Ableton Forum

I have a Ibook 700 mhz g3
with 256 ram

I have been recording to my internal hardrive, (I know a big no no). I can tell you it doesn't take many track or plugins to make things shaky in Live to say the least. I'm about to play my first show using live in a month or so. I need to get my setup in tip top performance shape. What are your suggestions. Here's what I'm thinking I need to get, will these help to increase my track and plugin count. What will help the most.
1) external Firewire Harddrive(what kind) for recording to?
2) more ram (how much)?
3) memory allocation tweaking in my preferneces.?
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. However, please don't tell me to get another computer, I looking for an inexpensive solution.
Belive it or not, I'm able to get I'd say about 10 track, with about 5-6 plugings right now, before the cpu usage gets high and playback and recording get a ltiitle sluggish.
Thanks guys.

i am not too sure how much ram you can pack in there, but i think you have 128mb onboard, so buy an additional 512mb chip. external firewire drive is a good idea too, i've got the icecube-case and it works really well, but make sure you get a 3,5" ide(because of the speed). that should help already, but don't expect too much, as you "only" have a g3. a mate of mine got one and he is going alright with it. what system are you using?
hope to be of help

I'm using an Ibook 700mhz OS 9.2.2
With an Mbox for audio in and out
Not really sure, what you mean by setup.
ON stage I have a Oxygen8 sending midi thru a Fcb1010, into live. I also have a mic and guitar input from a line 6 pod going th Live for my "live in". Thanks for the advice, is there anything else I can do increase performance, something about a ram disk, or allocating more memory to Live? Thanks

you need an external firewire drive with these specs (or better): 7,200 RPM, 8 Mb cache, 8.9 ms seek time--more gigs the better. Western digital makes quality drives that you can purchase in external closures (or purchase seperately and save a bit by doing it yourself) for like $185 for 120 gigs. Oxford 911 chipset and FAT 32 seem to be standard (and good). I definitely think more Ram is in order, get a 512 chip now, so that at a later point you coud get another 512, bag the 256 (maybe get some change for it on ebay) and get another 512 for a gig.

Ryan

To get slightly off-topic:

FAT32 is a Windows file system. It has several inherent limitations with respect to speed and filename length under OS X.

Better to format a disk with HFS+ (the default) if you're running OS 9 or X with a Firewire drive, unless you need to plug the disk into a Windows device at some point.

Even then you could set up two partitions, each formatted with a different file system. Copy a file from HFS+ to FAT32 partition when you need it accessible from a Windows device.

-Alex

and on tonights menu is
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/audio/issue67.html
all about tweaking your mac for audio etc.

Anonymous wrote: I definitely think more Ram is in order, get a 512 chip now, so that at a later point you coud get another 512, bag the 256 (maybe get some change for it on ebay) and get another 512 for a gig.

Ryan

max ram on an iBook is 640megz. onboard 128 + slot.
i don't have ram issues though. Live takes far more HD resources.