@irvind said:

\\On a practical level, isn't that annoying with loading up songs, backing-up etc? How does it work? And surely there's the cost of Gigasampler on the PC's to take into account?

Just curious, I'm buying a system soon to upgrade from the Powerbook, but still want a G5 (maybe dual-core..?) for softsynths etc.

Well, its not really that annoying. I turn on all three computers, open logic on the mac, open giga on one pc, kompakt east west stuff on the other, and then I'm ready to go.

It's quite simple really. the mac sends the midi data to the two pc's with MidiOverLan, and the kompakt computer sends its audio through the ADAT out of a Hammerfall 9636 into giga's inputs through the ADAT in the other 9636.

Of course this was not a cheap solution. But this is not a cheap profession either [:)] Anyway, I built my own PC's, and spent so that was not as expensive as it could have been. Plus the Dual 450 G4 is perfect for a sequencer only setup, and of course Logic is a great sequencer.

As far as backups are concerned, its the same as any other system. I don't need to backup audio files, just the Logic, Giga, and Performance Tool sessions, but thats not really a pain.

I think the bottom line is if you are going to spend top dollar on a new mac, you should wait if you can manage it. The intel macs are going to be more bang for the buck, thats for sure. This is the first mac, in a long time, that will not use a custom made processor. What this means is that they can use Intel's market saturation and cut costs significantly.

@Inteleky said:

Of course this was not a cheap solution. But this is not a cheap profession either [:)]

Of course one could look at it another way. It is far cheaper to sequence stuff so that other people can have a good idea what the sound is, compared with the old fashioned route of hiring an orchestra. It also means that more people get a chance to write than ever before, which is a mixed blessing as IMO there is no more good music about than there used to be; only more "composers".

DG

@Guy said:

I must now learn do do things on my own, like a big boy! But I'm a moron with computer set up.

I feel your pain. I am as computer illetarate as you can get, but I've been hanging around the forum for a couple weeks. You do learn a lot here! But I still feel like a moron most of the time. Things are going to change, though.
Keep dropping by, you can always learn from others' questions.... I am learning from yours (though I work with PC).
As far as I understand the sound card is what enables your computer to "read" the sounds. In other words, it translates the sound info into ones and zeroes that the computer understands... It allows for input and output of sound. (please, anybody, feel free to correct or expand my definition)
Regards,

J Marcos

J Marcos,

Thanks for the encouragement. I'm feeling better already, so many terms I now understand: RAM, ROM, CPU, Hard drive and a few more (not too many more...) enough to feel less of a moron though. This makes me appreciate more the advice given here.

It was mentioned that 3.7 Gig was the max..., why is that? Anyone?

Guy

Semi-moron

@Another User said:

Of course one could look at it another way. It is far cheaper to sequence stuff so that other people can have a good idea what the sound is, compared with the old fashioned route of hiring an orchestra. It also means that more people get a chance to write than ever before, which is a mixed blessing as IMO there is no more good music about than there used to be; only more "composers".

DG

That is true. hiring an orchestra is rediculously expensive, and for good reason. But for most of us, the orchestra is a luxury we will rarely get to have. So in that sense, its better to shell out $15,000 USD one time on a nice home studio and have a beautiful orchestra at your fingertips.

Of course the downside is, orchestras loose money. However, in some sense VSL is the orchestra for the common composer, albiet it takes quite an initial sacrifice to get the library in the first place. [:P] In my case, I'm just incredibly lucky and grateful for that luck.


Guy:

I wish I could answer why Logic tops off at 3.7 gigs. But that is still quite alot. With a nice SATA RAID 0 array to store your samples on, and 3.7 gigs of RAM to load the samples to?... You will be a happy person, no doubt!!

Guy,
Stay with us, and don't feel discouraged. There is some great information in this site that will definitely help in the programming journey. I respectfully suggest you browse the Giga forum and look for posts by David Govett, a very talented fellow who knows much about Giga. He's not always here, but drops in from time to time to answer questions and help. (Very decent thing to do.) In addition, in that forum, there's much discussion about hardware, and bits that work and don't work.

Regards, and good luck,

Alex.

