Best Imac for Protools 2019

[larsongs]

I used Apple Tech Support yesterday & they were willing to help me upgrade my OS but I preferred not to because of the affect it would have on my PT10 & Plugins. So they are there if I need them for Tech Support.. And they did say if I got my Computer upgraded by an Apple Dealer like Best Buy Apple Tech Support would be avaialable to me..

I agree the best thing to do at this point is upgrade my MBP. And that is what I'm going to do.

The spare time that I have I prefer Songwiriting, playing, performing & recording Music.. My passion isn't to working on Computers. That is only out of neccessity & for me is very frustrating. I don't like working on Cars either.. I'm more of a Driver than a Mechanic..

I do agree learning how to do all this stuff is good.. I'm just not confident that I won't screw something up.. I usually do every time I try to do stuff with Computers & end up having to get whatever Assistance I need somewhere..

That plus I don't want a lot of down time. I'm in the middle of finishing 4 Albums & some Solo Projects that I'd like to get done by the end of the year.. Plus, playing Gigs & being involved in making a couple Music Videos..

I appreciate you all answering my questions.. I don't mean to be redundant..

Thanks

[Darryl Ramm]

Oh you are in the middle of albums. I would normally not want to do any software upgrades while doing that. I might add memory if that would help problems... but the catch 22 here is adding the memory really helps do the OS/Pro Tools upgrade and not much else. I also would not migrate to a new iMac, just too much distraction/risk unless there was a hard problem you had to solve.

But backups... let’s get that sorted out... how do you backup/archive your sessions and content now (all I believe in external HDD and hopefully you are careful about all the session audio content really being in the session folder) and how do you backup your boot drive?

The boot drive backup I would use Carbon Copy Cloner to back up to an external 7,200 RPM hard drive, session backup maybe a combination of CCC clones and/ session folder copies to other drives and online cloud. I’ll post drive recommendations later... but tell us how you back up today if you are do we can better help.

[Righty27]

Good to hear that you have your music production priorities right Lars! :)

In case it makes a difference, check out the following short videos on the RAM and disk upgrades from OWC ... might help make up your mind (not certain this is your MacBook but alternative models are easy to find on their website):

https://eshop.macsales.com/installvi...MacBookPro9-1/

https://eshop.macsales.com/installvi...MacBookPro9-1/

P.S. - I realised after posting earlier that this thread is actually headed ‘Best Imac for Protools 2019’ and Lars’ opening sentence included ‘I'm looking to upgrade my System.. What Imac would you recommend’ and his post also mentioned a desire for a bigger display. So apologies to Lars as, to be fair, his initial preference for an iMac was clear, even if we steered him in the direction of upgrading his MacBook based on other comments :)

[Darryl Ramm]

And my current favorite external USB-3 7,200 backup drive is the G-Technology 1TB G-DRIVE ev RaW USB 3.1 (0G04101) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00SRV4B04..._CMweCbDAMNZET

It’s low cost, get at least two or just to make boot drive backups.

The 2 and 4TB versions of that drive are 5,400 rpm... just too slow for me even for backup. So if you need more than 1TB there are better 7,200 rpm drives.

Ultimately I would use SSD as the session/audio drive and maybe repurpose the current HDD as part of the backup pool. But don’t make those changes now.

[larsongs]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Oh you are in the middle of albums. I would normally not want to do any software upgrades while doing that. I might add memory if that would help problems... but the catch 22 here is adding the memory really helps do the OS/Pro Tools upgrade and not much else. I also would not migrate to a new iMac, just too much distraction/risk unless there was a hard problem you had to solve.

But backups... let’s get that sorted out... how do you backup/archive your sessions and content now (all I believe in external HDD and hopefully you are careful about all the session audio content really being in the session folder) and how do you backup your boot drive?

The boot drive backup I would use Carbon Copy Cloner to back up to an external 7,200 RPM hard drive, session backup maybe a combination of CCC clones and/ session folder copies to other drives and online cloud. I’ll post drive recommendations later... but tell us how you back up today if you are do we can better help.

That's what's making this a Catch 22 situation... If I stay with PT10 & OSX 10.8.5 I'm able to Record, Mix etc. but I can't send File Projects via Dropbox, WeTransfer.. I just noticed that My Photo, IMovie & Garage Band Apps are no longer on my Computer.. Tech Support said it's probably because my OS is so ancient!

So I'm trying to complete All Projects & save them on External Hard Drives. Then do the Upgrade.. Does that make sense to do it that way?

I have 2 Glyph 1T External Hard Drives. I back up Duplicate Copies just in case one of the External Hard Drives should fail.. I've had that happen before..

Thanks,

[Darryl Ramm]

OK I'm starting to get the issues here. So let me drill in further about collaboration.

Yes the age of your OSX install is an issue with online file sharing services. Many vendors seemed to get on the bandwagon about dropping support before OS X 10.10 Yosemite. IIRC that move was actually lead by DropBox, but it affects Google Drive and others who also cut off at 10.10. There may be some technical reasons like not wanting to support 32-bit OS X drivers there (although that went away in 10.8), but I expect it is more likely just wanting to set minimum OS X version they have to QA and support.

