Apple Logic Pro /LogicExpress Discussion

Hi,

I upgraded cross platform from Logic 5 Platinum to Logic 6 Pro about 6
months ago.  It was a struggle but I have finally gotten all the bugs
worked out and am competent enough with using Logic 6 to actually get
some productive work done. Check out my Christmas contest entry to
EWQLSO:
http://portelance.thejukebox.tv/songs/hi/A_Christmas_Waltz.mp3
(Is there a way to post hot links?)

I guess I am a little nervous about upgrading
to Logic 7.
My machine: dual 800 G4 with 1.5 gigs of RAM with 2 - 7200 RPM ATA
drives.
My programs: EWQLSO Gold & Silver, Kontakt.  I do orchestral work so I
have a pretty heavy load of samples.  I have gotten the AU validation
fixes for all of my programs.

What do think?  Will my machine handle it and can I expect a
reasonably smooth transition?  Or should I wait until I can afford to
upgrade to a dual G5?

Thanks!

Leon Portelance
Songbird Productions/Kaatza Music
Davis, CA

On Dec 19, 2004, at 11:58 AM, activist749 wrote:

> Hi,
> My programs: EWQLSO Gold & Silver, Kontakt.  I do orchestral work so I
> have a pretty heavy load of samples.  I have gotten the AU validation
> fixes for all of my programs.
>
> What do think?  Will my machine handle it and can I expect a
> reasonably smooth transition?  Or should I wait until I can afford to
> upgrade to a dual G5?

Hi Leon,

I'm frankly surprised you can get all of your present samplers and 
samplers to work well with your present system. Gold loves a 10k drive 
and eats a lot of memory. Kontakt doesn't stream especially well and 
also uses big time resources. Especially if you have a nice big piano 
in the mix.

I'm doing pretty well with a dual 1.25 but in the light of my recent 
purchase of Gold am taking delivery of a 2/2.5 G5, lots of RAM and a 
couple of 10k SATA drives.

I'm imagining that you can't get more than 32-40 voices with your rig, 
which can work for certain pieces I'm sure, but if you're getting into 
larger scale works you'll be wanting more power. Of course you can 
always bounce.... bounce.... bounce, or freeze.......freeze.....freeze. 
But that gets to be a real drag on your creativity after a while. Most 
composers aspire to be able to hear all their parts in real time, all 
the time. (I think)

If you can't buy a G5, get more RAM! Now! 2.5-3 GB.

You won't regret either decision. Then, when you buy the G5 (I call it, 
the inevitable G5) you network the two, of course.

Regards
Michael Telle

At the very least I would wait for 7.0.1. 

While some people are reporting a stable 7.0, that has not been my experience. I think that some version of 7 will be better than 6, but the stability leaves something to be desired.

I like most of the UI makeover, and the new plugins, and I'm using it, but I have a crash or two every day. My previous install was quite stable.


-- 
                       | In theory, there is no difference between 
 http://www.xfade.com/ | theory and practice. In practice, there is.
     cbm@...      |               - Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

Thanks God we can talk freely about this topic here . My latest post 
about this on Logic users forum was "moderated" (rejected). They told 
me to tell those facts to Apple ( the fact that Logic5 on PC never 
crashes ). I told the moderator to tell himself ; he seems to heve a 
better relatioship with them ;-)

Nice to hear free opinions here , even if it´s sad to read about 
other people´s problems . I need to know if it worths to buy a G5 now 
or not. I´m still on 5.5.1 on PC , and I NEVER crashes and I´m using 
2 machines ( one Atlhon 1500 W98 and other PIV 2600 WinXP... FYI: The 
AMD system can run the same tracks/pluggins number the PIV system 
runs... but it´s almost half the speed... )

I tried my L7 on a  G4 450DP 512mb, but OSX and L7 seems too much for 
the machine . Any suggestion to make it work more like today 
standards will be appreciated ( more memory??? a processor upgrade??? 
both ?? none??? ) I´m new to macs.

