Ibook G4 Suitable For Logic And Garageband?, Is a mac laptop powerful enough? Options

[Anderz]

Hi everyone,

I'm a complete newbie to using macs, let alone using them to record multitracked music.

I am used to using windows PC's running Sonar or Cakewalk Home Studio but have gotten tired with blue screens and numerous compatibility problems that windows machines typically suffer from!

I recently saw the light and purchased an iBook G4 1.2Ghz with 256mb RAM and 30GB HDD and was wondering if it would be powerful enough to run Logic 'properly' with real time effects, multiple 'real' instrument recordings etc? I have a MIDI setup at home which works fine with the laptop in garageband using an Edirol USB UM MIDI input device.

Also I see it has no line in and was wondering what you guys would recommend as a decent quality, low latency USB sound input device?

Any help would be really appreciated!

Many thanks,

Anders

[cress]

Hi - you will find that an i/book probably not powerful enough, the g5/4 are fine providing you have atlleast 150GHZ and a dual processor, some new G5's are a little noisy and not suitable for a studio environment/but this problem is being addressed at present. You really meed to upgrade before going to the trouble of creating a bus system for your plug ins / got to get back to college work now - hope this helps a little.

Also check out ATM magazine, they can be found on net, it is worth reading for practical production advice and getting ideas about the professional set ups used to produce drum + bass

all the best

[hydra]

I have that exact same iBook model and I record multitrack music (the most tracks recording live at once is 8, since I'm using a MOTU 828) and it works fine! Most of my things don't break the 24/30 track barrier, so I can't speak for that. Even when I was using the stock 256MB RAM, which I've since upgraded. When it comes to virtual instruments, it depends on what you're using. My main program is Tracktion and it seems to be written well enough so the CPU load doesn't start to get too bad when running, say, a Mellotron VST synth.

As for USB, I haven't tried any with my new iBook, I highly recommend holding out for some kind of Firewire-based device. There's an M-Audio one that's fairly affordable. I tried using USB three years ago with a PowerBook and had all kinds of problems.

[gdoubleyou]

I have no problems with doing sessions of 32-48tracks on an ancient G4/400 with Logic Express7.

I get even better milage from my 1GHz Powerbook, Logic is the most cpu effecient DAW on the MAC, I also own DP4, used to own SX2. So i have compared them side by side.

Garge Band on the other hand is a cpu hog, because all of the instuments have multiple effects applied to them. You can get better performance by disableing the uneeded effects.