Ableton Forum

Any of you using an iMac for production? Is an iMac too slow for this, should I go for a used dual G5 instead? I need an all in one solution for playing gigs and also production. Any ideas?

People used to use Amigas for production... at least for sequencing...

The G5 Imac (or G4) is more than suitable for studio work! I started out using a G3 imac 600mhz 2546 of ram! I even trusted it on the road playing live! I learned a ton using that machine and until the software became too processor intensive, it worked very well!

I guess the main question to ask yourself is, how many vst's or vsti's you plan on using simultaniusly as that has always been what has slowed my cpu down.

The G5 imac is a great machine. As are the G4's (both Imac's and powermacs and powerbooks). You could probably save quite a bit of money on a G4 which you will no doubt spend on RAM for any machine, G5 or otherwise.

Best!

If you're using Reaktor or any other CPU intensive app, you may be really disappointed. 1 instance of Reaktor + Izotope will crash my iMac g5 with 1 gig of Ram. So will 1 session of Kontakt with the built in convolution reverb.

Paranoid wrote:Any of you using an iMac for production? Is an iMac too slow for this, should I go for a used dual G5 instead? I need an all in one solution for playing gigs and also production. Any ideas?

Live only uses 1 CPU for the audio engine anyway. Performance tests show a 2ghz iMac performs identical a Powermac 2x2Ghz. So yes, the fastest iMac is actually the best bang for buck Mac you can get.

yeah I figured as much..I really only use live instruments(bass,guitar,e-drums,vocals) and absynth etc for now. Doesnt Reaktor crash a dual G5 too? I think I read that somewhere. Actually, after checking ebay it seems a dual 1.8 g5 is about the same price as a 17" iMac anyway...doesnt make much sense to get the iMac if that is the case. I have no problem lugging the dual G5 to gigs...I will just need a flat screen monitor and those are pretty cheap anyway...300 bucks or so..

There are some nice road cases for iMacs out there. Really wish the poor thing had more horsepower. Izotope's spectal delay will take all the available CPU. Found myself using Albino, Blue, and Operator more than I ever would have because they were light on CPU. Of course Reason also. But it's impossible to run, say BFD and Reaktor at the same time, and who WOULDN'T want to be able to do that? PC's can do that with no sweat.

Yeah it really is a disgrace how crappy the new macs are performance wise when it comes to real life use. A run of the mill PC costing less than HALF of what a mac costs will smoke a mac at most apps. Pretty sad.

I dont want to switch to PC though..I use one all day at work, that is bad enough...

supposedly the new laptops will be out in January that are wintel...so... I am not sure what to do...I just need a mac I can gig with and do some production work...

i have a imac 2Ghz and a 12" powerbook 1Ghz.......the imac has never choked on anything i've thrown at it.......i can't play back anything i have done lately on my powerbook though.......it's not the best thing out there, but i have nothing but praise for the imac.....the only good deal in price/performance in apples line up right now.........however, i also wouldnt' be buying anything this close to MWSF unless i really needed it (and a couple holiday gigs would be considered needing it imho)

By you're and my own definition...I "need it". I wish I could wait and see what happens with the wintel machines but I need a solution soon.

I use a 1mac g5 with only 1.6 ghz with a gig of ram and it has worked just fine, got a cool i lugger bag for it as well. highly reccomend the ilugger if you are going to gig with it.

I'm using a powermac g4 GigaDesigns upgrade (2.0Ghz), and i have to say that Reaktor and Live run rather well for me....

I'm running Live 5, Reaktor 5, Kontakt 2, Trash, Ozone, Minimonsta, MX4, Ultra Analog, String Studio etc. on a G5iMac 1.8ghz/1gb/Tiger, no problems. I do tend to render to audio rather than run a ton of midi tracks though. Overall quite happy with the setup, but anticipating major improvements to Live performance when the Intel move happens.

hmm...the upgrade option would be pretty cheap..those GigaDesign upgrades are only around 350 bucks...

I'm able to run a couple of instances of Reaktor on my 2.0GHz iMac with no problem.

working on a track now.
pretty plug-in heavy.....
G5 iMac 1.8ghz. 512 samples, 44.1khz, 24bit. internal soundcard


1 Automat AU Bassline, monophonic. Ableton EQ4
1 Kontakt 2 with Scarbee Rhodes (4v) Library, peaking with 12 voices polyphony. + Ableton EQ4
1 Reaktor 5 Ensemble running the "Massive" beatbox + Sonalksis SV-315 Compressor.
1 Reaktor 5 Ensemble running the "Oki Computer" Synth (3 note polyphony)
1 Impulse with 8 sounds sent to individual channels. - Each impulse sound channel gets Sonalksis SV-517 EQ, 2 of them also get Sonalksis SV-315 Compressor.

= 12 channels.

Returns -
1 = AUMatrixReverb on Maximum Quality Setting
2 = AudioDamage DubStation Delay
3 = AudioDamage 907A Filterbank.

Master -
Hydratone, Wave Arts FinalPlug.

CPU = 75% Thats 4 Instrument plugins, 8 Sonalksis EQs, 3 Sonalksis Comps, And 5 more processing plugs in the returns and master.
= 20 third party plug-ins.

remove the Reaktor "Massive" ensemble and its 50%. remove the Reaktor "Oki Computer" ensemble and its 35%. Reaktor is a pig. I'm using Automat + Operator more and more.

hope this helps.