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Re: OT: new Macbook wíthOUT Firewire :(



Per Boysen wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:20 AM, Buzap Buzap <buzap@gmx.net> wrote:
> 
>>Hi folks
>>
>>now, this is really off topic, but I wanted to let off some steam:
>>For a laptop setup, I was waiting for the new MacBook to come out. Now, 
>it is there and: it has NO FIREWIRE INTERFACE anymore!!!
>>
>>Obviously, for looping this really sucks. Now, what to do?
> 
> 
> 
> Buy an older model:
> http://www.apple.com/macbook/white/specs.html
> 
> The new MacBooks (2.0 or 2.4 GHz) feature a 1066 MHz frontside bus in
> contrast to the MacBook White's (2.1 Ghz) 800 MHz fontside bus. Both
> Intel Core 2 Duo processors with 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache running
> 1:1 with processor speed. I use the old 2.2 GHz MacBook White and find
> it fully sufficient. I would think different though if I was up to
> making multi track recordings, as when recording twenty mic inputs at
> one go. But for everything else FW 400 is as good as FW 800.

I'm thinking..  on the rec.auodio.pro NG we had a discussion about how 
many tracks can be run in parallel on fw400, don't remember the number, 
but decently many.  Same with the number of simultaneous audio ifc's.
IIRC, it's possible to obtain a fw800 switch with four fw400 ports on 
the other side.  So buy a new Macbook Pro and such a switch, and connect 
an external 3˝" fw400 drive + fw400 audio interfaces to that.

For my own home studio uses, I may buy a Macbook and use fw400 for an 
external 3˝" disk, and shop a pcmcia adapter for my RME Multiface.
I do worry about not having enough ram for Logic and Reason and loaded 
soundfonts (percussion, keyboards and philharmonics instruments).


> I've just been around doing a bunch of gigs with Mobius VST/Windows
> (on the MacBook) and I think a small miracle would be needed to get
> the same performance power into the Mac version. My experience so far
> is that for live processing of a live audio input Windows works better
> (meaning zero tolerance for drop-outs or any kind of audio artifacts).
> Then I have been a pro user of Mac since the early nineties and I do
> prefer Mac OS X for everything else  ;-)

Interesting.  Last October I attended a Logic Studio seminar, held by 
Erik Metall from Sweeden.  He ran a pretty large multi-track studio 
arrangement in Logic on a Macbook, no hickups at all.
Erik didn't loop at all, only played bass through this setup to demo 
building the sound, so of cause I can't evaluate how robust it is.

-- 
rgds,
van Sinn