@Guy said:

Martin,

You asked what was my goal. It is for film music. I've been heavily working with VSL for the past 2 years now, the movie Eternal (2005) was done in big part by me using VSL mainly. But since I went my own way I don't have the equipement or a technician by my side anymore. I must now learn do do things on my own, like a big boy! But I'm a moron with computer set up.
That's why I'm asking these stupid questions, so I could soon make my own set up. But I'm not sure if you found your answer in this paragragh.

Hi Guy - not stupid questions at all, yet I perhaps should have been clearer in my questions because I wasn't really looking for the film music answer so much. In other words, do you want to have a whole ton of articulations and all the instruments of the orchestra all loaded up at once, or are you comfortable loading up just those you need at a given tiime? What is your prefered working method? Do you sketch to paper then orchestrate (paper, notation program?) then render to a sequencer? Or do you want to do it all in one program? There are not right or wrong answers, but deciding what you want to do may help clarify which of several directions you may want to head.

@Martin Bayless said:

Do you want to have a whole ton of articulations and all the instruments of the orchestra all loaded up at onceare not right?

Hi Martin,

Appreciate your help.

That's exactly what I want and need to do. The way I worked before (I cannot say the specifications other than it was a G5, not sure of the number of Gb! Logic was the program. The problem I often encountered was that after using about 50 tracks of busy articulations + many performance instruments, I was obliged to bounce it and then use that wave as one of the tracks mixed in with the new tracks. After bouncing about 4 times you begin to loose some control if you want to remove the last note of the "triangle"!

But being less moron now, I would guess that having more RAM will help, but will CPU be able to process it?



Alex,

Ok I'll check David Govett's posts and the Giga forum. Thanks.


Guy

A big issue here will be how many articulations you want to load at any given time. It seems like you may want to keep everything in midi and bounce at the last minute in case any last minute curves are thrown. That's the way I work too and, after a few curves, thankfully so. the problem quickly becomes having enough articulations available so you don't have to bounce. With a library the size of VSL, I anticipated a mac for the sequencer and kontakt, with the bulk of the VSL samples on two giga machines. That was QUICKLY saturated and I went with another giga machine which got me to a point where I was happy. Many others are happy with less so it really pays to think it through as you appear to be doing.

Can't really help with Logic as i use Digital Performer. I would imagine the overloads are similar in either application which symptomatically suggests more of a cpu rather than ram issue. I run a G5 dual 2.0 and altiverb, kontakt and lots of other au instruments with no problem. Where ram becomes more of and isse is with samples. if you're thinking of Logic/EXS, then you will need a ton of it which has probably been discussed in detail in the exs forum if you need more info.

hang in there!

Ok, but knowing what I want (lots of simultanious instruments) if I add lot of RAM to either the G5 dual 2.7 or the upcoming "dual-core", can I be guaranteed that I won't have saturation problems? Talking about 100 simutanious tracks. If I'm going to spend over $2000. of additional memory I'd want to be sure it's going to work.

@Guy said:

If I'm going to spend over $2000. of additional memory I'd want to be sure it's going to work.

$2000? Where's that come from. Check here.

http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.asp?Mfr%2BProductline=Apple%2BPower+Mac&mfr=Apple&tabid=CR&model=Power+Mac+G5+%28Dual+2.7GHz+DDR%29&submit=Go

Guy, if you want 100+ tracks, you may need to consider a more robust solution. I'm not sure 1 computer can tackle all of your needs...

I keep about 120-130 articulations loaded at a single time. I'd like more but the law of diminishing returns kicks in. So if articulations in my setup roughly correspond to tracks in yours, it doesn't seem that a single computer is going to get it all done as everything here (G5/G4 powerbook and 3 Giga machines) is full to the hilt. the only thing I cant comment on is how logic and exs might change that. maybe someone else can chime in on that.

@Guy said:

If I'm going to spend over $2000. of additional memory I'd want to be sure it's going to work.

$2000? Where's that come from. Check here.

http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.asp?Mfr%2BProductline=Apple%2BPower+Mac&mfr=Apple&tabid=CR&model=Power+Mac+G5+%28Dual+2.7GHz+DDR%29&submit=Go

Hi PolarBear,

For me, add canadian tax and convert to canadian dollars=over $600. 2Gb

6 GB= $1800. approx.

Once again this is to find a solution to avoid using 2 computers, but nobody yet has written that a single computer will do what I'm looking for.
100 tracks+....

