The Logic Off Topic list

>
>The problem is, that if someone has a cheapy 2000+ Athlon machine
>with a DDR motherboard, and it's being suggested that they upgrade to
>a "superior" shiny new top-of-the-line just-released G4 2*1Gig
>machine, the G4's processing power with logic 5.x might not be any
>better than what they currently have, despite the fact that it might
>cost two or three times as much. And its performance with logic
>5.x /might/ actually be worse when it comes to running lots of
>sotware instruments and processing.

In which case no one is probably expecting them to buy anything.

>I guess that when logic becomes OSX-specific, they are counting on
>being able to strip out all the kludgey cross-platform code and
>replace it with super-optimised OSX code that'll run appreciably
>faster and compensate for the slower hardware.
>But at the moment that sounds a bit like jam tomorrow, and by the
>time they'd finished that piece of engineering, PC's will have gotten
>even faster, and distributed network processing might have caught on.

Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow.  We really can think ourselves silly but 
there is just no telling since apple is not telling.


>I think networked processing may be the Next Big Thing to hit the
>workstation market, and while someone might be happy to pay out a
>premium price for a single Mac G4 because of its pretty user
>interface and casing, they might be more reluctant to pay the same
>premium rates for a stack of slave machines to sit in a rack and
>provide background processing.

But they might be willing to pay for two machines that are designed 
to work together harmoniously which is something that it is not 
always safe to assume is going to be the case between even the 
components of a single PC.

>If emagic implement load-sharing, people will be able to buy /two/
>macs and increase their power that way ... but since the Windows line
>is being cancelled before networking features are implemented, they
>won't have the option of supplementing their pretty G4 with a little
>ugly cheap PC cubelet hidden under the desk which automatically kicks
>in to take over part of the load, because because there won't be a
>version of the new logic code that can be run on the cubelet.

  Given the troubles I've seen with my PC I would be happy to pay the 
premium so as not to have waste my precious time and creativity 
trying to figure out what was causing some nasty glitch between two 
CPUs of different types in some Rub Goldberg rig.  I would not mind 
paying for a couple of rack mount mac DP servers.  It would still 
probably come out to less Bang for buck wise than buying Digidesign 
cards.

Apple actually is working on some kind of cpu ganging scheme.  It 
will be interesting to see if they come up with something that will 
do what we need.




>Cross-platform processing is liable to end up being the domain of
>companies like Steinberg and Native Instruments, who are maintaining
>a presence (and investment) on both platforms.

Liable?  E-mapples position is pretty clear at this point don't you think.

>Unless apple/emagic change their minds about dropping all Windows
>audio product development, I don't see how they can hope to be a
>credible player in this new sort of market.

By making something that works well.  Only time will tell.