Kind regards

On 20, Dec 2004, , at 11:22, gpiccolini wrote:

>
>  Thanks God we can talk freely about this topic here . My latest post
>  about this on Logic users forum was "moderated" (rejected). They told
>  me to tell those facts to Apple ( the fact that Logic5 on PC never
>  crashes ). I told the moderator to tell himself ; he seems to heve a
>  better relatioship with them ;-)
>
>  Nice to hear free opinions here , even if it´s sad to read about
>  other people´s problems . I need to know if it worths to buy a G5 now
>  or not. I´m still on 5.5.1 on PC , and I NEVER crashes and I´m using
>  2 machines ( one Atlhon 1500 W98 and other PIV 2600 WinXP... FYI: The
>  AMD system can run the same tracks/pluggins number the PIV system
>  runs... but it´s almost half the speed... )
>
>  I tried my L7 on a  G4 450DP 512mb, but OSX and L7 seems too much for
>  the machine . Any suggestion to make it work more like today
>  standards will be appreciated ( more memory??? a processor upgrade???
>  both ?? none??? ) I´m new to macs.



A Sonnet Duet dual 1.4Ghz G4 upgrade and another 2x512 Mb RAM should be 
pretty functional. I know a couple of people with this configuration.

Paul.

> 2 machines ( one Atlhon 1500 W98 and other PIV 2600 WinXP... 
> FYI: The AMD system can run the same tracks/pluggins number 
> the PIV system runs... but it´s almost half the speed... )
> 
> I tried my L7 on a  G4 450DP 512mb, but OSX and L7 seems too 
> much for the machine . Any suggestion to make it work more 
> like today standards will be appreciated ( more memory??? a 
> processor upgrade??? 
> both ?? none??? ) I´m new to macs.

As much as Apple would like you to believe that a 500MHz PowerPC is as fast
as a 1GHz Pentium, in real world living, it simply isn't. Only in the world
of *specific* benchmark tests. I suspect you're going to need a Mac with a
similar CPU speed as your PCs to achieve similar results. It is also my
impression, that even though OSX is good at memory management, it is a
memory hog. You'll probably need more than 512MB of memory to match your
PC's performance.

Another issue is that, from what I've seen, older Macs tend to have slower
bus speeds than their PC counter parts. The new G5's are excluded from that
comment as they are on the bleeding edge of technology. If you can at all
afford it, a G5 would certainly be a smart move.

Hope this helps,

Kamm

> Thanks God we can talk freely about this topic here . My latest post
> about this on Logic users forum was "moderated" (rejected). They told
> me to tell those facts to Apple ( the fact that Logic5 on PC never
> crashes ).

Well to say it "never crashes" is of course nonsense, in fact I saw some 
threads about crashing LAW5s coming along. So yes it works ok for you, but 
then so does Logic 7 for a lot of people (including me).

> I told the moderator to tell himself ; he seems to heve a 
> better relatioship with them ;-)

Nevertheless there is a lot of whining in the group going on, not even stopped 
by the moderators, that would have been more useful if told to Apple instead 
of the users (especially the mails that have a tone like "please fix this! 
Please bring that back!"). Instead people just complain "Apple doesn't listen 
to us! Boohoo!"

> Nice to hear free opinions here ,

Yeah, I hope you don't mind me giving mine. ;o)

> even if it´s sad to read about 
> other people´s problems . I need to know if it worths to buy a G5 now
> or not. I´m still on 5.5.1 on PC , and I NEVER crashes and I´m using
> 2 machines ( one Atlhon 1500 W98 and other PIV 2600 WinXP... FYI: The
> AMD system can run the same tracks/pluggins number the PIV system
> runs... but it´s almost half the speed... )

Never change a winning team. Only upgrade/change if you need something new.

