Ableton Forum

I am thinking of getting one of the I Mac's.I have the mackie onyx 1640 mixing board with firewire with an external 320hd.I m looking to record all 16 channels live with the onyx board. Any thoughts on the IMac handling this kind of load? Any help would be great on choosing my new computer.

Thanks,
Woody

16 Stereo tracks or 16 mono tracks?

First figure out the bitrate you intend to record at - this can vary from 1411 kbit/s for PCM down to 192 kbit/s for MP3 that doesn't hurt too much to listen to, down to just over 30k for AM radio.

I'm sure you can fit somewhere in that range.

Then multiply that by 16 if you're recording mono, 32 for stereo, and you have your data transfer rate.

Firewire 400 runs at 400MB/s, so you have plenty of headroom there.

The question is how fast your disk is. Try copying a big file to it, and measure how long it takes. (Not using the meter it tells you, time how long it takes and divide size by time.) Then you'll know if your system can record at that rate.

As long as you're just recording and not processing simultaneously, I wouldn't think you'd have anything to worry about from a processor / cpu standpoint, but maybe someone else wants to chime in. I've never recorded 16 channels of audio on a home machine. No idea if you hit diseconomies of scale at somepoint.

What are you planning to do with 16 channels of audio at home? Do you have a studio and a band or something?

Hope this helps,

Thanks for the reply,
I am looking to record the band I work with and get some decent recordings and then go from there .I was hoping the iMac(i am on a budget) would handle the 16 mono tracks that i am trying to record.The iMac is the 24 2.8g,320hd 7200rpm 4g ram and also an external 320hd firewire.All the people I have spook with say it should be fine,but, I am looking for someone who has used the iMac to record this many channels.
Thanks

Do you have the rest of the equipment? If you have enough mikes, just put a record on and record 16 tracks of it playing to test.

Three,
Yes, I do have all the equipment. We have been recording to a Fostex 8 channels at a time, then, taking the wav files to live6. I am hoping to get all 16 going into the iMac using the firewire card on the Onyz 1640 for our live shows.I have tried recording to a laptop in the past but the laptop cant handle it so gave up on that a while ago. Now I have some money coming and want to go to the Apple Mac product and was hoping that the iMac is suffiecent. Thanks for the replies, as everything is helpful.

Woody

To add to the general "I think the iMac should be sufficient" feeling, I think that if it's not good doing 16 channels, then it'll be like 13/14/15 where you max out. So the worst case you sum 2 channels, or two pair.

HTH,

Chris