Should I sell my G5 quad?

[CV]

this post isn't meant to be whining or complaining...anyone who's been on here long enough is sick of all the silly complaints that go on ( although some are valid.) I'm a music composer who's basically frustruated with RTAS performance in PT LE. When I see how well Ivory piano module runs, I know it's possible. I run alot of soft samplers at lower buffer settings, which is the RTAS issue

I know I got myself into an unstable work situation by purchasing an unqualified computer. However, it will be almost 4 months now of CPU spikes and I really might be ready to throw in the towel with Digi and Native Instruments.

Native Instruments...Kontakt 2...god help us...I will not buy from them anymore...

This is really just a question to bounce off of other quad users running PT 7.0


Hardly any of my plug-in companies have optomized for PT 7, and there are no updates in sight.
(altiverb 5, sony bundle, izotope, trash...)

Anybody with a constructive opinion, please chime in...

Is anybody having great results with Logic Pro on their quad?


I really wonder with Digi probably having to scramble for intel codes, that maybe this is just a bad time for incompatibility due to lack of resources at these companies. Perhaps the quad is never supported?

pardon my rambling...

-CV

[Garjaye]

I'm facing a somewhat similar dilemma.

Although I'm able to make it though a project fine on this machine (not without complications of course)...I'm paying for more machine than I'm using.

I too, contemplated selling my Quad... the problem is, for the price that I paid for the Quad direct from Apple a little over a month ago.. people on Ebay are selling new Quads with 8 Gigs of RAM, 500 GB hard drives..etc For cheaper, or around the same price as getting it from Apple with only 512 RAM, standard 250GB Hard Drive... so you are guaranteed to take a drastic hit if you bought directly from Apple with minimal specs and try to sell on Ebay....because, the folks with the new, loaded Quads have the better deals.

In your situation though, it seems that you are being prohibited from getting anything done on this machine without months of jumping through hoops... so, I'd say let it go and try to deal with the loss.

It shouldn't have to be that way though.

[CV]

Garjaye...


thanks for the input...
Selling the quad won't resolve all of my issues though as a big problem is PT 7 and its RTAS performance bugs.


I guess I've come to realize that Pro Tools LE is just not the best system to run for a Pro Level composer who needs to run virtual instruments and mix / compose simultaneously.

I'm also running a Muse receptor to take some of the burden off LE and the quad...I bought it after seeing the poor results with the quad
just very frustruating after the thousands of $ I spent...


cheers,
CV

[Slim Shady]

I guess I've come to realize that Pro Tools LE is just not the best system to run for a Pro Level composer who needs to run virtual instruments and mix / compose simultaneously.

This is true. PT is great for mixing and audio editing, but for serious composing (esp. using lots virtual instruments) Logic has a huge advantage. For my personal use, one doesn't replace the other, I use both pretty regularly, but for different tasks. DP of course is another option, and a lot of the other composers I deal with are using it, and my impression is that it's actually a little easier to use than Logic, but Logic is still the soft-synth King by a noticable amount. Add in the Score view (which DP can do but PT cannot) which is an essential tool for composers, and you start to see why PT can't keep up when it comes to MIDI and VI's.

Logic would probably scream on your Quad, I've got a dual 2.5 and it's heaven. I'm not a big fan of Logic's audio mix bus, but it works fine for quick demo 'on-the-fly' mixes of MIDI scores, but when it comes to the final mix I bounce everything out and do my mixing in PT. If you can afford to have both, you'll have the best of both worlds - however I also recommend NOT using a Digi interface with Logic, the Digi CoreAudio drivers are pretty weak, I use an M-Audio Firewire box and it's great, and that new Apogee thing looks amazing.

[CV]

Slim,

thanks. awesome!...very insightful response. Could you please briefly describe your method of moving a session you've written in Logic over to pro tools for mixing.

Is it simply a matter of printing all of your midi to audio stripes, or is there some sort of conversion tool.

It just sounds very time consuming, especially when you're under time constraints.

Also, with automating plug-ins, tweaking VI midi, wouldn't you want to do final mixes in the session/program you've been carefully adjusting for the past 12 hrs?

I'm always tweaking Kontakt2 right up to the final print (and holding my breath for crashes.)


cheers,
CV

[Slim Shady]

Could you please briefly describe your method of moving a session you've written in Logic over to pro tools for mixing.

Yeah, it's just a matter of printing everything, and I go the super simple route and just print every track from bar 1 so it's very easy to line them up in the PT session. It's not as time consuming as you'd think though, because remember Logic can do offline bounces, it doesn't have to be realtime like PT, so I can bounce out 12+ tracks of virtual synths in just a couple of minutes - with your Quad you'd probably pass out with how fast it'd go after dealing with PT. Of course if you've got external MIDI that's being printed you have to do that in realtime, but you can just import the track printed in Logic in that case, no need to bounce it again after the inital printing.

Also, with automating plug-ins, tweaking VI midi, wouldn't you want to do final mixes in the session/program you've been carefully adjusting for the past 12 hrs?

I'm always tweaking Kontakt2 right up to the final print (and holding my breath for crashes.)

Generally I don't have to work that way - like I mentioned before, I do all the demo mixes etc. right out of Logic, and once the cues are approved by the studio I shouldn't really be changing any settings anyway so that hasn't been an issue for me. There have been occasions where I've added something later, or like on a recent Imax project I was using a lot of Absynths and was given a lot of leeway with the sound design, so in that case I did just leave those Absynth tracks as MIDI when I moved to PT and I was still able to tweak the patches during the mix - that's one thing that is very nice about the fact that PT can do some VI's when necessary, it's just my opinion that you can't rely on it to do any heavy lifting in that department.

[bradch00]

This is a little off topic, I'm running M-Powered on a G5 iMac and am considering a Muse Research Receptor, probably for the same reason you got one, to offload host CPU processing. Is it worth the investment?

[CV]

On the Receptor:

I'm actually in the process of checking in with their tech support to see if I'm not doing something right...I haven't been overly pleased with its CPU load especially with Kontakt 2 and Kompakt. I can only run one instance of Kontakt and one instance of Symphonic Strings before its CPU is overloaded. I was hoping to be able to run at least 3 or 4 large instruments...

Otherwise its a great interface. Uniwire looks promising, but not for Pro Tools users as it's not supported...

and back to the orginal topic...

Slim ( or anybody else)...thanks so much again for your input. I'm seriously thinking of getting DP or logic. Have you noticed better midi timing with these programs?
PT has some serious issues with midi timing slop. It actually seems to have gotten worse with newer versions.

cheers,
CV

[Hype]

I'm having issues with MIDI too on the Quad, but mostly just a heavy CPU load. However after doing some testing today, I found that even at 64 buffer setting I'm able to play MIDI quite fluidly from my AXON guitar MIDI interface. My problem comes when I need to change the patch, things get very sticky. I'm using Sampletank XL 2.1 (I used to like it but since upgrading my monitors to Dynaudio BM15a's I'm really hearing some crappy sound samples coming out of it) berrrr!!!

My real issue is BFD lite. It's a session stopper all on it's own!

As far as slop is concerned... I thought it was my AXON which is normally really good at tracking (Neural Network system) but you're right, it might be Protools.

[jaketanner]

I've just used the quad for a mix with a 002rack and the power was amazing. It seemed to have endless resources. The session was 24bit at 44.1 with a full track count plus many virtual tracks in the session.

Plug-ins used: URS N & A; SSL4000; Nomad Factory; Waves Gold; McDsp Analog Channel..never a glitch...7 days straight.

Although, I'm not so sure that they will be supported anymore once the Intel versions come out. The Quad was just a stepping stone from Apple.