Hi,
I was recently given an MAudio MIDI keyboard, which came with Ableton Live Lite. I'm very impressed and think that upgrading to the full version could be well worth my while. However, before I do this I'd need a new computer, mainly because I've installed Lite on my work laptop! (and I need my own PC)
I've been thinking of getting a Mac for a while - but I wondered which Mac would be suitable for running Live. Portability may be useful, so I wondered if the current range of MacBooks are good enough to run Live well. Are the standard configs (processor / memory) beefy enough, or would I need to get more memory / the faster processor option? Is the screen too small to really see enough of the Live interface in both views?
It will obviously be better run on a MacBook Pro - but how much better? Is it easy to quantify?
What is it like on an iMac? I know they've just replaced the current range, but what were the most recent white iMacs like? I may be able to pick one up cheap if they are doing a clear-out.
Also, being a PC person in the past, would I need to upgrade / purchase some kind of audio interface for any Mac - or is the built in audio sufficient? I've already though a decent control surface, such as the FaderFox devices would be good - but is there a good Audio / MIDI interface that might be good to plug this in to?
Help would be much appreciated with my Mac related questions...
Oh, one final thought - if I got a Mac, would I need to keep it "clean" in the same way I might with a PC that I use for audio stuff? i.e. not install lots of stuff on it that slows it down?
Cheers,
Chris
Which Mac for Ableton Live?
I'm not about to tell you to buy a mac book pro,,
but i will tell you how i get along with mine.
I have a 15" 2.4 C2D
I also have a desk top G5 DP 2.3.
The mac book is more than capable at keeping up with my G5,, in fact,, i can transfer sessions between the two of them and play them back or edit them with out any CPU or disk errors at all, and i have a couple of sessions with close to 200 clips across several tracks,,
The screen is the same resolution as my desk top 19" wide screen monitors so there is plenty of real estate,,
I've been a Mac user since the early days of OS 9,, i've had a lot of experience using windows since windows 95 up to and including XP,, and i love OS X,, it's almost transparent and comparatively hassle free,,,
I use my MBP and my G5 for every thing,, music making with Logic and Live,, playing back iTunes,, surfing the net,, using a couple of drawing and graphics applications,, writing manuals for my day job where i am a teacher and have to crate lesson plans and lesson resources,, i use iWorks for all of those kinds of jobs,,, I have 2gig of RAM and the standard HD and every ting is as solid as a rock,,,
The new iMacs look sweet,, they seem to be a desk top version of the MBP,, they even have the FW800 and FW400 ports now,,
but i will tell you how i get along with mine.
I have a 15" 2.4 C2D
I also have a desk top G5 DP 2.3.
The mac book is more than capable at keeping up with my G5,, in fact,, i can transfer sessions between the two of them and play them back or edit them with out any CPU or disk errors at all, and i have a couple of sessions with close to 200 clips across several tracks,,
The screen is the same resolution as my desk top 19" wide screen monitors so there is plenty of real estate,,
I've been a Mac user since the early days of OS 9,, i've had a lot of experience using windows since windows 95 up to and including XP,, and i love OS X,, it's almost transparent and comparatively hassle free,,,
I use my MBP and my G5 for every thing,, music making with Logic and Live,, playing back iTunes,, surfing the net,, using a couple of drawing and graphics applications,, writing manuals for my day job where i am a teacher and have to crate lesson plans and lesson resources,, i use iWorks for all of those kinds of jobs,,, I have 2gig of RAM and the standard HD and every ting is as solid as a rock,,,
The new iMacs look sweet,, they seem to be a desk top version of the MBP,, they even have the FW800 and FW400 ports now,,
15" 2.4 MBP/Live/Sampler/Operator/ Home made Dumble clone/Two Strats/One Jazz Bass.
Come and visit any time= Soundcloud
Come and visit any time= Soundcloud
Re: Which Mac for Ableton Live?
Apple used to have a nasty habit of keeping the standard specs pretty low as far as RAM was concerned, but they seemed to have bumped that bar up a little bit. OSX is pretty memory hungry, all things considered, and you should be running with at least 1Gb. 2Gb is better if you can afford it, and IMO a more worthwhile investment than an extra 200Mhz on the CPU or something.cpettifer wrote: I've been thinking of getting a Mac for a while - but I wondered which Mac would be suitable for running Live. Portability may be useful, so I wondered if the current range of MacBooks are good enough to run Live well. Are the standard configs (processor / memory) beefy enough, or would I need to get more memory / the faster processor option? Is the screen too small to really see enough of the Live interface in both views?
As far as the screen is concerned, I don't find it to be too restrictive at all... though I should note that my favorite laptop of all time was the 12" powerbook, which was a perfect little beast for running Live 4.
I used to also have a macbook myself (since sold it), and I really liked the display on that. The screen size itself I did not find to be too small, and I like the new glossy screens (some people don't... I guess that's just a matter of personal taste, though).I've currently got a MBP via my workplace, and it's a nice machine, though having used both it and the macbook, the differences between them are really quite negligible for audio. The biggest difference between the two machines is the graphic card, and there is a bit of performance loss with the onboard cards that the macbooks use. However, this will really be more of an issue if you're using graphically-intense plugins.. live itself is pretty light on the GPU, obviously.It will obviously be better run on a MacBook Pro - but how much better? Is it easy to quantify?
