Does a Mac Mini play well with PT

[sonicland]

I've searched for this topic but not found anything. I'm in need of a new Mac and have to spend as little as possible. Is a Mac Mini a decent choice (I want to buy new not used)? I've read in the support pages that PT needs a HD with a minimum speed of 7200 rpm, is that just for the drive that gets the audio? The internal drive on the Mini is 5400 rpm, my external FW drive that I'm using for PT now is 7200 rpm and I would use that. I would get the Mini w/ a Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz, 4GB RAM, 320GB Hard Drive, NVIDIA GeForce 320M, and SuperDrive for about $900. I've considered an iMac but that would be hundreds more. Any one using a Mini and what's your experience? Digi support pages does qualify the Mini as suitable but I'd like to get some user feedback.

Thanks

[pgripp]

I've been using the mac mini (2.53 Ghz, 160gb intel ssd) with pro tools for about a year. It works great and is totally silent. I planned on buying a Mac Pro, but now I can't bring myself to have one of those big boxes around.

And I recorded this with it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_sfnQDr1-o

[pgripp]

Oh, you'll really want to swap out the drive. I suspect the 5400rpm 320gb will be a problem.

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by pgripp

Oh, you'll really want to swap out the drive. I suspect the 5400rpm 320gb will be a problem.

Swapping the drive and cloning with Carbon Copy cloner would solve that, but I suspect that, as long as you are recording to a 7200 rom drive, the system drive rpm won't matter that much(unless you start using lots of VI's and need better performance from the C: drive)

[Shan]

Originally Posted by sonicland

I've searched for this topic but not found anything. I'm in need of a new Mac and have to spend as little as possible. Is a Mac Mini a decent choice (I want to buy new not used)? I've read in the support pages that PT needs a HD with a minimum speed of 7200 rpm, is that just for the drive that gets the audio? The internal drive on the Mini is 5400 rpm, my external FW drive that I'm using for PT now is 7200 rpm and I would use that. I've also read in the support pages that Digi does qualify the Mini as suitable. I would get the Mini w/ a Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz, 4GB RAM, 320GB Hard Drive, NVIDIA GeForce 320M, and SuperDrive for about $900. I've considered an iMac but that would be hundreds more. Any one using a Mini and what's your experience?

Thanks

I've set up a few Mac mini systems for some friends. They worked fine without issue. A separate firewire drive was used for the audio.

Shane

[punchiest]

They work real good. Not so much with several tracks at 96khz...but real good otherwise.

[Griffin23]

No problems here

[Rednaught]

I've two Mac Mini's

A G4, running PT7.3 which is in my location tracking rig, 002R + 8 mic pre ADAT + 2 mic pre SPDIF
Records 18 tracks at once easy as you please to a 7200rpm external drive
All in a 6RU case with wheels. Great for recording at the pub.

Also have a 2009 model Mini in my living room (my HTPC) which I occasionally plug an MBox2 into to do the odd job on PT.
It gets about 70 DVerbs on 1 core. I can't remember where I saw the post but I think you're supposed to leave one core to the computer and my Mini certainly works better that way.

Cheers
Rednaught

[dmm]

Interested in this topic, also to replace a wounded sounding dual 2.8 G5. Money is tight but would the mini do better than the G5 in a noticeable way power wise?

Not using any VIs but many instances of Waves SSL and AC Channell and am stuck at maxing out most sessions CPU wise @ 1024 buffer on 7.4

thx in advance

[Darney]

Originally Posted by dmm

Interested in this topic, also to replace a wounded sounding dual 2.8 G5. Money is tight but would the mini do better than the G5 in a noticeable way power wise?

Not using any VIs but many instances of Waves SSL and AC Channell and am stuck at maxing out most sessions CPU wise @ 1024 buffer on 7.4

thx in advance

You'll see a HUGE difference with a core 2 Duo. A typical session I run on my dual G5 (2.5 GHz, 7 gig RAM) may take 35-65% CPU... on my MacBook Pro, maybe 13-18% CPU usage.
As others have noted, hard drive upgrade (you can get 2 SATA drives in it) and max out the memory. For about $1500 you can have an awesome machine.