The First Of Many Mac Mini Questions..., Can it work for small-scale recording? Options

[IWood]

OK, so here goes.

For a small-potatos setup (recording demos and original music for Flash animation):

A mini Mac with 1GB RAM
Digidesign MBox in one of the USB ports
Glyph drive in the firewire
OS + production software in the internal HD
Recording tracks onto the Glyph

Good? Bad? Indifferent? Cheap minds want to know!

Many thanks,

--IW

[don says mac]

from what i've heard, i'd stay away from the mbox unless you're gonna be completely committed to producing with protools software... check m-audio for other usb/firwire hook ups...

.d.

[IWood]

Well...like I said--small spuds (and also small $$$, which means that an interface/software bundle is attractive). At this point, PT will probably serve my needs as well as anything else.

Right now, I'm more interested in whether the Mac mini will do the job...

[don says mac]

it'll be powerfull enough yes, for most recordings... but what will you be recording? live instruments? midi/softsynths???

-edit-

don't forget, there's always free apps out there... garageband, audacity... do a search on this site or check out;

www.osxaudio.com
www.soundonsound.com

This post has been edited by don says mac: Fri 14 Jan 2005, 02:04

[IWood]

Live acoustic guitar, MIDI keys, live keys, maybe some vocals, in various combinations. No softsynths (K2500, Karma, Evolver, CZ-1...things that actually take up space!)

How many playback tracks do you suppose I can get out of this while recording?

[ourmanflinty]

Set it up the way you said you'll get loads of tracks. If the firewire starts to clog up spread them onto the internal as well. Wouldn't like to say specifically just in case there's some silly bottleneck somewhere but you know, 24+??

It's crazy, some people really really hate Digidesign.
I love all my TDM dsp chips, every one mmm kissy kissy kissy!
I love logic too, my cute l'il tdm bridge and DAE mmm hugs xx



must admit though, it's a bit of a monopoly sometimes..
and it's overpriced, well, not the mix stuff these days...
or the 001, or mbox, er, or audiomedia's, umm, or nubus stuff, umm, just the HD stuff, and the mixers!

[IWood]

24! More than enough.

Off I go, to spend my dough, go, dough...d'oh!!!

[ourmanflinty]

you just wanted an excuse to buy a mac mini didn't you, you'd be happy if I said 10 tracks...!!

I know, I want one too, I might go to the Apple store tonight and see if they got any of those funky white usb memory chips that play music and they got some yankee dj there tonight on traktor or something up in the theatre, shame the genius bar doesn't serve drinks.

Go for the bluetooth option as well on the mac mini, with the wireless keyboard n mouse so there's even less usb traffic...

[don says mac]

you just wanted an excuse to buy a mac mini didn't you, you'd be happy if I said 10 tracks...!!

I know, I want one too,

ha ha... i think we all feel the same... just so damn small & cheap...

any ideas in regards to front bus or cache???

[IWood]

you just wanted an excuse to buy a mac mini didn't you, you'd be happy if I said 10 tracks...!!

Go for the bluetooth option as well on the mac mini, with the wireless keyboard n mouse so there's even less usb traffic...

Who me?

Good suggestion re: Bluetooth...keep the traffic down to myoosic only...