PT11 v iMac

[Dandy Highburyman]

hi there

classic newbie nerves so hope i'm posting in the right place.

i'm about to upgrade to PT 11 and an iMac respectively (specs for Mac on my profile somewhere as i listed them when registering). with regards to the OS issues Avid outline:

"There are known issues with Mac OS X 10.9 (details)
Mac OS X 10.9.1 is not supported"

would it be better to wait and purchase once Avid have get around to sorting everything out?

part of me can't see the point in spending the money, which to me is a lot, only to find they'll be stuff, maybe a lot of stuff, i don't know at this stage, i can't use. or is it all pretty much there now and i can purchase away safe in the knowledge any future update won't involve me losing part or all of a 'masterpiece'?

hope that makes sense. i know what i mean.

danders

[Darryl Ramm]

I am confused, do you already have this iMac showing in your Profile or it is what you are thinking of getting?

And you give no clue what you are going to be using this system for, your budget, current disk and other equipment etc. etc. so specific advice is hard to offer.

This system in your profile has some potentially serious issues and is not configured how I would buy an iMac for Pro Tools use.

1. A !@#$% Fusion Drive.

There seems to be some very serious problems with Fusion drives and various DAW products including Pro Tools. You can search for the problem reports on DUC, Apple's support forum and others. Make sure you do not purchase the Fusion drive options -- unless you really know what you are doing and only want it to immediately deconfigure it and use it as an internal HDD+SSD.

Apple's US pricing for its iMac internal SSD is $1k to upgrade to 1TB SSD, or $500 to upgrade to 512GB SSD, is about twice the street price of a very good Samsung 840 Evo SATA III drive ... but the Apple drive is PCIe and should offer improved performance (I've not seen any hard data from detailed benchmarks I'd trust yet). But if me I'd be buying one of the Apple SSD drive options. And given you may be wasting US$350 on a Fusion option it is better to just put that toward the SSD upgrade.

2. Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse

Your config lists

Apple Magic Mouse
Apple Wireless Keyboard (British) & User's Guide (English)

Bluetooth wireless keyboards and mice are not recommended with Pro Tools, its a lot less of an issue nowadays than it used to be, but if I was buying a system for Pro Tools I would only use a wired keyboard and mouse. And I'd purchase the keyboard with numeric keypad as I need that for several applications.

3. Only an i5 Processor

The system is a quad core i5, I would only recommend an i7 processor.For the US$200 incremental cost it is a no-brainer. if you are goign to run heavier plugins or do much at all with VIs then you want the i7. The advantage of the i7 processor is that it has hyperthreading and 4 physical cores and 8 virtual cores vs. the 4 physical cores in the i5.

4. No dedicated audio/session drive?

Your system should have a dedicated HDD or SSD for audio/session files. You may be able to get away without this with an SSD boot drive but the first time you have a hiccup folks here are going to (rightly) suspect this is the problem. On an iMac you likely want a Thunderbolt external drive.

Again I would go SSD for performance and robustness and get a Lacie Rugged SSD (http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10599) or Little Big Disk SSD (http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10549) (especially if you need to daisy chain Thunderbolt peripherals) or I'd look at empty Thunderbolt box options and add Samsung 840 Pro or Evo drives to them. The new Sonnet Thunder Bolt Dock is very interesting product, it would be good to hear folks are using them OK (and it replaces your need for an Apple external SuperDrive) http://www.sonnettech.com/product/ec...rboltdock.html.
If you already say have a boat load of Firewire 800 audio/session drives then you can use a Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter (and the Sonnet Dock has one FW800 port for example) but don't go buy new Firewire drives now.

-----

So now what about OS X 10.9.1 Well others cannot really tell you what to do, you will need to make that decision. If you already own this iMac you have some work to do getting it set up, and should probalby start by deconfiguring the Fusion drive. See discussion on that in other threads here.

it will eventually get officially supported and will likely work now anyhow (although there are no guarantees -- search over DUC to see if there are any specific problems that people might be having). .

You also likely have lots of work to do with setting up things like timemachine backups for user files, Carbon Copy Cloner image backups of the system drive (ideally to bootable portable external drives) and checking all those work OK.

In addition to Pro Tools itself you should be worrying about the OS and Pro Tools compatibility with any third party plugin or VI software you want to use, any other third party software etc. and very importantly the device drivers for your audio interfaces.

As always read and follow the Pro Tools installation documentation, including making sure you follow the instructions on properly optimizing your system. its not clear what you have installed now if you do have this system. Do not co-install Pro Tools 10 and 11 on this OS X 10.9.x system, unless you are willing to play on the edge. The Pro Tools 10 uninstaller does not currently work on 10.9 and you currently cannot uninstall Pro Tools 10. If Pro Tools 10 is currently on this 10.9.x system my advice would be to do a clean recovery/internet download restore of OS X 10.9.1 and start over.... which if you have a Fusion drive you likely want to do anyhow.

[Cutlerbri]

Hey Darryl,
Pardon for momentarily hijacking this thread, but I always pay strict attention to your posts (and for good reason). I've been using a bluetooth keyboard and mouse with my iMac (early 2009 24"), and I have not had any performance issues. But at the same time I want to optimize what I have. So:
I have an old wired USB keyboard from an old iMac (G4 "iLamp"). Would that keyboard work as well as a new one for functionality? Also, with limited USB ports on the 24" iMac, should I get a USB hub?
Thank you in advance.
Brian

[JFreak]

I'm using Apple Wireless keyboard/trackpad all the time.

