hey all

just wondering if anyone can help me out.
i recently just upgraded my computer from a powerbook to a nice powermac G5 dual 2.5 ghz. 1 gig ram.

i run pro tools LE 6.9.2 on Tiger.

i was wondering if anyone has any advice on tweaking my powermac and/or pro tools to make it run the best it can. i use reason quite often along side pro tools. i am also using BFD drum module for drums. I plan on trying to use BFD along with my drummers roland v-drums in the near future.

one thing i noticed that i never expected to happen with a G5 was when i opened up my last session which was a small session with BFD drums along with some reason piano it stopped playback and told me to increase buffer size. and at one point it told me to decrease it. could this be a pro tools LE and tiger issue? maybe its still not stable?

any thoughts, suggestions and advice on any of this would be much appreciated. me being a powermac newbie i could use some from some more experienced users.

thanks so much.

cheers all.

Dear wreckthisplace,

Well, I quit using ProTools a while back because it seemed to be very contrary with Tiger. I use Logic and GarageBand for all my audio now. Logic isn't quite as intuitive, but once you get used to it, you won't miss ProTools. It's been my experience that Digidesign's products have started to become increasingly unfriendly to Macs.

Here are some things you can do to make your Mac run more efficiently:

Next time you restart, launch Activity Monitor and see if there's anything running from startup there that you don't need (like an old scanner utility or something). If it's on the list, it's sucking up CPU time and RAM. Get rid of it. If you don't want to get rid of it just yet, you can also launch System Preferences, go to the Accounts pane, select your account from the left-hand list, click the Login items tab, find the process you want to remove, highlight it, and click the minus sign to remove it from your startup.

Put a solid color on your desktop instead of a picture. Pictures slow things down because your Mac has to load it into RAM and constantly redraw it.

Reboot occasionally.

Defrag your hard disk with a third party utility like Drive Genius or Tech Tool Pro 4.

Get rid of the Dashboard. It sucks up the RAM. To do this, open the Terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal) and type the following:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES

Then press Return.

Then type:

killall Dock

and press Return again.

If you decide you want the Dashboard back sometime, go back to the Terminal and type the following:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO

and press Return. Then either reboot or type:

killall Dock

and press Return again to restore the Dashboard.

Clearing your caches can make your Mac more efficient. The two main cache folders are /Library/Caches and /username/Library/Caches. Delete the contents of these folders (but not the folders themselves!) and reboot to rebuild them with fresh data.

Unmount any external drives you're not using. Only mount them when you need them.

Get rid of anything you don't use on your hard drive. You should always keep at least 10% of your hard drive free.

A lot of these chores can be done automatically, too, through utilities like Cocktail, OmniDiskSweeper, MenuMeters and Tidy Up.

I got these suggestions from Mac Addict Magazine, and my Mac runs a lot better since I took these steps. Hope this helps!

hahaworld

hey

thanks a lot for all of your advice. cheers.
i'll definitely try a lot of these things out.

even BFD is causing a little trouble right now with a gig of ram.

i appreciate your help.

thanks.

I got myself a nice set up a few months ago...same g5 and digi002...
protools 6.9 has very nice features, but i don't like how it runs on tiger, it's still funky.

I partitioned my hard drive..and now i run 6.2 on panther...

then i use tiger for all the rest..

It is also easier to find plug ins that work...if you know what i mean...

good luck.

yes i understand what you mean about it running funky sometimes. good to know its not my powermac or anything. let's hope a lot of things are fixed when they release pro tools 7 in october (i think).

how much ram do you have? 1 gig? i'm thinking of upping it to 2 gigs already just to be safe.

thanks again

cheers

I am about to buy Logic 7 for a Powermac 2x2Ghz, with 2.5 gig of RAM and 2 x 120gb internal harddrives.

Can someone please tell me whether I need to/or should also purchase a sound card?

Can someone please advise on what keyboard I should get, and what monitors.

mpnow: I suggest you start a new topic for your questions, as you'll get a lot more help that way. FWIW, yes you probably need a soundcard (PreSonus FireBox, Focusrite Saffire, Edirol FA-66, M-Audio FW410, MOTU 828 etc), most keyboards are pretty decent these days providing you spend more than, say, £150 and monitors are almost as personal a choice as shoes. Google a few phrases like "best budget monitor" and see what turns up. I have Yamaha MSP5s. They're OK. But ask all this again in a new thread, please.

As for RAM, yep, load that mother to the max - you'll definitely appreciate it. I have 1.75Gb in my dual G4 and I could always do with more. There's no room for it now, mind you, but it sure would be nice to have it.