It's possible to have 100+ tracks on a sequencer machine, but not to load the needed articulations to do that in the same machine at once. No-go as of today, neither with Mac nor with PC. But well, you don't loose money on buying only one G5 today and add another G5 or a PC at a later point (just a small shipment fee).

Are you buying registered or unregistered RAM modules? $600US looks heavy, 2GB should cost around $200US... Some more Mac-savvy please chime in here but afaik the max that will be of use for you would be 4.5GB with Logic and EXS (and around 3.5GB of that useable for samples then).

Oh and, you quoted PaulR, not me [;)]

PolarBear

Ok, I'm becoming less ignorant by the post. But since I want to not wait too long before making my purchase and be sure to buy the needed hardware, I'd like some realistic advice for a proposed budget. This is what I was use to: G5, Logic and VSL. But now I want to buy the Complete Orchestral Package and I have no sound card. My budget is $15,000.CD tops.let's: $13,000 USD, (stupid canadian dollar!) For the moment I'd rather stick to one computer but have it working well enough to not give me TOO much trouble with saturation problems. If I could reach 80 or 90 tracks live, that will be pretty good for the moment. I would really appreciate some suggestions giving me basic specification on what to order or buy in that budget. G5 dual 2.7? new dual core? Ram? Soundcard?etc.

Guy

@Guy said:

Ok, I'm becoming less ignorant by the post. But since I want to not wait too long before making my purchase and be sure to buy the needed hardware, I'd like some realistic advice for a proposed budget. This is what I was use to: G5, Logic and VSL. But now I want to buy the Complete Orchestral Package and I have no sound card. My budget is $15,000.CD tops.let's: $13,000 USD, (stupid canadian dollar!) For the moment I'd rather stick to one computer but have it working well enough to not give me TOO much trouble with saturation problems. If I could reach 80 or 90 tracks live, that will be pretty good for the moment. I would really appreciate some suggestions giving me basic specification on what to order or buy in that budget. G5 dual 2.7? new dual core? Ram? Soundcard?etc.

Guy

Just one more thing to confuse you. If you a certain that you are going to do everything on one computer then it might be worth converting your solo samples into mono as that should save RAM. This way you will be able to get more instruments and articulations at a time, assuming that your Mac is fast enough to cope with all this.

DG

Okay! Okay! Okay! You've convinced me, there's no way aroud using 2 computers/gigastudio for my needs. I'll have to take your word for it, I doubt my paperboy will know about this... BUT if I start with my initial idea, 1 computer and as powerful as possible I could always add gigastudio any time, right? And all I'd have to do is buy a PC (any specification for the PC?)
and make the connections, right? Is this complicated to manage or install?

@Guy said:

BUT if I start with my initial idea, 1 computer and as powerful as possible I could always add gigastudio any time, right? And all I'd have to do is buy a PC (any specification for the PC?)
and make the connections, right? Is this complicated to manage or install?

Why would you want to do that though Guy?

Why waste time with Gigastudio if you're going to get a G5 2.7 with loads of ram? That's starting to get unnecessarily complicated to me.

And why GS - why not say, Kompact?

@Guy said:

Okay! Okay! Okay! You've convinced me, there's no way aroud using 2 computers/gigastudio for my needs. I'll have to take your word for it, I doubt my paperboy will know about this... BUT if I start with my initial idea, 1 computer and as powerful as possible I could always add gigastudio any time, right? And all I'd have to do is buy a PC (any specification for the PC?)
and make the connections, right? Is this complicated to manage or install?

Of course you can add as many PCs to your system at any time you like. The only extra potential expense is that you will also need a sound card and of course GS itself, but once you have that you can get site licences for additional PCs. Then, of course, you will need to buy a side licence for VSL, as I doubt that the conversions will work too well due to the complexities of VSL mapping. However, if you're not intending to use any of the Performance instruments GS might just do the conversions adequately.

GS is not complicated to install, and as long as your PC is set up only to run it you shouldn't have problems.

DG