Any Mac Pro HD users out there ? I have some questions....

[Lizardpoint]

Hi there,
Not wanting to get dragged into running Vista and having to upgrade my PC again, I was considering a Macpro (Running OSX not XP) but have some pretty dumb questions:

1. How noisy is a Mac pro ? Can it be left in the control room or must it be banished to a machine room ?

2. Is there anything fancy about the hard drives or are they straight off the shelf units that you can fit yourself ?

3. I'm a soundforge user for editing stuff outside of Pro tools. This is PC only. What is the Mac editor of choice ?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Cheers

Lizardpoint

[Rail Jon Rogut]

1) Very quiet unless you're using the DVD drive then it's really loud.

2) Stock SATA drives.. I use Seagates.

3) Parallels and Sound Forge.

Rail

[Lizardpoint]

Thanks for that.

When you say very quiet are we talking more quiet than a 192 i/o interface fan ?

Great news about parallels !! I can keep Soundforge.

Thanks again

Lizardpoint

[Rail Jon Rogut]

My 192 is dead quiet except when first powered on.. so no, the Mac pro is a little louder than that.. but nothing near the volume of a G5... I can hear the drives being accessed in my Mac Pro more than I can hear the fans.

Rail

[James Drake]

3. I'm a soundforge user for editing stuff outside of Pro tools. This is PC only. What is the Mac editor of choice ?

I was a Soundforge/CD Architect user. Since switching to OS X I haven't found any alternative.

I was hopeful when I saw this:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/soundbooth/
but it is for Intel Macs only, no PPC. But you're looking at the Mac Pro so....

[Jay B]

My control room is part of my tracking room.. I record vocals with Neumann's, etc right next to my G5.. I have never picked up any extraneous noise from my G5... real quiet..

Jay

[Jay B]

My control room is part of my tracking room.. I record vocals with Neumann's, etc right next to my G5.. I have never picked up any extraneous noise from my G5... real quiet..

Jay

[Ted Spencer]

My G5 dual 2.7 is very quiet almost all the time if I set the processor in System Preferences/energy saver/options for "reduced". If it's on "automatic" or "high" it's very annoyingly loud when it cycles the fans up for certain tasks. Are the MacPros quiet regardless? Do they still have the processor options settings in system prefs?

[holden]

1. Do you do any recording in the control room? I have a Mac Pro/HD/Accel/96io setup and I consider even the 96io fan too noisy to be in a room where recording is done. I keep all equipment with fans in it (including the Mac Pro) in a closet (with an exhaust fan). I would not record with microphones in the same room as the Mac Pro without noise prophylaxis. For a dedicated control room it depends on your noise tolerance.

2. To elaborate on Rail's comment, not only can you use stock SATA drives, but you can use OEM SATA drives (at a savings over consumer packaged SATA drives) without having to purchase an extra power cable to hook it up to the Mac's power supply [I use a 500GB 7200 rpm Seagate drive for archiving and general storage and two lower-capacity 10,000 rpm drives (Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD) for mixing, recording, and sample storage]. Hard drive installation in the Mac Pro could hardly be easier.

3. No comment (No editing experience outside of Pro Tools).

Regards.

[ronwasserman]

[quote1. How noisy is a Mac pro ? Can it be left in the control room or must it be banished to a machine room ?

2. Is there anything fancy about the hard drives or are they straight off the shelf units that you can fit yourself ?

3. I'm a soundforge user for editing stuff outside of Pro tools. This is PC only. What is the Mac editor of choice ?


[/QUOTE]

1. Very quiet. HD drives 2-3 are known to have a little vibration noise. Easily fixed by putting a little piece of paper below their trays to tighten up the bay.

2. You can install them yourself.

3. Bias Peak