> I tried my L7 on a  G4 450DP 512mb, but OSX and L7 seems too much for
> the machine . Any suggestion to make it work more like today
> standards will be appreciated ( more memory??? a processor upgrade???
> both ?? none??? ) I´m new to macs.

It works quite nicely on my G4 1GB machine (single processor!),  so I guess 
memory is the way to go. However if you want to go for all the pro goodies 
like lots of space designers and guitar amp pros, then I guess a G5 is really 
the way to go.

But erm.. you're already using L7 then? Well then you can safely check its 
stability for you before you upgrade to a G5?

Maurits.

--- In Logic_Cafe@yahoogroups.com, "activist749" <leon.joseph@p...> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I upgraded cross platform from Logic 5 Platinum to Logic 6 Pro about 6
> months ago.  It was a struggle but I have finally gotten all the bugs
> worked out and am competent enough with using Logic 6 to actually get
> some productive work done. Check out my Christmas contest entry to
> EWQLSO:
> http://portelance.thejukebox.tv/songs/hi/A_Christmas_Waltz.mp3
> (Is there a way to post hot links?)
> 
> I guess I am a little nervous about upgrading
> to Logic 7.
> My machine: dual 800 G4 with 1.5 gigs of RAM with 2 - 7200 RPM ATA
> drives.
> My programs: EWQLSO Gold & Silver, Kontakt.  I do orchestral work so I
> have a pretty heavy load of samples.  I have gotten the AU validation
> fixes for all of my programs.
> 
> What do think?  Will my machine handle it and can I expect a
> reasonably smooth transition?  Or should I wait until I can afford to
> upgrade to a dual G5?
> 
>
Hi Leon,

I upgraded to Logic 7.  My sample load isn't as heavy as yours, but I
use many of the same plug-ins, in addition to Waves, Arturia, etc.  It
seems that no matter what I do, L7 crashes on my G5 2X2 with 2G of RAM
and a MOTU 828mkII.  I went back to 6.4.1.  While I still get the
occasional unexpected quit, more often than not, my 6.4.1 sessions
work without a hitch.

I'm going to sit on 7 until an upgrade is released.  Hopefully, things
run better at that point.

Regards,
-Michele Hobbs.

--- In Logic_Cafe@yahoogroups.com, "Kamm Schreiner" <kamm@s...> wrote:
> > 2 machines ( one Atlhon 1500 W98 and other PIV 2600 WinXP... 
> > FYI: The AMD system can run the same tracks/pluggins number 
> > the PIV system runs... but it´s almost half the speed... )
> > 
> > I tried my L7 on a  G4 450DP 512mb, but OSX and L7 seems too 
> > much for the machine . Any suggestion to make it work more 
> > like today standards will be appreciated ( more memory??? a 
> > processor upgrade??? 
> > both ?? none??? ) I´m new to macs.
> 
> As much as Apple would like you to believe that a 500MHz PowerPC is as fast
> as a 1GHz Pentium, in real world living, it simply isn't. Only in the world
> of *specific* benchmark tests. I suspect you're going to need a Mac with a
> similar CPU speed as your PCs to achieve similar results. It is also my
> impression, that even though OSX is good at memory management, it is a
> memory hog. You'll probably need more than 512MB of memory to match your
> PC's performance.
> 
> Another issue is that, from what I've seen, older Macs tend to have slower
> bus speeds than their PC counter parts. The new G5's are excluded from that
> comment as they are on the bleeding edge of technology. If you can at all
> afford it, a G5 would certainly be a smart move.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> 
> Kamm

I have switched over a year now.  I have read more about crashes and problems, but have 
not experienced them at all.  I started with logic big box 5 on powerbook G4.  now use 
G5 2x2 with 2gb ram.  work for 8 hours straight recording vocal, guitar, drums without a 
hitch.  throw in some VI's still no problem.  I feel for you guys runing G5 optimized 
software on older G4's.  I guess these are the days where a 733mhz G4 is outdated.  Best 
of luck to all who are having problems.

happy recording,
editbrain