Quicksilver G4 "not recommended" for PTLE 7.x?

[6stringer]

Does anyone know WHY the entire Apple G4 Quicksilver series has been condemned as being "not recommended" by Digi for use with PTLE 7.x? Do any Quicksilver owners find this distressing? As a Mac support professional, I'd just like to know what the issue is based on and if any workaround has even been investigated? Any information on this will be GREATLY APPRECIATED! Thank you in advance.

[Slim Shady]

The CPU's aren't fast/powerful enough to guarantee decent performance. I'd imagine PT7 would do OK on a dual 1ghz quicksilver, I've run it on a QS 867 and it could do enough for small editing, but in general those are just old computers with outdated chips, so not only can most of them not keep up, but Digi probably had to drop them off the QA testing line due to the large number of new Macs that have come out since then.

[Tom Ptacek]

Having owned a Quicksilver 867 that was upgraded to a Gigadesigns dual 1.8 with 1.5 gigs of ram, I can tell you that I was frustrated by the buffer errors that appeared irregularly but sometimes often in ProTools 7.1, like maybe in a recording session. If I set the buffers to 1024 I would get decent performance but I like to use a lot of soft synths and 1024 can be too much latency for laying midi tracks in real time. What was interesting was that the Core Audio drivers worked much better for me in Logic Pro 7.2. I even set the buffers at 256 with good performance. Another interesting thing was that the performance seemed better in ProTools 6.9. I have since purchased a G5 dual 2.5 with 3 gigs of ram and it works with both programs without any problems, except needing therapy worrying about CPU temperatures and Liquid cooling systems. I may buy the Applecare for the first time ever.

[Bennett Paster]

I've been using a Quicksilver Dual 1gHz for several years with LE. I agree with the sentiments in the above post- 6.4 was perhaps a bit more stable that 7.1 has been. (I never used 6.9.) The main reason I upgraded to 7 at all was to take advantage of the additional CPU power I'd get since only 7.x truly utilizes both processors. It would seem that I'm getting 30-40% more RTAS power now on 7.1, so the upgrade has mostly been positive. I do see the occasional spikes in CPU for no apparent reason, which can be annoying during a mix, but usually things seem to resolve themselves. I can't push the CPU meter much above 70% because of the regular "surges" in the meter. Perhaps three times in last 6 months the system has even spiked during track recording (12-16 tracks simultaneously, mind you), cutting short a take. I usually record in Low Latency Monitoring; turning it off and raising the buffer size has always been enough to help in these rare case.

Soft synths (I use the GForce and Digi ones) don't do too well on this machine either- it's almost fast enough, but since I can't use Low Latency Monitoring with a plug in on an instrument track, I have to turn the buffer size to 512 or 1024, which creates too much latency for many sounds. Reason (via rewire) seems to work quite a bit better- it's much snappier with regards to latency.

In general, upgrading to 7 has enabled me to add another reverb and a handful more plugins than I could get with 6. That's made it worth my while, but I don't have rock-sold faith in ProTools... (I used to in 5.x on my dual 500Hz G4 with digi 001- ahh the PCI days, how I miss them!) Sometimes I get nervous when clients are over. Save, save, save (and hope) is my motto.

I'm trying to hold out for a intel G5 (which are not even released as desktops yet), but I'll certainly wait until PTLE and the plugins I like (Waves, Oxford, Bomb Factory, Sound Toys) are solid in this new platform. I may well wait a long time- I don't like to be the first on the block. (Perhaps I should get on older G5- you can never have too much CPU.)

In short- if you are stable in 6.x and you don't need the extra processing power (right...) or the "new features" in 7 (what are they again? ha ha), stick with 6. I've been in 3 major studios in NYC in the last week- 2 of them are running TDM 5.x in system 9, the other TDM 7, reluctantly (and it was crashing and having firewire freakouts).