I haven't used an iMac, so I can't say. However, you can probably score one for pretty cheap from the "refurbished" part of Apple's store.What is it like on an iMac? I know they've just replaced the current range, but what were the most recent white iMacs like? I may be able to pick one up cheap if they are doing a clear-out.
The built-in sound interfaces on macs are generally quite good. I don't remember what the specs are on the macbooks, but I know that the MBP's can do 96k/24bit. There is also very little line noise from the laptops compared to most PC laptop soundcards.Also, being a PC person in the past, would I need to upgrade / purchase some kind of audio interface for any Mac - or is the built in audio sufficient? I've already though a decent control surface, such as the FaderFox devices would be good - but is there a good Audio / MIDI interface that might be good to plug this in to?
As for control surfaces and soundcards and the whatnot... well, I'll let you just stumble through the dozens of other threads on this board about such topics.
Nah... although I guess that does depend on what you install, mainly. Just like on a PC, programs that are set to start up automatically after bootup will consume RAM, and thus, system resources. Under OSX, these programs are much less common than in windows, but overall OSX is designed to be much more low-maintainance than windows is. However, I have quite a large amount of software installed on my macs, and it doesn't really effect performance too much, unless a bunch of them are running at the same time.Oh, one final thought - if I got a Mac, would I need to keep it "clean" in the same way I might with a PC that I use for audio stuff? i.e. not install lots of stuff on it that slows it down?
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Freakybeatz
- Posts: 82
- Joined: Sun Jul 10, 2005 4:19 am
- Location: UK
Any one of the current (or previous line) of Macs will run Ableton fine...
on a 13" macbook its suprisingly nippy and dont worry to much about the screen size Abletons GUI lends itself quite nicely to smaller screens.
A Macbook Pro really is overkill if Ableton is what you will primarily using.
As for the new iMacs...cool...nice screen real estate very nippy, but its basically a macbook pro (with an inferior 3d card until new drivers kick in) slapped inside a screen! Oh...and the older "whitey imacs" run ableton fine.
work out exactly HOW portable you want to be...THAT is the question as all of those macs eat ableton for breakfast. (get 2gigs of RAM though through a third party vendor like crucial, kingston or corsair)
In regards AUdio/Midi interface. Although the audio on a MAC is generally a lot better than integrated audio on a PC, if you really want to use the power of Ableton, a separate interface is recommended (latency issues, quality reasons) and again it depends on how portable and compact you want your rig.
You can get keyboards with audio interfaces built in like the m-audio ozonic
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Ozonic-main.html
which gives you a firewire audio interface, keyboard and control surface,
or you can stick with your current keyboard and buy just an audio interface (also available on the m-audio site) + a faderfox or behringer controller.
Bear in mind! everything depends on your budget!
In regards keeping a Mac clean, the folks at Apple would have you believe that a Mac never crashes, cleans up after itself and never needs maintenance, but at the end of the day.......its a computer!
Its a bone of contention in the Mac vs PC debate... but the truth is... a well tuned PC (not an off the shelf PC world family thing) is as stable and reliable as any Mac and all the cleaning and maintenance is usually down to all the crap we as users bang on our hard drives.
The Macs do run their own "routines" and dont have a registry to worry about, so for general users it does seem like a cleaner system and if all you will be doing is running ableton, ilife and a few bits and peices, then there is no reason a Mac can't take care of itself 90% of the time. (and before I get PC haters jumping over me I use Macs and PC's!)
Infact the selling point for a Mac is the OS. it really is ready to use out of the box. Microsoft Os's need a lot more "setting up" for pro audio use but as I said, once this is done it can be as smooth and reliable as a Mac.
OK now I'm rambling.....
time to shut up...hope any of this helps
Freaky
on a 13" macbook its suprisingly nippy and dont worry to much about the screen size Abletons GUI lends itself quite nicely to smaller screens.
A Macbook Pro really is overkill if Ableton is what you will primarily using.
As for the new iMacs...cool...nice screen real estate very nippy, but its basically a macbook pro (with an inferior 3d card until new drivers kick in) slapped inside a screen! Oh...and the older "whitey imacs" run ableton fine.
work out exactly HOW portable you want to be...THAT is the question as all of those macs eat ableton for breakfast. (get 2gigs of RAM though through a third party vendor like crucial, kingston or corsair)
In regards AUdio/Midi interface. Although the audio on a MAC is generally a lot better than integrated audio on a PC, if you really want to use the power of Ableton, a separate interface is recommended (latency issues, quality reasons) and again it depends on how portable and compact you want your rig.
You can get keyboards with audio interfaces built in like the m-audio ozonic
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Ozonic-main.html
which gives you a firewire audio interface, keyboard and control surface,
or you can stick with your current keyboard and buy just an audio interface (also available on the m-audio site) + a faderfox or behringer controller.
Bear in mind! everything depends on your budget!
