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[marc bu]

Hi .. this is my first post here, so I added a bit of blurb about myself at the end of the post, but let's start with my questions.

What I have:
 Some ancient midi kit (Roland, Yamaha, etc.)
 AKAI S2800 sampler (with SCSI interface and some Hard disks)
 Tascam 12-to-4-to-2 mixing board (quite good)
 Some accustic sound sources (microphones, fender rhodes)
 
 Apple G4 (400Mhz) PowerBook, 256MB RAM
 OS X 10.0.4 and 9.1 (will upgrade to 10.1 when available at my dealer)
 Apple Macintosh Quarda660AV running an old version of Deck
 Apple Powerbook (68030) running an old version of Cubase
 Griffith iMic (does not work in OS X yet.)

What I need:
 A midi/audio recording/sequencer, preference would be MOTU Performer (seems easiest to use) or Opcode Vision (like the Audio-to-Midi feature!)
 A midi interface for USB!!
 A firewire harddisk (please recommend)
 Maybe a better 'audio in/out' device then the iMic
 Advice on how to get it and make it work! ;-)
 
I am ready to spend in the region of $2000 US now.  I use OS X as my every-day OS on my PowerBook and olny use OS 9, when I need to run VirtualPC. However, I am aware that none of the publishers have yet announced OS X versions.

More questions:

How does the USB midi interface work using a USB hub alongside with having a mouse, Epson printer and Visor-cradle plugged in? I intend to buy a Belkin hub. Do you have recommendations?

Is there a way to link the Sampler to the TiBook? Would this work with a usb-to-scsi bridge?

Me: I live in Livingston. Soctland. I used to work as a professional musician (singer/songwriter/piano - wrote once a film score as well, but not using my own gear), but am currently doing other things to earn money. However, I am still writing and arranging (with my old kit), but want to gear up a notch. I have not found a good shop either in Edinburgh or Glasgow that really knows Mac. (They'd sell me the stuff, but when asking questions to their experts, I noticed that knowledge is really limited to using the software.) If you know one, tell me about it!

Cheers

Marc

[marc bu]

Thanks for the contributions guys! While they stimulated my thoughts, I went for an all MOTU solution in the end:
828 audio interface
Fastlane midi interface
DP3

I bought an EZQuest drive, as it was the only one available with 2 firewire ports, so I can hook up drive and 828 without the need of a firewire hub. (And it works a treat.)

I have got a lot of input from a US message board and in the US MOTU seems to be king. The main argument for DP versus Logic was how newbies described their learning curve. I was made to believe I would be recording and working within minutes of installation and can learn new features as I go along with DP, while Logic was described as beeing hard in the first few steps.

I don't know about Logic, but from unpacking to recording, the MOTU solution took 20 minutes! I am working for a wed days now and have not read the manual once yet.

BTW. DP3 does NOT work under OS X (not even Classic), as expected.

Cheers

Marc