Anyone using a Mini Mac??

[JGullone]

I've been recording for quite sometime w/ the Zoom 10 track / and then upgraded to the 16 track. Well, I'm in need of more options and ease of recording these days so I am moving in to computer based recording.

I have the Firebox....A/D / Pre-amp, etc.....I've recorded on my laptop which is just over 1mhz. for the processor speed (AMD) and has 512 mb of RAM.

I can't do much w/ it as it usually starts "skipping" after I record more than two tracks. It won't even playback stereo drums w/o the digital skip.

I am limited to 1 gig of RAM so, question is, I need to upgrad. I've got a tower that I can purchase new things for (motherboard, hard drive, sound card, etc.) but I recently was over a friends who was using the Mini Mac for simple recordings. It seemed to work great for him and it was extremely fast.

I was wondering if anyone here has used the MINI MAC for multiple track recordings and if so, how it works.

Thanks,
Jay

[richiebee]

What sequencer do you want to use? If it's PC only software, I wouldn't go the Mac route. While it might work with bootcamp, there's not the driver support that each native operating system offers.

If it's both Mac and PC software, the MacMini might be an option. They were severely underpowered when they first came out. I think they still are slightly, but they are pretty cheap, and certainly usable. Upgrading will be tricky, if indeed possible at all. The Intel switch put me off Mac's for life. I've never preferred them, but I have to use them every day, so I deal. But regardless of initial cost of computers, (Mac's seem comparable to PC's) the Mac route as a way of life always seems a more expensive one with more waiting for compatibility than should be the case.
If you're on a budget, I'd suggest going the PC route. While freeware VSTi's are not always the best, there is so much variety to keep you going until you can afford the real deal.
For heavy sampling use, there's almost unanimous consensus that PC's offer more power. This may or may not be important to you and may change now that Mac's can handle such a huge amount of RAM. But then you're talking about the high end machines, not the Mac Mini.

[brandondrury]

I've recorded on my laptop which is just over 1mhz. for the processor speed (AMD) and has 512 mb of RAM.

I can't do much w/ it as it usually starts "skipping" after I record more than two tracks. It won't even playback stereo drums w/o the digital skip.

I've never used a Mini Mac, so I can't comment on that.

However, I can say that a 1Ghz machine that can't play back stereo drums is a problem. Something isn't right here. My first recording computer was a Pentium 3 550Mhz with 512 MB of SDRAM. I was able to get 16 tracks out of it quite often even if it was a little sluggish.

I had to be careful with the amount of plugins I used and rendering was quite slow, but it worked fine.

If you can't get stereo music to play, I'd guess that you have a ton of junk on it. (Almost all laptops are covered in junk like most name brand computers are).

So before you go out and blow a big wad of cash on a new computer, you may want to take a look at your current rig. Just a thought.

Brandon