Can you use your little Macbook (not the Macbook Pro) as a mobile recording studio?
It's a well-known fact that computers are getting faster and faster and it seems that Moore's law has no limit, at least for the next 10 years or so.
The fact that you can setup your studio to go with you has become an old topic, for years laptop computers have been able to cope with live recording and/or performance and surely you remember seeing DJs and all kinds of musicians boasting those little computers on stage.
About your little Macbook and Logic Studio on the road... the answer is YES, there is also a limit but so far I've been able to record up to 16 tracks simultaneously, (I could not record more because of I/O limitations).
Most of you will be curious to know how many effects you can cram into a project but honestly, it depends, if you want to have 32 tracks with a Space Designer effect on each I'm sure some coughing will begin...
Check out this fellow who doesn't seem to have a problem basing his entire home studio on a white Macbook.
It seems that most Macbooks are within the scope of minimal requirements:
Minimum requirements to install all applicationsNo doubt a desktop system would give you a better performance but you cannot lug your desktop computer everywhere you go, can you?
- Mac computer with a 1.25GHz or faster PowerPC G4 processor (PowerPC G5, Intel Core Duo, or Intel Xeon processor highly recommended)
- 1GB of RAM (2GB or more highly recommended)
- Display with 1024-by-768 resolution (1280-by-800 or higher recommended)
- Mac OS X v10.4.9 or later
- QuickTime 7.2 or later
- DVD drive for installation
- PCI Express, ExpressCard/34, USB, or FireWire based audio interface recommended
I looked at doing this once briefly, and if I remember correctly, the problem was that Logic Studio would only install on the boot drive, and it required some enormous amount of space, which made it impractical with the size of Macbook internal drives. But one could travel with a Macbook and a large external firewire drive and make that the boot drive... more awkward, but still much more portable than a desktop.
ReplyDeleteHi Scott, thank you for commenting.
ReplyDeleteYou know a great idea could be to get a 2.5'' portable drive and save your projects there. That's what I have been doing, my portable drive is 250 Mb, and the internal drive I have in my Macbook is 80 Gb, I saved a lot of space by deleting the samples I'm not using.
Most of the 40 Gb the Logic Studio installation asks are for sample material.
Just the Soundtrack samples could take 22 Gb of space.
My Macbook internal drive is only 50 gb, and I need other stuff on it when I travel, like all my email... no way I could install Logic on that! But yes, I may try getting a larger external bootable drive and dedicating it to music applications.
ReplyDeletep.s. - The funny thing is, one of the features of Logic 8 is Mainstage for live performance. That's what made me look at it in the first place (I'm content with Pro Tools for the other work I'm already doing). But even though Mainstage was all I was really interested in installing (at least on my laptop), it looked like I wouldn't be able to fit it in my laptop, which is clearly the way one would want to use it! So I didn't really look further.
ReplyDeleteJust out of curiosity, what other equipment did you use for this test? I'm most interested in hearing what you used to bring the tracks to your computer.
ReplyDeleteThanks.
Hello Joseph, thank you for asking,
ReplyDeleteto record up to 16 tracks simultaneously like I did, you can use the Alesis MultiMix Firewire 16, here's a great review of it on SOS
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb06/articles/alesismultimix16.htm
or, on the other side of the Atlantic, there are reviews by users on HC
http://reviews.harmony-central.com/reviews/Effects/product/Alesis/MultiMix/10/1
Cheers!
I have a problem daisy chaining a MOTU 828 mk2 FW and FW hard drive. When I hit record in Logic to record to the FW hard drive the Macbook locks up every time. I have tried hooking them up in every conceivable cable configuration. Anyone else try this? It's a first gen Macbook with 2GB ram, 2GHZ Core Duo, one FW400 port... It's only a 60GB HD so I would rather keep the audio going somewhere else. Plus I use Pro Tools so I want to bounce audio back and forth as easily as possible... without a bunch of copying. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteI have a question and your help would be helpful,i am using windows for about 10 years and now i want to move on mac for better music production stuff but the thing is that i want to use logic pro-in the start i noticed it like this-but after little time i found that it's the logic studio update?-and you have to pay for both of them or they come included in your macbook(if you buy it) ?
ReplyDeletemaybe this sound silly but i dont have any idea about apple's products.... :O ?
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ReplyDeleteCan't wait for subatomic circuits in processors =)
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