What Macbook Pro is good enough for 8 le

[royalt32]

I am going to begin my run with macs after a long time with pcs.

I need a macbook pro to be able to run Pro Tools 8 le with at least 10 rtas instruments, at least 20 rtas plugins per session. I'll be recording thru my mbox 2 mini for now and my external hard drive. I'm not big on getting more bang for my buck, just want something that won't crash and will be durable for a while.

Here are some of my options:
13-inch: 2.4GHz?
15-inch: 2.4GHz?
15-inch: 2.66GHz?
The Intel core duo 2, i5, or i7?

Also big question which is more important to invest more in the external hard drive quality/size or the computer with a bigger hard drive?

[Slim Shady]

Get the best laptop you can afford, and remember to have some of that computer budget set aside to get more RAM right off the bat.

10 RTAS instruments.... can you be more specific? 10 instances of lightweight synth modelers would be easy, but 10 instances of fully loaded Kontakt samplers would probably be a bit heavy for a laptop.

Better to invest more in better (or more) external drives than doing any kind of custom build through Apple and getting a bigger internal. All of Apple's "upgrades" are insanely overpriced, which includes RAM, Hard Drives etc. Just get the off-the-shelf model and upgrade the RAM yourself from Macsales or Crucial, that's what I do anyway.

[the.engineer]

Hi royalt32,

I've just bought the 15" MacBook Pro 2.4GHz i5 4GB Ram for my mobile rig and I also splashed out a little bit and opted for the Hi-Res screen and the 7200rpm internal drive (for those rare times you do need to record to the system drive).

I'm running Pro Tools 8.0.4 on Mac OS X 10.6.4 and it behaves like an absolute dream. I run all of my audio from a Lacie d2 via the FW800 then daisy chain my digi 002 from that via FW400.

The setup hasn't crashed once and the stability is fabulous. The biggest point I can make is to make sure that you use compatible plug-ins. They have been the cause of much misery for me over the past year or so and after rooting out problem plug-ins (basically all the ones from IK multimedia) everything is plain sailing.

If you can afford it, go for i5 and more cores. It's all good stuff.
Best wishes,
James

[royalt32]

That sounds like a sweet setup, that is my dilemma with the cores the intel core duo 2 or the i5. How big is the difference?? Would I most likey freeze up or crash using the duo processor during a pro tools session with lets say reason rewire, 2 kontakt tracks, 15 dynamic processors, 2 vienna strings tracks, 2 rob papen tracks?

[Noviisi]

Originally Posted by the.engineer

The setup hasn't crashed once and the stability is fabulous. The biggest point I can make is to make sure that you use compatible plug-ins. They have been the cause of much misery for me over the past year or so and after rooting out problem plug-ins (basically all the ones from IK multimedia) everything is plain sailing.

Are you saying that you can't use AmpliTube 3 (for exeample) at all?
What kind of problems these IK Multimedia plugs cause?
This is a very sad news for me because I just bought MacBook Pro 13" and I am palnning on using it with AmpliTube 3 onstage.

[the.engineer]

royalt32, I'm afraid I can't say about the difference between the two cores. I went for what I could afford at the end of the day.

It depends on what dynamics processors you're using (I use nomad factory, joemeek & massey and they use little to no processing power even on large track counts). Reason I find eats up CPU power and because it's rewire Pro Tools doesn't tell you how much of the RTAS engine it's using. Pain in the ass!! Don't know about rob papen, kontakt or vienna. Can you look at your old PC setup and possibly gain some insight from that?

[the.engineer]

Noviisi, I get by with amplitude 3 in pro tools 8.0.4. It's purely a compatibility issue between the two programs. If you run amplitude 3 stand alone, it runs fine. I also have the same problem with Ampeg SVX but because it's such a damn good plug-in I get over the problems by bouncing down the audio and then disabling the piug-in. Symptoms of incompatibility is pro tools 'losing communication with the interface'. That's what happens with my digi 002r when I try and use anything slightly CPU intensive with amplitude 3 or ampeg svx.