Putting together an LE based post system, how do these specs look to you?

[diamondschwin]

I am putting together a post audio mix setup for my own personal use at home. I wanted to run the setup by you guys to make sure I can work with this rig on commercial, radio and indie film and documentaries.


I am kind of putting together all the bits and pieces of gear I have collected over the years.


heres the break down


Powermac G5 Dual 2GHz, 7GB Ram, ATI 9800 256mb Graphics Card, two 500GB internal drives, Extra Firewire PCI Card (forget the model, its the digi qualified TI chipset version)

Two 25inch monitors

Canopus ADC Video peripheral

Philips 32 inch tv for picture sync

003 Console Factory Complete (PT8 Complete Production Toolkit)

Mackie 824 and JBL 4206 Audio Monitors

External firewire hard drives, for video media, fx libraries etc.



the only thing I am buying is the 003, the rest I own.
I will upgrade the computer at some point in the near future (its definetly old)


what do you guys think?

[minister]

I'd look at an Mbox 2 Pro and a new computer to run 8.

Otherwise, stay at 7.x. All of our studios are still 7.3.1 and we don't feel it is lacking to get the work we need done. One room has 8 because it is a new computer system. 8 has a few nice things, but is not necessary.

[Craig F]

You will want a new computer sooner than later.
I would avoid the Canopis if at all possible. We had 20 for 5 years and they were nothing but trouble. you could split the first DVI with a Matrox Head 2 Go and use DVI 2 for the picture 32", you could do a Blackmagic PCIe interface box
What are you doing for cuve/room coretion?

[arvid.lind]

A hardware PPM-meter is a good friend in my opinion!


arvid in stockholm

[macaholic]

+1 on Arvids comment. You should absolutely have some decent meters (hardware or software)... We use the Dorroughs where I work (North Amerca NTSC), and have not used the Waves version, so cannot comment on their use as a plugin.

If you are in Europe, I agree nothing beats a hardware PPM. PPMulator will get you by in a pinch, but I ran them side by side on some BBC stuff I was working on, and the ballistics, although close, were not quite the same.

You didn't mention where you were located, so I just threw both of those out there, but make sure you budget for the "non gear" aspects as well, as mentioned before: good room treatment, proper speaker set up, decent metering, etc.

[Sonsey]

Can you work with this rig? Well you can work with ANY rig, if you're willing to put in the effort...(still remember tape and video machines?) The question becomes when do the tools start to slow you down. In that regard, the G5 may well be a bottleneck. Certainly I know people who use them, but their sessions tend to be smaller. A Full 5.1 Surround mix is likely to cause the machine to slow to a crawl. You may end up buying the new machine sooner rather than later. Also the Canopus boxes (Canopi?) are notoriously unreliable, both in terms of sync and durability -do a search here - as always your YMMV. Finally, I'll repeat the need for good meters - the stuff that comes with PT is useless as far as broadcast/film is concerned. Good VU/PPM (depending on where you're located) as well as something like a Dolby Media Meter or LM-100 are an absolute necessity if you're working for broadcast.

[infiniteloop]

I'm going to stick up for the Phasescope meters here - the BBC setting is easily as good as the PPMs in PPMulator, which I also own, and which is now useless in PT8 and doesn't seem to be getting updated any time soon. I do broadcast mixes in the UK every day and the Phasescope PPMs are just fine. In an ideal world you'd have hardware DK Audios or the like, but it's not that important anymore - the likelihood of you needing Dolby Media Meter is fairly high in the future, and that will be more important to you than PPMs.
I would add a strong recommendation for the outrageously good value L2007 limiter by Steve Massey, and his free plug-ins (the meters and the talkback plug-in epsecially).

[diamondschwin]

thanks for the input.


I am in NYC, the studio I run has dorrough metering and DK meters so I am aware of good metering, I was looking at some different plug in solutions, havent sorted that part out.

I dont anticipate running 5.1 mixes yet (or at all) from my home, my room is nowhere near appropriate for that.


I plan on using some heavy drapes along the wall that has some windows, I will have a couch (futon actually! this is still a guest bedroom when people come over) behind me in the 'prodcuer postion' I will treat the wall directly above that with some of the higher end auralex wall tiles or some other diffusion materials. I mean this is for my home, so I dont want to go too nuts with treating the room and what not, this is for any project that does not have the money to come in to my studio, mostly mix by remote stuff where I get files over the internet.

[tonepad]

LE rigs should be built on Intel Macs for any serious work. PPC G5 class boxes are still good for edit/lite mix work in an HD config. LE is 100% native so it works best with the Core 2 CPUs. I wouldn't recommend less, based on our experience.

Wilson Dyer mpse