Ableton Forum

Arghh, Im so frustrated. I was supposed to switch to mac this autumn, but as everyone knows they dropped Firewire for the new 13" Macbook. I use Live and Reason (Ive got Cubae 4 but never use it....). Before I had a win laptop with RME Cardbus with such low latency and no problems! I read alot of problems with USB2 and audio. What to do?
1. Buy a new 13" Macbook 2,4 Ghz and USB2 audio (NI Audio Kontrol) and pray?
2. Buy "old" 13" Macbook (2-2,4 Ghz) and Firewire audio (RME or MOTU)

Any opinons (latency, CPU, graphic cards)? I use some Novation Remote and record some audio but mostly creates music inside the computer. My RME interface has been so good but its time to move on....

Regards 59min

I think it's a 50/50 chance that Apple is going to say buh bye to firewire at some point and move things towards USB3 (whenever that happens). My point? Don't drop tons of money on firewire gear.

My Audio Kontrol works great.

beats me wrote:I think it's a 50/50 chance that Apple is going to say buh bye to firewire at some point and move things towards USB3 (whenever that happens). My point? Don't drop tons of money on firewire gear.

My Audio Kontrol works great.

+1 to the Audio Kontrol - has it become the forum's official USB2 interface yet?

mkelly wrote:

beats me wrote:I think it's a 50/50 chance that Apple is going to say buh bye to firewire at some point and move things towards USB3 (whenever that happens). My point? Don't drop tons of money on firewire gear.

My Audio Kontrol works great.

+1 to the Audio Kontrol - has it become the forum's official USB2 interface yet?

It should be but there will never be a shortage of people buying cheap m-audio interfaces despite the literally 1,000s of people complaining about them.

Cue "my m-audio interface works fine for me" guy.

hi, thanks for comments. Yes, firewire will be "out" soon. USB3 will come next year (but I cant wait that long). If i buy secondhand old mac I have money over to buy a really good soundcard and som other stuff (monitors). So big question:
Is there any real perfomance enhancements with the new macbook for music making? Graphic card is much better but CPU cycles counts the most for us music maker (and a good throughput audio card, firewire is probably better..).

regards

59min wrote:Is there any real perfomance enhancements with the new macbook for music making? Graphic card is much better but CPU cycles counts the most for us music maker (and a good throughput audio card, firewire is probably better..).

You need to look at benchmarks to really get an idea of the difference but there's some stuff to consider just from the specs. Firstly, I'm assuming you're comparing the white MB to the lower priced new MB. If not, stop reading.

The white MB has a 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo, which actually beats the new MB at 2.0GHz. However the new MB has a 1066MHz front side bus (FSB) as opposed to the 800MHz in the white MB. I'm not 100% on how this affects performance, but I think the FSB is a how the data gets to/from the RAM/GPU - the faster it is the quicker it can get access to it's data. The new MB also supports faster RAM which will help in this department.

In the end, a CPU can only process the data fed to it, and if you can't feed it fast enough your cycles are wasted. I imagine that despite having a slower processor, the new MB is probably going to be slightly more performant.

It will likely be a few years before USB 3.0 pro audio hardware is available. I think your best bet is to get a MacBook Pro (if you can't afford a new one, you can still buy the old one at some retailers - they have been marked down or get a used one).

If you loved using RME, why switch and set yourself up for dissapointment? Get an Expresscard cardbus set-up with a MacBook Pro and don't look back.

Hidden Driveways wrote:It will likely be a few years before USB 3.0 pro audio hardware is available.

Agree with this. We don't know yet just how USB3 will fare - bearing in mind that theoretically USB2 has a higher bandwidth capability than FW400. The extra bandwidth is wasted if the protocol is inefficient - maybe USB3 will be more efficient but we'll probably have to wait and see.

Working on a new Macbook Pro here, and well after the initial honeymoon period I am loving it. My producer friend picked up the regular 13" Macbook and loves it. I highly recommend staying AWAY from M-Audio sound cards. I had to go through 3 of them (all on different computers) before I learned my lesson. Apparently I was just a glutton for punishment back then.

Run a VAIO Mac clone

mkelly wrote:The white MB has a 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo, which actually beats the new MB at 2.0GHz. However the new MB has a 1066MHz front side bus (FSB) as opposed to the 800MHz in the white MB. I'm not 100% on how this affects performance, but I think the FSB is a how the data gets to/from the RAM/GPU - the faster it is the quicker it can get access to it's data. The new MB also supports faster RAM which will help in this department.

I've read the macworld benchmark test and there is very little differnce between old/new except for gaming (graphic card). So there seems to be very little speed advantage for making music? My experience with win is that the audio card makes more differnce than CPU, thats why Im thinking of investing i new firewire interface and "old" macbook (and I dont want the 15"). As an amateur Im gonna stick with this investment for 2-3years....

http://www.macworld.com/article/136214/ ... marks.html

Thanks for all the advice!!

But why invest now based on technology that is potentially going to disappear? I have a firewire firepod and my USB Audio Kontrol gets better latency. I assume that when they move to USB3 your past USB devices will still work. If they get rid of firewire you are, well, screwed.

Also I see you have RME in your profile and I've seen reports of RME interfaces having problems with Macbooks/Macbook Pros on some models. I don't have the details but hopefully somebody will chime in.

i recently upgraded to the previous generation of mac book pro. for 2 reasons; it was super cheap and the last version of a generation is always much more stable / reliable whatever came after it.

im loving this new machine.

The demise of firewire won't happen overnight. Go firewire now and be happy.