Help Me Get The Best Setup For Me.. Thanks Options

[shaneblyth]

I am totally new to Macs so new I have not bought one yet but want to in the next little while purely for Music.
I have a really good Keyboard Midi Synth, and a proffessional Mixer, PA, and Mics as well as an electric guitar and base.
I am a one man band who wants to record on this equipment using a MAC.. I dont expect to be selling my stuff but who knows one day

Can people suggest what is a good system to buy ?
and what about additional hardware ? I intend to be recoding only 1 audio track at a time so what should I use to interface with my external gear and MIDI . what spec of MAC would you suggest ?
and what would you recommend for software and why..

I know it is a big ask but you would be helping a soon to be EX PC user get into some good gear and systems finally where i can hopefully create some good quality Music.

Cheers I appreciate your time and input

Shane

[gingau]

would be interesting to know what is the most important in order
Ram Size
CPU Grunt ... single or duel
Hard drive speed/separation from OS.

I mean if you have say a 1ghz G4 with 1 gig of RAM and an external firewaire hard drive
is it gonna be better than say a fast G4/5 with say 512 ram and no external drive.
where is the cross over point ?

Here's my take on it
RAM - smoother ride
CPU - faster ride (but is not noticable on all software)
external - depends on the software, but usually recomended.

Certainly for your needs a G4 will do everything you ask of it, and is $600 - $1600 cheaper than the G5's
you could max the ram on the 4 for about $800 (http://dealram.com/), although I wouln't be surprised if 1G of ram will be sufficient for you.

I don't think you will see much speed dif between the two models or even with a dual proc for what you want to do, so, yes, it is better in that you get the same work done for cheaper.

This post has been edited by gingau: Sat 17 Jul 2004, 14:56