But the issue there is hopefully only just if you want to use the desktop drag and drop/virtual filesystems integration and it should not stop you using DropBox or other series web interfaces for sharing sessions. If the web interface is not working for you let us know (and try updating Safari or Google Chrome to the latest browser your OS X version supports).

So my first question is can you just make the web browser work?

I'm not sure how you are using Dropbox for collaboration but I hope nobody is trying to run it live on top of Dropbox. Disk cache is so good it can allow that to work and if two people are sharing that trying to work on a session simultaneously you are open to all sorts of session corruption. With the web interface to Dropbox you can bundle up sessions say in a ZIP image, drop them on the web and have collaborators drag to their desktop. ZIPing them saves space and prevents anybody deliberately or accidentally opening them on the dropbox remote disk. And you can build up a history of complete saved sessions by being organized say, putting the session date in the name or similar.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by larsongs

That's what's making this a Catch 22 situation... If I stay with PT10 & OSX 10.8.5 I'm able to Record, Mix etc. but I can't send File Projects via Dropbox, WeTransfer.. I just noticed that My Photo, IMovie & Garage Band Apps are no longer on my Computer.. Tech Support said it's probably because my OS is so ancient!

So I'm trying to complete All Projects & save them on External Hard Drives. Then do the Upgrade.. Does that make sense to do it that way?

I have 2 Glyph 1T External Hard Drives. I back up Duplicate Copies just in case one of the External Hard Drives should fail.. I've had that happen before..

Thanks,

It's not the combo of your old version of PT and OSX as much as it is running an old version of OSX. Unfortunately to run newer versions of OSX so you can use DropBox, etc. you also need to upgrade your PT installation. Which as you may know, means a lot of your current plugins won't work UNLESS the developer has aax64 versions of those plugins.

PT10 will run on OSX 10.9.5 - check and see if those services you want to use will run on that OSX. There's no way I know of that you could possibly lose the programs you're talking about due to running an old version of OSX as those essentially are a basic part of OSX. You've been asked this many times and haven't answered it - do you have backups of your system from when it was running like it used to? Not Time Machine but via such a program like the oft-mentioned Carbon Copy Cloner.

There is a possibility IF certain things on your computer can handle it. First off max out your ram using modules from OWC. Along with that: if your system drive is big enough partition it using OSX disk utility and install a more modern OSX so you can use your online services. That way you can work inside PT10 and transfer the files in the other OSX.

With the session on external drives it should be easy to do what I just wrote above.

[Darryl Ramm]

In terms of backups... besides your sessions you need to get your boot/system drive backed up. Use Carbon Copy Cloner so you make a bootable clone to an external drive, and if you ever need to use that you just connect it and boot off it. A systems recovery in the time it takes to reboot.

And for session backups. Copying sessions you are working on to other drives is a good idea, I'll often say copy them to the boot/system drive (although with modern SSDs I'm just running everything there) and renaming for folders, or putting them into zip images to stop them accidentally being opened etc.

One of the largest causes of data loss you want to think about is user error. That's much more common than say disk drive failure of theft. And as long as . those sessions are mounted somewhere on your computer they are much more vulnerable to finder problems. And anywhere near people/coffee/beer etc. vulnerable to accidental physical damage (one reason why SSDs are nice). So I'd hope you are also putting backups/archives of sessions on on an external drive and then removing (after ejecting) that drive and putting it somewhere safe, ideally offsite. If you are doing that as well as having multiple copies in the cloud you are likely well covered.

The other thing with session backups that causes grief is not having all the audio content where you expect it is. An example problem is audio content say on a cloud file share and the sessions refer to it there and then a collaborator deletes it and you are all dead. So do a "Save Session In" (to consolidate audio content in the session folder) to a backup folder if you are not sure, and make sure this archived session works as expected in Pro Tools (e..g . drag it to the boot/system drive and run from there) with all the session/audio volumes and online file shares ejected (to be paranoid the archived sessions are not finding content on the current audio/session drive etc.). Mistakes related to content inclusion in sessions is such a frustratingly common cause of tears.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by musicman691

There is a possibility IF certain things on your computer can handle it. First off max out your ram using modules from OWC. Along with that: if your system drive is big enough partition it using OSX disk utility and install a more modern OSX so you can use your online services. That way you can work inside PT10 and transfer the files in the other OSX.

With the session on external drives it should be easy to do what I just wrote above.

Or do none of this and just collaborate using the DropBox web interface for now. _much_ easier and safer for somebody not comfortable with opening up the computer, until the current album work is done, then worry about upgrades.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Or do none of this and just collaborate using the DropBox web interface for now. _much_ easier and safer for somebody not comfortable with opening up the computer, until the current album work is done, then worry about upgrades.

But it seems that DropBox isn't working on his computer anymore according to what he wrote.

I wonder if you could comment on something he wrote in his last post here where he wrote that certain apps are no longer on his computer which seems weird. I'm beginning to think there's more going on than either he's telling us or doesn't have the tech smarts to say what's going on.