Back in the day there used to be a recommendation about disabling all wireless systems but I don't agree about that anymore. Maybe when processor performance was a fraction of what it is now, wireless introduced more trouble and greater latency, but now that IMO is gone for good. BT latency and USB latency are on par, I never worry about it at all.

[Dandy Highburyman]

thanks for such a comprehensive reply darryl. no, i don't have the mac yet so i can act on what you suggest.

however, if i do all that i'm still left with the OS issues until Avid get around to sorting them, yes?

thanks again

adam

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Dandy Highburyman

thanks for such a comprehensive reply darryl. no, i don't have the mac yet so i can act on what you suggest.

however, if i do all that i'm still left with the OS issues until Avid get around to sorting them, yes?

thanks again

adam

Well that was the first reply I started to write before getting sidetracked on all this other stuff.

You need to worry about the whole picture of OS X version, Pro Tools version, driver version, and any other software version and try to get them all compatible. Sometimes its just an impossible mess but you need to do the best you can. I don't know what systems you have now and how set up and organized with computers you are and how long it will take for you to do even the non-Pro Tools specific setup of this system. But if this was me I'd be expecting official 10.9.1 support from Avid soonish, and I've be working on getting going here.

But not supported does *not* mean it won't run (but search DUC for any specific problems folks are reporting). I'd get the iMac and all the peripherals etc. and set that up. Get user accounts set up and backups working, test the backups carefully, make (ideally two) bootable backup clones of 10.9.1. Try a test install of the latest Pro Tools 11, see if it works, if so go for the plugins etc. and so on. The worst that can happen should be you need to boot the external backup disk and clone it back again to the internal drive.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Cutlerbri

Hey Darryl,
Pardon for momentarily hijacking this thread, but I always pay strict attention to your posts (and for good reason). I've been using a bluetooth keyboard and mouse with my iMac (early 2009 24"), and I have not had any performance issues. But at the same time I want to optimize what I have. So:
I have an old wired USB keyboard from an old iMac (G4 "iLamp"). Would that keyboard work as well as a new one for functionality? Also, with limited USB ports on the 24" iMac, should I get a USB hub?
Thank you in advance.
Brian

If you are not having any problems now I would not change anything.

But yes I think that keyboard and mouse should work. I'd just plug it in and try it of you wanted to.

If there is a problem and you need to try the wired keyboards out now then try to do that without a USB hub at first, if you then needed to use them over the Bluetooth devices and that even one needed USB port was too much then I'd look at a hub for keyboard, mouse and hopefully iLoks etc. Not normally for USB audio interfaces.

---

It is more about the way I set up a Pro Tools system: that is to start with as much as possible done to exact spec/compatibility requirements/best practices discussed on DUC etc. And with every last system optimization aggressively done. So that includes using a wired keyboard, disabling WiFi, disabling spotlight etc. etc. My first goal is to just get the system rock solid just for basic stuff, second goal is to make sure it's delivering good performance while staying solid solid and the third goal is to start relaxing things to be more convenient while still keeping stability and performance. If I wanted a wireless keyboard that is when I would introduce one. If I wanted to cheat and turn on spotlight on the session drive, etc. and so on... but I'd have a test session or several that I'd run before and after to make sure what I just did did not break things.

Bluetooth peripherals cause most Pro Tools users absolutely no problems, but that is the same for a lot of things you are "supposed" to do and may not, and knowing that something does cause most other users problems is no totally comforting if you are the poor user sitting in a heap with a system that does not work properly. Hey you can often run small sessions perfectly well from a boot/system drive, you don't *have* to have a dedicated audio drive. But its nice if you know exactly what you are deliberately choosing to do against standard advice, and when you start having problems you better be ready to undo those things as a part of the troubleshooting steps.

But hey I also personally dislike unnecessarily needing to keep replacing batteries in keyboards and mice and I like the wide Mac keyboard with numeric keypad (I *need* it for some non-Audio related software I'm developing). And I like using that the keyboard's spare USB port to hold my iLok vs. reach around behind an iMac. so none of this at all is an inconvenience to me.

[nst7]

Originally Posted by Cutlerbri

Hey Darryl,
Pardon for momentarily hijacking this thread, but I always pay strict attention to your posts (and for good reason). I've been using a bluetooth keyboard and mouse with my iMac (early 2009 24"), and I have not had any performance issues. But at the same time I want to optimize what I have. So:
I have an old wired USB keyboard from an old iMac (G4 "iLamp"). Would that keyboard work as well as a new one for functionality? Also, with limited USB ports on the 24" iMac, should I get a USB hub?
Thank you in advance.
Brian

You can try the old G4 keyboard. But if for some reason it doesn't work, you can use many brands of newer keyboards. You don't have to spend $50 on Apple's keyboard. Most common brands will work nowadays.

Regarding the hub, I highly recommend them, but get an AC powered hub (that plugs into the wall) rather than a bus powered one, as they are less likely to have issues. I use a hub for midi keyboard controllers, printers, Iloks, etc.

[JFreak]

Any USB keyboard will work. Just bear in mind that Mac/Wind keyboards have different special keys so you have take that into account...

[Dandy Highburyman]

thanks again darryl. looking into everything you advised.