Intel iMac 3.06 GHz not "Officially Qualified"

[Vogger]

Thanks for the post, DigiTechSupport (and Mr. Chinchilla). As for me, I have not bought my new iMac yet (I am still on 001/G4 Quicksilver!), and I want to buy an iMac but I am waiting to hear more from some other folks before risking the investment as opposed to getting a MacBook Pro. Hopefully Mr. Chinchilla (the other poster) will be able to test your bus theory and kindly post again re shorter cables and networking options you've suggested. Thanks!!

[Tomas Chinchilla]

You are welcomed.

Touching on the firewire cable thing, one of the first times I called tech support they did send me a replacement cable but didn't seem to make much of a difference, I do have firewire networking disabled as well as airport and have gone thru best practices.

I get the errors even on 6 track songs with just an acoustic guitar and voice, some waves SSL and a Reverb (Just as an example) and it starts barking back at me with CPU load issues. and in often cases it will just disconnect the 003.

iMac 24" 2.4
4 GB RAM
320GB Drive Internal
500GB FW400 Audio Drive
500GB FW400 Sample Lib (This was a new addition to see if it helped)

7.3 and now 7.4 and still have the same issues
Have done the firmware updates

MP Toolkit

And god forbid if I rewire reason and open a Piano patch ...... it refuses to run some times and others it miraculously just works.

I am at a lost. Its going to be a year in August/September since I bought the 003, didn't have any issues with my MBOX2 Pro Factory using the same setup.

[Vogger]

I am confused about something; are there ANY Macs that are actually being sold now in stores that Digidesign has tested? Are there any urgent plans at DigiDesign to test, say, the actual iMacs and MacBook Pros that are now on sale? Thanks!

[DigiTechSupt]

I get the errors even on 6 track songs with just an acoustic guitar and voice, some waves SSL and a Reverb (Just as an example) and it starts barking back at me with CPU load issues. and in often cases it will just disconnect the 003.

iMac 24" 2.4
4 GB RAM
320GB Drive Internal
500GB FW400 Audio Drive
500GB FW400 Sample Lib (This was a new addition to see if it helped)

Can you use the Tech Support Utility to post a list of your installed plug-ins and version numbers?

Also - what brand/model drives are you using? How are they connected - meaning in what order is the FW chain?

[DigiTechSupt]

I am confused about something; are there ANY Macs that are actually being sold now in stores that Digidesign has tested? Are there any urgent plans at DigiDesign to test, say, the actual iMacs and MacBook Pros that are now on sale? Thanks!

Yes, testing is going to happen, it's just been delayed due to the testing resources needed for the Leopard release.

[Tomas Chinchilla]

Can you use the Tech Support Utility to post a list of your installed plug-ins and version numbers?

Also - what brand/model drives are you using? How are they connected - meaning in what order is the FW chain?

Right know is all basic, is PT 7.4 standard out of the box with the version of xpand/BFD Lite/DIGI PLugs that come in the box. besides that the Waves SSL and the Music Production Tool kit.

2 WD My Book drives FW400 (One of them has an 800 connection but not using it by DIGI's Previous advice)

003 -> WD400 (500GB) -> FW 400 port on the iMAC

[Vogger]

Hey Tomas,

Any luck getting your Pro Tools gear to work properly on the iMac platform?

Regards,
Vogger

[Tomas Chinchilla]

Hey Tomas,

Any luck getting your Pro Tools gear to work properly on the iMac platform?

Regards,
Vogger

Hey man, here are my findings which lead me to believe it might be a compatibility issue or an issue with my iMac revision (I suspect the internal Firewire Bus):

DiGI asked me to test it on my macbook and I did, this was my response back.

______________________________

Sure thing, the thing runs on the macbook fine, not only that but I will give you some examples: it runs like a breeze with no UI glitches or anything. (The best I’ve run PT so far including my old G5) it makes me wonder about the firewire bus on the iMac and System Architecture

On the iMac:

on the imac I would have to use a buffer of 512 during recording and more than likely it will live on the 1024 at mixing
cpu on the imac would have to be at 85% or above
these sessions were recorded at 96k

On the MacBook:

I am abusing it right now and I have gone as low as 128 on the buffer with small instances where it would stop, but 256 is very reliable
I have gone as low as 65% on the CPU but more comfortable at 75%
sessions were originally recorded at 96k

The sessions I tested range from 6 audio channels to 48 audio plus Aux/Midi


Same data path; 003 -> HD -> Macbook/iMac

Given I haven’t installed reason or any other heavy sampler yet but so far this is were the iMac would render itself unusable, Waves SSL – MP Toolkit – Wave Arts (Latest Version of everything)

Configuration:

Imac:

2.4 Ghz Proc
4 GB Mem
320 GB 7200 RPM
256 Video

MacBook: (BLACK)

2 months old so is the newest

2.4 Ghz Proc
4 GB Mem
250 GB 5400 RPM
144 MB Video (Shared Mem)

[Tomas Chinchilla]

The little booger runs circles around the iMac.

This just sucks!

Maybe a MacPro Dual Quad (8 Core) would be the ticket.

[drguitar]

Digi, you said this:

Also - one BIG thing to watch out for is that most new Macs come with FW networking enabled. You MUST disable this from the Network control panel, otherwise there will most definitely be problems.

Is this really a problem?

I am not having problems on my machines running 10.5.3 that are all configured with their default post-leopard install networking settings

when I look at Network in System Preferences, it lists Built-in FireWire and says not connected

but there is no disable button.

I want to understand why this is a problem and if it's a big problem, why there isn't a big red flag note to users about this during installation?

thanks for your time