[Richard Fairbanks]

Brad,
card order? Gee, I don't think there's much to go wrong there. Expansion chassis host, firewire, UL3D in that order. Not much to change.

Jon,
compared to a system that does not have MOJO, or AVXL for that matter, many things ARE sluggish. Smoothness of scrubbing is one of them. (BTW, the wonderful scrubbing trimmer has been broken since 6.7. Not a fault of MOJO, just broken.) Wait time after pressing play is about 1/2 second longer, time required after stopping seems very noticeably longer. I find myself waiting on the system more noticeably with MOJO than without, especially after stopping playback. For someone who is coming from a system with video running externally it will be a big change.

It is natural to assume that when you double the processor speed, and then put two of them in the system, that you will enjoy a boost in performance. The boost is there but you won't enjoy it because OSX and Pro Tools bloat takes it all away from you. You cannot get ahead of the curve in this regard, you will have to spend good cash to stay even. You will get the additional features that come along with the bloat, so some things will make the switch worthwhile. You'll never run out of TDM timeslots again, you'll get to use a bunch more internal busses, and you'll be able to run some plugins that are not available on OS9 or 5.3.1. Pro Tools has more features and conveniences to, so at least you'll see some of what you traded away to bloat. You cannot avoid an upgrade forever so this is all part of the game.

Maybe my previous post read more negatively than I intended, but mainly I meant to provide a realistic portrait of my experience and to mention the instability that I have using a SATA drive with video. It should be obvious, if you've read my other posts, that I like MOJO and choose to use it over all other options.