In regards keeping a Mac clean, the folks at Apple would have you believe that a Mac never crashes, cleans up after itself and never needs maintenance, but at the end of the day.......its a computer!
Its a bone of contention in the Mac vs PC debate... but the truth is... a well tuned PC (not an off the shelf PC world family thing) is as stable and reliable as any Mac and all the cleaning and maintenance is usually down to all the crap we as users bang on our hard drives.
The Macs do run their own "routines" and dont have a registry to worry about, so for general users it does seem like a cleaner system and if all you will be doing is running ableton, ilife and a few bits and peices, then there is no reason a Mac can't take care of itself 90% of the time. (and before I get PC haters jumping over me I use Macs and PC's!)
Infact the selling point for a Mac is the OS. it really is ready to use out of the box. Microsoft Os's need a lot more "setting up" for pro audio use but as I said, once this is done it can be as smooth and reliable as a Mac.
OK now I'm rambling.....
time to shut up...hope any of this helps
Freaky
"Hi.. I'm a Mac...and I'm a PC.." WHO GIVES A SH*T!
Thanks, this is all really helpful. From what I've gathered so far...
A MacBook will be fine, provided I don't want to do graphics intensive stuff on it as well as Ableton.
Best to get 2GB RAM with it though.
Built in sound will probably be OK for now, but look to get an Audio interface at some stage - search forums for lots of converstations on this and MIDI controllers!
Other Macs will also be fine (although my wife and I have both been lusting after a MacBook for a little while now).
Does photo editing come in to the graphics intensive bit? i.e. will I need a more powerful Mac for this? How about video editing?
A MacBook will be fine, provided I don't want to do graphics intensive stuff on it as well as Ableton.
Best to get 2GB RAM with it though.
Built in sound will probably be OK for now, but look to get an Audio interface at some stage - search forums for lots of converstations on this and MIDI controllers!
Other Macs will also be fine (although my wife and I have both been lusting after a MacBook for a little while now).
Does photo editing come in to the graphics intensive bit? i.e. will I need a more powerful Mac for this? How about video editing?
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Freakybeatz
- Posts: 82
- Joined: Sun Jul 10, 2005 4:19 am
- Location: UK
I currently use Adobe Photoshop elements on my PC for photos - which is about the sort of level I need.
I also have Adobe Premiere Elements, which I have been using for video editing. I was looking at Final Cut Express on Mac and keep meaning to pop into the Mac Store to see what the guys there reckon it needs to run on.
I'm getting quite off the Ableton point now - so I'll quit while ahead. Thanks for the help with clearing up what I might need to get to run Ableton anyway.
Cheers,
Chris
I also have Adobe Premiere Elements, which I have been using for video editing. I was looking at Final Cut Express on Mac and keep meaning to pop into the Mac Store to see what the guys there reckon it needs to run on.
I'm getting quite off the Ableton point now - so I'll quit while ahead. Thanks for the help with clearing up what I might need to get to run Ableton anyway.
Cheers,
Chris
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glamourboy
- Posts: 253
- Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2007 11:57 am
- Location: Copenhagen
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mickey disco
regarding the 'old' white iMacs, I have a 2Gb Intel with 1Gb RAM and it runs Live 6 and all my plugs just great. I may at some point upgrade the RAM, but haven't felt the need yet.
More generally on the subject of macs, i very much doubt you will regret switching to one. I found it slightly odd at first after using PC's/Windows, but a couple of days and you'll be fine.
More generally on the subject of macs, i very much doubt you will regret switching to one. I found it slightly odd at first after using PC's/Windows, but a couple of days and you'll be fine.
Re: I agree
Regie_Boy wrote:I agree with the above, i just got my new Macbook Pro the other day, which I am very happy with, but it only takes a few soft synths to get the CPU up to a healthy 25-30%.
The more power the better!!
DE
What memory does your MB have?
Its like an extra good community.gerard wrote:Whooah u Mac guys really love each other
How sweet!!
Ableton people have a community which is not replicated anywhere else within music program forums.
Its the same for mac people.
Then you get the ableton live mac people.
an extra special community.
I love my 15" macbook pro 2.3ghz C2D.
Never had a problem with it.
always enough power.
Love It.
you know the day i decided to buy a mac, that was the day i became a happy person.
glamourboy wrote:"A Macbook Pro really is overkill if Ableton is what you will primarily using".
i disagree. if you use softsynths you need all the juice you can get.
especially when you have 15 instances of reaktor 5 open.
I think its always better to get the most powerful machine you can afford. It will remain future proof for longer.
Who knows when we will see Reaktor6, Live 7, the next must have super CPU plugin.
Macboks are fine, macbook pro's are better.
and you get the back lit keyboard. Here i am in the dark typing out messages without hassle.
You remind me of my fatherwilxon wrote:
you know the day i decided to buy a mac, that was the day i became a happy person.
He's also such a Mac fan after 30 years of using a PC. He switched only recently, about a year ago, but since then he's only discriminating Windows.For my part I've tried to get along with Macs for 2 months but I just don't get it. But they look better that's true. On the other hand we have the glitch VST. Noone can take that away from us
