To iMac or not to iMac?

L

Lustrum

New Metal Member
Oct 21, 2009
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Hey dudes

So, come October time, i'll be coming into a bit of money and I've decided that it would be best spent on upgrading my slightly antiquated studio equipment!

I'm currently running a PC i built for gaming 5 years ago as my recording PC, safe to say, it isn't very efficient anymore, pro tools eats resources like a mad man for one!

So, I've decided, on top of some room treatment and perhaps a new set of monitors, along with a Profire 2626 as a main interface, keeping with Pro Tools as i do on here, I've decided to invest in an iMac..

So, within my budget, i can comfortably afford the small screened version, with a 500gb hard drive and 4gb of ram...

I pose the question, will this last me for recording?
I produce anything from acoustic musicians to Devin Townsend style trackfests, i know my limits with Mpowered/LE, but can an iMac handle plugins, Superior Drummer and track with relatively low latency (my PC doesn't like the buffer below 1024, which is horrid for tracking DIs...) comfortably and last me a good few years?

TL;DR - Are iMacs good? :p

Cheers dudes!
Lustrum
 
Never owned one, but I don't think you'll be dissapointed. Sure, they aren't hugely powerful for the money compared to normal PC, but you do get a very nice screen, plus the main advantage of running OSX.
 
A few years=?
Can a iMac handle it? Yes.
Can you tell us how much you have to spend?
What are you looking at?
Will you go HD?

Just throwing some stuff out there. I'm using one in my bedroom.
 
Consider a Mac Mini. Similar specs (except processor speed), ports, and half the price.
Either way you'll need an external firewire drive.
Don't bother with installing a big internal drive unless you plan on filling it up with mp3s. A larger internal hard drive won't give you any benefit for recording.
 
If you've never used a mac before, it can be difficult at first as they are very different to Windows. But nothing too difficult.

Also, check out the Refurbished section on Apple when you are ready to buy. They have some great deals and they have the same warranty etc as new.
I got over £500 off my Mac Pro ;)
 
imacs are nice machines, and you honestly can't go wrong with the i5 imac (pretty fast..)

upgrade paths are pretty limited, and HD is out the window, but it will do the job more than adequately!

and plus, if you get bored you can always go back to windows..! haha.

thanks,
 
My budget for the system is 1000 GBP (Keyboards got to pound sign.)

I've worked with old imacs whilst i did music technology at college, so thats fiine

And HD is a no go, genuinely cannot afford that, absolutely definitely...

So, an iMac with a firewire hard drive on the outside?

Cheers for the opinions so far :)
 
I'm after a new iMac this year also. Are the i7's worth the extra coin? I don't wanna have to buy a new computer for a few years after getting it.

Sorry for the threadjack, but it's best to try and keep it all together :)
 
£1000 could get you a VERY nice PC, that you could then build a Hackintosh from. Depends how tech savvy you are though...

I wouldn't go for an iMac, because the storage options are limited, and they're not built that great imho - firewire controllers regularly break on them, and the screens sometimes go haywire too. I'd try and get a Mac Pro if I were you; maybe checkout Apple's refurb stuff.

I would NEVER recommend getting a G5. Don't do it; you'd be wasting your money.
 
Id rather work on an OSX based system, due to the fact that XP is getting antiquated and 7 is yet to support Digi drivers...

So, iMac, 2626, Adam A7s and some room treatment, go go?
 
Running an i5 iMac with Profire 2626 and PT8 here with zero problems. Never going back to PC's. The only problem I can think of is the CPU fan going a bit wild at times, but it seems to be a problem with SL.

And once again I'm questioning the Hackintosh thing. If you're otherwise legit, why would you want to enter the gray zone with your OS?
 
+1 on the refurb Mac pro. I got a G5 refurb a few months back and it's awesome. Actually, I just looked at a refurb Mac pro, maybe a bit out of your range, but you may find something within budget if you look around. The only reason I prefer the towers is the expandibility, UAD etc, but if that doesn't interest you then an imac would be a good option
 
I dont want a hackintosh, i want something thats supported by a company behind it.

