Need Advice On Buying My First Mac!, help a newbie out..... Options

[astralweeks]

hello all,

i'm about to dive into the wonderful world of apple computers for 2 things: audio and video. I have used (and built) PC's for years, but i'm ready to get semi-professional with my productions and there is really no way to do that without using a mac. BUT: i know little about Mac's in general, let alone the specific things i need for audio applications.

i've been checking out different power mac systems, and as of right now a g5 is out of the question, so i'm looking at g4. should i get a dual processor? or a faster single processor? exactly what speed CPU should i be looking at when i go to buy a system? my friend has a dual 1 ghz g4 he wants to sell me: how solid would this system be for my needs?

i've messed around with recording on PC's before, so i know more ram = better, faster HDD = better, etc....i'm just wondering if the transition to mac will be an easy and productive one.

if anyone could help me out i'd really appreciate it!

[shaneblyth]

the minidv will be wonderful I love ilife apps that come with new Macs including my mini.. Imovie and iDVD are fantastic at muching about with video files... i just dump my movie clips straight thru the firewire port to the app and then arrange the clips as i like and use some of the iDVD themes and make a DVD video my firends can throw in an DVD player complete with animated menus and slide shows, pictures or multiple movies whatever you like it is rediculasly easy to do and very very pro looking.
as for the audio you say multiple tracks of audio.
do you mean you want to record mulitple tracks at once?
maybe say 8 audio tracks or midi tracks in at the same time? or do you mean you want to simply playback lots of tracks?
I'll tell you my setup
Motif ES7 keyboard, I have an Mlan fireiwre card in the Motif ES itself
I plug the firewirte cable into my Macmini and the Motif then passes and midi to my DAW (digital perfromer 4.52) and as the Motif has A/D inputs on the back I can plug in a guitar or Mic or whatever and run it thru the inbuilt Motif ES effects such as compression, reverb, chorus , various amp simulators etc etc .. a bunch of DSP effects anyway... then it all drops down thru the firewire cable to my Macmini all without leaving the digital domain.. very neat and very clean system and only 1 little wire.. so I can laydown lots of midi or audio (you can send any of the motif sounds or drums arps in real time in either Midi or the actual audio itself to your DAW)
you can actually send 8 stereo audio tracks from the Motif ES sequencer all at once in realtime.
sure is a neat system... there are lots of other interfaces of course.
I dont like softsynths cause they take alot of power out of your system