Quote:
Originally Posted by snipertango
I'm missing the question in this topic, but if your question is "is that a good computer" the answer is yes. I have one of the 2012 non retinas and it works like a dream. however i've heard people having problems with lion/mountain lion which i have also but thats on both my iMac and Macbook.
If you're asking about recording to a external drive with USB 3 that's fine too. USB 3 has a 5 GBp/s data transfer rate which is huge. Other options include thunderbolt (generally more expensive) and Firewire 800 drives. Its really easy to find a dual USB 3 and Firewire 800 drive for a low price tho.
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There is a lot more to what works well than just a marketing data transfer spec for an interface. We'll have to see how USB 3 drives work in practice (and specifically on OS X). So while USB 3 might well work OK, if you use one now you are being a test pilot. There is nothing wrong with that but just be aware what you are going into. The most conservative options on a Mac today are to use a SATA internal drive or a Firewire external drive that meets all the traditional Firewire drive requirements (e.g. Firewire Oxford chipset based).
Especially be sure to avoid (USB 3 or any other interface) drives that --
1. use software or hardware RAID (unless you can disable the RAID and separately access each drive--like you can for example on the Lacie Thunderbolt drives)
2. are slower than 7,200 rpm
3. or use "green" drives (the WD Caviar Green is especially causing folks problems). -- green drives typcially have on-board power management, spin down, etc. that causes all sorts of problems.
Hopefully we'll see more people here reporting successful use of USB3 and Thunderbolt drives with Macs and PCs. And all this is happening in parallel with Flash based storage and its compelling performance specs. Flash is not always a magic bullet and problem free, but things have improved there a lot with falling prices and improved OS/driver support, improved controller chipsets, etc. Again what I'd hope to see most is folks who are using specific Flash drives with Pro Tools, either as a systems, sample or audio drive, to report their success or failures here.
I do worry that Avid is now running too far behind with all this, and has not qualified/approving even one single example of all this interesting new technology (USB3, Thunderbolt, Flash SSD, PCIe based flash). Avid have lots of other issues as a company and maybe they have just given up and/or don't have the staff to do any of this.
Darryl