boomrecorder macbook or macbook pro ?

ScoobySounds

ScoobySounds

Well-known member
I'm putting together a cart very slowly (to try and get everything for dead cheap, biding my time) and was wondering if there was any advantage to using a macbook 'pro' over a macbook normal for BR

thanks for you answers.
 
I've done up to 10 tracks mirrored on two different hard drives (the internal and an external FW drive) on MacBook with 1 GB with no problem. I do recommend though that you not overload any Mac with extra stuff I basically treat the Mac like a dedicated recorder to keep it very clean. (This advice applies to any Mac you use for recording).

BTW, I haven't tested BR with the new Mac OS upgrade yet - nor has Take (the BR author), though others have tried it and not encountered any problems.

Do a quick search for BoomRecorder and you will find several of my posts that talk about my field experience with it.

Phil
 
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Shouldn't be a significant difference. I'm on an older MacBookPro but I tested it recording 60+ tracks to a USB2 buss powered drive and had no problems. In practice I have done 12 tracks mirrored to two drives (so 24 tracks) with no problems on a doc (so very long takes - 1hr+).
 
Great thats what I thought - I was going to be selling my laptop and going mac, but if you say its important to keep the mac as a dedicated recorder then i'll have to rethink that.

and also was going to get a new one, but I guess I can get aways with getting an older one if BR isn't that heavy on the processer.

It will be a mickie onyx i'm using so maximum 18 tracks, maybe mirrored. but only on the very rarest of circumstances.

See if i'm using the internal hard drive on the mac (I know it should be external, but just suppose) does the 5600 one struggle? I'm guessing the 7200 ones are the 'only' choice?

Thanks.
 
My external drive is a 5400 - but it is firewire, not USB. I recommend FW over USB because it carries less overhead - USB has to go through the system bus, FW does not so you get better actual through-put.

Another benefit you get with the external drive is that the internal drive is already helping execute the program, whereas the external drive is not - again better through-put.

Phil
 
As Phil says an external drive is important. Sound post has been using hardrives and audio a lot longer than production has and it has always been a bad idea to use your system drive. For one thing the drive can take a beating (more post than production) with all the read writes going on and who wants to beat up the system drive. But probably more important is that the system drive is in constant use by the system. THere are swap files and cache files constantly being read and written off the drive and that conflicts with your smooth recording, or can, because those files will have a higher priority than your recording and you could get interrupted.

I don't do production recording all the time so my MacBook Pro is not a dedicated recorder. Not that it isn't a good idea it's just not practical for me at the moment. So for instance this is being typed on it right now. I have FCS on it because that won't run on my post machine and quite a few other apps. It basically serves as my office machine and my post machine is now much closer to being a dedicated system than it was. Having other apps on the box in OSX doesn't seem to be the issue that it used to be on previous systems. I would not be running a bunch of other stuff at the same time, though I did when I was testing, I'm too paranoid (or sensible) for that.

The bus powered drive I got is USB2 and ESATA. after talking to Take (the developer) it seemed like USB2 was actually a better choice than ESATA because of the way they were cached by the system. FW would also be good and would have been my first choice but I had a USB2 so I tested it and could find no compelling reason to buy a new FW drive. I would probably buy FW if I had to buy a drive today, though I would probably want one that also did USB2. My interface is FW and this early MBP only has one FW400 port and no FW800 so my thinking is that it might actually be more flow friendly to have the interface on the FW and the drive on the USB2. Some of my thinking on this is that the Alesis driver seems to "own" the FW port and I usually have to reboot with a FW drive connected to get the system to see the drive after the Alesis has been connected and Via Versa. So while I haven't tested it I have some worries of using the Alesis with a daisy-chained FW drive since that is how I would have to connect things.
Though I pushing so fewer tracks than I tested I'm not really worried about the USB2 VS ESATA VS FW question, unless the Alesis driver causes a problem.
 
Scott,

Sounds like something amiss in your setup - when I'm recording with the external I run my chain like this: MacBook->Alesis->FW Drive and I have no problems, no rebooting, etc. Performs like a champ.

Acom had a 160GB FW drive for like $99 at Fry's recently, so that's what I'm using.

Phil
 
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