iMac help

domforr

Ok, that's good to know. Is it Firewire 400 or 800? Mine is the 400 - does it matter?

sweepy

Thunderbolt to firewire 400 adaptor, then a 400-800 lead into the back of the 003r

domforr

Ok thanks, looks like a feasible option then. I've been holding back for this reason but it looks doable now.

sweepy

Some Thunderbolt Docks also have a FW port on them too, actually a very good call if you have a Macbook or iMac as it gives you the option of driving a 4K display at 60z. extra USB 3.0 ports and an ethernet socket, which is missing on new Macbook Pro's

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/14/review_belkin_thunderbolt_express_dock/

One of the above units work very well

domforr

And is there any benefit to 7400rpm v 5400rpm? Again, reading forums there seems to be conflicting views on whether it makes any difference at all speed wise.

LooseMoose

All other things being equal, yes - the faster the speed it spins, the quicker the data can be read and written.

But the issue is that all things are not equal.  At a bare minimum these guys, go for a hybrid drive (8Gb SSD+1TB) as you'll kick yourself, especially as OS X gets more and more bloated as time goes on.

domforr

Interesting, thanks.

sweepy

Just to confuse matters even more (don't you just love it,) using an SSD for the OS AND Recording is " supposed" to cause issues, tbh I've never noticed it, but maybe in some 48 track opus at 96Khz 24bit, who knows . In real life situations, i.e. us chaps recording normally at home, avoiding the wife, kids and cat,  using a 7200 rpm external drive via USB 3 or Thunderbolt, you aren't going to hit bottlenecks, USB 2.0. i'm not so sure about .

In a nutshell, get the fastest and largest hard drive you can afford, there are some cracking 4TB external drive solutions out there around the £100 mark

domforr

I've never quite understood the recording to an external hardrive thing. I've tried it when I used to use Pro Tools and it didn't seem to make any difference. If anything there were more problems than before. This could have been a PT issue of course, as I only ever had problems before moving to Reaper.

So it's definately a no-no to record to your machines hardrive?

I've also read that Fusion drives are problematic with audio - causing lot of clicks and pops: https://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/877537-potential-audio-problem-new-imacs.html

sweepy

I've always made a habit of recording to a separate drive, primarily in my Mac Pro, where its easy to stuff extra drives in, more recently I have started migrating to my MacBook and have had no issues recording to a USB 3.0 5400rpm external drive, though this is going to be replaced with a Thunderbolt drive in the near future. I think the big issue with using your system drive for audio recording stems from the Swap File activity causing glitches, though I am only assuming that, i'm sure there are shiny graphs on the net somewhere with access and latency times for hard drive read/write etc .

spark240

I stick everything on the Mac mini HD, no issue here.

I use a remote HD for back up.

pmg

ThorpyFX said:

Ok I have a fusion drive which is 3tb....it's a mix of solid state and regular memory. The solid state is used to run the operating system whilst the storage uses regular memory. The computer opens in 10 seconds, closes in 11. Seconds. Do not whatever you do buy the ram from Apple on the desktops. So 32gb of ram from Apple (increase over 8gb) costs £470. I paid £100 from crucial. The rest is up to you, although the retina screen is truly great.

THIS.

domforr

So I've now got a second hand Mac Mini 2.3 Ghz 16GB RAM 256GB SSD and I'm planning to get the Audient id14 or spl crimson as an interface.

Would it make sense to get a 7200 rpm thunderbolt external drive to record onto, as a music only drive? Would that be better than recording to the internal SSD?

spark240

If you google stats for the difference...its not a lot, so I doubt you would really benefit.

sweepy

A USB 3 external drive will be ideal for recording, plus a lot cheaper than a Thunderbolt unit

spark240

On another forum someone mentioned that a Flash Drive was just as efficient as  SSD ?

The only issue with my Mac was I ran out of USB ports pretty quick...

Keyboard, Faderport, GT001, Webcam....all gone ! 

thomasross20

Did you buy one in the end? 

I just bought the high-end MacBook Pro and will be returning it. 

Apple have screwed up USB audio interface with their USB 3 ports. I thought it was a problem with my Toneport but on the Apple forums and USB audio interface forums (Line 6 , National Instruments, etc) there are people all over complaining about audio dropout, pop, hiss, crackle. 

So go Apple if you like but do not use OSX El Capitan because it's a disaster.