i mac thoughts and opinions

karl · Post by **karl** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 1:10 pm

Hello,,thinking of converting to i mac from a p.c after 10 years,,whats peoples thoughts on the imac and what fire wire/soundcard device would be best 4 me !! sorry im shit when it comes to all this ha ha doh im wanting to run live 7 and finaly get me fingers on logic 8 + all my plugins and racks etc anythoughts and ideas would be appreciated

thanks

karl

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 1:50 pm

iMac will be great, soundcards depend on how much you want to spend.

karl · Post by **karl** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 2:24 pm

thanks,,thinking of spending anything thats going 2 be qaulity realy,,if im forking out £1300 for an i mac i may as well pay out on a good sound card,,, may b £300 for 1 !! how long do ya reckon it will take 2 get use to an imac and is live 7 exACTLY THE SAME SET UP 4 MAC AS IT IS P.C

THANKS

KARL

no_barcode · Post by **no_barcode** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 2:54 pm

I recently bought a 20" iMac after being a PC user for over 15 years.

My only regret is not switching platforms sooner.

Make sure you get at least 2 GBs of RAM. (you can do it on 1, but it's a much better experience with 2 or more)

Live feels the same on both platforms. (to me) Live's performance has not degraded at all. I can't say that I've seen any noticeable gains either, but I don't normally push it to the max anyway.

karl · Post by **karl** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 3:04 pm

thanks no barcode appreciate this info !! honest its so mad at the mo deciding what 2 do,,im so so keen on getting moved over to i mac,,and using live 7 etc been having so so many probs with the p.c running live,,its actualy struggling on a 15 channel track !! keeps jurking and stuttering running like a piece of shit,,so my instant thought is to buy some thing top of the list realy !!! what sound card you using or is there any you would recomend

thanks for your time

karl

chrysalis33rpm · Post by **chrysalis33rpm** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 3:07 pm

iMacs are probably the best value in computing, get at least 2 gigs RAM like somebody above said.

there a a million soundcards decide on how many channels you need and do a search around the forum.

j_ursa · Post by **j_ursa** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 4:33 pm

24" imac here with a motu ultralite, and I'm more than happy with both.

I got a sweet deal on the 24" (sale and open box), otherwise I would have gone for the 20" and spent the leftover $ on the soundcard. Def can't complain about the extra screen real estate though.

The ultralite was a no-brainer. Other cards I considered were the presonus firebox, and the rme fireface 400. The presonus costs more than half the price of the ultralite with less features, and the rme costs more than 2x the price of the ultralite. The rme looks to be a superb card, but as a hobbyist user I couldn't justify the jump, and the ultralite is more than adequate for my needs. Apogee Duet looks a beaut too, but I wanted more ins and outs than it offers.

Go for the imac - you won't regret it. The soundcard might take more mulleting over, but the ultralite was an easy decision in my case.

polyslax · Post by **polyslax** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 4:41 pm

I was using a 24 inch 2.4 ghz aluminium iMac until a month ago when the kids old Mac died and I handed it down. Ran great with 2 gb ram and an RME Fireface 800.

karl · Post by **karl** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 5:25 pm

Thanks guys for the help !! im soooo close to ordering my i-mac,,think this will be the spec

iMac, 24-inch,2.4ghz Intel Core 2 Duo,2GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM ,500GB Serial ATA Drive £1,288.99 running live 7-- logic 8,,,think ill check out the moto ultralite as one of my friends told me these were good,,how much was the motu ultralite..

to top things off i just ordered some sweet krk vxt 6,s studio monitors aswell..

thanks for the info !

karl

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 5:34 pm

As a hobbiest I am looking to upgrade my sound card. The Motu Ultrlite is where I would currently stop at.

karl · Post by **karl** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 12:14 pm

After the last post 3 or 4 mnths ago i have finaly moved over to a g5 mac fully souped up with logic 8 ,,not upgraded to live 7 yet as im moving house and not online,,but i can honestly say its the best thig since sliced bread,,,no more problems,,,switch her on and im jamming with in 1 minute,,,the old pc used to take 10 minutes to boot up ha ha....thanks guys happy days

Daim · Post by **Daim** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 1:18 pm

keep in mind that all imac displays are glossy and that switching off the motu ultralite takes about 5 seconds holding down a button

doc holiday · Post by **doc holiday** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 2:15 pm

don't upgrade your ram from apple,

go else where you can put 4 GB in 100$

Kodama · Post by **Kodama** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 7:13 pm

Beautiful machine!

The only downside is no internal upgrades except ram & hd, but in my time of making PCs, I never upgraded CPU or GPU (plus often by time you're ready, the motherboard/cpu architecture has changed, so you have to get all new stuff anyways), so it's no big deal for me.

inmazevo · Post by **inmazevo** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 8:24 pm

karl wrote:After the last post 3 or 4 mnths ago i have finaly moved over to a g5 mac fully souped up with logic 8 ,,not upgraded to live 7 yet as im moving house and not online,,but i can honestly say its the best thig since sliced bread,,,no more problems,,,switch her on and im jamming with in 1 minute,,,the old pc used to take 10 minutes to boot up ha ha....thanks guys happy days

Just as a curiosity:
Why buy, very recently, a G5 mac, instead of an Intel one?
Did you buy it used at a killer price or something.

I ask because very likely Leopard will be the end of the line for those machines.
Might not matter to you, but IMO its dangerous to buy a machine so out-of-sync with future OS development (Snow Leopard will almost certainly be Intel only, and looks to have some rather serious benefits for musicians, once they get the kinks worked out: "true" 64bit, good core spreading, etc.).

- zevo