Re: Which macbook for live audio?

[marcus kirby <marcusloops@gmail.com>]

Thanks for the responses.

I've been really inspired by Christopher Willits' setup as of late. I have a lot of that stuff in pedal form, and have spent the last year getting everything midi synced. I'm tired of messing with hardware for purists sake, and I just want to make music. I can achieve what I want in an easier manner with a laptop and built-in looper, so I think it's time.

I hardly ever hit more than 20% cpu usage in ableton, and that's with a 2008 blackbook. I imagine even the 2010 mpb would be fine?

On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com> wrote:

Wow, 8 MB! I have not yet checked the RAM spec's for last week's new
MBPs but before them the max amount was 4 GB. The only people I know
that run 8 GB or more RAM are the guys who simulate symphonic
orchestras to produce "symphonics-in-the-box", because of the super
long samples needed for all orchestra sections in combinations playing
long legato notes - on sample per note makes a hell of a lot of files
to read into RAM.

Live's Looper plugin isn't very RAM intensive because each instance of
it only handles one loop, so I guess 4 MB would work find. But
"more-is-better" anyway, you never know what software will come around
the next corner ;-))

For details on laptop efficiency you should read up on the thread at
Ableton Live forum where people run a specific test project on their
computers and post the result according to a standardized scheme. That
makes it easy to compare different models.

A general tip is to get the sharpest box you can afford so you will be
free  to chose between more plugins to set up your sound. Especially
Live needs CPU power because you can't call up new effect chains from
a no-cpu-taxing limbo but need to keep everything in the session all
the time.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.perboysen.com
http://www.youtube.com/perboysen

On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 6:14 PM, marcus kirby <marcusloops@gmail.com> wrote:
> I know this has been asked, but I had trouble finding the threads dealing
> with macbooks in particular.
> I am running ableton live, with some built-in basic effects.
> I would like to move towards using ableton's looper for my looping needs, so
> I probably need something with 8gb ram. What about processor requirements?
> Will the newest macbook pros be overkill?