close to it for the price.

Of course, speaking off price, can your wallet bear the strain of a G5?

Good luck,
Jeff

Any G5 is enabled to make great things with music but at the most power, has better. If the G5 is new,it installs the Panther OSX,because it will come with OSX Tiger and he is little mature still.It will be necessary to hope new updates to work calmly with him.

Thanks for that guys - was initially thinking of the new I-Mac G5. Were you thinking more of the Powermac?

The iMac is a very good option too.He is powerful,it has good price and in addition he is very
pretty.

Powermac accomodate 2 hard drives, more RAM, are bigger, way bigger, are not all in one, may be noisier, you need a screen, it's more pricy, but you can use PCI cards.

If you're starting up, or have not over the top needs, the imac can do juste fine.

To iMac also him you can put more hard driver,external but work.Cards PCI pass something similar then except for rare occasions you find in fireware what you do not have in PCI.Now, the power of the CPU and the bandwidth already are another thing.In that if there are important differences.But if you want to know if iMac is sufficient powerful to make music,my answer is yes.

BENCHMARK:

I'm using:
- iMac G5 1.6GHz 17"
- 160 Gig HD
- 1 Gig Ram
- Tiger
- Logic 7 Pro
- 15 Synths
- 9 Softsynths
- (2) 8 port MIDI patchbays
- FW410 Audio Interface
- (etc, etc, etc)

Results:
- Astounding!
- Average song:
- 12 - 14 Tracks Audio
- 10 - 15 Tracks MIDI (ie: unlimited / Runs Great!)
- 10 - 15 individual Effects
- 4 - 6 SoftSynths (Depending on the song)

Have not seen a massive slowdown yet... The system is comfortable running this...
I'm pretty sure it could handle much more... Very happy with my iMac G5 Purchase...
Last Note: DON'T believe ads about the "whisper quiet" iMac...
If I'm kicking out this much in a song or more - Especially with a Couple EXS24's hammering away with the other stuff, The fans can start cranking... The system still works well - But I believe there's like 4 or five fans - ANd they will ALL get going running something heavy duty like this... But, the system doesn't show signs of wear... AND the fans are not so loud as to annoy you unless you demand a perfectl quiet studio...

The iMac G5 is a good choice for a "mid-level" / "professional" user...
I don't record drums or a lot of live instruments with my system - Mostly vocal and some individual instruments...
I'd love to have a G5 Tower - But the iMac is a worthy alternative...

Cheers

It is not strange to me that you are happy with your system. I also would be it.

Thanks Jsegura...

It's taken a LONG time to get it this way...
Update this/trade that/ etc...

The only point I wanted to make was that you can cram quite a bit into a little iMac G5 and get a lot out to make a very powerful system for about 1,200.00 bucks... (A few more dollars with the extra Ram - I installed the 160Gig myself)...

That's another intresting point as well...
Upgrading the new iMac G5's is just as easy as the towers now...
The back just slips off and everything is right there...
Not like my old 266 Grape iMac...
That was like HEART surgery!!!

Good Luck...