Erm, yeah, if i could afford a Pro, i totally would, depedning how my savings are, we'll see then, but my simple question :p

iMac as a pro tools based recording system, y/n?
 
OT:
does anyone know when the motherboards change in apple products? or where i can get that info. I was thinking maybe i would buy an old intel mac mini and upgrade it but I suppose it's not just the processors and ram that's changed
 
Jarkko Mattheiszen said:
I'll agree if you tell me why my iMac w/ ProTools setup sucks ;)
Click to expand...

If your getting along fine with yours, then why bother having the discussion?

In my experience, firewire bandwidth can become limited when using multiple devices, due to the shared bus controller. The screens are fragile, no expansion options other than buying more firewire drives, and no real ability to upgrade the machine beyond adding in a few extra sticks of RAM.

Why do a Hackintosh? Simple. Apple do not do a machine that is marketed towards me. I can build my own machine for less than half the price of a Mac Pro, but with all the features of a Mac Pro, and often even more features than a Mac Pro.

Did you know that the current crop of Mac Pro's have speedstepping features on the CPU, that you CANNOT disable. In real terms.. this means that a project that plays back perfectly fine on Monday, might not playback at all on Tuesday because of the speed of the CPU being limited.

Apple are full of nice little helpful things like that.

As for the legal angle... legal schmegal. Koala's rape to reproduce, and warez bitches get away with stealing software left right and center. Custom building a "Mac" is perfectly fine in my eyes.

Sorry for the derail.
 
drew_drummer said:
If your getting along fine with yours, then why bother having the discussion?

In my experience, firewire bandwidth can become limited when using multiple devices, due to the shared bus controller. The screens are fragile, no expansion options other than buying more firewire drives, and no real ability to upgrade the machine beyond adding in a few extra sticks of RAM.

Why do a Hackintosh? Simple. Apple do not do a machine that is marketed towards me. I can build my own machine for less than half the price of a Mac Pro, but with all the features of a Mac Pro, and often even more features than a Mac Pro.

Did you know that the current crop of Mac Pro's have speedstepping features on the CPU, that you CANNOT disable. In real terms.. this means that a project that plays back perfectly fine on Monday, might not playback at all on Tuesday because of the speed of the CPU being limited.

Apple are full of nice little helpful things like that.

As for the legal angle... legal schmegal. Koala's rape to reproduce, and warez bitches get away with stealing software left right and center. Custom building a "Mac" is perfectly fine in my eyes.

Sorry for the derail.
Click to expand...

Why bother having the discussion? Because the OP is considering getting the computer we're discussing here :) I completely understand your points and I'm honestly not trying to turn this into a flame war. That being said... :heh:

1) I haven't personally had problems chaining firewire devices, though I haven't even tried it with this particular computer.

2) Screens are fragile? This one I really don't understand. They're as fragile as any other LCD screen as far as I know, no more, no less. The picture quality beats the shit out of my old LCD displays, though.

3) True, the expansion options are very limited. This is something you just have to decide whether you can live with or not. For me, the i5 processor and a terabyte of HD space will last perfectly fine until I'm going to jump to a Mac Pro and PT HD when I finally get a proper space for a commercial, fully functioning studio. After that, this computer will serve as my home computer.

4) I work with a Mac Pro running PT HD2 on almost daily basis at school, and have never encountered such problems. I also work with another, newer Mac Pro running Cubase 5 every now and then with no problems.

5) I understand your ethical point about running a Hackintosh setup, and I've done it myself with a couple of PC's out of curiosity, but if you're publicly doing audio work for money, I really don't see it as a particularly good idea to advertise you're running "PC w/ i5 processor, 8GB DDR, 1TB HD and OS X." If nothing else, someone will sooner or later ask you something like "Wow, you can do that? Is that legal?" and you're gonna have to answer "Well, it's kinda complicated, but personally I see nothing wrong with it." See my point?
 
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