Latency And Osx, Problems with latency on an old iMac Options

[moviescore]

Hi everyone, hope someone can enlighten me a bit here. I am about to set up a home recording studio with my iMac, Cubase SX a midi keyboard and the Roland XV2020 module. I am also thinking about using a number of soft synths, including Spectrasonics Atmosphere and Absynth.

Unfourtunately, the computer is one of the older models, G3 406, 400MHz. I am about to install 512 Mb of additional RAM, and MacOSX (version 10.2).

I am a bit concerned about latency problems. Anyone know if I will experience serious problems with this matter with the setup described above?

Apple says in their notes on MacOSX that it vastly improves the sound and the way the computer handles latency issues etc. Maybe this is a stupid question, but I was wondering if this is true independently of the hardware and the soundcard on my (old) iMac.

Any input here would be very valuable for me! Thanks!

[rickenbacker]

Spectrasonics Atmosphere will almost certainly overwhelm your G3/400 Mac. It's enormous, apparently, and demands a hefty chunk of CPU power and RAM to run effectively. G4 definitely recommended, the newer the better. I've not used it - I'm just passing on what the Sound on Sound reviewer said. He absolutely loved Atmosphere, mind you.

As for the audio/midi track business, SX handles soft synths automatically: they're automatically lined up in the mixer as audio channels. This makes it nice and easy on mixdown. If you're recording external synths, you will need to record their output as audio anyway.