Hi Cyril,
I do quite a bit of sacred music composing, arranging and recording.
For instance I may take hymns from the 17th - 19th centuries for some of my subjects. Typical arrangements use piano as a base (as that is my main instrument) and may add light orchestral accompaniment such as string trio/quartet all the way up to full orchestration with strings/woods/brass/percussion.
I also record acoustic instruments voice/strings/piano etc. The overall style is classical or neo-classical with a slight contemporary lean in terms of voicings, chord progressions, etc.
My recording template will probably max out at around 28 tracks but on average 16 - 20 tracks is plenty for what I do. I have VSL Special Edition - Standard but may need to download specific instruments to get the articulations I need.
What do you recommend? For context I am posting my earlier question I posted elsewhere on the forum:
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Hello Everyone,
Please help me decide between the two setups below.
My recording template will likely max out at around 28 tracks but averaging between 16 - 20 tracks. Although I be doing quite a bit of acoustic piano, vocal and acoustic instrument recordings, for the sake of this comparison let's assume that all of the tracks will be software instruments from VSL. Portability is a factor but I could go either way on this.
Hardware/Software I own:
Korg OASYS 88 (will be used as MIDI controller and plan to use some of the internal sounds in my projects)
Seagate 1TB HDD
Apogee Duet 2
Avid MIDI interface
Logic Pro 9
Vienna Instruments SE (standard)
VI Player & VE (standard)
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May be upgrading to the full library or SE Plus with VSL. Still evaluating my needs there but for now I could also go a la carte and download what I need.
Setup #1 (budget-friendly):
2011 MacBook Air 13" i5/i7, 256GB SSD, 4GB RAM w/Lion and ThunderBolt
THEN in the near - mid future:
2011 Mac Mini i5/i7, 8GB RAM ?GB SSD/HDD
LaCie Little Big Disk 256GB SSD External ThunderBolt Drive (to host VSL, etc.)
OR
Setup #2 (going all-out):
2011 iMac 27" i7, 1TB 7200RPM, 16GB RAM Drive w/Lion and ThunderBolt
THEN in the near - mid future:
LaCie Little Big Disk 256GB SSD External ThunderBolt Drive (to host VSL, etc.)
One more question: Is it better to have Logic Pro and VSL on the same drive or separate?
I currently have the MacBook Air 13" described above and it runs like butter. I haven't really tasked it that much but have about 100GB free after installing Logic Pro 9 and VSL SE and may be getting another external SSD to record to or use for hosting samples. This machine really screams with Lion and the SSD. I also have another Seagate drive (1TB) for backup purposes. I'm still within my window to return it and go with the iMac but I wanted some advice from the user community before making a decision. What I plan to do for the next couple of days I have the system is to load as many samples into memory as I can and try to bring the system to a crawl to get an idea of it's limits.
Thanks in advance for your help!!!
